Britain Shocked by Canadian Drinking Binge

For a second time in less than a fortnight shock waves are rippling through the British Isles over the Vancouver Olympic Games. The British media is hyper-ventilating because Canada's women's (ice) hockey team, having won gold medals in Vancouver, was also thought to be threatening to steal Britain's crown as the binge-drinking capital of the world.

Throughout the entire British nation journalists are sitting down and taking smelling salts in a valiant effort to deal with the effrontery of these colonials. Canada's women's hockey team went back onto the ice after medals had been awarded and fans had left the stadium to crack a celebratory cold one.

Canada has sincerely apologized to it's mother nation. A message has been sent making it clear that while Canadians enjoy blowing the froth off a couple of beers to celebrate a big sporting win, our women will not be drinking themselves stupid and vomiting all over public streets every Saturday night as thousands do in the United Queendom.

According to a BBC report, Britain invests £20 billion every year to maintain its world binge-drinking title. The main contenders are young people in the same age group as Canada's women's hockey team. The BBC report goes on to say that 33,000 binge-drinking competitors die every year pursuing their favourite pastime.

Canadians are deeply embarassed that our incredibly modest display of alcohol consumption was misinterpreted as a challenge to British binge-drinking supremacy. We promise to behave ourselves in the future.

I'll drink to that.

The Worst Ever: Newspaper

"Vancouver Games continue downhill slide from disaster to calamity. Snowboarding nonsense is the latest fiasco threatening to make these Games the worst in Olympic history" writes golf caddy and guitar player for the "Bluebells" Lawrence Donegan of Britain's Guardian newspaper.

Times are tight in the United Queendom. The Guardian couldn't afford to send a real Fleet Street hack to Vancouver, but when "Bluebell Donegan" showed up to caddy for the paper's editor one Sunday last autumn the head scribe collared him for the assignment.

Maybe Bluebell is a bit pissed off that nobody in Vancouver would hire him to carry their clubs around while on his jolly little junket. Maybe they were all more concerned with winter sports than Bluebell's favourite summer pastime. Poor chap; he got so frustrated that the poison just gushed through the nib of the jaunty little fountain pen the Guardian slipped into his pocket as they ushered him off to Heathrow.

Never mind Bluebell old chap, it's London's turn to host the Olympics in just two years. You can have a bash at showing us lowly colonials how it should have been done. There's a very large group of British expats living here in Canada and we are very proud of how our new country has responded to the myriad challenges of organizing an Olympic Games. At the same time, we are all hoping that Britain will have the most successful games ever in 2012.

Have a safe trip back to England, Bluebell.

New Correspondent for Blighty's Blog

Who would have imagined it? The great Simon Cowell - a part of Blighty's Blog's international team of top-notch foreign correspondents! Until recently it was beyond even our wildest imagination. Now, each morning we wake up and ask ourselves: "can this really be true?"

Simon's Bio
This is not the tale of a rude, sneering, spoiled brat who was expelled from a series of exclusive private schools for which his well-heeled parents paid the fees. It is not even the tale of how the spoiled brat grew up surrounded by pampering nannies, thinking he had a better pot to pee in than the rest of the world. 


Mail Room Clerk
This is the story of entertainment guru Simon Cowell. Mr Cowell was born in Brighton, England in 1959. He has achieved a lot of his fame by being simply obnoxious. His father was influential in the music business and got his erring son a job as a lowly mailroom clerk with a record company. The mischievous boy made good at the job and quickly rose through the ranks. Bursting out into an unsuspecting world on his own, he went on to become a music producer and record label owner.

TransAtlantic Idol
Cowell's breakthrough came when he was appointed as a judge on the British TV show "Pop Idol" and subsequently on the American spin-off "American Idol". His lack of sensitivity for aspiring young talent trying hard for a breakthrough in show business was amply demonstrated in his scathing sarcasm and dismissive attitude toward acts he didn't like. His biting comments and unpleasant demeanour became his springboard for success.

Stand Aside for Simon
He has since appeared as a judge in other talent shows such as "Britain's Got Talent". In that show another judge was well known personality Piers Morgan, former editor of the British tabloid newspaper "News of the World" - a well known breeding ground for papparazi infestations. While filming for Britain's Got Talent" in Manchester, England, Mr Morgan was waiting in his hotel lobby one morning. Those same paparazzi over whom he presided when in charge of the News of the World asked him to stand aside so they could take pictures of ... Simon Cowell!

Welcome aboard Simon, you're gonna fit in well on our team.

What Not to Wear? Clothes Apparently!

They are worth over £10 million. They are well known - and controversial - in both Britain and America. And nobody is really quite sure of their preferences when it comes to intimate relationships. They are Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine.

They didn't like each other when they first met. The English snob and the Eurotrash girl didn't hit it off. That all changed when, in 1994, Trinny and Susannah got together to write a fashion advice column for Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper.

Their dot com business blew away £10M of investors money. Their first book bombed. But then they were given an opportunity to host a TV show on BBC2. From there their careers and fortunes blossomed and grew exponentially.

Trinny and Susannah left the BBC and their successful "What Not to Wear" show for competing broadcaster ITV for a contract worth well over a million pounds. At their new home they put out a new show called "Trinny and Susannah Undress ...". Yes, well ... um.

Meanwhile their renewed efforts at publishing books brought an entirely different result to their first failed effort and added huge amounts to their growing fortunes.

Despite making their fortunes helping people decide what clothes to wear, the pair seem quite comfortable doffing their own attire down to their birthday suits. They setup a publicity stunt, along with 300 others, in which they appeared stark naked on a hillside in southern England to create a living sculpture.

And then, to promote their new American show, they again parted company with all their attire to pose for the picture shown in this post (which may have become a little distorted as a result of climate change).

So, what's not to wear? Well, clothes apparently. Just follow the example set by the experts.

The Chilled Cot Inquiry

In the Land of Hope and Glory a boondoggle inquiry chaired by Sir John Chilcot is investigating events that led to the invasion of Iraq. The Chilcot inquiry's website lays down a very vague statement about the terms of reference, but media reporting belies the true purpose - to identify culprits who can be blamed for the stalemate situation that now exists in that country, years after the largely unopposed invasion.

Among those who have appeared at the inquiry is former British prime minister Tony Blair (pictured). Mr Blair was the supremo responsible for ordering British forces into Iraq as part of a coalition led by George W. Bush's US forces.

Critics of the war argue that the invasion was predicated on the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But, following the invasion none were found - not even a thimbleful of Sarin or VX nerve gas (enough to kill hundreds of people).

Is it possible that Saddam's chaps flushed it all down the lavvy when they saw coalition forces riding hotfoot across the desert?

Or could it be that they used their entire stock of "non-existent" chemical weapons in their brutal slaughter of tens of thousands of their own citizens in Halabja and two hundred and fifty other Kurdish villages between 1988 and 1989?

Her Majesty's government will get to the bottom of it. And when they uncover and publish the truth you can be sure of one thing - Hell will be frozen over.