The Parish Counsel

You're doing this on purpose, aren't you? I ask two grown men to keep their chit-chat to a minimum so I can watch the tennis and you spend eighty minutes on helicopters, Paxman, tickets (again), Partridge, The Spice Girls, gigs in America, Adam and the Antz and the Doobie Brothers. Give me strength!

I'm getting soaked. Any chance you two could stop going on about Jimmy Carr, 24 Hours In A&E, Glastonbury, mortuaries, Yoko and that blasted pretend iPod and pass me a brolly? What do you mean you lost it? Which bus ...?

In the East for this exciting football tournament. But for some reason, I'm sat next to these two gob machines yacking on about Swedish Twitter, terrible panel shows, Kyle and Joy Division. Couldn't even hear the thunder storm.

Sixty minutes, I said. One hour, no more. But do these likely lads pay attention? Do they heck as like. Instead they give you closer to 70 minutes of gabble about Beach Boys tickets, Plan B's folly, the BBC jubilee fandango, punk recording studios and music for an iPod they still haven't bought. I give up, frankly.

So there we are at the Palace. The national anthem strikes up and we all jump to our feet, attentively paying tribute to Her Majesty on this wonderful occasion - with the exception of these two blokes, who manage to natter on about bad pub marketing, the death of irony, confusing ticketing, Veep and their ridiculous pretend iPod, throughout. Traitors!