1: What TV show do you wish you’d created?
Wonder Showzen.
2: Who’d win in a fight: Wagner or a lion?
The lion, obviously. But I’m pretty sure that Wagner would nose it in a bongo-off.
3: What are your hot tips for dealing with the pressure of producing a witty liveblog every week?
Accept that your social life will wither. Write down everything you’d shout at the television if you weren’t liveblogging. Also – based on a notorious story from liveblogging past – don’t get drunk before you start, unless you really like apologising to important Scandinavians.
4: What would be your X Factor audition song?
“We Are The Cheeky Girls (Touch My Bum)”.
5: If you weren’t a journalist, what would you be?
I was a teacher, briefly, before I started writing. So the answer is ‘an alcoholic’.
6: What’s most played on your iPod?
According to my iPod, it’s Baby by Os Mutantes.
7: What’s the worst comment you’ve ever received on an article?
The Guardian moderates comments pretty heavily, but someone on another website once wished that I’d get AIDS and die. That’s quite hard to top.
8: What’s your chat up line of choice?
I’m hopeless at chatting people up, so I usually just wait for girls to approach me. Girls rarely approach me.
9: Have you ever regretted an article?
Oh goodness, yes.
10: Snog, Marry, Avoid- Eastenders, Emmerdale, Coronation Street.
Snog Emmerdale, Marry EastEnders, Avoid Corrie.
11: In which country would you most like to stage a coup?
Belgium. It doesn’t really have a proper government yet. It’d be a piece of cake. Also: waffles.
12: Who’d win in a fight: Grace Dent or Charlie Brooker?
Dent, without a doubt. She has the cold dark eyes of a killer.
13: Is the pen really more powerful than the sword?
Are you kidding? Of course not. Swords are massive.
14: Which one box set would you take to a desert island?
All of The Sopranos please.
15: What’s your guilty pleasure?
I write about X Factor, for crying out loud. My entire life is a guilty pleasure.
16: Is print media dying?
I think it might be, sadly.
17: What’s your biggest achievement?
Aside from writing for the Guardian? I think I won a ‘guess the weight of the cake’ at a school fete once.
18: Who do you want to win X Factor?
Misha B, I think. That said, I’m worried that X Factor might try and turn her into Alexandra Burke if that happens.
19: If the Guardian was an X Factor contestant who would it be?
I’m contractually obliged to say Leona Lewis.
20: Vision or Nouse?
Nouse. No, bugger, Vision! I meant Vision! Please don’t hurt me.