First things first, John got his school report today. There was no mention of sex ed but I’m sure that he topped the class with his new-found knowledge. Mum and Dad were pretty chuffed with it so well done younger brother.

Secondly, it appears that while I have been redesigning my website the Daily Telegraph has opted not to heed previously offered advice and, instead, continues to churn out stories of very little use. I don’t know about you but when I read the news I want to have my attention grabbed by a headline that is both relevant and significant. Needless to say, the title “Rowan Atkinson sparks row over country house plans” doesn’t really do it for me.

I must admit that when i clicked on the link to the article I was still hoping for something deceptively controversial. Perhaps Mr Atkinson’s plans for the country house involved putting rocket boosters underneath it and flying it to the moon or converting it into a training centre for women bishops or something like that. Alas, the story was exactly as one might have envisaged it. Rowan wants to build a new house and some people don’t happen to like it. Big deal.

It really is a complete non-story. Rowan Atkinson has hired one of the men at the forefront of modern architectural design to draw up plans for a new house and the opposition is led not by an expert on landscapes or aesthetics but a bloke whose job it is to grow wheat and then chop it all down again. If being a son of the soil makes you the next Claude Monet then why is Uncle Ben still having to flog rice for a living? Exactly.

The says: “Atkinson, 55, who has also recruited the landscape designer Tom Stuart-Smith to reproduce a meadow at the front of the property, said his neighbours had ”nothing to fear”. I should think this is mainly because the house is to be built in the middle of a 16 acre estate; he doesn’t have any naffing neighbours. The whole affair is the equivalent of Australia falling out with the British government because the design of a new lighthouse off the coast of the Isle of Man spoils the view. Who the hell cares?

Yet again, the spirit of OK Magazine has infiltrated what is an otherwise highly-regarded national newspaper and it can only be a matter of time before we start seeing stories like “Michael McIntyre goes to the Shops – Comedian buys cabbage says Asda shopper” or “Jonathan Ross uses new sort of handcream – read the verdict of our hygiene experts on pages 9 – 33″.

Unrealistic though they may be, I’m hardly taking things too far with these quite plausible broadsheet headlines. After all, the telegraph does describe the whole, trivial Atkinson affair as a ‘row’. It really isn’t. A row starts with “Damn it Sharon, you’ve been sleeping with the milk man again” and ends with someone throwing a tea set across the room and storming off to the nearest divorce lawyer”. What we are dealing with, by contrast, is a small disagreement and one in which, Mr Man-Who-Writes-For-The-Daily-Telegraph, we the people have no interest whatsoever.

Photo of a man reading a paper courtesy of this chap

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