Vernon Kay is a one-man walking blight-on-our-culture, a dog-haired Toby jug, a self-satisfied banality engine, a git, a twit, a twat and an oaf... He shouldn't be on television - he should be sitting on a country stile wearing a peasant's smock and chewing on a hayseed, some time during the Dark Ages (and preferably at the height of the Black Death).
He isn't, you understand, calling for Vernon Kaye to be infected with plague bacillus. It's, like, hyperbole? It's done for comic effect? (imagine my tone of voice getting higher at the end of each sentence, in a mock self-deprecating way).
But - uh-oh - this week he criticised George Bush. At some length.
He blinks, he mumbles, he lets a sentence trail off, starts a new one, then reverts back to whatever he was saying in the first place. Each time he recalls a statistic (either from memory or the voice in his head), he flashes us a dumb little smile, like a toddler proudly showing off its first bowel movement. Forgive me for employing the language of the playground, but the man's a tool.
Oh, man. The US blogs got hold of it, and they went ape-shit.
How dare a fucking limey voice an opinion? But what incensed them to the point of spluttering incoherence was this final sentence.
The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?
Hello? This isn't a call for someone to actually kill George Bush. I mean, really. It doesn't even sound like it. It's an atheist saying - bad things happen to good people, and bad people always get away scot free.
Here are some splutterings at Obsidian Wings, a moderate blog. And some insane rantings at Little Green Footballs, a right-wing blog.