grumpyf1

F1 – or “The Lewis Hamilton Show” as it should probably be called now - zooms back into action this weekend. Will it be exciting this year? Despite being a huge F1 fan, even I can see that it’s been, well... kind of dull the last couple of years. In 2014 it looked like a good battle was on the cards, and fellow Mecedes drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg did just that for most of the season, at times acrimoniously, before Brit Hamilton took his second title. Everyone else was left looking like they’d turned up for a heavy drinking session with a thimble-full of shandy. Last year it was a bit closer, with Ferrari’s Sebastien Vettel taking a few wins, but it was again the Hamilton & Rosberg show most of the time, with the blinged-up Lewis tying up title number three much earlier, and the entertaining personal conflict better suppressed by the team. So will the 2016 season, featuring a whopping 21 races, be another one dominated by Hamilton? The all-too-brief winter te...

“I’ll just overtake that lorry” might soon become a decision requiring a tea-break, if trials of driverless “HGV platoons” hit Cumbria’s motorways soon. Believing there’s a motorway in the UK with quiet stretches is a little like me believing the sun doesn’t glint off the top of my head due to the luxuriant swathes of hair. The Department for Transport think otherwise though, suggesting that the M6 in Cumbria fits the bill nicely, according to a recent article in The Times. To make sure we don’t start bragging about our empty motorways as well as our beautiful countryside and very full lakes, the DoT are, it seems, proposing that tests of platoons of up to 10 lorries might tootle through our county, with only the one at the front being driven by an actual human person type-thing. The other 9 will play follow-the-leader using the sort of electronics previously reserved for getting people into space, or calculating how many people find Donald Trump disturbing (to the nearest bil...

Anyone remember Alley Cat from 1984? I never thought I'd see this again, but thank you internet... here it is! Nena, Ghostbusters, Alley Cat... I love 1984 :-)

OK. I'll be honest with you. Ghostbusters is my favourite movie of all time. I should probably be saying something epic, something intellectual, or something obscure and foreign that would make me look kind of cool. But I can't - Ghostbusters is just genius, even 30+ years later (and I'm horrified by having just done the maths on that). Ghostbusters II was OK, but nothing great, and there have been rumours for years about another one, but with the death of Harold Ramis (aka Egon Spengler) in 2014, hopes of an original cast reunion were sadly dashed. But now, we have this: All new Ghostbusters, with an all-female cast. The trailer gives plenty of nods to the original, but just about every review of it I've read has slated it, and I wasn't exactly gobsmacked by it either. I guess we'll find out in the summer If the answer to "Who you gonna call?" is "The box office - I want a refund" or not.

What’s a “Brexit” then? And why is everyone talking about it? Hang on... is this a serious column for a change? Having spent a notable amount of time believing that “grexit” was the word used to describe what happens when you leave a well-know high street purveyor of sausage rolls, I similarly thought that “brexit” was something to do with departing after brunch. Apparently not – it’s to do with us getting the chance to vote on if we want Britain to leave the European Union. BRitain EXIT, geddit? I know – they need a new scriptwriter. The date has been set for this momentous occasion, and it’s June the 23rd. A Thursday, no less. Coincidentally 50 years since the Beatles were at No 1 with “Paperback Writer” - and you’d need a book to explain what the EU is all about. We will then have the opportunity to decide if we want to be in, out, but sadly no box will be available if you want to shake it all about. Be careful if you do that though – those voting booths in your village h...

I may not be able to write for you for much longer. Pretty soon I’ll be too busy spending the fortune I’m about to make from my brilliant invention. What’s the worst thing in the world about owning a mobile phone (Apart from the fact that you might accidentally see a picture of Nigel Farrage smiling smugly, obviously)? That’s right. It’s not at a suitable angle when you put it on your desk at work. How are you supposed to watch that awesome kitten-falling-off-a-table video, when your screen is pointing at the ceiling? Exactly. It’s really slightly awkward isn’t? And we shouldn’t be made to suffer like that. Of course, the phone manufacturers must take their share of the blame. Sure, some of them have made cases with a little foldy-outy bit, so that your phone sort of stands upright-ish, but they cost nearly as much as my first car (an orange mini with fur-lined doors). What’s really needed is an ergonomic, lightweight, practical and inexpensive way of having your phone angled...