I was watching an interview with Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook last night, an hour long programme called Songbook: Squeeze where they sat and talked about the songwriting process. I was quite surprised to see how current it looked, because they reached a point a decade or so ago when they couldn't work together any more. I knew they were getting back to tour as Squeeze for a few dates last year to promote the re-releases, but that was supposed to be it. It turns out they got on well and it appears they may work together again. Which would be lovely if it happens.

They did a version of Tempted with Glenn Tilbrook at the piano, and much as I was enjoying it there was something I couldn't place which wasn't quite right. It was only when it got to the second verse, where on the record Tilbrook takes the lead vocal for the first time, that I realised - it's one of only two songs of theirs which have the lead taken by Paul Carrack, and as much as I adore Tilbrook's voice it was Carrack that was missing. And it served to remind me that the version of Tempted on East Side Story is about as perfect a pop song as has ever been recorded.

Out of curiosity I had a browse through iTunes to see if there were many cover versions, and of course there are loads - bland versions which remove all the soul, country versions which are an abomination, jazz versions which overcook it, a folk version by Richard Thompson, a bizarre ska version by Regatta 69, even an a cappella version by a sub-Take 6 act called Rockapella... it's like a Noah's Ark of musical styles all trying to put a new slant on this peerless song. Weirdest of all there's a moribund version by Chris Difford, who I suppose at least has the right to murder his own song. And I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at a Jools Holland version - you'd think he'd have realised that the reason East Side Story is Squeeze's best album is because he's not on it.

Anyway, they all highlight the reality that once in a while a combination of music, lyric, personnel, performance and production come together and create something upon which it is simply impossible to improve.

At this point I would embed the YouTube video if I knew how, but I don't. So it's here.

Here's an interesting diversion, if you're sad, or bored, or both. As you're probably aware, almost everything on Wikipedia links to something else on Wikipedia. Just to see where it took me I decided to start from a random page - in this case Neil Armstrong - and follow the tenth link on each subsequent page to see where I ended up. The idea was that when I got to the tenth page I would read that one in its entirety. As well as gaining some new knowledge at the end, I figured I would pick up some interesting nuggets I didn't know before along the way, and I was right. Did you know that West Point Military Academy is in New York State, overlooking the Hudson River? That the Dutch East India Company was the first multinational company in the world, and the first to issue stock? What the Batavian Republic was? Unfortunately my plan to get into progressively more specialised areas somewhat backfired when the tenth link on the Patriot Party (political faction of the Dutch Republic) was United States... but I still ended up with something quite interesting:

Neil Armstrong
David Scott
West Point
Hudson River
Dutch East India Company
Batavian Republic
Patriot Party
United States
Canada
French colonisation of the Americas

Then I had another go, starting (as we approach the 60th anniversary of the health service) with arguably my least favourite institution, BUPA:

BUPA
Leeds
Historic counties of England
The Bishop of Durham
Family name
Mr
American English
German language
Linguistic geography of Switzerland
French language

Not bad. I'm not sure if ten links is enough to get you away from the ones which are very similar to the topic you're on. Then again, Neil Armstrong to French colonisation is quite a journey, as is BUPA to French language (anybody still doubting that Wikipedia is part of a French conspiracy?)

If I were Dave Gorman I'd have visited all these places by now and made a supposedly spontaneous but in reality meticulously planned documentary about them. And given that my weblog is now apparently a hotbed of media research, any journalists reading this please note that I thought of this first and if you stick it in your newspapers I want my cut! Likewise if it takes off as on online cult, I want everybody pointed back to my weblog. I like the idea of thousands and thousands of people ending up here thinking "this is drivel".

I've often wondered who the (according to the blog stats) regular 40-50 visitors to this weblog are in the long weeks when I don't get my act together to post anything on it. Now I know. They're researchers desperately looking for material with which to fill their radio programmes and magazines.

A couple of weeks back I got an e-mail from a woman at Radio 4 who wanted to speak to me about my dislike of mobile phones. She wondered whether she might be able to use me for a segment on one of their Saturday morning programmes in which, as far as I can gather, people with viewpoints which go against the grain get to say their piece. Then this week I got an e-mail from a woman at Time Out who is preparing a feature about different types of spotters and who wanted to talk to me about my number plate "hobby". Strange really - I go 40 years without the media having any interest in highlighting my saddest, most socially misfitting attributes, then two opportunities come along in a week. The Time Out one said "We would be interested to know why you're passionate about it, what got you into it and what it involves. Alternatively, it would be great if you could recommend somebody (who is London-based) who would be happy to talk." I love the idea that if I'm not willing to speak about it myself I have a phalanx of London-based number plate spotting cohorts upon whom I can call.

Sadly I must report that it doesn't look as if either of these will result in anything. Although I had a very pleasant conversation with the Radio 4 woman, I suspect she may have been looking for someone rather more strident and rabid than I am on the subject of mobile phones. Much though I loathe them, and moreover those people who claim that they couldn't live without them, I'm not on some sort of crusade against them. I find them an irritant, but I can appreciate their usefulness to many people. I don't own one simply because I have no need or desire for one, in much the same way as I don't own a fishing rod or a loom.

And as for the woman from Time Out, I imagine that my response to her that I see number plates as less of a hobby and more of an obsessive compulsive affliction I can't shake probably ruled me out of that one. And if that didn't, telling her I'm in Oxford probably did (I'm guessing that since she wondered if I had a London-based fellow spotter she must assume, like everybody else in London, that anybody who is in any way interesting or has anything to offer must also be in London). I'm not sure there's much to be gained from appearing in Time Out anyway, unless I could somehow ensure that they presented me with the same level of self-deprecating awareness of the innate stupidity of the number plates fixation as I maintain here - and I think there's a good chance they'd see more mileage in going down the conventional nerdy dork route. I don't imagine the fully rounded father of four part of my life (i.e. 98% of it) would feature too prominently.

However, these two incidents have made me wonder whether I shouldn't start shaping my weblog - since it seems to have become a source of material for media types - in anticipation of further examination, so that I might subsequently get offered other projects more apposite or generally appealing. So stand by for "I've always wondered what it would be like to meet Stevie Wonder backstage", "Retiring at 40 - can it be done?" and "Why I said no to a threesome with Tea Leoni and Roisin Murphy".

A couple of weeks back I was talking to a girl here about a concert she went to by the appallingly named Boyz II Men. She was telling me how in the interval she'd been standing in the bar next to someone she vaguely recognised but couldn't place. In the end she realised he was one of the blokes from the now defunct Liberty X. I think she was quite chuffed about it, although I wasted no time in telling her it was a poor relation compared to my own famous-bloke-at-a-concert story. When I went to see Steely Dan a few months back, just as the show was about to begin, Paul McCartney came and sat two rows immediately in front of me. It was a slightly surreal moment - just as I turned to my wife to say "That bloke looks just like Paul McCartney", the woman on her right, with whom she hadn't exchanged a word but whose excitement at being in the proximity of someone so famous nullified the London convention of scowling at/ignoring strangers, announced to her "That's Paul McCartney!", and a ripple of whispers promptly circled its way out from him. It was an interesting insight into the life of a megastar - complete strangers coming up and shaking his hand, heads turning from all over to gawp at him. He took it, as you might expect from someone who experienced Beatlemania from the inside, in his stride.

I'm happy to say I resisted the temptation to join the throng of McHangers, although had I been sitting immediately behind him I might have struggled to resist asking him what he thought of the support act's version of Norwegian Wood. Or better yet, leaning forward and whispering "Have you heard? Apparently Paul McCartney's here." I more or less managed to forget he was even there, until the band intros at the end. At the point where Walter Becker announced Donald Fagen, McCartney stood up and applauded, hands aloft. That's how good Fagen is - he gets a standing ovation from Paul McCartney. And after 25 years of telling people that The Nightfly is my favourite album and getting blank looks, 25 years of people not having heard of Steely Dan, here was substantive validation. Ever since then, whenever anyone has told me they don't know or don't like the band, a little voice in the back of my mind says "Ah well, Paul McCartney does".

The next day I went to work and got people to try and guess behind whom I had been sat. I told one of the girls that he was probably one of the ten most famous people in the world, and that he was English. "Hugh Grant!" she guessed. "Even more famous" I replied. "Bruce Forsyth!" she offered.

When I told her the answer she said "Oh, I don't really know the members of The Beatles", which remains one of the most extraordinary displays of wilful ignorance I've ever witnessed.

It's that highlight of the cultural calendar - yes, FHM's 100 Sexiest Women list has been announced. Putting aside the complex psychological issues involved in even contemplating such a subject (into which I have previously attempted to delve here), I am going to run down the Top 10 and see whether the readers of FHM have a clue what they're talking about.

10. Keira Knightley
Now, Keira is a lovely looking girl. Very pretty. But sexy? If I want the sort of sexiness Keira Knightley can supply I'll dress an ironing board in lingerie.

9. Angelina Jolie
Hard to argue with this one. Although she has a strange habit of fluctuating between drop-dead sexy and just funny looking. She is the FHM equivalent of Middlesbrough FC - you never know what to expect.

8. Hilary Duff
I am 40 years old and as such I don't know who Hilary Duff is. She was in something called Lizzie McGuire apparently. She's half my age and looks like just another of the vast American phalanx of homogeneous post-teen babes.

7. Cheryl Cole
Well, yes. Only number 7? Perhaps that's down to her impenetrably broad Geordie accent, which sounds like she must be exaggerating it for a laugh.

6. Scarlett Johansson
Hmm. See Angelina Jolie above. Jury definitely out.

5. Hayden Panettiere
Even though I am 40 years old I actually know who this is. Save the cheerleader, save the world. She's probably very nice looking but she's barely more than a schoolgirl so if it's all the same I'll just look away.

4. Elisha Cuthbert
Her fan club most have mobilised to get her in at number 4, given that she's hardly the biggest star in the world. And anyway, nobody can be truly sexy with the name Cuthbert.

3. Keeley Hazell
I gather this girl appears in FHM simply as someone to look at, rather than as a result of actually doing anything more worthwhile elsewhere. This is probably just an idiosyncracy of mine, but I find it hard to find sexy a woman who exists in the public consciousness for that reason alone. It seems to bring the vacuousness of gawping at pictures of women into sharp refrain. Next, quick, before I poke myself in the eye with a stick.

2. Jessica Alba
I don't really get the whole Jessica Alba thing. Too bland, too vacant. If she were permanently in Sin City mode, maybe.

1. Megan Fox
I haven't seen Transformers, but if there's a better reason to watch a film than this

then I haven't seen it. Readers of FHM, for once, you did right.

Of course the big news on the FHM list is that Kirstie Allsopp - presenter of one of the 19,000 property based programmes on television - has been voted higher than Kate Moss. Quite why anyone is shocked that a proper, real woman with proper, real curves is deemed sexier than a drug-addled, nicotine-stinking scrawny old bag of bones I don't know, but it's certainly a step in the right direction.

Flicking around the proverbial '30 channels and nothing on' late the other night, I stumbled across the last few minutes of Richard Curtis's wretched 'Love Actually'. I first saw it a few years ago. I've seen plenty of films in my time which did little for me, but 'Love Actually' is one of very few to make me so angry I wanted to kick the television in. I really, really loathed 'Love Actually', to the extent that even now when I see it in a listings magazine I feel like getting a biro and scribbling over it until the paper gets all mangled and torn. It wasn't just that it was trite, facile, witless, sentimental pap; it was that it was insulting to the viewer to suggest that they were so shallow that they could be emotionally manipulated by stories that were so vacuous and devoid of heart. Seemingly dozens of characters, not one of them fleshed out to the extent that you might genuinely care about them, trotting through a succession of paper-thin romantic plotlines designed to tug at the heartstrings in a manner which even the most compliant Mills and Boon reader would find mechanical.

Having now seen the end of the film again, I have discovered it is possible to hate 'Love Actually' even more than I thought I did.

Goodness knows how I missed it last time - I can only presume that I was by this stage so thoroughly nauseated by the dialogue that my nervous system had opted for temporary deafness - but over the closing montage of all of his characters getting together one final time Curtis chose to play The Beach Boys' 'God Only Knows'. 'God Only Knows' is one of my favourite songs, albeit one to which I listen very rarely because it always - and I mean always - makes me cry. I have no idea why, because it has no specific emotional attachment for me. I think it is simply that it is a song so beautiful in every way that I go through a small breakdown whenever I hear it. And here it was, shamelessly grafted onto the end of one of the most shallow, meaningless excuses for a film ever perpetrated in the name of entertainment. And yes, it did make me cry, and I thanked the stars that nobody was there to wander in and misapprehend the situation by inferring that it was Curtis's abomination that brought me to that state.

I am not a homophobe. Which has nothing whatsoever to do with my feelings towards homosexuals. Let me explain.

Classics scholars (of which I am not one) will be aware that the word homophobe has its origin in two Greek words, homos meaning 'one and the same' and phobos meaning 'fear'. As a word, homophobe appears to be a lazy 1970s offshoot from homosexual, some etymological anarchist simply adding the phobia suffix without bothering to think about the derivation of the original word. As such he or she created a word which means not fear of homosexuals, but fear of things which are the same.

This is where I come in. I have a great deal of time for things which are the same. I am a big fan of symmetry. It borders on obsession. The lengths of shoelaces, that sort of thing. You know, when you're tying your shoelaces and the amount you have in one hand differs from that in the other? That's intolerable, is it not? There are other, myriad examples I could present. Most of them are extremely trivial, although there's a part of me that thinks it is not coincidence that I have an even number of children. Anyway, my point is that anomalies are anathema to me, which by my understanding makes me about as far from a homophobe as it is possible to be. In fact I'd go so far as to say that I am a homophile, and am toying with describing myself as such in the future. I'm tired of getting nonplussed looks from people who are not sure how to react when I tell them that I am mainly interested in the apparently incomprehensible combination of jazz and football, so from now on I think I will declare myself openly as a keen homophile and see how far that gets me.

"PIMP MY PROFILE" screams a banner across the top of my weblog, inviting me to visit a website called webfetti which has facilities to enhance my site with generators (whatever they are), 3D graphics (a neat trick on a flat screen) and "bling".

I suppose I'm getting old, and I suppose the last dregs of liberalism have yet to be crushed by this country's seemingly endless lurch to the right, and I suppose I think about words too much... but am I alone in being uncomfortable with the appropriation of the word "pimp" into widespread use? Pimps are not people to be admired, even in a postmodern, ironic sense. Pimps trade on the fears and desperation of vulnerable women for their own gain. They are not, as seems to be the notion in much popular culture, simply kitsch, Huggy Bear types with a flamboyant dress sense and gaudy jewellery.

It's the thin end of a wedge which has also seen "bitches" come perilously close to being accepted as a synonym for "women", a truly deleterious state of affairs to my ears. Although these linguistic trends have come about as the result of British kids being in awe of the culture and street slang of the American gangsta rap movement, their affectations are not enough on their own to have created this shift towards the mainstream. For that it has also needed a complicity by the record labels, TV channels, magazines and websites which allow such repugnant terms to be used out of context and thereby broaden their original meaning. Who knows what is behind such an idle abrogation of responsibility, but I wouldn't bet against a pusillanimous unwillingness by white middle class executives to take a stand against the spreading influence of an artform which has its origins amongst the oppressed black.

I seem to have travelled in one paragraph from feminist to Daily Mail reader. What is happening to me?

I was bemused to receive an e-mail notification that a comment had been added to one of my weblog entries, bearing in mind that I haven't posted anything on my weblog for about six weeks. Stranger still it turned out to be in response to an entry from February 2006, in which I lambasted the Coca Cola company for refusing to accept that there can be such a person in the world as a grown man who does not own a mobile phone.

It turned out that the 'comment' was actually just a spam link to a mobile phone selling website. Slightly ironic that such a link was put at the end of an entry which expressed my loathing for mobile phones, but then I suppose the automated systems set up to inflict this blight upon us haven't yet developed the sophistication to work out whether the targets of their invasiveness are sympathetic. Not unlike mobile phone users themselves, in fact.

The sales manager of the mobile phone website in question, needless to say, denies all knowledge. So I can only conclude that it must have been one of those people who go around visiting weblogs and placing links to arbitrary websites just for the hell of it. Come on, which of us can't say they've done it? It's the only rational explanation.

The irony of all this is that it's come merely days after I have been obliged, as part of my work, to take delivery of my first mobile phone. No matter that the phone will be switched on only one week in four, and even then only in order that I can be contacted in an emergency - it was still a moment of profound disappointment and disillusionment to me. This may seem an extreme reaction to a minor event, but it comes hot on the heels of me acquiring a passport and flying off to meetings in Germany and France, in relation to new aspects of my work which also seem (no pun intended) foreign to me. Pure financial necessity has obliged me to be pushed out of my comfort zone (no bad thing in itself) into areas which feel strange and discomfiting to me (a bad thing in itself). It's one of the reasons I have posted so little here lately - the fabric of my working life has altered so much that I find myself almost devoid of moments of respite in which to be bemused or artificially incensed by some aspect of modern life. I'm spending most of my time just trying to remember who I am.

I have reached 469. There is a 469 on a red van in a street more or less on my way to work, so this morning I rode that way and saw it just pulling away about a hundred yards ahead of me. I upped my pace, hoping that if it got stuck at the junction I would be able to catch it. It did hesitate briefly, but just as I was getting close enough to see the number plate it turned the corner. I got up out of the saddle, determined that having got this close I would not let my 469 elude me. I rounded the corner and saw that it was stuck behind a bus! Aha! One... final... sprint... and it was in range!

It was a different red van.

This is no game for a man of 40. What am I talking about, this is not even a game for a man with an IQ of 40.

In other news, I had one of those fake bank e-mails yesterday. They'd gone to a lot of trouble to get the graphics right but, sadly, it didn't take a genius to work out that it might not be genuine: