I was in Manchester last night, on an intensely private matter. Oh, all right, I was at a football match. Anyway, I was staying at the city centre hotel where I am a regular visitor. In the relatively short time I have patronised this establishment, it has changed names – and, I assume, ownership – three times, and in its latest incarnation it went from a hotel with a short, memorable name – just four letters – to one with a cumbersome, Americanised moniker – three words, 18 letters.

It's such a leap of faith, going to a completely unknown restaurant in an unfamiliar town. Rather like going on a blind date with someone you've met online (or so I would imagine, she adds hastily). Their profile photo looks appealing, they sound as though they'll be fun and they seem to like all the same things you do. Then you meet them, and you can tell at first glance it just isn't going to work out.

I know this is the equivalent of asking you to look at my holiday snaps, but yesterday I promised to share with you a couple of small reflections from my recent break in California.

Visiting scores of towns on my three-month tour has allowed me to have a good look at my own country – something I have long neglected in favour of travel to sunnier climes. I'm in love with the Borders, have a new-found admiration for East Anglia, and am contemplating a family holiday in Wales.

The BBC has put its landmark Television Centre up for sale and said it is looking for a deal which will "maximise the value" for the corporation and licence fee-payers.

Fawlty Towers and Monty Python actor John Cleese has been charged with speeding.

After being reminded that John Cleese can understandably take exception to ill-founded fears his funny bone may have been surgically removed in recent years, I would like to place on record the confident belief his best work could still be ahead of him. (Just pretend it's some other bloke in those rubbish AA adverts). Now the old boy proudly informs us that he wouldn't still be plain old Mr Cleese to you and I, if he had seen fit to accept a peerage from Paddy Ashdown back in 1999.

Playing safe is the enemy of comedy

Having discovered comedy gold in the shape of one of the funniest series to hit the small screen in the past decade, Channel 4 has had to face an unpalatable truth: inbetweeners do not stay inbetweeners forever.