An Anglo-German friend once assured me that, on every New Year's Eve, German TV ratings are topped by a 1980's British comedy called Dinner for One. I'd forgotten about this until the current edition of The Economist reported that, this year, one of the channels had shown a spoof. Instead of the waiter sitting at each seat in turn, impersonating the long gone friends of his mistress, the lone lady in the chair was Mrs Merkel, the waiter was President Sarkozy and the men impersonated by him were the recently departed leaders of several EU members. Oh, and Mr. Cameron. As The Economist puts it, The joke was clear: summits are empty charades; only Mrs Merkel matters; and Mr Sarkozy is her comical servant. I'm betting he doesn't see the funny side of this.

Which reminds me, it seems that M Sarkozy's (illegal) attempt to save SeaFrance has failed. Which won't go down too well ahead of the imminent presidential elections. As if any of us cares.

After ten years of progressively getting rid of them, I'm finding it tough to deal with these bloody British manners. Especially with people who move out of my way when they're still at least three metres away from me. But at least both of us aren't doing this.

One of the odd things about the Spanish is that they don't rate mackerel. The good consequence of this is that the fish is remarkably cheap on the market slabs. The bad consequence is that it's impossible to find smoked mackerel pâté for love or money. Which is huge shame as this, in my opinion, is one of the greatest culinary inventions. Even rarer are kippers.

The Suárez-Evra saga rumbles on, with Liverpool coming in for a great deal of criticism for their rigid defence of Suárez, and Evra being exposed as someone who used the N-word some seven years ago.

Nice to see Saudi Arabia taking a step into the 18th century, with the royal decree that men must cease being assistants in lingerie shops and hand over this work to women. Even if this horrifies the clerics who think the Koran bars women from working. Amongst a few other things.

Back to Merseyside this evening, so my humour bone has to be polished up. And Irish stew anticipated.

Finally . . . . Here are a few of the things that have found their way onto my hard disk. As I say, I have absolutely no idea how.

Or not. As they won't upload.