Strictly Come Dancing is back, with a plethora of well known and not so well known ‘celebrities’ from across the cultural spectrum.

Included in the bunch, is Actress Rose Ayling-Ellis, who is deaf and, unsurprisingly, the first deaf contestant to compete in the series. Previous series have included an amputee (the impressive Jonnie Peacock), a victim of severe burns (the amazing Katie Piper), and Lauren Steadman, the talented Paralympian who was born without a right forearm.

Now, I’m all for diversity and inclusivity, and it’ll be fascinating to watch Ayling-Ellis rise to the Strictly challenge while not actually being able to hear the music.

However. The question is, how the BBC will rise to the inclusivity challenge next year?

There’s only one logical conclusion. They’ll have to have a dead contestant.

Yes, next year we’ll be treated to one of the professional dancers throwing Sir Clive Sinclair around during the Paso Doble, or another dancing the American Smooth with Amy Winehouse.

Mark my words. Len?

So, Paddy McGuinness has replaced Sue Barker as host of the BBC’s A Question of Sport. Which begs the question, what dodgy pictures has he got featuring the Corporation’s top executives?

“Paddy, are you interested in fast cars?”

“Yeah, I am actually.”

“Great, fancy being lead presenter of our showcase motoring programme?”

“Paddy, you a keen sportsman?”

“Well, I was substitute for my school’s football team a couple of times.”

“Fantastic, Sue Barker’s leaving….”

If Monty Don ever hangs up his Gardeners’ World wellington boots……

“Paddy, you a keen gardener?”

“No, not really?”

“Ever had a garden?”

“No not really….”

“Paddy, have you ever been in a garden?”

“Well, yeah…..”

“You’re in!”

Apparently, we have stolen Greta Thunberg’s dreams. Oh, and ‘How dare we’?

I sympathise. To be honest, I’m a bit pissed off that my dreams weren’t realised. Obviously shagging Kylie, hosting ‘Live at the Apollo’ and Cambridge United winning the Premier League were probably a bit unrealistic, but I’m man enough not to blame Nick Cave (or any of the Lightning Seeds), Jason Manford, or even Big Ron.

Anyway, sorry Greta, but Supertramp probably put it best:

I said, “far out, what a day, a year, a life it is!”
You know, well you know, you had it comin’ to you
Now, there’s not a lot I can do

Work it out someday
Oh ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma

As the late, great, Ben Elton used to say, here’s a little bit of politics ladies and gentleman. What? He’s not? Ah, never mind.

Now, the LibDems. Nothing offensive about them at all. And that’s my problem with them. They’re just wishy washy. Beige. Generally, they’re just nice. You wouldn’t want a LibDem with you in a fight. Except Cable of course, he looks like a Silent Witness baddie. You just know his fridge is full of human body parts, carefully removed while the victim is still alive, with his Alexa playing Abba in the background.

They did well in the Europeans of course, getting the protest vote. Something’s very wrong with British politics if the only reason you vote for a party is that they’ve made a decision on where they stand on the main topic of the day. What are the LibDem’s other policies? Anyone know?

Well, ‘HIV prevention available on the NHS’ is one. Free Johnnies, basically. OK, fair enough. ‘Tackling childhood obesity’. Have you ever tried to tackle an obese child? They’re easy enough to catch, of course………..

‘Create another 10 garden cities’. You ever been to Milton Keynes? Do we need another 10 Milton Keynes?

‘Vote for 16-year olds, and legalise cannabis’. So 16 year old kids will be able to vote, but be too stoned to be arsed to do so. Nice one.

And finally, of course, ‘No new construction of anything whatsoever with 2 miles of a Liberal Democrat member’s house.’ Because, the LibDems, for all their airy-fairy, ‘We really careness’ are the biggest Nimby’s of all. Yeah, we need to build 300,000 homes a year by 2022, but come anywhere near my little bit of Middle England and I’ll send Uncle Vince round with his scalpel.

As a middle-aged bloke, I’m getting pretty pissed off about still being accused of ruining my children’s future by voting leave in the referendum three years ago.

For a start, I didn’t. For some unknown reason, I didn’t think, “Oh, it’s written on the side of a bus, it must be true.” If that were the case, ‘X-Men Dark Phoenix’ would be the best film ever made. It’s not, by the way, it’s completely shite.

Nor did I ‘Not really know what I was voting for’. If you don’t know what you’re voting for, it’s really easy. Don’t fucking vote. The Daily Mail and Russian bots aren’t going to frogmarch you down to the voting station and force you to place tick in the ‘leave’ box. Boris might, I suppose.

No, one reason why it’s certainly not my generations fault is that we actually voted, whereas the ‘youngster’s didn’t. And I know why.

Take Steve. He was 18 in 2016, but was too busy up in his bedroom playing Fast and Furious, surrounded by acne puss stained tissues and spunk infused socks. He didn’t think he needed to vote, because his mate Dave would be down the polling station, making a mark for his age group.

Except he wasn’t. Dave got up at 9.30, met Steve’s mum in a Premier Inn and shagged her brains out for 30 minutes, after which he returned home completely knackered, not to surface from his bed again until the next day.

Steve’s mum voted of course. Voted leave. She got up at 7, made the family’s breakfast, did the housework, wrote a website’s worth of computer code and wandered down the polling station on her way to meet Dave.

But that’s OK, because Steve and Dave’s mate Millie would have voted. She’s really into politics.

But she didn’t vote either.

Millie was too busy taking part in an anti-Brexit protest march in London, pissing in bottles, chanting left-wing slogans and informing her 24 Twitter followers that the BBC was definitely biased. She was too engrossed in her own smug pointless political activity that she forgot to vote.

Either that or maybe she didn’t realise she needed to vote. Maybe the young these days think that all you have to do to change the world is protest. Maybe they believe that blocking bridges, chucking milkshakes and sticking initials at the end of your Twitter handle is all you have to do to make anything happen.

The young, eh. Fucking idiots.

Should we hold a second Brexit referendum?
The thing is we had a vote, the good guys lost, let’s get on with it.

Everyone had their own reasons for voting leave. One of these reasons may have been  racism, and another maybe based on an individual’s very personal circumstances. Fair enough (sort of).

But please don’t tell me you voted leave because you were ‘misled’.

Once in London, I saw ‘Caroline gives great blow-jobs’ written in the dirt on the side of a bus. Now I’ve no idea if this is true as I didn’t know the lady in question but, looking back, I give this statement far more credibility than I gave the ‘£350m per week to the NHS’ promise displayed on the side of the Boris battlebus. Why? Because in my normal, yet not overly intelligent brain, I know the former statement is possibly true, where the latter is extremely unlikely. Common sense.

And yet. And yet, people believed it and are now whining that they were misinformed. If they had known ‘the facts’ they would have voted remain instead.

That’s the problem. Even idiots get the vote.

At general elections, do they believe every word of a manifesto? Do they believe politicians and their spinners are honest? If I paid to have ‘Yeovil Town will win the 2019 F A Cup’ posted on the side of a double-decker would they all be forming unorderly queues at William Hill’s?

Idiots.

Would they go into a casino and put all their worldly possessions on red, and when the ball landed in black say “Oh, I didn’t understand that I’d be broke, not be able pay the mortgage, and have no food”?

As for a referendum on the terms of brexit – the electorate was confused by a simple yes/no question, what chance would they have of understanding something more complicated?

Anyway, I’m off to find Caroline. Well, you never know……