Pain and Pleasure

Christmas dinner this year has turned out to be rather an expensive affair. I went down to my friend's to celebrate with her and her mother. We sat around the kitchen table on rather hard wooden chairs. I wriggled a bit, but didn't think anything of it till the next day, when my back was killing me. The sacro-iliac had locked. I've been trying to coax everything back to normal, but with no luck. My Christmas break has been pretty much a write-off. So today I phoned the osteopath, not expecting to get an appointment any time soon at this busy practice. But I was in luck, and at 10am I was in the treatment room with Habib, parading my pale flabby flesh so he could see where the problem lay. It turns out that, since my last visit six years ago (really?) they have introduced acupuncture into their repertoire. So this was me (only fatter):

A few pinpricks and a lot of painful clicks later, my mobility was improved, my bank account diminished by £30 (quite cheap for an osteopath, £40-£50 is more usual) and I came away armed with a further appointment for next week.

Meanwhile, one of the nation's favourite ad campaigns has reached new heights (depths?)

The car insurance comparison site GoCompare has been running ads for several years featuring a Welsh tenor singing the Go Compare song to the tune of the wartime song "Over There". They have now decided to set various celebs on the hapless man with ever more inventive deadly weapons.

But the latest has attracted the co-operation of one of the world's most eminent scientists.

Enjoy: