I DON'T FEEL LIKE NEWSNIGHT TONIGHT

Things must be bad when Jamie Oliver is seen promoting what look like traditional British meals he claims belong to him via the Daily Mail. Is there no end to this man? Even herdsmen in the Pyrenees are fed up with 'that man Jamie' he is so ubiquitous. There is another cook on the tele who could get annoying just because his name is Nigel and he only cooks for himself. The reality concerning food in the UK was seen being served in the form of chunky chips, peas and something that resembled meat during lunch with future Big Society saviours on Newsnight last night. If I haven't dreamt or imagined it, these saviours are going to be paid £15,000 once they are trained to go out and tackle the problemos that blight Britain. There was an interview with a Big Society trainer/guru/tszar who looked like a bloke that someone in Parliament might have gone to school with. The one that never quite found his way. After him there was another interview with a vague looking boy from Newham, the type that has worry lines at the age of ten. One of the Big Society folk argued that even though they were all going to be employed they didn't want to appear they were working for Cameron or to be associated with him at all. I wonder if this sort of thing will catch on in Spain once Rajoy gets his foot in the door. In some ways it has already started with some police officers having to walk the streets as the council owes all the petrol stations money and now they refuse to fill up the coppers' cars. 

On the subject of politicians, Zapatero is determined to go out in style. The style of Generalissimo Franco. Zap has set election day for the 20th of November, the day Franco is supposed to have died and Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera decades earlier. So now there is a photo doing the rounds of Franco on his death bed, full of tubes with Zapatero's face superimposed over the caudillo's. It is said that Franco was kept alive on a life support machine, some say in agony, so he could 'die' the same day as Primo de Rivera and now it seems Zapatero will too.

Lastly, I am still reeling from the images of the Duquesa de Alba's wedding. She is difficult to describe but a cross between the Bride of Wildenstein and Jade Goody or perhaps Jordan doesn't even come close. She is one of those women of a certain age who on hearing Flamenco can't resist toying with the hem of her skirt, pulling it slightly higher and threatening us with something worse than dancing. A smallish group of Spaniards seem to adore her with the rest of the nation either ashamed or bemused.