Kew Gardens

I have never been the greatest fan of end of year awards.  Im all for celebrating excellence and all that but the nomination and voting process in most of these awards are highly questionable. Take this year`s BBC Sports Personality of the Year award. The panjadrums at BBC Sports wanted to know the best sportsperson of the year so they asked  Nuts magazine. Among other exclusively male readership publications. So it isnt surprising that this year`s award list is made up entirely of men. Of course whoever wins the award will be a worthy winner. But the process is flawed. This casts a shadow over the whole affair. You have to be in it to win. Who is to say,  if the nomination process was more representative and a sportswoman was in the mix, she wouldnt come up trumps.

So I really dont know what to make of this news that Kew Botanic Gardens has just been voted the best visitor attraction in the country at the British Airways travel awards. Kew Gardens best visitor attraction in Britain?  I lived in Ealing which is just round the corner from Kew Gardens for a long time. Even though I passed the Gardens on my way to Richmond on a regular basis, I was never interested in it.

Why tourists head west in droves to sample the horticultural delights within Kew Gardens beats my imagination. Typically, one would have thought the major attractions in and around W1 would top the list of tourist attractions in the country. But then we dont know how British Airways got the nominees. All we have to do for now is celebrate Kew Gardens as the place to be for any savvy, in-the-know tourist.

Channel 4 Axes Celebrity Big Brother

Channel 4 announced today that it axed the 2008 episode of the excreable Celebrity Big Brother. I do not know the principal reason for relieving our screens of this tomfoolery but i could not careless but have a celebratory drink. I have never been a fan of these so called reality television.

The genre is a fraud. Most of the so called celebrities are has-beens whose agents are looking for new angles to gain them publicity and revive their dead or flagging careers. And the show producers? Less said about that the better. Lets just say they have a script to which the characters in these shows are willy nilly made to work to. You get more reality watching a panto. I would gladly read the teletext backwards rather than watch programmes like Celebrity Big Brother.

I suggest they might as well get rid of Big Brother too. Such tawdry programmes would not be missed.

Alan Johnston Freed

The kidnapped BBC journalist Alan Johnston was freed earlier today. Hightime. We could do with a break from the gloom and doom occasioned by the weather and recent events in the country(flood wrecking havoc and attempted terrorist attacks).

It's highly immaterial what Hamas is or not. They delivered Mr Johnston and should be thanked for their efforts. His capture never made any sense in the first instance and i think Hamas recognised this fact.

Read the full story here.