They held the Grammys the other night. Now renamed the Taylor Swifts as she seems to win them all every year. And quite rightly. We love high school country-rock about teen romances gone wrong. Its what country stars sing about whilst they’re waiting to grow old enough for their dog to die, the wife to leave them, to lose a couple of legs in some war or other, to become an alcoholic, to be a beaten wife; the normal adult side of country & western. And who better than Taylor? Certainly not Kanye West, that’s for sure.

And after the awards come the parties. Music companies and musicians rent spaces in LA, BIG spaces, and host extravagant parties akin to those by the Russian Tsars in War & Peace but with less fabric in the clothing and more drugs.

Paul McCartney turned up at one such gig, accompanied by Woody Harrelson and several other BIG names.

Sir Paul McCartney. The man who invented music as we know it. A Beatle. One of only two left anywhere in the world. If rock has royalty, Macca is the King, the Queen and the entire court. He is a God.

So they turned him away. Wouldn’t let him in. Not famous enough? Not ‘big’ enough? Not on the clipboard nazi’s inevitable ‘list’. Paul’s comment as he walked back to his limo was a wry ‘how big a VIP do you need to be?’

But really, the doorman was actually doing him a favour. Should a man that old really be out at nightclubs in the middle of the night? Wouldn’t he be better off at home with a cup of cocoa waching Newsnight? Maybe touching up his roots? Not doing the white man’s overbite grooving it away with adopted-for-the-night grand-children.

Tomorrow is E-Day. Like D-Day, when the fate of Europe was decided back in 1944, but the next one. E-day. Europe Day. When all 28 of the European Union people get to vote on whether David Cameron’s demands for our continued EU membership are acceptable. Whether we can refuse in-work benefits to European immigrants. Whether we can be exempt from parts of the Human Rights act. And most of all; whether we’re allowed to stop the ridiculous situation in which a (f’rinstance) Polish worker over here, currently on benefits, can claim child support payments for a child who has never been in this country, and have them paid directly to Poland. Easy peasy. And fucking daft.

David Cameron is suitably stressed out because he wants us to stay in Europe but if those pesky foreigners don’t agree to our (quite reasonable, if you’re British, downright outrageous if you’re French/German) terms then we, the nation, may vote to leave the Union, come June.

Finally; gambling; the disease. We love a gamble. Its everywhere here. Online, booky shops, slot machines, we just can’t pump our fivers in there quick enough. And guess what? Its a problem!!! People are actually addicted to gambling!! Who’d’a thought?? Such a nice, pleasant, harmless (phah!) pastime. Folks sit at a gaming machine and only stop when their money’s gone, their shopping budget for the week is blown, their cards are maxed out and they’ve sold most of their children. And its all sooooooo easy. And so unregulated. When the football stops for half time on tv, the first thing you see is Ray Winstone imploring you to put twenty quid on Wayne Rooney to score the next goal (15 to 1), or Scunthorpe to get the next corner (8 to5) or the ref to blow his whistle in his left hand (17-8 against). “Isss soooow eazy, innit, kids, just nick yer mum’s credit card, hack the password on ‘er phone an yer away. Go’worn, get startid naaaar”.

Thanks Ray

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx