Separated at birth, stars with reasonably long haircuts

Incidentally, have you ever noticed how Stephen Fry and James May are never in the same studio. Stephen even drove the 'reasonably priced car' on Top Gear, while James outed himself (ironically) as The Stig.


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Illnesses of convenience

Hmm. It seems that far from being on death's door, the man jailed for the Lockerbie bombing, Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi, has now been told he has made than ten years to live. What a surprise.

Almost as much a coincidence as jailed Guinness fraudster Ernest Saunders miraculous recovery from Alzheimer's disease and Great-train-robber Ronnie Biggs continued respite in a Barnet old people's home.

And we're not talking about untold trips to Lourdes.

The common denominators? Money, infleunce, and politics.


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Life's a drag race

Drug research needs success stories. The recovery of Kaz Aston from the symptoms of multiple sclerosis is a case in point.

Diagnosed in 1995, she was given the drug Tysabri and, recovery in hand, has taken up drag racing to publicise the cause. And to take on new risks to her health.

Biogen Idec Inc., Elan and the MS Trust will be glad of the good publicity and the likely increase in prescription rate of the life-restoring drug.


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Must the show go on?

Pop stars are finding new misfortunes with which to grace the tabloids.

There have been crashes (e.g. Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochrane, Marc Bolan, Sonny Bono), drug meltdowns (e.g. Syd Barrett, Janis Joplin, Michael Jackson), alcoholic binges (e.g. Jim Morrison, Hank Williams Jr, Amy Winehouse), physical injury (e.g. Bono, Keith Richards) and even murders (e.g. John Lennon, Sid Vicious) but Western icons have managed to avoid exotic diseases (except perhaps cancer, e,g, Kylie Minogue, Bob Marley, George Harrison).

Until now. Cheryl Cole has malaria and may be starting a trend. Amir Khan, the boxer, has collapsed with the same mystery disease.

No one famous has recently croaked from tuberculosis, syphilis. polio, cholera or a flu epidemic but with global travel increasing and the losing battle against bug evolution means it may just be a matter of time.


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Let the plane take the strain

Ryanair takes the biscuit for no frills and paid added extras in the low-cost airline business. The latest additions to the rosta of pain are coin-operated loos and 'vertical seats' (i.e. standing room only). What would health and safety make of that?

Where will Michael O'Leary's money-making schemes go next?

• Choose your own destination, as long as you're going to Paris (approximately)?
• Fly your own plane?
• Pay-as-you-go oxygen supply in an emergency? (Otherwise you get mustard gas)
• Propellor-driven aircraft using clockwork technology? (The 'vertical' passengers turn the cranks)
• Seats that double up as commodes?
• No aisles? (People move around by swinging from a climbing frame bolted to the ceiling)
• Luggage roof-racks?

If not these, suggestions, there will be others along soon.

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Spinning on the line

The glory of opening the East London line extension from Hackney to New Cross today (and soon to West Croydon) was monopolised by Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, without him having made the decision to build it.

This is why Ken Livingstone, his predecessor in the job, tried to muscle in on the postponed launch a few weeks ago.

This is the easy bit for Mr Johnson. The tricky part will be to deliver Crossrail and the remaining portion of the East London orbital line from Surrey Quays to Clapham Junction without cutting existing services (e.g. the London Bridge to Victoria route).


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Giving voice to one's fantasies

The latest Facebook viral campaign is promoting the stentorian actor, Brian Blessed, as the next voice of the TomTom satnav. Here are some other voiceovers I'd pay money to hear:

• Loyd Grossman to be Stephen Hawking's computer voice;
• Moira Stewart as the speaking clock;
• Sid Waddell commentating at the World Cup in South Africa;
• Marilyn Monroe railway-station announcements;
• Rory Bremner reading the news, saving money on outside broadcast interviews;
• Vincent Price overdubbing for Conservative Election Broadcasts, Frank Spencer for Labour, Bart Simpson for the LibDems, Prince Charles for the Greens and Rab C Nesbitt for the SNP (leaving Marcel Marceau's mime for the BNP, in the fine tradition of 'the actor voicing' Gerry Adams in his erstwhile pariah days);
• Jeremy Paxman as a weather forecaster;
• Margaret Thatcher as a judge on Britain's Got Talent.

The list is endless ...


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No bad for a Muggle

Boffins have developed a device that renders 3D objects invisible, the first step in the development of a Harry Potter-style invisibility cloak.

So, what other benchmark gadgets might maverick scientists be working on behind the scenes?

• Teleporting beams?
• Telepathy helmets?
• Time machines?
• Superpower ability enablers?
• Perfect photography memory devices?

All of the above ideas have been inspired by fiction, written and visual. Perhaps even more creative work can be achieved where artists have yet to tread? Unless, of course, the artistic visualisation of a gadget has to precede the need to create it.

Which came first: the science or the art?


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Last bastion of amateur rugby?

Time was that tales of gargantuan drunkenness among international rugby union players were the stuff of awe and legend. Witness prop Colin Smart's encounter with a bottle of aftershave after a rare England win in Paris.

These days such escapades are looked on as schoolboy errors. Welsh No. 8 Andy Powell was rewarded for his buggy trip on the M4 with a 15-month driving ban, a £1000 fine, court costs and -- most pertinently -- by being dropped by Wales like a hot potato.

There's no room in modern sport for 'characters'. Discuss.