I woke today, saw the headline on the front of the i that said: "RBS boss bows to pressure and waves bonus."

Well, how is he meant to get buy on just his £1.2million basic salary? I know there's a recession on, but the dude's gotta eat.

And we should remember, he has been very successful as a boss of RBS. The Government said he managed to downsize RBS and thereby protect the tax payer from risk. So we should thank him for seeing the share prize drop.

And he oversaw the laying off of 4,000 people. He worked hard to make sure 4,000 people don't have a job to go to, and we thank him by taking away his bonus?

That's exactly what I'd expect to happen... in communism!

It's not like all these city types are greedy. RBS chairman Sir Philip Hampton gave up his £1.4million "golden hello" payout.

I'm not an expert in finance, which is why I don't know why they have these golden things; golden hello, golden handcuff, golden handshake. All I'm saying is, if ever you go round to their house, don't try the shower.

Some people say you shouldn't have "guaranteed bonuses" because they're an oxymoron. It's like having a guaranteed Christmas present. No, if you've been a knob all year you're on Santa's naughty list, deal with it.

But they're looking at it the wrong way round. We should feel sorry for the city bosses who have these "guaranteed bonuses" because I'll tell you one thing about a "guaranteed bonus", there's no surprise.

ACCOUNTANT: "Hey, Stephen. Guess what I've got for you."
STEPHEN: "Oooh, I don't know. What is it?"
ACCOUNTANT: "It's your bonus."
STEPHEN: "Oh."
ACCOUNTANT: "What's wrong?"
STEPHEN: "Nothing. It's just... anything else other than the bonus?"
ACCOUNTANT: "No, that's it."
STEPHEN: "Well, it's the thought that counts. I'm glad you put so much thought into it!"

I always knew this happened. I knew I wasn't insane.

Experts have identified a new condition suffered by obsessive mobile phone users. Forget RSI or tennis thumb, people who use their mobiles too much are suffering from "phantom bum vibrations".

This is where you put your phone on vibrate, you think you can feel your phone ringing but when you put your hand in your pocket you realise your phone isn't even in your trousers. And you just need a poo.

Research carried out at the University of Worcester has found we're so obsessed with getting a call or text we imagine we can feel some vibrations. And well done for doing that research. I wouldn't want to be the one putting electrodes on someone's bottom muscles to monitor any actual tremors, but I'm glad someone's done it.

It's linked to stress. The more stressed you are the more likely you are to experience a fake trouser wobble. Well, it's better than a heart attack. In the old days if you were really stressed you'd clutch your chest. Now you just clutch your bum and say, "Oh, I thought I was ringing."

I have to admit, I have this condition. I often suffer form these phantom bum vibrations.

I say "suffer", I thoroughly enjoy them.

Remember the good old days when graffiti was all Nosey Parker drawings and bad spelling? "Jez Woz Ere". I'm sure he was, but Jez wozn't in skool much, yeah?

Graffiti peaked in the days of Banksy. He has made millions from painting on walls. But these days it's cheaper to get some Polish bloke to do it.

Graffiti took a massive nose dive with the advent of people who think we give a crap about their family member's birthday. You can often see a bedsheet tied to a traffic roundabout proclaiming, "Happy 18th Claire."

Yeah, I'm glad you put that sheet there or everyone who doesn't care who you are wouldn't have known not to buy a gift for someone they don't know.

And now it's got even worse. A jilted boyfriend covered his home town in 'romantic' graffiti to try and get his girlfriend back. Great plan. Nothing makes a woman want you more like acting like a total stalker/nutter. If this plan doesn't get her back with you, maybe you should collection her rubbish bins and make a doll of her from her own hair and nail clippings.

He's written his little messages all over Weston-Super-Mare. One says, "Remember the good times we loved and miss". With that lack of punctuation and mixed tenses I think he went to skool wen Jez woz there.

In total he has left 16 of these badly drawn tags, saying things like, "We were the best."

Of course you were, because the best relationships often end up going through a phase were the only way they communicate is via public walls.

I'm sorry but it's time we stopped all this. If you want to say happy birthday or cry about an ex in a public arena, do the right thing, and sign up for Twitter instead.

Costa Cruises, the company that owns the stricken Costa Concordia cruise ship, has offered passengers just £9,000 each in compensation. It covers lost belongings and the emotional distress.

So, if you were on the Costa Concordia as it struggled to stay afloat you get £9,000. If you were at RBS when it struggled to stay afloat you get £1,000,000.

Yes, Stephen Hester, the boss of the Royal Bank of Scotland, has caused some upset in the news for getting a £1m bonus. I don't actually mind the concept of rewarding failure; without it I wouldn't earn money doing stand-up.

Now he's facing pressure to give the money back. Have you ever known anyone linked to a bank to just give money back? No. These are people who send you a letter and charge you £15 for the privilege; he'll certainly think he deserves his money.

The Government says there's nothing they can do about it because Mr Hester had a contract and this bonus was in the terms of that contract. But RBS is effectively owned by the taxpayer now. That makes Stephen Hester a public sector worker, and we all know how much the Government likes to change the terms of those contracts even after they've been signed. If we can't take away his bonus can we at least bugger up his pension like we did with the teachers?

The share price of RBS has continued to go down but Stephen Hester is still going to get a performance related bonus of £963,000. If all they were looking for was someone who could ruin the share price they could've asked me. I can't even balance my cheque book, so I could've got some of that bonus action too.

Some people defended his bonus saying that he is worth that amount of money if that is what the market is willing to pay him. They compared the situation to a high paid footballer.

It is similar because footballers are paid too much, but if there was a team that got relegated, nearly ran out of money and then continued to make a loss, they wouldn't be paying for top players. They'd make do with some Sunday league types.

And how bad would a football team have to be before it needed a Government bail out?

Don't get me wrong, Stephen has a difficult job and he has done well to stop the bank from going under. But he gets a £1.2million salary for that. If the market says he's worth an extra million then he should get paid £2.2million. I'd rather people got the money in a salary than as a bonus. It's because you earn a salary but you win a bonus.

I'd rather someone thinks of themselves as an 'earner' than someone think of themselves as a 'winner', because that makes you sounds more like an utter dick.

One thing that has come out of this is a realisation that the taxpayers have ploughed billions into the Royal Bank of Scotland. So if the Scottish get independence, we're keeping the bank, OK? We've spent a lot of money on it. It's like being a bloke who renovated a house only to lose it in the divorce.

Sir Richard Branson spoke to the Home Affairs Select Committee saying we should decriminalise drugs.

He's a strange choice to head up this campaign. In his career he has managed to make a business out of everything, from records to planes, from make-up to banking, from weddings to broadband. So when he says we should relax the laws on drugs use it kind of sounds like he's planning his next company. Virgin Gear.

They'd start you off with a free trial and soon enough you'd be stealing to pay your Virgin Gear bills. Still, it would be cheaper than a Virgin Gym.

Sir Richard, who had been part of a global commission on drug policy, said he wouldn't sack someone if he found out they were on drugs. This from a man who used to employ Chris Evans on Virgin radio, so I think we can take his word for it.

As much as it seems like a joke, saying that Branson will start selling drugs, there's an interesting point. People say we should decriminalise drugs to stop the criminals selling them. But if you look at the legal world, most things are sold by big companies that take large profits from us and give little back. At the moment, the criminals who sell drugs don't pay tax. If the big business started making and selling drugs, their accountants would base it in Jersey or somewhere to make sure they don't pay tax either.

At the moment, the criminals who sell drugs are ruthless people who don't care about society. I can't see that changing if big business gets involved.

I suppose, if we have to pick a British entrepreneur to be in charge of selling drugs, we could do a lot worse than Sir Richard Branson. We could end up with James Dyson. Can you imagine how much cocaine you could do aided by his cyclone technology.

It's the SomeNews Podcast episode 29.

In this podcast:

We talk boats, from the Costa Concordia to gift ideas for Queens.
French PIP implants are in the news.
Is Angelina pregnant? And if she isn't, we know someone who is.
And who did a wee-wee in a salad?




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In the Mirror: "Loose Women's Andrea, My marriage is over ..I'm so ashamed."

I don't know about you but when I feel ashamed about something I like to tell a national newspaper about it.

If I feel slightly ashamed of something I hand out flyers in the street and if I'm only the smallest bit ashamed of something I've done I put a card in the Post Office window.

I don't get it. Why do we live in a world where as soon as you have something you should hide you put it out there to try and get some fame from it? If you have a drink problem and you row with the teenage mother of your child, do you try to keep a lid on it or do you take it all onto The Jeremy Kyle Show?

But the best example of this is the TV show Embarrassing Bodies. It's a show for people who have such minged up genitals that for years they have been too embarrassed to take it to their own GP. They couldn't bring themselves to drop their pants in a small private room in the back of a doctor's surgery. So what's their solution? They get their bits out on national TV. "Oh, I'm so ashamed of the state of my giblets. I couldn't possibly show you. What's that? You have a TV camera? In that case have a look at this angry thing."

So what have we learned today? Basically, it's a good job Andrea McLean doesn't have thrush or the front page of the Mirror would be terrible today.

Yesterday we heard that Paul Daniels had chopped off some of his fingers. "Slight of hand" has never been so apt. But it's not just celebs who use power tools like a drunk Mr Bean.

A man in Chicago accidentally shot a 3.25-inch nail into his head without realising.

What? Surely he must've thought something was wrong when he walked away from the wall and the bookshelf came with him?

34-year-old Dante Autullo was in his workshop when a nail gun recoiled close to his head. He was unaware a nail had been fired into his brain until he began feeling sick the next day and his fiancée convinced him to go to hospital.

He was feeling ill? Well, it's not like he wasn't getting enough iron.

Doctors at Advocate Christ Medical Centre in Oak Lawn, Illinois, successfully removed the nail. His fiancée, Gail Glaenzer, said: "He feels good. He moved all his limbs, he's talking normal, he remembers everything."

He remembers everything? Are you sure he's a bloke? That's not what we're know for. Sounds like brain damage to me.

I don't remember everything, I don't always talk "normal" and I don't often feel good. So he's doing better than I am. Then again, I never shot myself in the brain with a nail gun, so it's swings and roundabouts.

He clearly is no good at DIY. He shot a nail into his head. Tut. He should've drilled a hole, put a rawlplug in and used a screw. If a job is worth doing...

File this under "Someone told me this at a gig and I totally didn't believe them till I got home at looked on the web". Paul Daniels has cut his fingers off. Talk about "now you see them, now you don't".

Paul managed to sever a finger and mangle the top of a second with a circular saw.

What he should've done is have his fingers in a little wooden box, so when he went through them with a circular saw he could've pulled them apart, showed us between the two halves and then put them pack together.

But this is a serious injury. Paul is a magician, he works with his hands. A magician losing a finger is like Frankie Cocozza having a blocked nose.

It said in the paper: "Speaking from his home in Berkshire yesterday..."

I assume they called him, not the other way round. Little buttons.

It went on: "...the master illusionist said he feared for his career but he was now on the road to recovery and a planned tour will, naturally, go ahead."

I feel sorry for him for I feel more sorry for Debbie McGee. When the guy sawing you in half only has eight fingers left, it's time to worry.

Surgeons battled to reattach the index finger but were unable to save half of the third finger. So he has a hand still... not a lot, but he has one.

Some couples in London took part in a 24-hour "hug-a-thon" in the first in series of record attempts ahead of the Olympics.

That sounds like my idea of hell. A hug gets awkward after 3 seconds. I once suffered a social hug that lasted nearly 10 seconds. And if a hug ever gets near a minute a referee should step in and say "break".

A 24 hour hug must be like torture. There's a strong chance I would gnaw my own arms off at the shoulders like a coyote in a trap.

They met at St Pancras station at 7am. I feel sorry for anyone stood behind them waiting, thinking, "Jeeze, get a room. She's only going to the Midlands."

According to the Guinness World Record people they have to hug for 24 hours 34 minutes, must stay awake throughout but they can have people standing by in case they get an itch.

This is where it starts to annoy me because it's not fair. I love the idea of having someone ready to scratch me but I just couldn't have the hugging. In fact I'd need someone to help with the scratching after I'd gnawed my own arms off.

They brought in a hugging expert, Jean Smith, who said: "Hugs, like chocolate, produce oxytocin and a feeling of happiness." OK, where do I sign up for the 24 hours of chocolate then? Why does it have to be a hug?

You may have noticed, I'm not good at hugging. I don't handle intrusion into my personal space very well. I put it down to my upbringing. I'm northern so we couldn't afford hugs when I were a lad. Now, if someone insists on a hug I have to go to my "happy place". And remember, I'm northern, so even my happy place isn't that happy.

So I'm glad I am not taking part in the record attempt. If I managed to stay in a hug for 24 hours and 34 minutes we'd break the current record, and we'd celebrate. And you know what people do when they celebrate? They hug! I'm better off out of it.

Good news, the number of crimes recorded by police fell by 4% to 4.1 million in the last year, figures have shown.

Really? Did the people working on these figures notice the riots last August? Or were they just not reported because everyone in Hackney and Croydon had their phones nicked?

It's not all good news. The number of robberies and thefts went up by 4%. That's according to the number of reported crimes. But the British Crime Survey, which looks at our perception of crime, showed "no statistically significant change".

We're getting robbed more, we just don't seem to notice it.

I suppose when you are getting ripped off by your energy supplier, fleeced when you fill up the car and food inflation robs you of what little you have left, it must be hard to notice any more thefts.

Chief Constable Jon Murphy, the lead for crime for the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo), said the increase was "driven by a rise in robberies of personal property". Some say this is because of the economic problems. Unemployment and decreasing standards of living are pushing some people into crime. But I'm not worried about it in the long term, I'm an optimist. Crime levels will soon be coming down.

Yep, if this country keeps heading in the same direction pretty soon no one will have anything worth nicking.

There has been a lot of bad news on the high street recently. Peacocks have called in the administrators. La Senza has said they are closing down. The one thing I never understood about La Senza is, why did they have full length mirrors in the shop? Lots of clothes shops have these large mirrors in the actual store, not in the changing rooms, in case people want to see what they look like with an item on. But who is trying on bras and pants in the middle of a La Senza shop? No one, for the entire three hours I waited once.

The latest piece of retail trouble comes from Past Times. They have appointed administrators from KPMG to try to sell the business as a going concern.

I am amazed it took so long. If you don't know what Past Times stores were, they were a place where you could go to buy stuff that looked like it was old. Not new stuff that would be nice and new, or even old stuff that could have antique value. They sold new items that just looked like they were old and crappy.

It's a strange business model, the kind of thing the idiots on The Apprentice would could up with when trying to be clever. I never understood which niche in the market they were going for. If you wanted some old crap, just keep the old crap you already have.

The remaining 51 stores will continue to trade for now, although 30 people have been made redundant at its head office and another 37 at its warehouse.

So, while I still have the chance, I thought I'd have a look at the items they have on sale to see what life was like for those living in the "Times" of the "Past".

They sell A Guide to Senior Moments Flip Book (now £3). Is that the kind of purchase that helped us win the war? Or maybe it's the Danger Mouse Run For It Keyring (£2). Or how about the Downton Abbey Official 2012 Wall Calendar (now £3.99)? I'm sure people in the past would but a calendar for the year 2012 themed around a TV show that hadn't been on air yet. How very authentic.

On their website you can see that they sell a Thomas Crapper Giant Mug. I'm sorry but if you have the word Crapper being used I'll get put off my hot chocolate.

My favourite thing about the Thomas Crapper Giant Mug (£5) is that it's listed in the What's New section of the online store. What's New? You're called Past Times. That section should be empty.

They say crime doesn't pay. What they probably mean is crime doesn't pay well, and here's the proof. Authorities say a determined gang of thieves spent six months digging a 100-foot tunnel into a Blockbuster store to steal a cash machine.

The police should've noticed something was suspicious because who goes into a Blockbusters these days?

It's in Levenshulme, England, where police found a tunnel, tools, electric lighting, bags of soil and a ventilation system, that took six months to build. Not only did they have to make the 100-foot tunnel, they also had to make their way thourgh more than 15 inches of concrete to get to the ATM. And what did they get away with? £6,000!

Six months to get £6,000, shared between a gang of them. You know the recession is bad when even criminals will take less than minimum wage.

The cash machine hadn't been filled up since the new year so it didn't have much cash in it.

If they're willing to build a tunnel for just 6-grand, when we catch them we should ask them to work on the new high speed rail project. We could dig through the Cotswolds for much less than the £17billion projected.

Detective Sergeant Ian Shore said: "I would ask that anyone who may have noticed anything unusual around this Blockbuster store, or who may have seen or heard anything they think might help us with our investigation, to get in touch."

I heard some blokes near that Blockbuster's crying and saying something about how it was a total waste of time. I just thought they'd rented the Cuba Gooding Jr version of "The Hit List".

Channel Four features a show about a woman who has 14 children and has another on the way. All she needs to do now is live in a shoe.

It's Sue Radford from Morecambe in Lancashire. She's expecting another child in just a few months, and doesn't rule out still more after that.

After recently watching One Born Every Minute I thought, "Wow. How could she go through the pain of labour 14 times?" But I suppose by now she barely feels it. It must be like the end of the Alton Tower's log flume. If you want to know how baby 15 will feel just drive through the Dartford Tunnel when it's raining.

It's an hour show, so they could probably show the labour in full. If she sneezed it could be sorted in 5 minutes.

Sue said: "It's usually when they're between six and 10 months I begin to think about having another one."

I'm like that with computer games. I get one, play with it for a bit and soon enough I start thinking about getting the next one, when I really should just enjoy the collection I have already built up.

Meanwhile, her husband Noel works 80-hour weeks in the family bakery to support their massive brood – no easy task when an average dinner runs to 18 pork chops and seven kilos of potatoes.

Although, at the same time on TV there's The Biggest Loser and it's on after The Fat Fighters, so it's a night of people who have 18 pork chops and seven kilos of potatoes for tea.

Sue is only 36, had her first child at 14 and therefore has spent virtually the whole of her adult life pregnant.

Tut. The things people will do to get a seat on public transport.