"Is That Your Final Answer?"

Last week I commented on how I thought Have I Got News For You was losing it's way this series with very weak gags and ideas running out of steam. After watching Friday's episode however I can honestly say it was the best edition of the programme I've seen in the last two years and it wasn't just Chris Tarrant who helped to make the show side splitting.

The two panellists this week were both returning contestants with comedian and fellow Chelsea supporter Andy Hamilton and Lib Dem MP Lembit Opik who unlike Tarrant wasn't very good at coping with the jibes about his extracurricular activities.

The Wheel of News made a welcome return which resulted in Paul Merton making a brief dig about quiz show cheating when Tarrant moved the wheel to a panel that it hadn't landed on after spinning it first time round. As always when a guest host of a game show calibre takes control the Odd One Out Round was adapted to the style of Millionaire much to Ian's embarrasment and he really had it in for this weeks guest host constantly mocking him for his recent exploits. However it was also in this round that featured the overall show highlight, John Sweeney losing his rag during an interview with a scientologist on Panorama.

This was such a hilarious episode that just before the WAGS party I set the video to recorded the extended version on BBC 2 which I'll probably get round to seeing on returning from Canterbury tomorrow.
Before heading down the Underpants I had a gander at the first episode of the new BBC 2 series "7 Ages Of Rock" which took an in depth look at the career of Jimi Hendrix. Amongst the areas covered was his controversial live cover of "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" performed just two days after the Beatles had released the album, and his totally justified performance of "The Star Spangled Banner" at Woodstock in 1969. Unfortunately that performance now will remind me of a similar sounding rendition of "Happy Birthday" performed at Monday night's Band-E-Oke accompanied by Steve and Ina on mic. It's the thought that counts however.

Quite a few people were present at the Undercroft for Ashlea's birthday party including her flatmates Hannah, Jess and Linzi, Martin pulling the pints and the soon to be wed Maz and Gab. As always a lot of drink was involved and when these things happen I end up going on about either my passions such as Going Live! being the best entertainment television show ever, or my personal gripes such as the idiots on buses who play hip-hop music at full blast from their mobiles. Penny was one of the attendees who endured my tangents although she ended up in a few of her own in between the dancing.

Later arrivals include Elsa and Natasha and I was really pleased to see Natasha as she looked rather down and left out at last night's awards which I felt really bad about.
I seem to remember her feeling really disapointed when she found out that her mate Lizzie from the third year wouldn't be going but she managed to shrug it off last night.

In fact there are a few more things that happened at the awards that didn't get mentioned in the previous blog post:

• Myself enthusiasticly chatting to ex coms officer Rob Watson about Shane Meadows after he plugged "This Is England" on Goodlass and Marshall's show earlier in the week
• Seb and Jon winning the funniest on-air moment award for when Ross Tilley accidentally shut the station down with his backside during their show on the 24 hour Broadcast. As funny as it was I was really pissed off for that part of the night as I had to spend half an hour trying to get Selector back up on the computer. But as I've said before at least the incident happened whilst a Razorlight track was playing.
• Mark Jackson congratulating Stewart Paske on being able to use Scoopy without any problems!

Anyway back to the Undercroft and I also got roped into a photograph with all the men who were wearing football shirts. Most of them were wearing England strips but thankfully none of them were wearing United shirts.If the photo's Facebooked I'll upload it onto the blog.

There were also a few DJs present including Dan P who's been very busy in the last few days. They were spinning a mix of current and classic dance and garage tracks including a few what can now be called nostalgic tracks from 2000-2001. These included York's "OTB" featuring Chris Rea and the delightful "Flowers" by Sweet Female Attitude. It was while dancing to that track that a few people got carried away and started dancing on a wooden table which collapsed to much applause.

I'll be seeing most of last night's attendees again next Saturday on what will be my final visit to the Northwick Mansion for Jess's birthday beach party. And if I'm feeling nice enough I may bring along a few drinks that other people will want to drink as well, rather than just for my own pleasure.