It's only words, and words are all I have.....

As I have mentioned to many people in recent weeks, work can be a little slow sometimes, between the highs and lows and tos and fros of my showbiz lifestyle. Especially on the late shift that I am on at the moment.

Many things help these slow times to pass a little swifter: XFM; Miniclips.com; cups of tea; cups of coffee; The Simpsons; food; and the Guardian G2 crossword.

When I first began working at CNN I was worse than hopeless at crosswords. I'm getting better now. I used to average one a day, one word that is, not one crossword. I used to average one word a day. Yesterday I got more than 1/2 of it completed before i gave up.

My sometime lack of a way with words doesn't mean I don't have a love of them. For instance, there are some words in the english language that are just inherently funny. Poo. Plop. Spam. Rowan Atkinson does the funniest "Bob" ever. There's also The Rule Of Three concept. Although The Fast Show seemed to think there was some kind of Rule Of Twenty, much was there fondness of saying the same punchline or catchphrase about 5 times an episode for an entire series. And to be fair, they were usually right.

I was reading Paperweight by one of my favourite authors, Stephen Fry, the other day and he was talking about palindromes. I like palindromes are also great, (if not necessarily) funny.

The Shining famously used, not a palindrome, but 2 way word (whatever the name for that is!) redrum.

There are some nonsense palindromes such as "Doc Note: I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod". See what I mean? Nonsense.

A oldun and a goodun is "A man, a plan, a canal, Panama!"

In June 2006, a Polish chap called Professor Morawski announced he had created a record-breaking 33,000-letter palindrome, here it is: http://www.palindromy.pl/thelongest.htm However, it is in Polish.

The longest palindrome in english I've been able to find is here http://www.palindromelist.com/longest.htm

And let's not foret, as the Pythons pointed out to us "The palindrome of Bolton would be Notlob - it don't work!"