Thomas Fraser Did you ever hear a Shetland crofter singing the country blues? It's a rare sound - check it out. What a story, man, what a story!

Smashing Pumpkin, Singular Tonight, my neice Darryl and I carved us a pumpkin. It's the second year in a row we've carried out this most Yankee of rituals but such is the grip it has on the UK now that a pumpkin is as common a sight as the turnip used to be when I were a lad. Seriously - it feels embarrasingly pastoral to even say it now but we used to carve out turnips ('tumshies' to use the local dialect). I personally feel last year's pumpkin was better but there's no photographic evidence and the rose tinted glasses of hindsight may be clouding the issue.

Let's Bro'Town Again Whaddayaknow? Heaps of kindly Kiwis have posted Brotown clips on Youtube.

Most Farted If you've ever seen Derek Acorah and his fake ghost hunts on Britain's Most Haunted, you'll appreciate the work that has gone into this little piece. And there's even a second helping. Oh we may be older, we may be wiser in some ways, but by Christ, there's nothing like a good farty joke - they still get me right in the guts.

Shot Bro' Ow When I was in Australia a few weeks back, I was listening to Triple J one morning and they had these Kiwi blokes on from a collective called 'Morningside 4 Life.' They do many things artistic but their most public face is the cartoon series Bro'Town. They were on Triple J cos the series was starting on TV in Australia that night. We watched it and it was really funny. Kind of along the lines of a King Of The Hill or a Kiwi Simpsons maybe. The thing that struck me about them in interview was their fantastically irreverent sense of humour. They seemed to find absolutely nothing worth being serious about - and I love that. I think the Morningside crew are mainly Islanders and Maori - the characters in the cartoon certainly are. The cat above is Maori Jeff - his accent is precious and he does this "-ow" thing at the end of most sentences which apparently is a maori thing added at the end of a sentence to add emphasis, according to the glossary. There are tons of fantastic little expressions used in it actually. I'm gonna get me to the online shop and order up the DVDs. I reckon even a pakeha like me can pick up the jive, eh bro? They said in interview that they had special guests doing voice overs in the show and furthermore that they had Prince Charles' voice in one episode. They were so fucking unserious about everything, though, that it was probably bullshit.

Boy 'Hoar-Hey' Ridiculed From today's Guardian - Sam Woolaston's review of last night's telly. I really wanted to watch this programme too. Ah well, laughing at queen tubby is an aceptible substitute.

Cradle Snatching For The Well Heeled I'm not sure what's behind all the ballyhoo about Madge nicking an orphan out of starving Africa. For one thing, can't rich people do anything they want? It could be that we know this and are just sick of it - maybe we want to see bureaucracy get in the way of unbridled avarice, just this once. Maybe she's just not that much of a star in our eyes any more and we don't think such star-exclusive privilleges should be accorded her. Personally, I just feel sorry for the kid. Madge herself may have become so accustomed to a pap-pack dogging (no pun etc) her every move, her every waking hour that she didn't consider what an imposition it might be on someone else. I look at these images of the infant being trailed around, swaddled in army blankets, in a constant hail of flashes and all I can think is - You Selfish Fucking Cow.

Hooked On X Sigh, well it's X-Factor time of year again, folks, and I'm hooked. Even when I was in Australia and missing the X, I became hooked on Australian Idol - a show in which I'm reliably informed, my main man Bobby Flynn has this week been papped out. He was a huge, gangly monster with a red jew-fro - as 70's as they come but cool for it, you know? Anyway, this year's UK X Factor is full of intrigue and what-if. The audition rounds and the bootcamp stage etc are all done and dusted and now its the weekly live performances - my favourite. Twelve remain after the country has been scoured, the tuneless and toothless weeded out, ridiculed and cast asunder. This year I feel they have made particular work out of picking people with a backstory - it seemed like everyone had lost a mother or loved one, been in an accident or else just sundry ill-fate. Thus does our lot as armchair judges become a tougher proposition entirely. How does anyone evict a girl in a wheelchair? Because this year there is a girl in a wheelchair, a Scottish girl in a wheelchair. She has an awesome voice but on Saturday, her first night, she was given a shite song for her pipes anyway, and really delivered a sub-par perfomance. Simon Cowell was straight enough to tell her this, but I just don't know if even the despotic king of entertainment-based reality-type TV will find it in himself to say nay when the time comes. My own feeling after watching the first live night is that Robert and Dionne are the two top natural-voiced, non-cloning-Mariah-Carey, real talents in the pack. Robert, a carribean Londoner with a speaking voice like Frank Bruno, came out swingin and sang the best ever version of Lionel Ritchie's All Night Long. The lad was so chock full of appreciation for being there, such childlike exhuberance that I was readdy to give him the record deal right then and end the whole charade. He was actually jumping - yes, jumping up and down during his performance and after - he RAN to and from the stage at full pelt and could hardly say a word for tears of joy at just being there. Lionel Ritchie came on the show to perform one of his latest songs later on and he looked tore-up by comparison with my man Robert. Dionnne is another Englishperson or carribean ancestry whose nerves have almost cost her her position already but she came out sexy, sultry, and belted out 'I'm Gonna Make You Love Me' that had me dancing about the living room. She was in the bottom two and had to sing for her life to stay in the contest. The British public's taste is in it's ARSE. Thank God the judges know something.

Furthermore Further to a pervious post about Mozambique and the bit about the kids hitching on the back of the Landrover, it transpires that one of the inhabitants of the car was astute enough to get a snap as we bumped and shook along the road with a payload of human cargo on the back. To me, it's funny but maybe its a had-to-be-there thing.

McTakahashi Steps Out I'm at my man Rick's for dinner tonight and am enjoying it too much but still do I think of you and post. What's it like to have a friend like me, tell me? Form a fuckin queue. Anyway, here's a snap from the recent Tokyo Highland Gathering for your viewing pleasure, ladiesangennulmenn. thanks to Special K in Kanazawa for the link, nice to know he's still innahouuuusssse.

Political Correctness? We'll See Thee An article in this week's Observer, puts every thought I have on political correctness and the very notion of it, twice as succinctly as I could have ever hoped to. Yeah, Shorty, I'm Laughing At You by Simon Fanshawe. It's time we all started calling a spade a spade. Or should I say it's time we started calling a beltline-challenged person a fat bastard?

Have A Laugh While we were watching the live broadcast of the Australian Rugby League final on TV the other week, the funniest ad of the year came on and split us in two. It's so big a talking point that Irene Cara was actually in Australia the week before, giving interviews etc about it. Well, evidently it's only one in a series of great antipodean beer ads and Carlton's follow up to this cracker. Did I even mention this one that's showing here in the UK just now? Well, it's only one version apparently. They take their beer commercials seriously down there - you can see how much buisness is obviously at stake. Nice work anyway. Remember the days when Volkswagen used to have the best ads out there? What happened to them?

Blood Diamond Right in time to create a buzz before Oscar time, comes the film they were shooting while I was in Mozambique at Easter, Blood Diamond. It looks pretty good, too.

The Gawld Cawst Well after about a week and a half here on the Gold Coast, I consider myself a fully qualified person to start making sweeping generalizations about Australian culture - this being the typical, down home Australian kinda town. (arf arf) The weather right now is about perfect for me - and this being Australian winter, it's then a bloody good thing I don't live here all the time. Warm emough to swim in the sea during the day and cool enough that you need a jacket at night - that's all I ask for - and a place that can grow palm trees. A good friend, Trueman, once, on a postcard to me, stated the ultimate holiday sentiment "I don't wanna live anywhere palm trees can't grow ever again" - Boom! The Asutralian people, I find to be wholly agreeable in their element - easy going, eilling to chat it up when required, astute enough to know when its not required - I've never had an issue with antipodeans anyway but having observed them in their natural habitat, I'm a fan. I've been careful to make the most of any interchange with local people, who are hard to find around these touristy parts, and I can say i've had some good laughs. Taxi driver talking up the local dog racing scene - that was a good one. Larrikin at local convenie talking to his mate about the after hours boozin' scene here - that was nice. Signs of life, all of them. I can find none of the insecurity-driven overcompensations you find in many in the new world, folk here seem at ease with themselves, which suits me fine. The stanch character in my few true mates from these parts is upheld by what I find in their home turf - Pistol and Jobbie - I can see what it is that I like you for now! Hah! The area of the Gold Coast we are staying at, Main Beach / Surfer's Paradise, is about as touristy as I imagine a country, any country, could get, and yet I am able to see through the miles of tourists andd tourist-driven kak, and get a feel for what the rest of the country would be like. I've been watching some TV which again I find fun - mainly a comedty series called "Real Stories" which is awesome. Also, we dutifully watched the Rugby League final on Sunday between local side Brisbane and Melbourne. I have to say, though I enjoy Rugby of the union variety, I fully enjoyed the leage game - far faster, more of a running game and infinitely better to watch. I'm a convert. Brisbane won by a narrow margin anyway. We've been buying shrimp fresh off the boat and choking them back at a helluvah rate here, and during these trips, have come across some rather unhealthy anti-asian sentiment among the trawlermen. One day there were no prawns and i made the mistake of asking a man why - I was treated to a 45 minute discourse on the evils of asian infiltration not just in the prawn business but everything else where there's money to be made. Another day I spotted this sign, paid for by the Gold Coast fishermen's co-op and was relieved to find that my friend had not been unique in any way. Note, especially, the cartoon asians on the boat and at the dock - complete with buck teeth and straw sampan!! Hilarious. Click on it to blow it up and get a load of the detail. Anyway, that's my time here drawiing to a close now, will be outty on Friday and back to reality and the new job come Monday morning. Australia - it's a cunt of a journey away, but it's alright once you get there. Tourism Australia can have that one on me.