Wave farewell to Bute from the Rothesay ferry after a lovely weekend whose high point would have been a visit to Mount Stuart, had it been open, so was instead an excellent fish supper from the town's West End Cafe.

This establishment's exotic menu made interesting reading to a chap from the salt'n'sauce east - among the enticing extras was something called "scoop gravy", for instance. Sounds delicious. And I was delighted to see that members of the local constabulary take healthy eating seriously enough to frequent the place too: while I was waiting, a PC dropped in to pick up victuals for the evening shift. A battered sausage was duly delivered.

'Mike Read, Mike Read, 275 and 285! Mike Read, Mike Read, National Radio 1!".

That's how I remember the DJ's self-aggrandising jingle from the 1980s, usually followed by the new single from Blancmange. It's all change now, though: the 67-year-old's current berth is at BBC Radio Berkshire, which some might think an appropriate county given his berk-tastic turn at the recent Ukip party conference. Taking to the stage with a guitar, Reed sang a calypso in a faux-Caribbean accent extolling the virtues of Nigel Farage and betraying a view on immigration which, if I was a Ukip spin doctor, I might describe as hawkish. Read, affecting the contrite aspect of a man with egg on his face as well as blancmange on his playlist, apologises. He asks that the single version of the song be withdrawn from sale - difficult, as it has already bagged the coveted number 21 spot in the UK singles charts. Meanwhile, an offer to donate the proceeds to the Red Cross is rejected.

"If anyone has taken it the wrong way, many apologies. But it was never meant to be remotely racist," Read says. "It's an old-fashioned political satire … you can't sing a calypso with a Surrey accent." There, at least, he has a point. Filed in the So Bad It's Good section of my record collection is a 1957 release in which film star Robert Mitchum also unearths his inner West Indian. It was re-issued in the mid-1990s, and I don't recall anybody calling Mitchum racist for singing in a comically bad Caribbean accent.

So maybe Read should stick with the calypso lark. BBC Radio Berkshire's loss could be music's gain, though he'll need a typically grandiose stage name - something like the one adopted by Aldwyn Roberts, aka Lord Kitchener, author of the classic London Is The Place For Me. That's also a song about immigration, the difference being Lord Kitchener actually was one: he arrived on the Empire Windrush in 1948.

If all you want for Christmas is a Walter White doll, better think again. This item - modelled on the chemistry-teacher-turned-drug-dealer character played by Bryan Cranston in acclaimed TV series Breaking Bad - today joins Mike Read's Ukip Calypso in the list of Things Withdrawn From Sale This Week.

A mom [sic] from Florida has raised a 9000-signature petition against Toys R Us, complaining about the doll's glamorisation of drugs and guns (though not ill-judged goatees). Before you can say "How do you synthesise crystal meth?" all the dolls are swept off the shelves. In response to this slight, Cranston tweets: "I'm so mad, I'm burning my Florida Mom action figure in protest."

Private Eye readers will know all about that mag's open invitation to correspondents to write in with spurious reasons for publishing a certain snap of Andrew Neil.

You know the one: simmet, hairy chest, baseball cap, arm candy. I have a sneaking suspicion something similar is at work with the lexicologists who decide which of the 50,000 new entries to the Collins English Dictionary gets to be named Word Of The Year today. The 2014 recipient is "photobomb", meaning to intrude into someone else's photograph, and this can only have been done for one reason: to let magazines, newspapers and websites the world over-use that picture of actor Benedict Cumberbatch doing a weird-faced star-jump behind po-faced Irish rockers U2 on the Oscars red carpet. I fully expect it to be used to illustrate even this small article - though if it isn't, please forgive us.

According to Empty Labour, a new book on what The Economist's Schumpeter column calls "skiving", the average worker spends between 90 and 180 minutes a day doing, well, not very much. I know this not because I read it on Facebook but because I spend my morning diligently and enthusiastically sifting the internet for stories (that's for my editor's benefit, by the way). Talking of Facebook, Empty Labour author Roland Paulsen also reveals that around 27 million of us office drones - sorry, highly-skilled white collar workers - have our internet use monitored regularly by suspicious bosses. And he has news for those of us who use the old jacket-over-the-back-of-the-chair trick to make the middle management goons think we're in the office: we can update it by programming emails to send themselves long after we've gone to the pub.

The best advice, though, deals with what he calls "the theatre of enthusiasm": if there's absolutely no way out of a job, look eager about doing it. Nothing an organ grinder loves more than a monkey that wags its tail.

Great news! Island Records, once home to reggae great Bob Marley, has stepped in to sponsor the Anglo Caribbean Domino League and is hosting today's Grand Final at the Murad Banqueting Suite in Walsall (4.30pm till late, if you're thinking of heading down). Dominoes is an important part of West Indian culture. I daresay Lord Kitchener played a hand or two on board the Empire Windrush with fellow passengers Harold Philips and Egbert Moore, aka calypso singers Lord Woodbine and Lord Beginner. Today's top players have similarly outlandish names, including Badboy Leroy, The Preacher, The Philosopher and (my fave) Seven-Days-A-Week. Rumours that today's final will include a performance by tip-top calypso singer Lord 'Ave Mercy, formerly known as Mike Read, could not be confirmed.