A couple of weeks ago I made a final visit to the house where I grew up. My dad had decided to sell and I had to pick up a few remaining bits and pieces.

Though I was actually born in hospital, I spent my years from zero to 20 living in that 1950’s semi-detached. In a small cul-de-sac alongside the former A1 — the main London to Edinburgh road — and just a couple of miles from Newcastle city centre.

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In The Times, Giles Coren comments on the suggestion that obesity is caused by pollution!

‘I HAVE HEARD some hilarious excuses from fat people in my time, but the one rolled out in the last item of yesterday’s Today programme managed to flabbergast even me…’ .

Funny and worth reading.

My American friend Bill told me about Noah’s Arc, a series that is on the Logo network over there. It’s about four black gay friends.

We’d watched a couple of episodes and clips on the Logo website, but Bill doesn’t have the channel and I doubted the series would ever get a showing over here. However I had a gift voucher for Amazon so I bought Bill the three-disc DVD of series one and after watching them himself he sent the discs over to me. They were waiting here me when I got back to Manchester last Saturday.

So I’ve had a great week viewing it all: episodes, pilot and extras. I love this series.

You can watch the whole of the first four episodes of series one for free here.

And the first episode of series 2 here.

There are quite a few clips on YouTube including the pilot scenes they did to try and get a network interested.

I think Logo is missing a trick by not making this available to European viewers as pay-per-view. I wouldn’t have minded paying a dollar a show to watch it. Whereas, I doubt many people here are going to import it on DVD like I did. It’s a shame.

The Gulf Stream is an ocean current that keeps Britain warm by dragging water northwards from the tropics

Now scientists have revealed that a part of the Stream came to a temporary halt for ten days during November 2004.

No one is quite sure what this means. Will it happen again? Is it a sign of the current stuttering to a permanent halt?

‘A complete shutdown would lead to a 4C-6C cooling over 20 years.’ A new ice age…

Sea change: why global warming could leave Britain feeling the cold.

I forgot my friend Chris’s birthday, so I made a short video message for him.

Standing by yourself in a busy public place, talking into a camera, is the weirdest thing. Of course, on-screen, it seems like a normal thing to do and if you appear to be anything other than 100% natural, it looks odd. I’m better at it than I was.

On 18 August 2006 I wrote to Manchester Pride with the following questions. I received a reply from Marketing Manchester, saying that I would get a ‘prompt reply’ just as soon as Pride was over. More than two months later I am still waiting…

Here is my letter:

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Pride is not a charity event anymore says taxman

It seems this is being kept oh-so-quiet in the press and online. I can see nothing about it on the Operation Fundraiser, George House Trust or Manchester Pride websites.

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Greg Palast explains how George Bush helped North Korea get the nuclear bomb.

In a nutshell, U.S. intelligence found that Saudi Arabia was funding Pakistan’s development of the bomb. They were told to back off (as we know, Bush is a big friend of the Saudis) and Pakistan’s Dr. Khan subsequently sold the technology to Libya and North Korea.

Greater Manchester Police have put a video on YouTube in an attempt to get more information from the public about the murder of a 15-year-old schoolboy.

In the early hours of Saturday, September 9, Jessie James was shot three times in a park in the Moss Side area of Manchester. The clip includes a tribute from his mother and sister.

‘ITN reporter Terry Lloyd was shot in the head by American troops as he was being driven to hospital, the inquest into his death was told…’. The Guardian.

Full story here.