With further apologies for last week's no-show, The Blueprint Podcast is back with episode 49. No Greg this week, but I hope you won't mind spending a little time with just me instead.

Quirkies this week include a convicted murderer in the US, who pulls an unusual series of mindflips by agreeing to be turned into fish food for a piece of art after his execution, but also frantically appealing against his death sentence. Now in this life, you either want to be fish food or you don't. Nobody likes a ditherer. Or a murderer, for that matter.

As well as the usual quirky stories, we've also got some great music in this week's Blueprint, from Bluesman Tom Malafarina, Oriskany Strings, and Blue Valentine, all of whom are from America.

This weeks' pictorial side dish is of some fish food.

Oops, sorry about being a bit late with getting this one online. You try telling my eight-year-old that he has to stop playing Star Wars Battlefront II in the middle of a crucial mission. That's what was going on. And then the podcast's database server seemed to be down for a bit. But finally, here it is.

We get into a few topics, chiefly our recent weekend at The Green Man Festival in South Wales, and the fact that both of us have given up smoking. Expect flashing tempers in coming episodes.

 Please join us next week for episode 49, and fill in the Blueprint Podcast Survey (link at the top of the page) so that we can read your very thoughts.

This week, here's a panoramic view across the Green Man mainstage area. A seriously niiiice music festival.

We never know which is the best way in which to open a new episode of The Blueprint Podcast, as the beginning of this one demonstrates. Greg likes to state the facts, and Chris likes to showboat like a 1980's holiday disc jockey.

Television animals get us started this week, before we move into cartoons, particularly the Hanna Barbera-style ones in which some sort of unusual beast accompanies a teenage gang as they travel the United States in search of mysteries to solve. Sadly, this brings about the startling realisation that  many of our favourite animated heroes were actually the tragic victims of their so-called friends.

We celebrate the wisdom of Bill Cosby for a while, beofre bemoaning the existence of the cartoon spin-off Fonz And the Happy Days Gang, which, was ridiculous on every level.

The cartoon chat culminates in a nostalgic mood with The Incredible New Shmoo, a sort of white shapeshifting abomination capable of assisting his teenage pals in the unravelling of mysterious events.

Then it's quirky story time, and UFOs are definitively sorted out, along with the slightly odd notion of a special police bra, before Chris and Greg compare their childhood Action Man (that's GI Joe if you're in the USA) collections.

We'll be back, friends. Back. It'll happen On Friday, 22nd August at 5pm (UK time). Join us then, we'll put the kettle on.

Here's the Shmoo. The Incredible New Shmoo.

Hello, and welcome to episode 46 of The Blueprint Podcast, a podcast broadcasting from Hartlepool in the North East of England on a weekly basis, brought to you by Chris Wright and Greg Hildreth.

In this episode, Greg contemplates a charity moustache, which leads to discussion of extreme martial arts-based attention seeking behaviour. Some people, of course, can make a living from seeking attention, which brings us to Michael Jackson (a singer), Spanish holidays, and British pubs in foreign lands.

 We get back into the canoe disappearance of John Darwin, and the trials of him and his wife Mrs. Darwin, which gets us onto a judicial debate. It may surprise regular listeners to learn that neither Chris nor Greg is a judge, magistrate or even so much as a legal clerk.

 All this gets us into some career advice for Barry George, who was recently acquitted at a retrial of the murder of TV presenter Jill Dando, and of course this leads to some chat about the polarising nature of the music of Queen.

Finally, we get onto some quirky stories, including one about a naked man who was chased by police into some nettles. Ouch.

 We'll be back with episode 47 on Friday, 15th August at 5pm (UK Time), so feel free to join us then for more audio companionship.

This epsiode's visual aid is a photo of Freddie Mercury impersonator Justin Gilbody. He's got the suit and a moustache. He's also no stranger to Word Art. Maybe Greg will be available for Mercury work soon, if the moustache thing works out.

Glue is a strange word. I've just been Googling it to look for interesting quotations about glue to use as a title for this week's episode. There aren't any. But now that I've been looking at the word “glue” for a few minutes, it strikes me as being an ugly word which would be much more fun if it were spelled “gloo”.

Anyway, the reasons for all this glue chat are twofold.

Firstly, Greg reminds Chris of an incident in which The Blueprint were offered glue for sniffing purposes by a passer-by (we refused, of course).

Secondly, soon to be former British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was offered glue for sticking purposes by an invited guest. He had no option to refuse, as the glue was smeared on his jacket by someone, who then added insult to injury by making a terrible play on words about glue. Yet another rubbish protest, and this time we've looked into the past of the protester to reveal that this wasn't his first ill-advised attempt to change the world.

We also cover the devils on earth that were PE teachers (PE is the same as Phys. Ed., American listeners) during our schooldays. Honestly, there should be support groups for people who went through some of the cruel and unusual punishments for being alive bestowed upon children by PE teachers back in the day. What's more, everyone who is unfit to any degree should be able to personally sue their old PE teacher if their interest in exercise was crushed by their evil ways.

That aside, we've got a bizarre quirky story about a toilet which blasted hailstones the size of golf balls at the exposed bottom of an unlucky toiletgoer. How unlucky is that?

Here's a coyote making use of some glue purchased from Acme, a well-known manufacturer of specialist birdcatching equipment. The glue sometimes worked, but usually in an unpredictable manner, serving only to frustrate Acme's customer base. Acme went into liquidation in the late Sixties following historic damages awarded following a class action raised by several coyotes over the quality of instructions provided with the company's products.

The judge agreed that providing a crude drawing of a huge rock landing on a small bird as it attempts to eat bird seed which has been glued to the ground was an irresponsible way in which to suggest glue should be used. Awarding damages in excess of $100m, the judge went on to rule that solvents should not be marketed directly to prairie wolves in the first place.

We'll be back on Friday, August 8th at 5pm (UK Time) with more Blueprint Podcast chat and banter, so please join us then.

This episode starts off with some rather unlikely claims about the self flagellation methods of former British Prime Minister William Gladstone. Apparently, he used to whip himself on the back. He was a strange cookie in some respects, fair enough. But whether these acts of autobashing were executed using pasta has probably never been discussed before we entered the historic debate. Which is what we do today.

 Nintendo's probably very clever but difficult to understand marketing and production policies are brought into question over their Wii Fit game (if “game” is the correct term). Frustrated shoppers can't buy Wii Fit anywhere, but it's still being aggressively advertised. How does that work, then?

(Note that we are not affiliated to Reebok, although if they want to send us some free stuff to thank us for our glowing review of their exercise equipment, we will make friends with them.)

Greg's lottery madness provides us with our very own quirky story, and we've got photographic evidence courtesy of Greg's girlfriend, who captured him at the height of his panic…

We'll be back with episode 45 of The Blueprint Podcast at 5pm (UK Time) on Friday, August 1st. Until then, please complete our very short Blueprint Podcast Survey, which helps us to make the podcast better.