So I was thinking...

Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.

Took this the other night over some bloke's shoulder.

So he's watching The Big Lebowski on his iPod, checking his Blackberry every 30 seconds AND has his regular mobile on his lap as well, just in case he needs to use his third ear!

I know we live in the 21st century, but this is a little bit ridiculous!

Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.

As I was putting my little girl to bed this evening, I smelt a barely recognisable odour - eau de bonfeu! Yes, one of our neighbours seemed to be conflagrating (made-up word?) some things.

As a kid, a bonfire was a weekly event in our garden and most of our neighbours. I have fond memories of dragging twigs, branches and leaves to the bottom of the garden, scrunching up newspaper and shoving it at the bottom and then lighting the aforementioned copies of the Daily Mail (best thing for it, I hear you cry) and watching the bonfire take hold.

Inevitably, it would start to smoke as the leaves smothered the flames and no matter where I stood, the smoke would follow me and make my eyes stream. Add to that the smell that lingered for a long while - infecting clothes and filling the house, even after the washing machine had done its business.

But fast forward 30 years and bonfires seem to have gone out of fashion. Maybe as gardening becomes fashionable once again with families desperate to find cheap weekend activities, the weekly bonfire movement will grow.

I know there was a call for it to be culled because it was bad for the environment, but given that people still seem to leave supermarkets loaded down with plastic bags, I can't believe this was the only green initiative that actually made sense to the general public.

Bonfires make me wistful for my youth and I'd like to see and smell a few more. Here's hoping!

Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.

Last February, A was just coming up to her 2nd birthday and saying two-word phrases at most. Her preference was for individual utterances.

Today, a month from turning 3, A made this statement, while looking at CDs.

I don't want to dance to the Sugarcubes, I want to dance to the Ting Tings!

How time flies...

Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.

This is one of the more bizarre, but genuinely entertaining celeb talk show interviews you'll see for a while.

There has been speculation that Joaquin Phoenix was being serious, but I think it's clear that even though David Letterman wasn't in on the gag, he's playing it for laughs.

Think about it this way: if Joaquin had gone on David Letterman and just given a straight interview, no-one would probably remember it. Now, it's quickly become an internet phenomenon and tens of thousands of internet goers will have heard of Two Lovers, the movie he's on plugging.

Enjoy!

Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.

Shock, horror! The Met Office gets a weather forecast right for once.

I can honestly say, this is probably the heaviest snow in the UK I've seen in a good 10 years. At least 12" and with more still coming...

Photographic evidence below...

Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.

Clearly I haven't written a blog post for a while for various personal reasons.

And while my blog will not drift into total disrepair, I will probably be limiting my updates to as and when, rather than regular.

Apologies if my wittering was really that entertaining that you feel lost without it, but that's the way it is, I'm afraid.

Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.

I was sitting watching Strictly Come Dancing on Saturday and a thought suddenly came to me. What happens if all 3 or all 4 couples end up with the same number of points?

It's not such an implausible scenario and one that Bruce and Tess never allude to, which leads me to believe that there could be the potential to rig something.

Here comes the anorak part of this post, but please bear with me.

For argument's sake, let's say that next week Rachel and Vincent come top (3 points), Lisa and Brendan are second (2 points) and Tom and Camilla are bottom (1 point).

Now the rules say that the other half of the score is made up of public vote, so if Tom Chambers is most popular he gets 3 points. I have a feeling that Rachel Stevens is least popular so she ends up with 1 point and Lisa Snowdon 2 for being in the middle.

Now my maths isn't up to Calculus level, but even I can work out that all 3 couples then end up with 4 points each. That's a 3-way tie, isn't it?

Surely they can't have a three-couple dance-off, can they? How do they separate them? I can't believe this has never happened before or that the BBC haven't thought about it. I think we must be told...

Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.

No matter how many adverts I see on TV, how many times radio stations play Wham!'s Last Christmas or the number of presents I have/haven't bought it never really feels like Christmas until the tree is up.

Yesterday, we tootled down the road to a man selling trees from the car park in the local pub. There was no variation in price depending on how much taller some were than others, so we had a look round and, amazingly, found one very, very quickly.

C was happy because it was the tallest one we've ever had, A was happy simply because it was a Christmas tree and I was happy because it was a good deal!

Back home, the decorations came out, the lights went up, baubles were hung - much to A's excitement (see photo) and suddenly it was Christmas in our household.

I even spent an hour or two making some Christmas cards last night - a first for me! Roll on the 25th...

Originally published at A few words from Rob Mansfield. You can comment here or there.

The ongoing saga of topslicing the TV licence fee to help prop up the likes of Channel 4, but at the expense of the BBC, has been a thorn in the side of Ofcom and the government this year.

No-one in power wants to rule out topslicing, but no-one wants to come down heavily on the side of the BBC either. Even David Cameron is only 'sceptical' about it now, having previously endorsed the concept.

In spite of all the problems the BBC has been through recently, most recently the Daily Mail-led witch-hunt of Messrs Brand and Ross, many people in the corridors of Westminster don't believe that it should have its own power diluted.

In this month's The Word magazine Andy Burnham once again throws his support behind the BBC, saying:

People like to kick lumps out of [the BBC] but I do think we do that at our peril. It's the backbone of our broadcasting system and, going forward, it should be more important, not less.

Not exactly the most impartial of comments, I'm sure you'd agree. And although he'd hate to confirm, Mr Burnham is clearly not going to be pressing very hard for topslicing, but as Steve Hewlett pointed out in the Guardian a couple of weeks ago, 'after the next election... it may be a very different situation'.