Leona Lewis, of whom I am a fan (though was not sad enough to vote for on The X-Factor) is to appear on the premiere showing of the huge American TV show American Idol in the coming week.

How we rejoiced. Now she will be big and successful in America. I guess that’s ok, she’s a very good singer and should be fun to watch become famous.

“American Idol has produced winners such as Kelly Clarkson and Fantasia, and so Leona’s appearing on the premiere of the show on Wednesday is a very significant acheivement.”

Leona Lewis

And some more information on Leona’s performance:

“X Factor winner Leona Lewis is hoping to kickstart her US career by making a guest appearance on American Idol.

Having conquered the UK and topped the Number One spot since Christmas, judge Simon Cowell is reportedly hoping to showcase his latest prodigy in the States.

The singer is hoping to put an appearance in on the show when it kicks off in the US next week with a special two-part premiere.

The new series will feature 170 singers which will eventually be whittled down to the final 24.

Leona held on to the top spot in the revamped official UK chart for the second week in a row with A Moment Like This.

The X Factor winner’s debut single, which is a cover of previous American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson, became the fastest-selling download of 2006.”

ITV News

More soon, loyal readers!

With the world’s finest human editted encyclopedia, one can never be sure where to venture. I have attempted editting as an unregistered user, both having had my edits deleted, and accepted as part of the wiki.

What I wonder now, is whether I should attempt to become a fully-fledged member of the project. I think it’s fascinating, and worth doing, but I do not know if my English and knowledge “skills” are up the challenge. Certainly I see a lot of brash and poorly written edits; more so do I see vandalism and spam, but do I really want to get myself into another WebChat?

I hope in the coming months I will have the guts to actually register as a Wikipedian, but I have my doubts.

Well, there’s been a recent PageRank update (which may still be taking place). The strange thing about this update, though, is that several pretty large websites (for example, AOL.com, Digg.com, 9rules.com, and unlimitedgamer.net), have lost all their PageRank for no apparent reason. I noticed that some of these sites were advertising Text-Link-Ads.com, but I have seen other now PR0 websites and weblogs which have nothing to do with T-L-A.com.

Why might the PR have dropped?

It seems strange that such bigs sites have lost their entire PR for no reason. Another thing is that the ranking and indexing of these sites seems to have remained relatively similar to prior to the update. It could be that these sites are linking out to bad neighbourhoods, but that doesn’t really weigh up if you look at what they are linking to.

Is PR now defunct? At least partially? Perhaps. Comments would be helpful!

As my sister Jess points out, the 10 year anniversary ‘This Life + 10‘ was rather the anti-climax we had feared it would be.

For one thing, the magnificent cast of ten years ago was rather depleted. The main protagonists were present, but +10 revealed just how important the supporting cast like Luisa Bradshaw-White (Kira), Ramon Tikaram (Ferdy) and Natasha Little (the excellently played Rachel) were. Not only this, the writing by Amy Jenkins left rather a lot to be desired. Despite her creating the original programme, it is not in fact her that is to be thanked for the most fabulous of the episodes (she was always rather obvious and clichéd in comparison.) Furthermore, some of the actors (ahem, Mr. Lincoln.) were slightly hammy were as in the past the acting had seemed authentic.

There were plus points; four of the main characters dancing to the Manic Street Preachers classic A Design For Life while the other seemingly attempted to top himself was of old-school-This-Life-aptness albeit in a more clinical and less natural way.

The character of Milly (Amita Dhiri) was just as I had anticipated she would be. Still a driven bitch, with a different drive. Obsessed with her baby now instead of work, but resentful at the same time. Cliché? Yes. As Milly would be? Probably a yes as well if I’m honest.

This was all reversed with the beloved Anna (Daniela Nardini). Anna now wants babies, and not the law. As if! I am afraid I didn’t really buy this complete transformation of character in the slightest. Another thing that struck me, as my mother said, was that she had lost some of her sexiness and identifiable characteristics. But for those who have yet to see This Life +10, worry not, as her character wasn’t entirely wasted - she was still a bit of a bastard.

Miles (Jack Davenport) was interesting to watch. His presumed divorce to Francesca was unsubstantiated, but he had re-married to Vietnamese model Me-Linh (maybe there’s a more stereotypical name for an east-Asian character, but I doubt it) whose involvement seemed false and contrived. I guess the character of Miles got better as the programme drew its conclusion, but it was still riddled with hypocracy and unexplained sillyness.

Egg (Andrew Lincoln) inexplicably emerged as a successful author despite his endeavors in the kitchen (which he presumably jacked in). The acting for Egg was (by far, far and away) the worst of the five, which was always the case, and let down the character rather substantially. His character hadn’t really developed as one would have invisaged, either.

That brings me to Warren (Jason Hughes). There were moments of the old Warren we all knew and loved, but on the whole Amy Jenkins re-wrote Warren as a parody of an excentric gay man whose only real pre-occupations were therapy and the consumption of his anti-depressant medication, used to help him grieve the death of Ferdy. She lathered on the “irony” rather too thickly — yes, we got that he was screwed up from the original series — cheers, Amy.

I suppose it was worth watching. It could have been worse. It just all seemed a little contrived and over-boiled, when all we wanted was a nice ending to the best TV series ever! Never mind, there’s always This Life + 20…

I really enjoyed watching CBS‘ hit Survivor: The Cook Islands on YouTube recently (thanks to TheRoundPeg!). The series was highly controversial (or at least was intended to be highly controversial) as in the first few weeks they seperated the tribes according to their ethnicity. It didn’t really work out that way for long, though, and what seemed like a bizarre and idiotic publicity stunt at first then gained perhaps a slight amount of credibility by virtue of there being less white-Americans than usual. Don’t get me wrong, there a loads of lovely white-Americans, but those which are lovely and appear on Survivor tend to be few and far between. History bares this out.

This is presumably pure coincidence. Perhaps they picked idiots to represent the white-Americans on purpose. I’m sure it’s total chance that the show miraculously goes from having almost no black, hispanic or Asian representitives to suddenly having 15 (with 5 white-American contestents) in the Cook Islands season. It was all a very cynical attempt to get the public off dear Mark Burnett and co’s backs for their collective neglectfulness of minorities in prior seasons.

Ultimately, though, it didn’t really matter. It worked out well, and the best team won, and it was very entertaining to watch.