Sailing seems to me to be one of those activities that’s better done than watched, which is why I’m finding it difficult to raise anything in the way of enthusiam at Ellen McArthur’s record breaking solo round the world voyage.

On a basic level I can appreciate her achievement. 71 days at sea, on your own and with little sleep would tend to reduce most people to the state of sticking pencils up their nose and saying ‘wibble’ - undies on head, optional - it’s just that as a mere viewer the whole business seems a hell of long way from being as ‘gripping’ as the media would try to have you believe.

As a televisual experience, 10 weeks of grainy satellite feeds starring a sleep-deprived truncated prop-forward in waterproofs is not my idea of rivetting stuff, especially when the dialogue seemed to consist mostly of ‘I’m feeling really tired’. I suppose I should be grateful we didn’t get on to ‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with S…’.

Still, if anyone is desperate to relieve the whole thing, the dear old Beeb have helpfully provided an animated guide which is at least shorter than the real thing, if no less tedious.

Today is Chinese New Year and the start of the Year of the Rooster which apparently means that this year:

“Politics will adhere to hard-line policies. The diplomatic scene will be dominated by philosophical orators who rave a lot about nothing. Governments will be found flexing their muscles at each other, but just for show. There may be no real confrontations. It is just that everyone will be too occupied with himself to hear or care what the other person is saying.”

Just your average General Election year, then…

So Alistair Campbell’s back in the New Labour fold after an absence of 18 months and seemingly as gaff prone as he was before his resignation as Tony’s communications director during the course of the Hutton enquiry.

Campbell is apparently the ‘mastermind’ behind Labour’s recent ‘flying pigs’ and ’sort of like Fagan/Shylock if you look at in the right light’ posters which inadvertantly caused offence to the Jewish comnunity as well as that great bastion of social enlightenment ‘The Sun’.

Cambell, as ever, put up his usual robust defence to criticism of the posters from BBC’s Newsnight in an e-mail to TWBA, the ad agency responsibile for the designs, to make suggestions on the possible content of a statement to the Beeb before adding the postscript ‘Now f**k off and cover something important you twats’ - only problem being he managed to e-mail his comments to the Beeb rather than TWBA. D’oh!

Of course the Tories are above such things, with party co-Chairman Liam Fox commenting that Campbell’s return had seen the adoption of new “sinister and underhand tactics” - convenient forgeting about his own party having hired Lynton Crosby to fill the same role for them.

All very pots and kettles, eh…