Stranger than Fiction

The prize for most surreal happening this week surely belongs to Lembit Opik MP for appearing in "Hello" magazine and talking about how he's in love with one of the cheeky girls although the report of this I read does not reveal whether or not he's touched her bum. I also understand that he used to be engaged to a weather girl. Somehow I don't think I need to gaze too deeply into the crystal ball to predict that it shouldn't be too long before the right hon. gentleman is seen stepping out with the winner of celebrity big brother - and wouldn't that be entertaining if it was the bloke who used to be in Steps.
A close second is the revelation that a member of Girls Aloud was at one time living in Princess Park Manor (the Middlesex County Asylum or Friern Barnett Hospital if you prefer), my memories of the building are not quite in keeping with the sales blurb and I quote (selectively of course) "The Italianate splendours provide a luxurious link with the glory of Victorian England", "A Victorian masterpiece which has delighted and inspired", "an aura of grandeur about it" I suspect that the views of someone who had been incarcerated under the Lunacy Act of 1891 or more recent mental health legislation might have had a rather different view of the building. Certainly as someone who was a nurse there I don't have particularly fond memories and the long corridor at the front was not a natty architectural feature when you had a 1/2 mile round trip to the pharmacy.