Being British I can bear a grudge with the best of them. I like nothing better than to nurture some perceived grievance and to slowly plot some revenge I will probably never enact. It's a national pastime, probably up there with whinging and moaning, we clearly all love to hold grudges.

This said, even I know where to draw a line. Time is usually a great healer, is there any point in wanting to piss on the grave of a school bully when you haven't seen that oaf in almost 30 years? Similarly one might think that English sports writers could move beyond the shadow of the war whenever we face Germany in any fixture. Guys, it ended 60 years ago and war is not the basis for puns. Not now, not ever.

Naturally we enjoy the schadenfreude (tactical use of Deutsch word, use the link to look it up if you need to) of some enemy or other coming to grief, even when we played no part in it. We also seem to relish the downfall of the famous or fatuous thanks to our build 'em up, knock 'em down mentality. Thus, there is Maradona. One-time king of football, latterly known for his drug problems and carrying enough blubber that he looked like he had two baby elephants wrestling in his tracksuit.

It's a fact that Maradona was one of the most gifted footballers to grace the grass of many a pitch, but you'll rarely read about that in England. Instead, I can guarantee, that accompanying any text about him will be some reference (usually in the headline) about the World Cup Goal he scored against 'us' using his hand. Since he then referred to it 'tactically' (if not tactfully) as the 'hand of God' this will usually, if not always, feature in the article.

I went to see Rancid at the Academy the other night. They were great, in case you were interested. I suspect it's slightly more likely that you've never heard of them, which is a great shame - but it doesn't seem to hold them back. For the uninitiated they're an American punk band formed in San Francisco in 1991 who've released six albums and never really troubled the UK chart much. To quantify this statement I should note that their biggest album hit in this country was in 2003 and reached 29 on the chart.

On that basis and your relative and understandable lack of knowledge of them, you'd probably wonder how they manage to successfully tour the UK, playing 13 nights in Academy-sized (2k) venues. Is this further evidence that the live music industry is thriving while recorded music goes down the pan?

Maybe it is, but more fundamental to their 'success' is probably the fact that they understand their fanbase and they're consistent - they don't deviate and they've never really compromised their art for commercial purposes.

The major sea-change in the music industry over the last five to ten years has been that acts can have a more direct relationship with their fans than ever before. They can communicate with them through websites they own themselves or blogs and e-mails that they write themselves. They have, to an extent, cut out the middle-men and profiteers and subsequently they can more easily turn their art into a direct lower-cost sell, they also receive direct feedback more instantly.

I'm not sure if you've noticed but Cinema classifications have become works of comic genius. We've come a long way since the board of censors just scraped a random ranking on each film without any indication of why it was given; now every film has a little description of why you might (or might not) want to go and see it. More often than not the descriptions are becoming almost as compelling as the films.

I'd like to share a few favourites with you before I reveal the absolute classic of all film rankings. My most recent update from Odeon Cinemas told me that a film I'd never heard of (and rated PG, for all ages essentially) contained 'mild language and sexy dancing'. I was tempted if only to find out what censors think sexy dancing actually looks like - I suspect it was nothing like the image I had conjured up in my filthy mind.

I'm rapidly reaching the conclusion that one of the most important attributes to possess is a sense of perspective. I wasn't going to comment on the Ross/Brand/Sachs affair but since it's still running out of control like a herd of bulls being stung by wasps in a china storage warehouse, I feel the need to call for calm. Storm, meet teacup.

As I sit here writing there have been 30,000 complaints to the BBC about a broadcast aired almost three weeks ago. That's 30,000 people with nothing better to do, but get on their high-horse and comment on something they didn't actually hear, something they've only read about. Something they have no need or cause to be offended by.

So, a presenter used a swear word. Get over it; it was after 10pm at night. So they might have offended an old man who used to be on TV. They apologised and he's forgiven them, get a grip. They may also have offended a 23 year old woman. I suspect that since she's in a burlesque group called 'The Satanic Sluts', she is not offended easily. She may only have been aggrieved that she wasn't in the Country early enough to take advantage of the resulting publicity. Yep, that's cynical but she has employed Max Clifford and it is 2008. I wonder if Sachs was more embarrassed/outraged by Ross & Brand than he is by his own granddaughter spilling all the gory detail in The Sun.

I've worked in radio for over 20 years and during that entire period I don't think the stations I've worked for would've collectively received 30,000 complaints. In the eight years I spent broadcasting for the BBC (WM), I doubt that I had a cumulative of 30,000 listeners. Thirty thousand is a lot of people, a lot of complaints - but what exactly are they moaning about?

I've become nervous about using the word 'ironic'. I blame Ed Byrne. Since he famously trashed the Alanis Morrisette song of the same name it has put the fear in me. What if I get it wrong?

In case you may be in the minority of people who've never seen it, then please join me in this celebration: "It's called ironic but it's written and sung by a woman who doesn't understand irony"

Anyway, to take the risk, it was the Coventry Half-Marathon last weekend. I've run it for the previous two years and last year was my best ever time over that distance. Even weirder, considering it's 13 miles of slog, I really enjoyed it. Sadly I'm now banned from running - on a surgeon's advice, and that tends to be the kind of advice I take. It seems that I've destroyed part of the cartilage in my left knee and now if I run I'm just banging bone against bone which isn't advisable, apparently.

When I did run I wore Asics trainers, not particularly easy to find in my size, 14. A few wks ago Asics opened their first European store, it happens to be on a street down which I walk whenever I have to work in London - which is frequently. Is that ironic?

I love the internet. I also hate it. I have no idea how we managed without it. It's a bloody time vacuum though, isn't it? The time you're spending reading this could probably be spent more productively, as could the time I'm spending typing it. This is me thinking direct to print, if it was a podcast I'd be thinking aloud, both of which are equally dangerous for all concerned.

The net seems to put so much at our fingertips - with every keystroke I feel like I'm either on the edge of some great revelation or equally likely to fall off the precipice into a porn explosion. Accidentally of course, the purveyors of porn have cornered the market in search engine optimisation, google anything and you'll get a porn option at some point or other. Or maybe that's just the things I search for.......

Sadly we don't seem to be too willing to pay for what we get online. We use it to find stuff cheaper or, preferably, free. You aren't paying to read this and I'm not getting paid to write it - is this the future of journalism, the uneducated spouting off for the pleasure of the illiterate? I mean no offence but if I wasn't a fame-junkie who needs the ego-boost of having his name in 'print' then neither of us would be here now. You wouldn't be having your time wasted by me - it'd probably be someone else instead.

The music industry was first to feel the impact of global data transfer and a recent report stated that '95% of downloaded music is illegal' (source; IFPI Digital Music Report 2008). The upshot of this is that a whole generation is emerging, a generation who believe that everything is meant to be free - from information to music. The long-term impact of this is a world of entertainment with no obvious means of funding itself. Do we not all believe in a fair wage for a service provided?

"Don't have any heroes, they're all useless."
John Lydon, 1976

What becomes of the broken artist? When all your credibility is cast into the wind where do you go? On a nostalgia trip obviously - but when the catalogue cash cow is milked dry and the horse well and truly flogged then perhaps you can rent your former notoriety to commercial enterprise. Thus we see the one-time enemy of the establishment, John Lydon, selling butter, it clearly wouldn't melt.

It probably seems archaic that we once expected more of our rock stars. Young people today might be surprised that we once held them up to be figureheads, role-models and icons. What an incredibly stupid thing to have done.

I guess The Pistols were a flash-in-the-pan, over before they began, but for a while they were an incandescent ball of fury - a H bomb at the heart of the entertainment industry. I was too young to be a punk, still at school with an adolescent love of heavy metal, but I could appreciate the spirit and enjoy the energy of it all. It clearly had an impact and led to some great music, opening the door for artists and labels in a frenzy of creativity.

Long after it all fell flat, in death and dishonour; we should perhaps admire John Lydon's tenacity - his brazen-faced attitude and the delight he seems to have in being an irritant. Where once he wound up the powers that be, now he annoys those who believed in him, having becoming a cartoon caricature of his reputation. At the very least he is occasionally entertaining, some never reach those heights.

The British political conference season is upon us. Brummies who may have tried to walk through what they previously considered to be their own public square will be more than aware of this. The security lockdown for a conference by a party not even in power does seem on the wrong side of excessive. We can only hope that all those well-protected Tories are out using their discount vouchers in our clubs, restaurants & bars so that we do see a positive balance to our local economy.

Other than this visible intrusion there's barely a ripple of excitement caused by the conference or anything else in British politics, it is relentlessly dull. I suppose politics isn't really built for stimulation, even the arguments and petty jibes are yawn-inducing, and used so repetitively that they become ineffective.

The fact that politics touches all of our lives should make it relevant, important even. The presence of politicians essentially makes it quite the opposite. Politics is essentially practiced by people with no grasp on reality, people who've lived their entire lives within institutions - from higher education to the Houses of Parliament. These people have no idea how to engage with us, even when they've been repeatedly schooled in the practice. They are the essential proof that there is a massive difference between theory and reality.

Essentially now it's about leaders. Do we buy into the over-educated Etonian in love with his own soundbites or the principled but dour Scot who says one thing and often does something else entirely. Do we really have anything in common with these power-obsessed individuals?

I always vote but the very concept of casting favour in the direction of those who are so desperately needy for it seems alien to me. They may pretend to want to help you but really they're ego-driven-power-crazed aliens who want to be top 'man'.

Perhaps Dave could at least try to humanise himself by spending some time with me whilst he's in the area. We could take a brisk jog away from the sanitised areas of Broad Street. Head away from brindleyplace on the canal towpaths, away from the over-priced and under-sold luxury apartments, run under the Dudley Road and past all the disused industrial buildings, the scrap-yards and into the heart of what used to be a manufacturing industry before Thatcher.

Failing that we could just go to The Wellington on Bennetts Hill, have a few pints of Pig on the Wall and talk shite. Then we'll stroll down to catch the train from New Street and laugh at how run-down the station is, perhaps we'll also wonder how trains that are advertised on the trainline website can suddenly disappear. Or even muse about why the pre-recorded voices of the announcements weren't given phonetic pronunciations of some of the local place-names.

I doubt we'll have that much time, so maybe he can just come down the baggies with me. He can probably still afford to buy me a pint in the ground before the match, as I'm certainly not paying the £3 they want for it these days. Maybe after a few stellas he might agree to buy my Bradford & Bingley shares. Probably not though, he doesn't look quite that stupid.

Sometimes it's hard to feel sorry for international mega-stars, they have fame, adulation and money - but sometimes they also catch an unnecessary crock of criticism.

Witness Metallica, they took the unfortunate stance of opposing Napster & music-file-sharing at a time when everyone began to steal music and they've been whipping boys ever since. Whatever your opinion on this issue and the point that it's led us to in the decline of recorded music sales, surely they deserve a second-chance?

They're currently under fire (again) for two reasons and I have sympathy for them on one of these. Frontman James Hetfield took the time during their O2 gig (£5 entry and proceeds to charity remember) to ask people to put down their phones and just enjoy themselves. His comment was that "a 2 second blurb of shitty Metallica on youtube is not gonna make you famous". Naturally it ended up on youtube:

Obviously I believe in free will and free choice but this is one of those things that also irritate the hell out of me. Why is it that so many people feel the need to take photos or video when they're at a gig? Is it not enough to be there and to enjoy it? Do you really have to prove you were there? Do you really have to record a clip of video that shows nothing but some flashing lights and poor audio to remind you of a minute or two of a song that you missed because you were too busy f**king about with your 'phone?

I don't really understand 'art'. This may not come as a great surprise to you; possibly you already have me typecast as the archetypal black-country-bloke. I'm not about to burst that bubble at the altar of modern art, or any art from any era come to think of it. Or any altar.

This is not to say that I don't appreciate art, I recently stood in awe at the base of 'The Angel Of The North' and consider most of Gormley's work to be quite brilliant. I suspect that - like music - the concept of what we individually consider to be 'great art' is a hugely personal decision. And then there's the other stuff.

Every week or month there is some example of the 'other stuff' to inflame or amuse us, even when rational common sense demands that we should simply ignore it. This week it comes courtesy of Andy Savage and his lightswitches at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol.

In case you missed this story, Andy's 'art' is two normal light switches, one on the ground floor and one on the first floor at the gallery. The unpretentiously titled 'switch' has a twist - as the ground floor switch controls the lights on the first floor and the first floor switch obviously controls the lights on the ground. Genius.

I know a lot of people in new-build houses who'll be ecstatic to discover that what they'd originally considered to be an electrical design fault is actually a priceless work of art. Or possibly it only counts as art if it features in a gallery and was installed by someone who might have attended Art College.