... £10 million spent on a verdict we all reached a decade ago. Now let the conspiracy-peddling morons, opportunist vultures, maudlin grief addicts and ridiculous Brit-kitsch flag-wankers SHUT THE HELL UP.

It's been quite a week in the British courts, demonstrating either an unprecedented confidence on the part of defence lawyers or a new-found tolerance among judges for unutterable bullshit.

First up we hear from a bloke who'd have us believe that he did not kill a girl but did have sex with her freshly-slaughtered corpse, noticing neither her multiple bloody wounds nor her cold, unresponsive state.

Then we hear from a London shop-keeper whose son died in a car crash a while back, along with a girlfriend. You probably didn't read about it. Anyway, this man appears to live in a Britain lifted straight out of an episode of The Avengers, complete with shadow-governments, psycho blue-bloods and secret agents masquerading as television reporters.

However my star is the least-reported of the bunch, a postie in Perth up for drink-driving charges. His defence? Normal rules shouldn't apply to him, because he's a mutant.

It's begun! Homo superior is here! Choose a side! I'm with Magneto!

Britain's love affair with wittering, breathless, sexless, woeful chantreusses continues. After Katie Melua and Sandi Thom, step up Kate Rusby and her cover of The Kinks' The Village Green Preservation Society. This record neatly combines the meandering, dopey lists-as-lyrics of Melua with mind-shatteringly irritating Thom style "nostalgia for a time I didn't actually live in". The thing that gets my goat most is the inclusion of "Donald Duck" along with all the imagery of a WI-ran rural England long since lost. The invocation of a character belonging to one of the most rapacious megacorporations in the world is bad enough, but that they should pick one who is typically seen lathered in a beligerent, incoherent, violent frenzy of misanthropy... Wait. Actually, he's perfect. I can't think of a cartoon character that more closely resembels the Daily Mail-reading yahoos at whom this release is aquarely aimed.

Has anyone else noticed how the plot of pretty much every episode of "adult" Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood is either predicated or at least partly depends upon how stunningly attractive the main characters are, despite the fact they are played by a typically pasty troop of sub-Casualty jobbing actors? For example, in the first show of this second series guest villain James Marsters straight-facedly referred to this bloke as "eye candy". Last night, on BBC 3, Freema Agyeman turned up for a spot of inter-series nod and winkery. A genuinely attractive woman, by the internal logic of the drama all narrative should have ceased as our bunch of bi-curious alien-busters greeted her like a paragon of female sexuality, falling to the floor in paroxysms of orgasmic joy. Meh. Bring on Dave Ross, says I.

Speaking of hit-and-miss BBC 3 drama, did anyone else bother with Phoo Action? Jamie Hewlett's work is poorly served by live action adaptation; just how shitty the ill-fated Tank Girl movie is becomes clear when you consider the last ninety seconds of it, which constitute one of the most thrilling and well-executed pieces of animation seen on cinema screens in the nineties. Shame they had to be preceded by as many minutes of unfunny, lazy film. Based on his Get the Freebies comic strips, Phoo Action came off like a love child of The Banana Splits, the sixties Batman tv show and Kill Bill. On paper, that sounds like tv made for Tel, especially when you factor in the cartoonist author and presence of Spaced's Jessica Hynes (nee Stevenson) on the writers' list. In practice the hour long show was in need of liberal use of the red pen; the observations on celebrity culture and mass media- Hewlett's original target back in the day- were welcome. But it was overloaded with non-sequiters and half-assed jokes. The show looks fantastic, but it's not up to Hewlett's simian-themed best (be it Monkeys or Gorillaz). I note six more episodes have been commissioned sight unseen, all to be filmed in Glasgow. If nothing else, the increased chance of encountering a basketball-headed goblin on Buchanan Street is a reason to be cheerful.

An unexpectedly long absence from the blog, broken by- what else?- irritation.

Advertisers: do you think you could, as a matter of extreme urgency, come up with some words to describe your products other than "fun" and "cool"?

Food, in particular, can be described in many verbose and flowery ways. But outside of a Hal Roach finalé and the nauseating extremities of "sloshing" it cannot be considered fun and is only ever as cool as the refrigerator that houses it.

Yet the Kelloggs company are currently opening one of their tv spots with the statement "We all know how much fun Coco-Pops and milk are." Really? Am I missing something? Coco Pops are a pretty black and white proposition, I think, either delicious or emetic. But they can't enliven your breakfast with a song and dance number, give you a challenging set or two of tennis, dazzle you with anecdotes about life on the road with their jazz quartet, teach you magic tricks or randomly sling fluorescent cuddly toys at passers-by. I think you'd have to have lived in a sensory deprivation tank for a considerable length of time before pushing chocolate flavoured puffed rice into your head could be considered fun.

"Fun" is in danger of losing its linguistic currency through over-use, in the same way that "fine" has slipped from meaning something of the highest quality to anything just this side of okay and "nice" now equates with the very faintest blip on the pleasure-meter rather than something beautifully subtle and precise. Pretty soon, everything short of having one's body rent asunder by wild jackals will be covered by the term "fun".

But worse by far is "cool". Cool is now the copy-writer's description of choice for something that's either stultifyingly uninspiring or ethically troublesome, yet must be portrayed positively if the commercial is to succeed. Case in point, the advert for a how-to-be-jailbait-comic based on tv show Zoe 101 which manages to describe itself and its associated bits and pieces as cool no less than three times in the space of fifteen seconds.

That a bit of slang coined in the fifties is so ubiquitous in contemporary advertising proves the extent to which an industry that prides itself on its ability to measure what they insist on calling the zeitgeist is hopelessly unmoored from reality. A good example of this is the advert for Orville Redenbacher's Microwave Popcorn. In this, a typically buffoonish tv dad (the way men are portrayed as a race of useless twits on British television is a subject Charlie Brooker's explored to hilarious effect, so I won't touch it) tells his moppet children they're having popcorn tonight, but does it amid an impression of W.C. Fields. The male child is sufficiently delighted by this to exclaim "Cool!" The very idea that a child would get excited over such a niggardly treat as unsalted, unbuttered, uncaramel-and-peanutted microwave popcorn is a stretch, but that he'd be amused by a reference to a screen actor who died about fifty-five years before his birth requires a brain bruising suspension of disbelief.

Anyway, what else? I've been busy since the New Year, but in the worst way, doing a hell of a lot of administrative and otherwise non-drawing tasks. Taking care of business, I guess. Still, there's been time to squeeze in a fair bit of caricaturing and a piece for today's paper. And I've had an unbroken run of six weeks so far on the Toon Weekly site (link on the left). Lots happening on the political front too; there's a big cultural summit happening in February, also the month in which consultation on the proposed replacement for Disclosure Certification closes... Long story short, it's an unfair tax on the self-employed. Speaking of tax, I'm also lining up meetings with all the various party political spokespersons to see if we can't hold the SNP to their promised tax break for Scottish artists. Planning on having a week-long presence in the parliament itself later this year too.

Plans for Feb's anniversary (Y & I will have been together for a decade) have been abandoned thanks to the intransigence of her employer. All focus now on the summer trip out West. This weekend is family, family, family though. A brother and sister-and-law we haven't seen properly for almost a year, an uncle recently turned fifty and a grandmother about to turn seventy-five. Should be fun. And cool.

Postscript: Except it won't be quite so much, because despite their much vaunted interconnnectedness on goodhardpunchintheFacebook, the various members of my family certainly love and cherish but don't actually talk to each other. Important information isn't passed on, yet pretend cartoon animals are fed imaginary treats. This is progress!

My big resolution for this year is simply to draw more: not just the stuff I'm obliged to draw but to accept more challenges, stretch certain atrophying muscles (like at Toon Weekly) and do more just for fun, like this.


Apropos of nothing, I witnessed a glorious incident on the bus from Glasgow through to Linwood (paradise!) on Saturday night. I had my 'phones in, so can't swear to every word that was spoken but the essentials were clear enough.

Every four minutes or so I was aware of shouting from the rear of the bus. It was so regular and incessant that I assumed it was coming from a Tourette's sufferer. As Paisley Road West shaded into Glasgow Road, however, the shouter made his way to the front where I could see him and it became apparent he was just a drunken arse, swigging from some alcopop or other. Late twenties, I'd say, but pretty nondescript. Just another Buckie-soaked Weggie.

Anyway, from his seat that's facing away from the bus door and towards everyone else, he starts directing comments to a younger guy and his girlfriend two rows down. Not quite a goth, but a willowy black-clad chap with an umbrella (always an open invitation to forensic examination from Glasgow wags in my experience, along with hat wearing). Between these two is an elderly woman, who's clearly not comfortable being in the middle of the exchange. She gets off at the next available stop, and Alcopop makes a move to do the same. It's at this point that something is said by Umbrella, probably a parting shot or a warning to leave the woman alone.

Alcopop turns on his heel, gets in Umbrella's face, says something else (I'd imagine insulting) and gets right back in his seat, facing the young couple with a typical wide-o expression and posture that made it clear they'd be enjoying his company for as long as they stayed on the bus, and probably afterwards. Alcopop had made two crucial miscalculations in his boozey fugue.

1- The collective will of the entire bus had turned against him.
2- Umbrella may have been slender of frame, but was a good foot and half taller than him.

Within a second of retaking his seat, Alcopop was bodily dragged from his chair by Umbrella with a hearty "Get tae fuck!", and was halfway out the door that the driver had casually and wordlessly opened. Alcopop braced himself in the doorway, at which point a female voice behind me shouted "Remember he's got a bottle!", i.e. an impromptu weapon. Quick as a wink, a stocky, pierced, camo type bloke gets up, takes Alcopop by the ankles and "wheelbarrows" him out onto the street.

The driver promptly shut the door, and by the time Alcopop had got back to his feet the bus was pulling away, filling with cheers and applause. All he could do was stand with both hands pointing and the classic pinched mouth, eyebrow raised expression of thwarted bams everywhere. Camo got pats on the back, Umbrella- I can safely assume- later got laid.