What sort of a name...

...is Windass? Quite rightly, this is the question being asked over on the Corrie blog, thanks to the arrival of that very 'orrid family that keep ruining Gail Platt's life. Very kindly, they've given me and Deano a namecheck. Take a look yourself at Corrieblog.

Soap and SHUC...

Well, well, well, Coronation Street bad un David Platt’s car’s gone missing and he’s surely out on the road as I write, heading to Blackpool where he’ll suffer a head-on collision with a tram or, perhaps, he’s already driven it nose first into the Manchester ship canal. And it’s all his soon-to-be-wed half-sister Sarah’s fault, for not taking his hand-written spider-scrawl suicide letter seriously. And David’s dad, Martin, who, rather predictably for a character that was written out long ago, is unable to attend the wedding, news that made David almost cry and pull a reet horrid face when leaning on a wall down an alley. And the scriptwriters, who couldn’t decide whether Marie, who could have saved the lad, should be involved in a storyline about a black puppy or have gone running to mother of the year and aged hamster face Gail with the news. But never mind Coronation Street and other similar soap weddings that may or may not end in doom and a subsequent tangled web of duplicity, I have finally come round to Dragons’ Den, just five series too late but better late than never. Last night I was very impressed with Jill Parkinson’s utterly pointless shower head holder the SHUC, a nicely designed lump of plastic into which she had already sunk vast sums of money securing intellectual property rights. The Dragons backed her into a corner, pointing out that there was absolutely no market for an item pitched as a “must have” for those visits to hotels that don’t have shower heads fixed on the walls. You carry one of these babies in your case and, voila, problem (what problem?) solved and you can shower away, spraying water everywhere as, no doubt and the Dragons pointed out, if the shower head wasn’t wall mounted there’d be no shower curtain. “I’d just have a bath,” said Dragon Peter Jones, who did a great job of losing patience with Jill and her "take anywhere shower holder-upper". Jill insisted that you could also use it as an essential aid to cleansing your pets. Marvellous. Dragon Deborah Meaden likes saying, “I’ll tell you where I am,” doesn’t she? She turned to Jill and said, “I’ll tell you where I am. I wish you’d come to us a year ago. We could have saved you £200,000.” There is a SHUC website and, after paying a visit, I’ve realised that I must have one of these things, mainly because the slogan tells it like it is: You never know when you might need one - so make sure you always have one! And no nails or glue are required. Imagine if they were and the maid turned up in your room to turn down your bedding just as you were nailing your SHUC in place.

Corrie goes music hall...

Coronation Street's Sally Webster when it was suggested that mechanic husband Kevin accompany her to a production of Henry V: "Kevin? Shakespeare? He thinks that Coriolanus is something you go to the doctor with."

Start of a good night of hilarity. The IT Crowd just gets better every week and Moss's appearance on Dragon's Den with his spontaneously combusting Abracadabra was truly inspired, then youtube provided me with the second instalment of the new Curb Your Enthusiasm season, The Anonymous Donor, in which Larry realises that it wasn't such a good idea to donate money using his own name, given that those that donate anonymously get all the credit. Wonderful - really good and consistently excellent comedy does exist.

Tags: Coronation Street, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The IT Crowd, comedy