Oh God, It's a Camel.

So, as of a few minutes ago it is a hung Parliament.

Get ready to re-run this in about 6 months time.

Here comes the disappointment for all those who think that a hung Parliament means everyone works alongside each other in harmony and the world gets better and the fairies come out at night and do the housework.

The good news for us though is that Ann Keen has been ousted as our MP. She and her MP husband Alan have been known as Mr & Mrs Expenses for years. He however has held on to his seat in Feltham.

This election has turned out to be a rather unsatisfying feast.

Knife crime.

Just had Hospital Heroes on BBC1. 25% of all trauma admissions at The London Hospital are for knife wounds. Probably a more worrying but more accurate statistic than anything put out by the politicians this week on crime.

Why Stars and Celebrities Aren't The Same Thing.

Last night in Brentford there was a special concert. It was a fund raiser for the local church. These things are normally sparsely attended but last night it was packed. 400 local people came to watch plus a few from further away.

The person performing lives nearby and has done for 25 years. He wanders around the area and drinks in his local and is pretty much left alone, partly because most people are too young to remember him. The age group there last night were the key. Mainly around the 50 mark as his heyday was the late 70s. In fact his three major singles were all in 1979.

The reason so many came out was that just a couple of years later he stopped touring. For 20 years! And he only started touring when he started recording once more a few years back.

For those who remember that era, it was Nick Lowe. (Cruel to be kind : I Love The Sound of Breaking Glass).

And the reason for the title?

He obviously gave his time for free and in return set a few conditions. Not ones you'd normally expect though.
1) Because he knows his concerts have a high demand he only wanted publicity to be kept locally and by word of mouth pretty much. (The tickets still sold out with two weeks to go).
2) The only people to get in free were himself and his wife and kid if they wanted to come. Everyone else in his entourage, manager, two band members and technical people plus close friends, had to buy a ticket. And they did.
4) Tickets were to be kept at an affordable price. They were. Just £12.
3) It was pouring down with rain but 40 minutes before he was due to appear he walked through the door, shook off his umbrella, shook hands with the doorman said hello to the people on the ticket desk and quietly slipped in whilst the support act were playing. No fuss, no melodrama.

He played for just over the hour, a mixture of mainly "new era" songs and a couple of older ones. You could have heard a pin drop. I spoke with the vicar who I know and asked was he working out how to get the church this full on a Sunday? He reckoned he would have to get him to lead the worship. He was doing. Every member of that audience was there to marvel at the man, talented, quiet, unassuming, gentlemanly and a throughly good bloke.

And becaue of this thoroughly nice bloke we reckon the total raised will be about £8000 to keep a couple of the churches community projects running.

Now, that's the difference between a star and a celebrity.