Rent My Husband with Video's

RENT MY HUSBAND: ANOTHER FIRST ANNIVERSARY. Mac and Debbi Story are celebrating their first anniversary with Rent My Husband Window Cleaning Service. They are expanding their window cleaning services, which covers a territory from Quincy to Portola, to include housecleaning and general building maintenance. Mac has more than 15 years of experience in this field.

FALLEN POP STAR STARTS WINDOW CLEANING: John Tovey, Flowered Up, London's answer to Manchester's Happy Mondays had a top 20 single with Weekender in 1992, followed by two disastrous comebacks. Everything took off for us from 1990 to 1992. We were on music paper covers and signed two major deals. I reckon £600,000 went through our band in two years. But it was accepted for bands to get off their heads through drink and drugs, and a lot of us ended up on smack. My body stopped functioning, and I needed to get away. I took off to Tenerife, but it was just before we were scheduled to be the first ever band on The Big Breakfast - when I got back, they'd replaced me with a new drummer. The band fell apart. I had spells in prison, but came out knowing it was suicide or get clean. I've been clean and sober since 2001. In 2005, I noticed that Happy Mondays were playing somewhere. The next thing, Flowered Up were asked to play with them at Clapham Common. I tracked down the rest of the band after having lost nearly all contact for 17 years. Tim [Dorney] was the last to get involved because he thought I'd nicked his keyboards in 1992, which I hadn't. The warm-ups were amazing, but the gig was a disaster. Joe [Maher], the guitarist, swears he didn't take anything, but he played the wrong songs and ended up being carted out by St John Ambulance in a straitjacket. Last October, we lined up another five dates, but it all fell apart. We never got to play, and I feel bad for the fans. There won't be any more comebacks. I'm setting up a window-cleaning business. I cherish memories of blowing Blur off stage at the Reading festival in 1991, and I love the guys. But sometimes I wish I'd never joined a band. I lost the girl I was engaged to, and I deeply regret that we pissed it up the wall.

Health & Safety gone mad: Caretaker wins ladder fall case. A school caretaker has successfully sued Hampshire County Council after he was injured falling off a stepladder. Anthony Gower-Smith, 73, fell off the 6ft (180cm) stepladder at Awbridge Primary School in Romsey in 2004. In court, he claimed his employer had not shown him how to use the ladder. The council denied negligence. But on Friday, Mr Gower-Smith, from North Baddesley, won his case on the basis the council was 75% to blame. His compensation will now be assessed. Mr Gower-Smith, who had made a claim for £50,000, suffered a fractured skull, fractured cheek bone and kidney injuries in the fall, leading to treatment in intensive care. He has not been able to work since the accident. Hampshire County Council said the caretaker was given adequate training and equipment to do the job.

Twenty-two years ago, Mikhail Fridman could be found wandering the streets of Moscow offering to wash windows. Legend has it that if you said your windows weren’t dirty when the young Ukrainian student first visited, they often were by the time he came round to ask a second time. Now, after rising to become one of the world’s richest men with a fortune estimated at between $12 billion and $17 billion (£6-8.5 billion), Fridman is leading a group of four oligarchs who are using strong-arm tactics with oil giant BP over its lucrative Russian business. The joint venture TNK-BP accounts for about a quarter of BP’s global oil reserves. BP owns half of the company; the four businessmen, through their Alfa Access Renova (AAR) consortium, own the other half. The feud between the two sides has become increasingly acrimonious. Two weeks ago, BP chairman Peter Sutherland accused Fridman and his partners of resorting “to the corporate raiding activities that were prevalent in Russia in the 1990s” in a bid to take control of the business. “This is bad for us, bad for the company and, of course, very bad for Russia,” Sutherland said. Previous story here.

And finally: I don't know if this guy is part of the English National Heritage or if he still uses vinegar in his solution? For all you old timers who are still window cleaning: this is how it used to be done. Does it bring back the memories? Happy days....

And another example of really bad window cleaning in so many ways. This guy has all the equipment but doesn't know how to use it!