“She walked like a partridge.” – Matthew Parris
“She scuttled about like a hen.” – Jon Snow

Two quotes from Maggie And Me, shown on Channel 4 this evening.

Mr Key’s adventures in the world o’ contemporary art continue tomorrow at this event, nine miles west of Cambridge. Do pop along to cheer frenziedly, should you have the wherewithal.

So there I was, standing by a Norwegian roadside as smoke from a blazing consignment of Norwegian goat cheese billowed in goaty cheesy gusts. Luckily, standing next to me was Kjell Bjoern Vinje of the Norwegian Public Roads Administration.

“Tell me, Kjell Bjoern Vinje,” I shouted, “Can you recall any previous occasions when cheese has caught fire on Norwegian roads?”

I did not catch his reply, but a BBC News reporter did.

[Thanks to Glyn Webster.]

Now here is an intriguing (if ungrammatical) headline:

Goblins attacks family, burn down homestead

Readers will be aware that I take a keen interest in goblins of all types. These ones are new to me:

Others went on to claim that snake-like creatures wearing sunglasses, a suit and a pair of shoes had been seen at the homestead.

Truly baffling. What type of snake-like being could wear shoes? Sounds like a job for Investigating Officer David Icke.

The first of our helpful series of Tips For Young Persons is offered specifically to Shane Stoops:

1. It is neither bright nor seemly to describe oneself as a Renaissance Man.

Over at Comment Is Free, two impeccably bourgeois graduates of the grammar and public school systems and of Oxford University debate whether the total collapse of civilisation would be, on the whole, you know, a good thing. A commenter called “questionnaire” gets to the nub of its amusement value:

I love the way George [Monbiot] and Paul [Kingsnorth] are putting ‘best wishes’ and ‘all the best’ at the end of each doom scenario.

Yesterday’s Guardian reported on the trip to London made by alleged bomb plotter Waheed Ali in December 2004. He claimed that on the second day he and others visited the London Eye and the London Aquarium. Of the latter, he said: “I’d give it one out of ten. It was just fish swimming around.”

The appointment of Brian Eno (aged 59) as the Liberal Democrats’ adviser to help new leader Nick Clegg (aged 40) keep in touch with Britain’s youth has caused much hilarity in blogland. I particularly liked this post which reminds us of some of Brian’s more enticing plans and projects. Yet I fear people are too quick to ridicule what is obviously a piece of visionary brilliance. Just imagine the transformation in the packs of brainless hoodies and gun-toting pre-pubescent inner city “gangstas” if, instead of being issued with Asbos, they are given a stiff dose of Oblique Strategies, innit?