The “auditing” phenomenon is one of the more polarising endeavours that modern social media - we’re looking at you, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok - has facilitated.

“Amateur” videographers/vloggers (video bloggers) visit a variety of locations with the intention of shining a light on sites, organisations and practices, with whatever they encounter documented for subsequent - or often live - publishing.

Close to a decade ago, a shift in my circumstances led me to, after a long hiatus, return to soap operas. Not how I refer to the dramas of my existence, you’ll understand, but the long-running episodic drama series which are the mainstay staples of television programming.

In the light of YouTube, Netflix and podcasts, to name but three challengers traditional entertainment media faces, the likes of Coronation Street, Hollyoaks, Neighbours, Home and Away and EastEnders (I never really got on with Emmerdale) seem almost ridiculous in their dated approach to catering for our needs, but somehow they still demand my intention. Perhaps it is so I can keep an eye on what passes as normal human behaviour to the normal humans so alien to me that make up the viewership. No, not for the first time, I don’t have to be alerted to the irony.

I sometimes struggle with the storylines, and will abandon even my sporadic viewing until a specific plotline runs its course or, so I’m sure it can’t be resurrected, at least one of the characters involved is killed off. Largely, however, and to varying extents across examples, soaps are informative mirrors to society, and progressive. There’s the banal and the misrepresentative, sure, but soaps educate and enlighten as a matter of procedural policy.

Here we go again. Donald Trump, two years into his presidency, is due another (state) visit to the UK. Sickening, right? At one point, due to The Donald facing threat after threat to his position from inauguration to now, some said Angela Merkel had become, in effect, LotFW, but she ain’t the boss of me - God bless Brexit, eh? - and neither is Trump, thankfully. Oh, do monarchs have a claim to that? Anyway…

No one thought Trump would make it into the White House. Well, no one except me (listen in from 6m45s). But he made it in, and he’s lasting, to an extent. So what does this tell us about this planet? Well, assuming the majority of people reading this reside in the UK, imagine Alan “Lord” Sugar - to most media commentators a far more palatable human being than Trump - becoming UK Prime Minister. More palatable or not, Sugar is still an odious f*cking toad, so the idea remains entirely abhorrent, but the main parallelling point endures: Alan Sugar - like Trump, a businessman, a straight-talker, an a*sehole - sits in the faux-boardroom hotseat of The Apprentice, the BBC’s UK version of the show that propelled Trump to power.

This article’s in two parts. The first part involves this dual-national - UK and enduringly EU (French) whatever happens - bemoaning the leave vote. The second part, well, we’ll get there…

So what happened in 2016? A bus? Seriously? Who believes a politician at the best of times? And look at what politicians were for Brexit. Granted, David Cameron and George Osborne were on the remain side, and they’re utterly horrid, but the bus didn’t actually tell a lie, it just ignored the fact that the suggestion of funding the NHS with (some of) the £350million (gross) that goes to the EU each week could not be backed with any power to see it through. That’d have to be a policy decision and Cameron and Osborne were then in power, and singing from a different hymn sheet entirely.

Yesterday’s BBC News at Ten had a fun little segment on “fake news”. No, it wasn’t a crisis of contrite self-awareness, rather a comment on the dark potential of facial manipulation in post-production editing suites, so we can overdub people talking with a different audio, and enable them to say something different.

The example they used, which is particularly sh*tty for a news programme, was the possibility of the hit BBC drama, Luther, being overdubbed for foreign viewers, with Sexiest Man Alive™ Idris Elba’s mouth contorting to form words of a language he doesn’t speak.

It doesn’t take a genius to extrapolate that the BBC’s possible gain in selling their enhanced programmes abroad could be the truth’s loss in other areas of life. The hipster video editor questioned on the subject paid the dangers very casual lip service, appropriately, by suggesting safeguards to ensure the technology is not used for nefarious ends. Because if you’re willing to edit a video to say someone said something they didn’t, you’d surely sign up to a code of conduct first, and be sure to stick to it.

Do you need this? Really? With unanimity amongst the public and critics that A Star is Born is wonderful, do you you really need me to tell you what I think?

How about if I tell you that it’s dogsh*t?

Okay, so, I found myself at a bit of a loose end on Saturday afternoon, so decided I’d go to the cinema. I couldn’t put myself through what I expect to be a deep clean of the Queen story, as told by Brian May - though I will - so I went for a different music-centric film.

We'll be slayin' people hatin'
But it don't bother us
Cus it's lit up in this thing called
Millennial Love

Millennial Love. The name of a song by a YouTuber I don’t dare type the name of, and also a podcast from the former newspaper, now blog online newspaper, the Independent.

This podcast - my main focus herein - centres on - uh-huh - the dating scene for millennials. If you don’t know, a millennial is somewhat accepted to be someone who was born in the last twenty or so years of the 20th century, which, incredibly, just about includes me, although there’s significant debate about the range. And, really, it’s a jungle out there.

Okay, so, two things:

1) I’m not Irish, and don’t live in Ireland, so maybe I should shut the f*ck up.

2) Chances are, by the time you - the average visitor to Marceltipool.com - read this, voting will have taken place, and my assumption, from over here in Britain two days before, is that Ireland will have voted Yes in a big way.

Well, to deal with both of those points, I’m nailing my colours to the mast on this referendum because I see it as a vote to legalise, and further the legitimisation of, abortion, both in Ireland and globally. Should Ireland vote Yes, then this piece can act as one of many examples of a counterargument whenever someone campaigning for easier access to abortion says “Even Ireland’s with us now!”

So, the talk today is of Conor McGregor versus Khabib Nurmagomedov being a very real possibility, perhaps for a UFC Russia/Moscow event. A couple of weeks after Conor McGregor threw a sack barrow at a bus, smashing a window and injuring colleagues, the hype train is back on track - thanks to the Barclays Center incident of course - and the biggest fight in UFC history may well happen.

So was it real anger? Or self-promotion? (By McGregor? Or by the UFC and McGregor?)

Yesterday, I had a conversation with a friend. Said friend is black. I am white. Ordinarily, these facts would be entirely irrelevant, but for the reasons which follow, they are on this occasion pertinent.

In passing, I mentioned that when I had first moved to the area of the country which I currently reside in, I had initially struggled to find work. In fact, I had struggled to even make it to interview stage, and despite the obvious shortcomings in my character and employment history outlined in my CV, the lack of interest seemed odd. That was until a friend of a friend, back at the time I was going through this struggle, pointed out to me that "Mate, they think you're black."

As the area where I live is backward on so many levels - it truly is a sh*thole, it has to be said - I actually gave, and still do give, some credence to this theory. My legal first name is, generally speaking, one which is given to Afro-Caribbean people far more than it is given to white people, in this country at least, and many people around here are d*cks. The idea that they are racist d*cks is not much of a leap. The idea that they are so idiotic, and arrogant in their idiocy, that they would racially discriminate - erroneously, in my case - seems, sadly, to follow.

"The best episode of Take Me Out ever". You'd probably still change the channel, right? Perhaps. But you'd read about it in the aftermath.

Sorry, to be clear, this hasn't happened. Yet. This is not a review; it is, rather, a preview. It is surely a preview.

So here's how it goes down: host Paddy McGuinness, as is his wont, makes some jokes that are construed as being sexist, chauvinistic and patronising (delete as applicable and more of which later), a group of women are introduced and, then, finally, after an innuendo or two, another human is lowered into the room for the aforementioned women's perusal.

But, on this occasion, it's not a man who's lowered in (it is usually. Check). Instead (drum roll), it's a woman.

Theresa May today announced there would be a six-week consultation over the use of "stop and search" powers by the police. Apparently, she wants to ensure that the police are only using stop and search "when it is needed", as otherwise it is "a dreadful waste of police time", and there is talk of the procedure leading to certain ethnic minority groups - who are seven times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people - feeling persecuted and regarding the action as antagonistic.

What an horrendously, unfeelingly pragmatic way of viewing a truly abhorrent way of treating members of the public. Firstly, the desire for stop and search to only be used when needed is incredibly damning and surely should be expanded upon. The suggestion - which we all know is fact - that police officers are abusing the power, most likely through personal or institutionalised racism - most likely both - should be a declaration in the form of condemnation, not muttered as an issue that needs to be ironed out as it is not resource-effective, especially in the wake of revelations concerning the family of Stephen Lawrence being spied upon. The talk of worries that communities which are most affected by this abuse may be antagonised - resulting in retaliation such as the 2011 civil unrest - is sickening. So it's ok to bully black people as long as there's no chance of them ever causing you a problem off the back of it? What about considering the turmoil each individual is put through?