2003-06-22 - 11:52 p.m.

Some coked-up bit-actress from a hospital soap came to a sticky end the other day when she fell off a balcony to her untimely death. Yeah, pity, but for a day or two we were suddenly "a nation in mourning", replete with St Diana-esque outpourings of grief and websites where you could "leave a lighted candle" (ie. write some trite guff in a message book - I tried to leave the message "There'll be a new freckle on the face of the giant pixie tonight", but it got erased.) This country has developed a worrying grief fetish since the sloan carked it in that motorway tunnel. I preferred it when we were dignified and repressed I think.

The balcony scenario DID remind me of a happy moment, though. I was on the tube and two old duffers were talking about the time that Eric Cl*pton's kid fell umpteen stories to its infant demise. One of them asked the other, "Didn't he write a song about it? What was that song called?" The other replied, "Um...The Way You Look Tonight?"