So..What are you you all doing next Tuesday? Work, maybe an evening drink?

Well Lindsay Lohan will be surrendering herself to the Centrury Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood. California, where she will start her 90 day prison sentence for repeatedly violating the terms of her probation following her 2007 drug charge.

Am I the only one that thinks that this will be possibly the best thing to happen to Lohan since she started to derail at the age of 19?

Her live court hearing was watched by 2.3million people online. This – and don’t quote me here – is probably 10 times as many people that have collectively paid to see Lohan in anything prior to Mean Girls back in 2004.

Since becoming jail bait, Lohan’s career has rocketed and she is finally famous for being something other than Samantha Ronson’s girlfriend.

A-List celebrities are giving her advice, TV Channels offering up millions for interviews and even her lost love Samantha has met her for a secret dinner somewhere in the hollywood hills. Seriously, I bet she is loving it.

So, what do you think? Will this be the reinvention of Lohan? Well, in 90 days we will see. Enjoy your time in the Big House Lindsay, just don’t drop the soap.

Ok, well I’m not going to write about compulsive eaters but I am going to have a little rant about cheaters.

Tiger Woods, Vernon Kay, Ashley Cole, Little Mark Owen… the list is endless.

Now, I don’t want to tarnish every man with the same brush but come on boys. What happens? You wake up one day lying next to Cheryl Cole or Tess Daly and you think… God, you repulse me. You have a great body, a beautiful face, you look after my children & support me but I am going to ruin it all by cheating on you with the nanny / page 3 blonde / any girl that shows me affection, and then, if that is not clever enough, I am going to leave a string of texts / illicit photo’s behind so you can find out?

Is that how it happens?

I am not naive enough to think that beauty is everything and I am sure that you don’t get as much attention as you used to and maybe even the spark that – 3 years ago was very prominent and very exciting has dulled but what I can’t understand is why you risk everything for, well… nothing. A stroke of the ego, a compliment and you’re gone. Flash forward 3 months and it’s tears, remorse and public displays of guilt-ridden apologising. The best outcome, your wife stays, but never trusts you again. The worst outcome is you lose, literally everything.

So, can someone maybe explain something I’m missing? Or, girls, are we just better at hiding our affairs? Do we cheat like men but are more clever? Or do we rationalise things in our head so the pros of cheating are too weak compared to the cons? I need answers.

ITV1 has a new drama and it’s promising to be the new Cold Feet.

Married Single Other is a six part-er with and ensemble cast featuring amongst others, Lucy Davis (The Office) and Ralf Little (Two Pints and Royal Family)

First aired on February 22nd it made a promising start with 6.2 million viewers and a 25.5% audience share in the 9pm slot however, I am cynical and dubious about it ever becoming or having the success of the highly acclaimed Cold Feet that had 5 series and won 20 major television awards during it’s 6 year stint as one of ITV’s major rating success stories.

I have watched both episodes and I have to say I am not hooked. Yes, there are 6 of them, and yes, they are all friends but that is the only comparison I can make between MSO and Cold Feet. The casting director must have been having a laugh or on medication when he decided on the role of Ralph Little as the ’stud’ because everytime I see him on screen with his circa 1993 M&S suit and his greasy boyband hair i find it completely unbelievable that he has girls swooning over him. Also, Babs’ the middle aged married lady stuck in a rut with her gambling addict husband is the Malteser advert girl. She will ALWAYS be the Maltese girl and therefore it’s very hard to concentrate on anything she is saying when she is trying to act.

Maybe I am being a little harsh, give it time I hear you say, but frankly I have a feeling this may be Married Single Other’s first and last outing at ITV1.

What do you think?

If you haven’t seen the many advertisements and if you haven’t heard the hype for the new American show Glee then….where have you been!
Glee is the latest sitcom to come out of America and it aired on E4 last night.

I had sky plus-ed it, because obviously, I work in media and therefore I am out every night partying and networking but low and behold, I found myself, bathed and fed by 8pm and ready to watch it.
Glee is a show about a high school glee club (for those of you not American, Glee Club is our equivalent of a choir club) that is failing and in need of a new, cooler type of person to join. Think High School Musical for adults. This is no normal Glee Club – this is Kanye West Singing, attitude bringing amazement.

I wont spoil the fun, but Glee was a huge hit for me. If you didn’t see it last night make sure you 4oD it or catch it again on E4. It is not one to miss.

I am on the bench with Christmas as a whole. I like it as a holiday away from work and as an excuse for the general public to just be a bit nicer but we all know Christmas is the best when you view it through the eyes of children.

Seeing kids get excited could not fail to bring a smile to even the most scrooge – like of human beings and the creatives behind the newest Christmas advert for John Lewis  obviously knew this because this year, they have (in my opinion) delivered a belter.  

The concept is simple but effective: children opening presents that are gifts that you would give to a grown up and being ecstatic about it. The tag line is: “Remember how Christmas Used to Feel? Give someone that feeling” and believe me, by the end of the ad you remember how good Christmas felt.

The final selling point for me was the beautifully sung version of ‘Sweet Child O Mine’ by Taken By Trees.

Watch it and let me know if it made you feel as happy as it made me!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8_-5RWjxZo

Well, I am surely not the first person this morning to put hand to keyboard and write about this weekend’s X Factor results. Twitter, facebook and numerous blogs are filled with ecstatic / outraged X Factor fans feeling happy / sad of last nights outcome.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I see a certain (tiny) amount of appeal for the big haired, high-top wearing duo that is Jedward and I think the onslaught of abuse they received at the beginning of the show was over dramatic and uncalled for but musically, Lucy Jones was better. Everyone that has two (or even one) working ear drum knows that Lucy is in a different league to the twins but her getting voted off by the public was not the shocker, it was Mr Simon Cowell choosing to take it to the public vote.

Like most people I know, I have a weird ‘thing’ for Simon Cowell. He is nasty and pompous but that has always been counter-acted by the knowledge that he could pick talent. Whatever he said or did I knew that he appreciated music and could pick the talent from the talentless.

What a hypocrite. 

‘I will leave the country if John and Edward win’ was just one of the comments Cowell exclaimed after one of the performances by the twins. Words like mockery, ridiculous and talentless were constantly uttered when asking for his opinions of the two and then, stop the press! Britain like them? They bring in the ratings? You could almost see his brain thinking – Simon Cowell + Jedward = another £10milllion house? And that’s what I feel was in the forefront of his brain last night. No longer was he a talent scout, he was a sell out.

Lucy Jones will no doubt fade into oblivion now, like most reality TV stars do, but to have her 5 minutes of fame cut short because of money making opportunities and to always be remembered that Simon Cowell sent her home in favour of Jedward must be a bitter pill to swallow. Simon has lost my vote but what about you?

Picture the scenario…. A friend comes over for a TV and take away night. You put the TV on your favourite (embarrassing) programme is on. You REALLY want to watch it but you know that if you admit this out loud it could quite possibly ruin whatever reputation you have been trying to promote and you could become subjected to immense ridicule.

Not. With. Sky. Plus.

It allows you to always be prepared. From the comfort of my desk, I can use my Iphone to sky plus any cheap / tacky / wrong / weird / rude programme I want, it then tape it (in secret) and stores it ready for my alone time, therefore allowing me not to disclose any of my private viewing habits.

However, for the means of the blog, I will let you in (only partially) to my Sky Plus library and what my guilty pleasures are:

 - Behind Bars. Documentary of prison life. (this is on Bravo. Its amazing, they have a different theme every episode, so sometimes it discusses prison relationships, sometimes prison violence etc)
 - Total Wipout USA (on Watch and its a mix of a surreal gameshows like Takeshi’s Castle, Gladiators and Krypton Factor. I’m addicted to it. Americans running around a man made obstacle course, falling in mud and jumping on BIG rubber balls over water. I love this show.)
 - Women who Kill (this is factual and on the crime and punishment channel. Its usually the stories of three separate real life women killers. Worrying I sometimes put this on when I try and fall asleep)

Anyway – what are your TV guilty pleasures?

First broadcast in the United Kingdom in 1964, the Granada Television series Seven Up!, broadcast interviews with a dozen ordinary seven-year olds from a broad cross section of society and inquired about their reactions to everyday life. Every seven years, a film documented the life of the same individuals in the intervening years. The series was structured simply as a series of interviews with no plot. However, it did have the then-new effect of turning ordinary people into celebrities.

45 years later, reality tv is a global phenomenon and most of our current celebrities have either started their career, furthered their career or ended their career as a reality tv star. The thing that baffles me is WHY anyone would NOW subject themselves to entering a reality tv show knowing that it has become a platform to show abuse, racism, bullying, homophobia, prejudice, tears, tantrums, sickness and even dying – don’t we have enough of that in our “real” worlds!

Big Brother returns this week for it 10th cycle with what I can only presume will be another set of contestants so eager for fame that they will literally make themselves hated by millions of people to get it. And is it their fault – no – it is ours. I guarantee that none of use will watch BB hoping that the contestants just sit around and laugh and chat and have lovely philosophical conversations about happiness and life. We will watch it to see who fights who, who lies the most, who is the most obnoxious and who will cause the most friction. We, the viewers have shown in our ratings figures that we are hungry for the really nasty aspects of reality, and the contestants know that. They know that they will get notoriety but at a price. That price is for them to become our personal hate figure, and they would prefer to be a disliked ‘someone’ rather than just a “no-one.”

What I want to know is who is still going to watch it or who, like me, has decided that they like no-one’s better than someone’s?

I’m a sociable kind of girl, I like my parties, I like my drinks and I love to have fun so it shocked me more than anyone when I found myself over this bank holiday with no plans from Saturday morning through to Monday night.

None.

Could I really go through one of the most popular long, work free weekends without drinking in the sun, dancing until 3am and waking up each day with a hangover?

Well, I did and it felt marvellous!!!

I cleaned, I sunbathed, I pampered, I slept, I woke early and made gourmet style breakfasts, it was bliss.

Most of all, I caught up on my favourite thing in the whole world – TV.

I watched hours and hours of the stuff;

Saturday Kitchen (someone swore on air and it added to the excitement of the omelette challenge)
House series 4 – ALL of it (the new series is starting next weekend)
The Wire – My language now contains so much profanity that I should come with an 18 cert
Home and Away omnibus – yes, people do still watch it.
Hollyoaks omnibus – so much tragedy for one small town
Britain’s Next Top Model – Is it wrong to want the recovering anorexic to win – Go Jade!
Behind Bars; The Story of women serial killers – Aileen Wournos; serial killer, or misunderstood hooker, I am yet to decide

I’m a changed women. I have realised that staying in is the new going out. “What about your friends?” you may scream at me, but I simply found new, better friends - 

Mr. Wide screen TV
Miss. Sky Plus
Sir. DVD player.

Who’s with me? Who’s going to say boo to boozy nights and yah to box sets, omnibuses and documentaries?

Our lovely Trading Director Andy Benningfield recently informed me that an old class mate of his sent him a photo of when they were at school. I was intrigued to say the least to see what Mr Benningfield looked like pre-media… well actually, pre-puberty.

Had he changed?

Well, I want you all to be the judge of that.

Can you spot him below? I couldn’t.