A BIT slow off the mark with this one, but last week I got round to watching Ugly Betty for the first time and spotted a fundamental flaw in the show s concept – Betty s gorgeous!

A BIT slow off the mark with this one, but last week I got round to watching Ugly Betty for the first time and spotted a fundamental flaw in the show's concept - Betty's gorgeous!

Not only is the simple, unaffected secretary a paragon of inner virtue in the vain and venal world of publishing, but she's hot! hot! hot!

Crack investigative reporter that I am, I embarked on further investigation, typing Betty actress America Ferrera's name into Google to find that, sure enough, sans braces and glasses props, she's aesthetically pleasing, although admittedly with a few more Yorkshire Puddings inside her.

In the interests of professional rigour, I trawled porn sites for naked shots, but I'm sorry reader I failed you. Put that Pulitzer Prize on ice.

RACE TO THE FINISH

ISLAMIC decapitationists are loose in the Midlands, our prisons are set to pop and the police are grilling Big Brother celebrities over racial comments.

We all know it was wrong. We should do. Every single newspaper columnist, TV pundit, internet blogger, town crier and pub bore has told us so incessantly and if you haven't vilified Jade et al with appropriate venom yet, then you're probably a racist, too - but are they really gonna lock someone up for a misdemeanour?

The three girls have received death threats, Jade's had a breakdown and Jo has been hounded out of her house by vigilantes. Excessive? The point when the punishment fitted the crime was lost in a pious stampede to condemn.

I don't believe any of them are racist. There's a minority of genuine, ingrained, unashamed, hard-core racists around Britain who believe that immigrants don't belong here. They're the ones we should pillory. The Big Brother abuse was only a superficial barometer.

What does it say about us that we feel the need to declare our antipathy to racism so strongly - surely it's a given, we don't have to metaphorically whip dumb scapegoats through the streets to prove it.

In a shameless display of media brinkmanship one irresponsible bandwagonesque columnist used the provocative metaphor of a burning crucifix in a Big Brother commentary.

Such inflammatory rhetoric on such a sensitive subject is a gross dereliction of duty. He should be strung up from the nearest lamp-post, or sent to Birmingham dressed as a squaddie!

Where are you Chris Morris, this insane scenario is screaming out for a Brasseye special.

APPARENTLY, according to (tabloid sourced) scientists, the globe's supply of cod is becoming so depleted they're in danger of becoming extinct. If this terrifying prospect is realised, it will be the biggest tragedy since the unicorn...I bet they were culpably delicious with chips as well.