WHAT do you do when the award-winning show you've hosted for more than a decade gets cancelled? Or as The Smiths would have it – And when you want to live/ How do you start?/ Where do you go?/ Who do you need to know?
For Deal or No Deal host Noel Edmonds there's only one answer – set up your own 'motivational' phone service for pets. Yes, you did read that correctly.
Deal Or No Deal will be axed after the upcoming series, but Edmonds isn't wasting any time on embarking on a new, and some would say slightly unusual, career change.
The 67-year-old is on a mission to make your furry (or slimy or scaly) friends feel "important and appreciated".
"It's amazing how a simple brief phone call can pick up the spirits of the most dejected hamster, the most stressed goldfish and the most neurotic cat," he claimed on his website.
"Please allow me to call your pet and offer positive words of appreciation and motivation."
To get a free phone call from Noel, pet owners must simply fill in a form on his website. Then Edmonds will ring up and impart his words of wisdom to your pet.
And the star has even bigger plans. Plans most people will hardly be able to comprehend.
By Christmas he hopes to launch the world's first radio station – for animals – called Positively Pets.
"I'm inviting pet lovers to send in their audio messages for their loved ones and we will broadcast them plus music requests and 'special relaxing tones' for pets left at home alone," he said.
Sleb Safari isn't sure if Edmonds fully grasps how man and beast communicate. Sleb Safari's dog understands a huge vocabulary including 'out', 'walkies', 'cheese' and 'biscuit' but often fails to respond to 'get off the bed', 'don't eat my toast' and 'no'.
How he would react to that man off the telly offering "words of appreciation" is unclear. Although if his loud reaction to the postman is anything to go by, Edmonds may want not to have his ear too close to the receiver.
Sleb Safari can't knock a man who had a hugely successful television career in the 1990s based mainly on jokes about his 'crinkley bottom' and pranking Barbara Windsor. 'Pet whispering' may be a left-field choice, but when you've hosted Noel's House Party, one of the most successful Saturday night programmes on TV, there's no point in prancing around in a sequinned leotard on Strictly Come Dancing.
Who else but Edmonds would have spotted a key animal demographic that the rest of the media have missed? Our only request is that your radio station never plays 'Who Let the Dogs Out'. The consequences don't bear thinking about.
Hiddleston or Herr Flick?
Benedict Cumberbatch, as well as having the best name in professional acting, is a man of many talents – playing Sherlock Holmes, singing Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb on stage with David Gilmour, and surviving the cinematic car crash that was Zoolander 2 relatively unscathed.
But just as Gertrude Stein told off Picasso when he tried to write poetry, Cumberbatch shouldn't be encouraged to spread himself too thinly – specifically by interviewing any more of his friends.
In a lengthy interview with actor Tom Hiddleston for a US magazine, handily called Interview, Cumberbatch told readers why he wouldn't ask his friend about his recent split with singer Taylor Swift after a three-month relationship.
Cumberbatch said: "Without getting into a huge debate, I just want to say that I'm not going to ask questions about my friend's personal life just because there are unsolicited photographs of him and a certain someone, in a relationship or together. I'm not going to get into that. So that door is closed, dear reader."
To that Sleb Safari says boo and hiss. The whole point of any interview is "getting into that".
Mind you, he was probably just being kind, unlike the person who chose poor Hiddleston's clothes for the accompanying photoshoot.
The Night Manager star, who looked like he was deeply regretting not having a veto over the clothing selection, was forced into a leather mac, apparently last worn by Herr Flick from terrible 1980s 'comedy' 'Allo 'Allo. And that wasn't even the worst bondage-style 'outfit' he was given.
Sleb Safari takes it all back. If anything, Cumberbatch is to be congratulated for his restraint in the face of all that leather.
Marky Mark at Buckingham Palace
Baffling royal news now, and Hollywood actor Mark Wahlberg has been having tea with Princess Eugenie at Buckingham Place. Wahlberg’s wife Rhea tweeted a picture of the historic meeting between the eighth in line to the British throne and erstwhile rapper Marky Mark.
"Went to Buckingham palace today and had tea w/ Princess Eugenie. Thank you so much!!" Mrs Wahlberg wrote on her Instagram page.
Everyone in the photo looks happy, if slightly confused as to why they're standing in front of a wall of China cabinets.
Sleb Safari confesses she’d like to know what they found to talk about – Wahlberg’s new film Deepwater Horizon, the best way to get around London without having a nervous breakdown or, fingers crossed, whether Marky Mark will ever reform with his funky bunch?
Competition winner
The winner of the Whiskey Walk competition is Kieran Scullion from Ballymena, Co Antrim
Social media scoop
Samuel L Jackson
Got an awesome gift from Tim Burton at lunch today
