The ominous date 9/9/9 has come and gone, and the world didn’t end. Though I’m curious to know if there was any increase in 999 calls that day [there was an accident where  I live; and it WAS around nine in the morning]. But, no, the apocalypse didn’t come; though certain apocalyptic tidbits did come to pass – newborn babies being left abandoned, the BBC considering inviting the BNP to Question Time, Derren Brown using the force to predict the lottery numbers, and Scotland being attacked by the Dutch…

Scotland have probably given up by now on EVER reaching a major football tournament again; but England are set fair for next year’s World Cup, with the nation full of optimism in our chances and confidence in Fabio Capello’s leadership. Mr Capello cannot be questioned as a manager, in terms of his past jobs, and England has a good side, no doubt; but this team is NOT going to win the World Cup. Trouncing the opposition in qualifiers and friendlies is all fine and dandy, but is rendered only a pale memory when we come up second best against the Argentinas and Portugals, as we inevitably always do. The prospects will increase with David Beckham on board, but England just doesn’t have the tournament magic.

But let’s not be grim about that. It could be worse; we could be Scotland, after all. Or Wales. Or Liechtenstein. However, if there IS ever going to be a prime time for England to claim the World Cup, it will be under Fabio Cappello.

[As for the apocalypse, by the way, it's still scheduled for 2012; so you've got three years or so to finish whatever it is you're doing...]

As for the BBC’s pontificating over whether to allow Nick Griffin on Question Time: of course they should. He’s the leader of a legitimate democratic political party, and has every business being given air time alongside representitives of any other legitimate political parties. Let him appear and make a complete tit of himself and his party; that way he and his people won’t be deprived of their rights as a legitimate political entity and the rest of us can see anew how laughable the whole thing is, and everyone goes home happy.

No doubt in response to the murder of Peter Connolly, the government is now talking about introducing new measures to remove endangered children from unfit parents as early as possible. This is one area in which I might be willing to advocate state interference in personal/family matters; there are too many vulnerable children in the hands of dangerous guardians, and where the risk it discernably high of abuses, social workers should be given more power to intervene decisively. What the actual laws will end up specifically being is unclear at present.

It’s nice to see, for the third year in a row, the genuinely nicest contestant of the lot win Big Brother; this year in the form of Sophie what’s-her-name. A nice girl, in every sense, and a logical victor; unlike the inexplicable victory of Ulrika Johnson in the celebrity version earlier this year. Oh well; it’s all over next year anyway. As for who’s going to win The X Factor; am I the only one who doesn’t remotely care? Oh. Apparently, I AM…

Only the Arctic Monkeys were able to keep Dame Vera Lynn off the number one spot in the charts; the ninety-two year old World War 2 veteran (in a manner of speaking) has become the oldest artist to reach as high as No.2 in the charts. But is it purely members of her own generation who’ve been buying her record en masse, or is a younger audience buying into a bona fide voice from history? She’s better than the cast of The X-Factor, Girls Aloud and Katie f**king Mellua anyway…

And how DID Derren Brown predict the winning lottery numbers? It obviously wasn’t magic [he's no David Blaine; and has never claimed to have any precognitive powers]. All will be revealed, apparently, this very evening on C4. I’m going to go with some kind of projector/printer type device that wrote the numbers onto the balls from the unseen angle as BBC1 was announcing them. I’m probably wrong. We’ll see. C4 are also broadcasting some of David Blaine’s newest street magic; which includes, I’m told, a version of the catching-a-bullet-with-your-teeth trick.

And some happy sort of news; a bird, until very recently, regarded as being on the verge of extinction in Britain is making a comeback on our shores, according to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds; which has recorded the highest number of calls by the male bittern in over a hundred years. Conservation programmes have preserved the heron-like bird from the brink of total wipeout, having been thought close to extinction in the early nineties (and already declared extinct once before; in the eighteen hundreds). By the way, I’m talking about a species of bird, not A bird – that’d just be stupid. Now, if only we could do something about the Dodo…

Speaking of extinction; one of the largest Tyranosaurus Rex skeletons ever recovered is being tipped to sell for over 4 million pounds in an upcoming Las Vegas auction. The extraordinarly well-endowed specimen measures up at 15 by 40 feet. That’s one hell of an addition to someone’s living room decor. All I know is the buyer is not me.

And on the subject of extraordinarily large thing; if you happen to see a remarkably bright star-like object in the night sky [brighter than all the others] at the moment, pay a bit more attention to it than you usually might: you’d be seeing the planet Jupiter. The collossal globe of the chief Roman god, by far the biggest body in our solar system, can be seen as an extremely bright star in the southern sky. It should remain visible for a little while longer, but not much, so catch it while you can…