That was his mother. When she wasn't crying over the breakfast cereal, she was laughing about killing herself.

When even the scrupulously detached BBC is exhorting us to talk to God, you know something is going on.

An official statement from Liverpool raised the spectre of a future where 'a club's rival can bring about a significant ban for a top player without anything beyond an accusation'. But on hearing this, many Manchester United fans would have been asking for a definition of the word 'rival'.

It's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party.

It's no wonder we're all such a mess, is it? We're like Tom Hanks in Big. Little boys and girls trapped in adult bodies and forced to get on with it.

I'm a good person. In most ways. But I'm beginning to think that being a good person in most ways doesn't count for anything very much, if you're a bad person in one way.

It was hopeless, life, really. It was set up all wrong.