After the griping from Wayne Mardle and Eric Bristow, Anastasia Dobromyslova made her PDC World Championships debut today, losing five legs to three to Remco van Eijden (but still finishing with the third-highest three-dart average of any player in the...

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The wise words of darts player Wayne Mardle, who was given a run for his money by leading female arrers thrower Anastasia Dobromyslova in last month's Grand Slam of Darts. If she'd triumphed, she would have been the first woman...

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I was covering The X Factor for the Guardian's website on Saturday night, and, during one of the breaks, was taken aback with one advert featuring Fearne Cotton and Holly Willoughby. Here's what I wrote over at the Organ Grinder...

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It's taken me a good 12 hours to work out what's been bugging me about Allen Stanford apologising to the England players. For those of you who don't follow cricket, Mr Stanford is a very rich man who is currently...

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I was waiting till now to post about Big Brother because I wanted to see how the finalists were treated by the crowd and by Davina McCall in their post-eviction interviews. Well, the moment has come, and lovely Rachel Rice...

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Apropos of the whole Sarah Palin/daughter story, Rudy Giuliani was on Sky News earlier. I've not seen his comments reported elsewhere, and I was in the middle of running a 5k on the treadmill at the gym, so this may...

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Harper Collins, the publisher, are sticking with their new Australian edition of The Daring Book For Girls - despite the fact that some Aboriginal leaders are outraged with its advice on how to play the didgeridoo. That's because the didgeridoo...

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I seem to be burning my bridges with lots of my sources of work over the course of the Olympics, but this made me so angry I can't help but post about it. The Times's Chief Sports Photographer Marc Aspland...

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Don't worry, I'm not going to ask you to write an essay about it (though I might get my third years to do so next semester), but I've seen two very contrasting plays this week with lots of meat for...

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As you may know, in real life I'm a journalist and cover a variety of subjects, mostly sport and media, so I was intrigued to find out that Golf Punk are launching a new football magazine. But wait! Who is...

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So I was watching Sky Sports' coverage of the cricket Test match between England and South Africa on Monday, and they had an interview with Piers Morgan at tea-time. They asked him why he liked cricket so much, and he...

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I need a new flash drive to store my research on. So I go to Play.com, and see this utter piece of genius. Yes, it's a PINK flash drive. So who is it for? Why, for the ladies, of course....

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Occasionally - and you may find this difficult to believe - I find myself in a local hostelry, at the bar, seeking some form of refreshing beverage. This was the case last week, when I was in a pub in...

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I don't even know where to begin with this piece from the Metro, purportedly in the 'Science and Discovery' section. It's reporting on new research indicating that tall women are less likely to develop dementia, with every extra inch of...

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Props to IndyCar driver Danica Patrick, who's become the first woman to win an IndySeries race, having finished top of the podium in Japan. She finished just over five seconds ahead of Helio Castroneves (who non-petrolheads may know from his...

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Seriously, single-sex orchestras are the best recommendation people can come up with in their report showing that girls play smaller, higher-pitched instruments and boys have the hefty brasses? How about, I don't know, working on changing attitudes - as the...

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I love me my darts, which is handy, being a sports journalist, but seriously, the more I go to Premier League Darts the more I wish I didn't. If you're not an arrows enthusiast - and let's face it, there's...

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Yes, it's a valid, topical piece of news, reporting on new ONS figures about suicide rates in the UK. The numbers from the ONS indicate that in 2005, 30.8 single men per 100,000 died by suicide, compared with 10.6 per...

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I hate feeling that I ought to start a blog entry with a disclaimer, but I want to be very sure that I'm not misconstrued. So let me say that I think learning to cook is a Good Thing. Everyone...

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I couldn't sleep last night, and switched on the television at about 4am. I was greeted by an advert that totally confused me. As I recall, it was for Stagecoach, and focused on a wacky professor-type named Harold Hooterson (Hooterson!),...

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