>>>>>Killing Time<<<<<: Mock the weak...

Picked up the guitar. M's not around today so I couldn't annoy her with my repeat-playing of the opening to Suede's Beautiful Ones. Just trotted through loads of tab and, as I had one ear on the John Lennon Rolling Stone interviews that I felt the need to re-listen to after watching The US vs John Lennon last night, I also belted me way through my bad versions of Cold Turkey, Working Class Hero and Watching The Wheels. Why do I bother? I dunno. It's a pleasant enough way to unwind, eh? Rugby arrived on the television (Hull KR losing to Warrington) but I kept up with the six string action and opted to try and move my fingers in a way that might make a sound similar to the fiddliest bits of Mr Brightside. In between I took these pictures of the guitar in question. Nice, ain't it?

Alex Ferguson. Indisputably a brilliant football manager. Not so well known for his thoughts on popular culture - you wouldn't expect him to turn up one day on Newsnight Review, for instance. Yet, in his defence of shit and tactically inept England football manager Steve McClaren, Fergie has deemed himself the font of all wisdom regarding reality television. McClaren, Fergie has been at pains to point out to various media, is a victim of this country's "mocking culture".

"We live in a mocking society now. Even on television, with shows like that skating programme [Dancing on Ice] where the panellists criticise, mock and ridicule the contestants," go the quotes in The Independent.

Surely mocking and criticism pre-date reality television? In fact, I can't even be bothered to qualify that statement because obviously they do.

"It's just a mocking society we're in. People are mocked and ridiculed, which is hard to take," Fergie said, according to Tribal Football.

Yes, Ferguson now mocks mocking culture so we must all stop the mocking and be nice to each other, for Steve McC's sake.

Fergie hasn't quite grasped that the reality television - thus called because it bears absolutely zero relation to reality, a bit like calling people with really straight hair Curly - that he so loathes is actually competitive and, thus, the criticism of those entering the competition is valid.

"Even when they skate, the panel then criticises them," highlights The Guardian.

No, he just don't get it. And it's upsetting the man who once had an embarrassing attack of diarrhea en route to the training ground.

"People are mocked and ridiculed, which is hard to take. Where you apportion blame, I don’t know. Is the press responsible or is that just our culture?," goes The Times report.

So, how do we solve it, Alex? Do we scrap all panel-based reality television talent contests just in case the red-faced England mismanager takes the hump after someone's assimilated the thoughts, vocal patterns and homo-erotic fashion sense of Simon Cowell and hurled some mocking McClarenwards?

"I have my views, but I don’t know the answer other than making sure your team win 5-0 every game. That might stop it.”

Yet Ferguson, also famous for talking like a hair dryer, hasn't figured lanky sex-obsessed skinny-trousered Russell Brand into his simplistic diarrhea-riddled stop-the-mock by winning convincingly equation. Brand's column in The Guardian's sport supplement, on the reverse of their Ferguson report, is headed...