...ruffles...

Moggiopoli, the corruption case, has ruptured Italian football. The verdict of relegation and points deductions for some of the country's biggest clubs, is as startling as the level of corruption that lead to it.

However, I must reveal a level of corruption that beats even this. Emma's mum has a friend that she knows "only through email". From the friend she managed to purloin a recipe for a chocolate trifle. An innocent exchange of remote friends, you may think.

Furnished with this information, Emma's mum then heard on Radio Oxford, that they were running a competition. People were invited to send in their recipes; the best would be made up and tasted and the best would win a prize. Emma's mum chose to send in her chocolate trifle recipe. It reached the final, and she won.

Her defence, she says, is that everyone pinches other peoples' recipes. Which may be true; but not everyone wins prizes with them. It was a prize worth winning; an all expenses meal on a train which is (according to Emma's mum) "like the Orient Express but it runs to Didcot".

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Labels: General me

It seems that pop success nowadays is only valid if you've built up a following through the Internet, or more specifically through MySpace. No number one is valid without a story of a starving muso in a basement flat using more than adequate recording equipment and broadband to get their sounds out to the world. It's an edgy, DIY approach screaming 'fuck you' to the music industry. It also hides the fact that most of the music is actually inoffensive MOR-lite acoustic pop. Mmm, underground.

The Arctic Monkeys, widely fabled to have built their fanbase through the Internet, have dismissed the idea as 'a load of bollocks'. Gnarls Barkley, who were the first to achieve number one status through downloads alone, were hardly unknowns. The musical mastermind of the duo, Dangermouse, produced the last Gorrillaz album. Now, Lilly Allen, described as "the queen of MySpace" sits at number one because of the fan base she's built up through her 'ickle space on the web. Of course, her success has nothing to do with the fact that Allen is the daughter of well connected media whore Keith.

Or, in fact, that MySpace is owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Sandi Thom, another one, perhaps gives it away with her debut number 1. She wishes she "was a punk rocker with flowers in her hair". She yearns for "69 and 77 when revolution was in the air". She then, laments, however, that she "was born too late to a world that doesn't care".

Didn't punk and the hippy movement happen because the world didn't care? It wasn't sanctioned by the establishment, created through focus groups and market research. If she's in a world that doesn't care then she was born at the perfect time to be a punk rocker with flowers in her hair. What does she want the world to do? Give her a favourable mortgage rate and secure job before she starts wearing stuff her mum might frown at. Of course, it would make her a deluded retro-phile, but it shouldn't discourage her from fulfilling her dream.

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Labels: TV and radio

Millie is 10 weeks old, so here are 10 things I've learnt about parenting.


1. Parenting gurus give their advice like they're stating scientific fact. If it were scientific fact then it would have the same effect on every baby in the same way. You can't know that blowing in the baby's face means they're more likely to be a concert pianist without years of evidence. If the book was written in 2004, it's all guesswork.
2. If you're concerned about something, ask yourself whether they'll be like it when they're sixteen. For example, if they're not lifting their heads up by six weeks, question whether its likely to be a factor in sixteen years time. On the other hand, if their leg falls off, worry.
3. Birthing plans are a nonsense. You have no choice about how the baby is coming out.
4. Your life doesn't change as a result of having a baby. This is your life, a continuation of what you had before, with new influences and factors to consider. If you're life is so heavily locked into a particular routine, so hardened that you can't move away from it, you're either very sad, or you're OCD.
5. People who know the mother best, think the baby looks like the mum, those who know the dad best thinks the baby looks like the dad. Agree, whatever the view.
6. Baby poo smells great, at least your baby's poo smells great. A baby has a minimal vocabulary, so they communicate their well-being through poo. A big smelly one is great to see.
7. It is easier to agree with people that you're not getting any sleep and nappies are a nightmare than to explain that it's all going really well, you're sleeping fine and you're enjoying it.
8. Doctors are always right. If your philosophy is that if a doctor gives you bad news then they're right, but if it's good then they're telling you a bunch of lies, you'll quickly end up in a puddle of your own paranoia. You have to make a simplifying assumption that what you're hearing is the truth and that a vast-majority of doctors have the same values and objectives as you.
9. Phases don't last long. If you can remember a time when she went through a phase of finding it difficult to settle after a bottle; it was probably last night.
10. Don't think about the future. The future may hold Neo-Nazi boyfriends, piercings and heroin. Today they don't, tomorrow they may do. As the great Gaulish chief says, Vitalstatistix says, 'Tomorrow never comes'.

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Labels: Babies

A good World Cup, not a great World Cup. Beautifully staged, fantastic stadia full to the brim, omnipresent sun, a pleasant way of spending a summer's evening after work. But then, so is Big Brother.



So why wasn't it great? In part, it's circumstance of the the modern era that even the most ardent fan has enough football on TV to satisfy their needs. Wall-to-wall-to-wall live football means that it's no longer a treat to see the games. Once upon a time live football was a novelty, from overseas was a positive curiosity. Now it's all a bit too familiar. All but a handful of the squads had players who play or have played in the Premiership and the even those who don't have players familiar from the Champions League, Spanish and Italian football. Very few players emerge at a World Cup. Once upon a time a Brazilian would arrive at a World Cup having played in his domestic league, he may be picked up by a bigger European club, but the gateway was the tournament. Now players outside Europe barely play in their home country, picked up before they get a chance by the hugely efficient scouting systems of the top European clubs. 



Overall, however, there's been no narrative. Every great World Cup has a narrative. The emerging nations failed to compete like they did in 2002, the hosts didn't fulfil their destiny like France in 1998, England failed predictably unlike 1990, Ronaldihno didn't turn up to complete the Holy Trinity of footballing greats joining Maradona's beatification in 1986 and Pele's in 1970. There have been great goals and moments of great skill, but no truly great games, like the 1982 France vs Germany semi-final. 



The rebirth of Zidane flickered briefly against Brazil with a thrilling performance of panache, but then age got the better of him and he was subdued against Portugal before going completely mad in the final. Italy's corruption backdrop, a mirror image of 1982, is a story, but, ironically, it's like the remake of The Italian Job - it may be well made and visually spectacular, but in the end it still stars the lead singer of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. Perhaps above all, this was the World Cup England were supposed to win, the nation was no longer enthralled by its betters, or charmed by those lower down the order. The country had a purpose, to efficiently dispose of all that came their way and win the cup. Perhaps next time we need to set our sights a little lower, and allow ourselves to be surprised about what's given to us.

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Labels: Football

When seeing The Mode at the Wireless Festival a couple of weeks ago, we came across the UK Garrison, a small outposting of Stormtroopers redundant from the occupation of the whole damn galaxy (c'mon Mr Bush, get in the game, you nobody unless you own the whole galaxy).

Stormtroopers, sinister anonymous androids with the ice cold glare of a mechanised man-fly. Devoid of emotion and cold and calculated whether patrolling the wretched hive of scum and villainy at Mos Eisley Spaceport or buggering womp rats out of sexual boredom whilst marshalling the supply line down the Kessel run. It's some fall from grace to have been stationed in the UK with a PR/peacekeeping brief, how they must lament, whilst manning little recruitment booths at six form colleges in Essex, that it's not like the old days of the Empire when they indulged in an endless orgy of violence all on expenses.

We resisted the temptation to wave two fingers in front of them saying 'these aren't the droids you're looking for'. Whilst they may not have been the actual 'Troopers to have been duped by the simple Jedi mind trick, the shame that it has brought on the good name of the Empire's finest must still smart today. That, and they'd probably heard it every hour on the hour for the five days of the festival.

We looked on, watching people having their pictures taken on their knees with the hands behind their back in a kind of Guantanamo Bay chic. The Stormtroopers posed for photos pointing their blasters at the craniums of the bowed, giggly, mildly inebriated festival habitue. How the temptation to engage in a little 'weapons malfunction' must have eaten away at them. These guys were running the galaxy, now they were turning tricks for buttons in some obscure outpost.

At least the Stormtroopers' fall from grace is shielded by their anonymity (read the FAQ's on their website, it's an enclosed netherworld, you can't join them, you get invited - presumably only if you can prove you are a clone of Jango Fett and pay your subs on time). Whilst it is easy to mock, you do know that there are millions more where they came from. Unlike Darth Vader, who is so iconic and whose story is so well known, that he is a mere parody of his original being. He was the Dark Lord of the Empire, a shadow across the galaxy, distanced from every individual yet capable of ordering their destruction with a nod. Now, there he was, stripped of his dignity, wandering around trying to get the attention of portly men in Nine Inch Nails t-shirts. There was a time when he would have ordered the destruction of whole planets for wearing aged industrial rock merchandise. It was like seeing David Beckham driving a taxi.

I may be wrong but I'm sure I heard him slurring to one disinterested punter that he'd 'had that Skywalker in the detention centre of his imperial cruiser last week'.

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Labels: Music

The bunion, the scar of women's battle for equality, the Blahnik and Choo, the spoils. Womenfolk place a lot of importance in their shoes. They're a celebration of sexuality, choice and independent wealth. A pair of women's shoes is an episode of Sex And The City distilled into footwear. Eclecticism, achievement, vivaciousness, cocktails and lunch.

Whilst the battle for gender equality has been a fierce one, women's shoes are also a place for the genders to meet. The passionate fixation of a woman on her shoe collection remains baffling, yet above all they openly recognise men as a component that is both required and sometimes desired. It is the terms and conditions that have changed.

Psychologists say that one of the reasons a pair of heals is deemed sexually attractive is because the shape of the shoe, and the angle of elevation offered by the heal make the toe look like a furry front bum. Shoes say, look at my fanny, but you're not actually going to get to look at my fanny unless I say so. Oh, and stop looking at my tits and keep your eyes on the floor, damn you.

The sexual subtext of the shoe is a deep and layered. You know, therefore, you're in the wrong party when one of the first things you hear is "Ooh Margaret those sandals look comfortable".

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Labels: General me

OK, I can't let it pass without comment.

The familiar pattern of England's exit from the World Cup on Saturday left me rather cold. There was a time when I would have got excited by the tournament. The squad recognised that the Quarter Finals no longer represent success, their interest was the final. For me also, only achieving something beyond the quarter finals would have raised the excitement levels.

And so to the aftermath. Was Eriksson overpaid? His agent, as agents always do, stresses that he was paid market rate. So if the buyer is willing to pay £4million a year for something, then it's not unreasonable to accept it. It would be unfair to blame Svennis for taking the money, but the FA ought to take a look at themselves for offering it. Argentina's coach was paid £100,000 a year. This recognised the facilitator role of a national coach; they can only work, for very short periods, with the product they are given. The national coach should be paid a premium for the pressure, but that's it. Seb Coe cited Jack Charlton's philosophy with the Republic of Ireland; choose the system, pick the team, practice set pieces, rest a lot, then let the players get on with it. The national coach's role is not to improve players, but to simply choose the best 11.

The billion pound Premiership machine has produced a slew of quality players coached to the highest possible standard. Sven needed to marshal this glut of choice, and resist the rampant media. The first choice eleven was self selecting. Take the Beckham versus Lennon debate. Lennon has just begun to emerge as a talent, Beckham, though not having the pace, has years of success behind him and contributed to 50% of England's goals. Using Lennon as a replacement for Beckham to chase a game, or stretch the opponents is a good one. But Beckham, though not as influential as he used to be, remained the obvious starter. That said, I hope he will retire from international football now, it would be a shame to watch him be dropped and remembered as a has-been.

Eriksson had precious few decisions to make, but the one key one, was wrong. To take only four strikers; two injured, one teenager and an acquired taste was a key error. Owen's injury against Sweden meant that Rooney had to play on his own. This was frustrating and exhausting, leading in part to his sending off against Portugal. Had he taken Defoe in place of the unused Jenas then there was a ready made replacement for Owen, the system didn't need have changed, the players could have got on with playing rather than trying to re-learn the pattern of the team. I'm not saying that England would have won the World Cup, but the over-complication certainly contributed to failure.

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Labels: Football

It's a bloggers bind; you have to have a life in order to blog but if you have a life there's no time to blog. Routine does not a good blog make, but routine is what I currently have. I've spent three years at work developing a department that functions so well we literally get to the end of the day having no idea what else to do... we're a bit like that now, Big Brother and the World Cup are a ubiquitous presence on the TV, even Millie has settled into a routine. I went to the O2 Wireless Festival to see Depeche Mode last week, and the week before we went to see Gifford's Circus. Great though both were, we knew what to expect, because we've been to both before.

It's not that I feel in any way restricted by the routine, on a meta-level there are many non-routine things happening, but you don't want to know that Millie has developed a phase 2 sleeping pattern at night that's different to the phase 1. As perfect as she is, I know you're not going to be as interested as I am.

The most routine of all is the gym. For a year now I've been going regularly in the morning. Up at 6.30, on the bike at 6.45, forty-five minutes and I'm out again, in the winter I'm sixth in, in the summer I'm 12th. I started going five times a week, but that's dropped to three. I'm a stone and a half lighter and people are starting to notice. Women in gyms are made up of two types; those who pull their trousers up after they get off a machine, and those who pull them down. The former are there to work out, tone up and burn calories, the latter feel the gym is an extension of their Heat inspired image, they buy the latest sexy skimpy gym-wear, including the low slung trackies that reveal their 'just above bum crack' tattoo and then use each machine on the lowest level for about 45 seconds each abandoning them when they feel an minor ache. When they've finished they leave swigging on bottled water dabbing the sweat off their forehead.

The 6.30am crowd is made up wholly of the former. Serious gym-bunnies. We're all acquainted in an eye-brow raising, half smile kind of way. Those who do the Spin class on Wednesday and Friday seem to talk to each other, everyone else just gets on with what they're their to do. I, being I, now know everyone only by what I've observed. So, in an occasional series, for this read, will get bored and/or forget about it before long, let me introduce you to some of the people from the gym:

Miriam T - can be quite abrupt and rude, especially when people leave the doors open rendering the air conditioning useless. She once commented that I'd really started looking good since coming down the gym. I said I'd lost over a stone, to which she replied 'Wish I could': I wasn't sure whether to give her a hollow reciprocal compliment or to laugh weakly. I did the latter. Actually, I don't think her name is Miriam T at all, it's a name on the signing in list, but I think that might be another women who gets in early. Miriam T will always be Miriam T to me.

The Kid From Fame - The Kid from Fame has a dizzying array of elaborate 80's-chic gym-wear. Cropped lycra tops under a t-shirt made of netting, three quarter length leggings and matching trainers is not unusual. The trainers change with the outfit. Serious about working out, serious about what she looks like when working out.

Tumble Turns - You can tell which of Tumble Turns' many routines she's going to do the moment she walks in the gym. Cycling shorts and she'll be on the bike for ages; running shorts and you know she'll be running. One morning I saw her head for the pool, which the gym overlooks. I couldn't see her in the pool until I worked out that the women powering up and down in a Speedo swimming hat, googles and doing tumble turns was, indeed, Tumble Turns.

The Robot - The robot is a woman who has been put together by a computer calculating the perfect female form. She's 5ft 6", slim, with pert breasts and a round, though not fatty bottom. She has long silky hair, white teeth and a symmetrical face. Her gym kit is subtly colour co-ordinated and fits perfectly without creases. There are no bulges anywhere. However like Laura Croft in Tomb Raider, she doesn't seem real enough to be attractive. She's being gently wooed by the Sales Rep, a man who looks like a sales rep. His tactics so far include writing 'nice bum' on the signing in sheet next to her name, and turning her running machine up whilst she's on it. It's horrible to watch.

Moby - Short and bald, probably not a sexually ambiguous Christian, vegan, techno rock behemoth. Not that it stops me thinking he is.

There are more, lots more...

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Labels: General me

At work we've got a World Cup prediction league going on. After a good first week, I've had a pretty poor run of form and I'm now lying second behind our work placement student who takes whole days off to get ready for England games. I had England v Sweden down as a 1-1 draw. Which is a good thing given that everyone else seems to have England down as winning every game 5-0. So, with nothing in the real world to really play for in the game, my interest was more in gaining some prediction league points...

England score, 1-0 - YES
Sweden equalise, 1-1 - YES
England score again, 2-1 - BOO
Sweden equalise - YES

I'm so confused.

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Labels: Football

I needed some t-shirts, not that this is something you generally needed to know, but it is the reason we went shopping. There hasn't been many tears as a result of losing a stone and a half down the gym in the last year, but there has been a shedload of sweat. My endeavours coupled with particularly unsympathetic washing detergent, has trashed many good and worthy t-shirts. The favourable weather in these parts meant that they needed replacing.

It wasn't the first time we'd gone out with Millie, but due to the heat it was pretty much the first time she could easily be seen in public from her pushchair. As we walked along people (women mostly) would turn and look, nudge their friends and saying 'Ooh look tiny baby'. As she's still pretty small, Millie looks like a brand new born baby, but she has the slightly more controlled demeanour of a six week old, where there for short periods at least, she coos sweetly looking like the most perfect baby in the world... which she is, of course.

When she did cry I took her out of the pram and carried her on my shoulder (a sure fire winner, although I do worry it only stops her crying because it restricts her breathing). As we walked along I began to sense particularly ethereal, barely audible, 'aahhs' from people. Women would tried to catch my eye, but I'm not best at engaging with strangers so I became increasingly conscious of my surrounds. it was like a rather cutesy version of the Blair Witch Project, where you could just about hear voices in the middle distance without ever actually working out which direction they came from.

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Labels: Babies

In China, people will tell you, women will give birth in the middle of a paddy field, sling the baby on their back and carry on working. In Britain the support received is somewhat more thorough. Once pregnant, the mother is assigned a community midwife. This is not necessarily the person who will actually deliver your baby, Emma had three additional midwives during her labour, plus a number of others who appeared and disappeared, and doctors, and anaesthetists, and other people. Then there's the post natal midwives who look after mother and baby. Once out of hospital you resume a brief relationship with the community midwife before being handed over to a health visitor.

The health visitor is part nurse, part social worker. A woman with no portfolio; which is probably why she's so keen to create one. The role is less than clear, she seems to have an array of surgeries, groups and meetings, none of which require pre-booking or an appointment, none of which is compulsory. From speaking to others, they're aim is to be as prescriptive and reactive as possible, scaring and stressing out new mothers at every opportunity. The advice they give is always retrospective and generally inconsistent. Emma's health visitor is full of nervous energy, when she first came over we told her that Millie was pretty much sleeping through the night. "EXCELLENT ARE YOU CALM PEOPLE BECAUSE GENERALLY CALM PEOPLE HAVE CALM BABIES ITS GODD TO BE CALM ISN'T IT, I LIKE CALMNESS, IT'S GOOD, BEING CALM, THAT IS". We were calm people until she walked through the door.

She wanted Emma to attend her post-natal classes held at a surgery a couple of miles away. This is despite the fact Emma already goes to a post-natal group and couldn't drive because of the caesarean. The reason given, breathlessly, was that the children that go are the ones Millie will be going to school with. I've just checked the calendar and Millie is 5 weeks old... school doesn't start for another 1,800 days. Feeling that she should at least try to attend, Emma spent the week trying to work out the logistics. She couldn't do it and had to tell the health visitor at the following week's meeting, the health worker, completely contradicting herself, replied "Oh no, I hadn't expected you to come".

Generally speaking Millie's is doing really well. She's alert, she's contented and sleeps well. We're in the rare position of actually enjoying having a new born baby (as opposed to coping with the culture shock on no sleep). What's more, Emma's feeling pretty good after the caesarean and is recovering well. The only issue is that having thrived in the first week, Millie's been losing a bit of weight, this is obviously something that needs reversing. After each weigh-in the health visitor presents a different pearl of wisdom. Looked at in one perspective, Milie has lost 3 ounces in a week, from another she's gained 5.5 in four weeks (or 5% of her birthweight). Not perfect, but not yet a crisis. When her weight did drop a little, the health worker said Emma shouldn't 'go home and cry about it'. She wasn't planning to, but it did get her pondering whether there was actually something serious going on, something to cry about.

If Emma was to take it all on board she would be eating six times a day, doing nothing and waking up Millie in the middle of the night to feed. Given that waking Millie up for a feed is a fool's errand (she just lolls around utterly uninterested) the net result of taking this advice on board will be to make Emma bloated, lethargic and tired. This, along with the fact it is Emma who has to visit the clinic, it makes the term 'health visitor' something of an anomaly.

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Labels: Babies

As Simon, Islay and I sat watched the first half of the Sweden versus Trinidad and Tobago game we lightly joked about which stereotypes the commentators would trawl to describe the West Indian debutantes. Simon searched for his answer having dismissed that it was the African's that would be labelled 'defensively naive'.

We concluded, well Islay mostly who claimed to have gleaned much from her mother, that comments would be about the colour they would bring to to the tournament, the constant partying of the fans who and above all, their nice smiles.

Indeed all three were insinuated throughout the game, but we hadn't banked on 'the Trinidad and Tobago players should really be wearing flip flops', that the game would have been fairer 'if it had been half a game of football and half a game of cricket' and that their time wasting was just 'them playing at Caribbean pace'.

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Labels: Football

Has hit, hasn't it? We've had a sweepstake at work (I got Croatia and Portugal), the whole thing caused an inordinate amount of excitement, particularly amongst the people whose knowledge extends to knowing that Wayne Rooney plays for Manchester Rovers.

Now, I don't wear novelty Christmas ties to work and I've never been one to dress thematically. A trip round Tesco on the Saturday morning of an England game will tell you that many people do. Lots of people must wake up in the morning and think 'Ooh, England game today, where's my England t-shirt'.

I can just about understand the psychology behind wearing an official England shirt, there's something in the assimilation to affluent, young, fit and celebrated individuals. A vintage England shirt, displays something similar, but a 1966 shirt suggests a deeper, historical appreciation for the game. But what does a generic loosely themed red and white England T-shirt with a number 7 on it say? 'Yes, I want to be assimilated to the affluent, young, fit and celebrated, but I'm clearly none of these and so to accentuate this fact, here's a £6 t-shirt from Asda to prove it.

And what does this fashion for flags on the sides of cars, communicate? Given that they're England flags in England and they only come out during the football it surely says 'I'm English, and I'm going to watch the football on the telly later'. Mindblowing.

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Labels: Football

I know what you're thinking. What was playing on Ruffles' new iPod whilst he made the dinner last night? Playing on shuffle and drawing from the 6827 songs on it, it came up with...

No for the 13th Time - The Wonder Stuff

Bruce Lee - Underworld

Mobeus - Orbital

Mercy in You - Depeche Mode

Hallelujah (Deadstock Mix) - Happy Mondays

Born to be a Dancer - Kaiser Chiefs

Rockin' It - Deejay Punk Roc

Sitting up Straight - Supergrass

Intro - Nas

And me - Beastie Boys

Izzy Izzy Ahh - Missy Elliot

Hit the Hi-Tech Groove - Pop Will Eat Itself

Potion - Ludacris

Highlight of the week on Big Brother has to have been the argument between Sezer and muscle queen Richard. Well not so much the argument but the aftermath. Tourette-y Celebrity Pete took responsibility to comfort Richard in the garden acknowledging that the pervasive bitching was what fuelled the blow-up.

"They're all a bunch of WANKERS" he said, his infliction attacking him once again... "Ooh, for one my tourettes has context." he concluded with pride.

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Labels: Music

Football is a wonderful wonderful game. It is, check out this site. Those who don't follow it should separate the business from the game itself. Its easy to play and understand; difficult to master. It's the same whether you're playing it in the street or at Old Trafford. It has no certainties and offers excitement, drama, boredom, despair and elation, sometimes all in the same game. It gives its fans focus and structure. This World Cup will see a team from Angola, where life expectancy averages 36, and Japan; life expectancy 81, playing on the same stage. It promotes racial, religious and political harmony; Iran and the USA will both be there. If they meet, like they did in France 98 (Iran won), nobody will die.

However, its not without its problems; the growing plague of celebrity football, for example. It enjoys a ridiculous media profile nowadays. It started years ago with Soccer Six, a tournament where teams from Blur and Oasis played against each other at the height of their Britpop battle. This year SKY dedicated a 6 hour telethon to it, despite there being no celebrities on it at all (the tournament included an Iranian celebrity team). Then there's SKY's summer schedule filler Masters Football, where its not unusual to hear things like "There's a goal from Willy Smith for the Motherwell Masters. Of course, he only played once from Motherwell reserves, he spent much of his career at Stenhousemuir reserves playing nearly nine times".

More recently, there's been The Match, where a team of celebrities train for a week to play a team of ex-internationals. This was followed by a charity re-run, sorry, walk through, of the 1986 Everton v Liverpool cup final. Liverpool won when John Durnin (a stalwart of all Liverpool Legends teams) scored after 89 soporific minutes. Durnin's legendary status being defined by his two League Cup appearances for Liverpool in the eighties scoring no goals.

The biggest of the lot was Saturday's Soccer Aid, teams of celebrities and ex-pros, lead by Robbie Williams and Gordon Ramsey, played in front of 70,000 at Old Trafford. Robbie's "England" team got to wear the full official England kit, like they were top professionals when surely they barely merit such an honour. Jonathan Wilkes, who is most famous for being Robbie's best mate (there's a site dedicated to him called Fansite for Jonathan Wilkes (aka Robbie WIlliams' flat mate), has a catalogue of showbiz career failures to his name and is now the closest thing you can get to a professional celebrity footballer.

The commentary, at one point, suggested that Wilkes had indeed been groomed to be exactly that in some kind of celebrity football academy. He had been a youth team player at Everton, where he played with the likes of Michael Ball. Although apparently, this was a rotund no-mark midfielder, not the bubble haired crooner your mum loves.

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Labels: Football

The composition of the Big Brother house follows a familiar pattern this year. Shahbaz was the fluffer, following a tradition that includes Kitten and Mary the Witch. They're not expected to last long, but they contain the requisite level of borderline insanity to kindle a fire of resentment in the house. Meanwhile, the motley assortment of over excited and sexually profligate act as the bellows to keep the fires burning. This allows the bevy of lad mad cannon fodder and boy candy to be the sausages cooked on the bar-b-que they create.

Presumably Channel 4 hadn't expected Shahbaz to move from charmingly bonkers to the early stages of a mental breakdown before his inevitable early exit. The frantic backtracking of Dermot O'Leary and Russell Brand whenever their guests put the words 'Shahbaz' and 'insanity' anywhere near each other suggests the channel are aware of the misjudgement they made when selecting him. Still, now he's out he seems to have steadied; albeit with a belief he has become some kind of Princess Diana figure.

There's little to admire in the house, which is how it should be. Nikki, who insists on over enunciating like a misfiring engine, can't drink tap water because it makes her 'PHYSically SicK' and is afflicted with being 'MIddle CLAss' although she was 'BOrn to have MOney'. She surely won't be tolerated simply because she has a nice bottom. Richard - 'Hi I'm a sexual terrorist' - no you're not you're a waiter - and the truly damaged Lea have styled themselves as a hideous house parents. The pre-requisites for this seem to be their age and experience, although few children would look for experience of 'hardcore pornography' and 'buggery' on any ideal parental check list.

The true mummy and daddy in the house are Imogen and Sezer, who in just over a week have settled into a pipe-and-slippers relationship without any problem. You suspect they will do little more than sit indoors worrying about the kids; the Chinese Jimmy Cranky, Lisa and Pete the 'Tourette-y Celebrity'. The long term aspirations of this duo will surely be curtailed due to the fact they're a bit of a novelty, thirteen weeks of 'WANKBOLLOCKSWHISTLE' will eventually erode any tolerance people will have for him and she's a, food fight/mis-directed vol-u-vent/argument/ejection, waiting to happen.

The evolution of the Mikey, Grace, George love triangle seems to have been born out of general boredom, although it's good to see how this has adversely affected Nikki, who is feeling generally left out because she doesn't have a house boyfriend, like Grace and Imogen, and has never been double penetrated on celluloid like Lea.

All of which leaves the door open to welsh speaking Glyn, who earlier in the week was chastised by Big Brother for 'speaking in code' after a chat in his native tongue with Imogen. This simpleton seems to have the winning formula, he's not offensive to anyone in the house and seems settled to simply sit back and enjoy the daftness around him, like everyone outside it.

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Labels: TV and radio

Some pearls of wisdom from the Midwife of Doom -

DOOOOM! - Her ex-husband once designed an educational leaflet about teenage pregnancy, when he presented his ethnically diverse designs they told him to take the Asian faces off because had only been one unplanned Asian teenage pregnancy in the Cardiff area in 40 years.

DOOOOM! - When she had a baby in Cardiff, she was moved to a ward for 'mature mothers'; she was 28, the average age of a Cardiff mother is 18.

DOOOOM! - Oxford has a terrible heroin problem.

DOOOOM! - If there'd been no intervention during Emma's labour she would simply laboured for days and then died,

DOOOOM! - and so would Millie

DOOOOM! - Level 7 at the John Radcliffe Hospital is where they take all the still born and deformed babies and the babies that have resulted in a maternal death.

DOOOOM! - In this country there area round 7 maternal deaths a year.

DOOOOM! - Maternal death is the biggest killer of young women in the world.

DOOOOM! - A popular celebrity London hospital is not popular with the truly posh because there maternal death rate is 'off the chart'... mainly because 80% of their births are 'too posh to push' caesarian births (national average 23%).

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Labels: Babies

Andy Gray was apoplectic about the pivotal moment in last night's Champions League final. Jens Lehmann's sending off, he said, ruined the game as a spectacle (though not, somewhat perplexingly, 'as a contest'). Richard Keys reinforced this by pointing out that people had spent a lot of money to watch the final (not least, one assumes, SKY themselves).

If football matches are simple 'spectacles' offering cast iron value for money why not make the goals bigger to guarantee goals. Or you could have a ball for each player - after all, who wants to see lumbering defenders hoof the ball into the stand when you've paid good money to see Ronaldinho's exquisite talents? Hell, why not get them to play the game behind closed doors then cut the best bits together; like a Nike advert.

If you didn't see the key moment; Barcelona's passing cut Arsenal to shreds, Samual Eto'o broke through, Lehmann came out and grabbed his ankle dragging him to the ground. The ball squirmed to Guily who slid it home. The referee chose to send Lehmann off and not award the goal because he'd already blown up for a foul. Technically there wasn't much wrong with the decision. The foul was clear and cynical, preventing a clear goal scoring chance. Once the offence was committed and the game was stopped. If anything, the referee was wrong not to send off Lehmann AND play the advantage therefore awarding the goal. In a sense Arsenal got away with it lightly.

Not in the eyes of Gray who managed to lose all sense and objectivity. When Eto'o slipped in to score the equaliser. Gray was adamant he was offside, firstly he wasn't, and secondly surely on borderline decisions like that you give the striker the benefit of the doubt... after all, you don't want to ruin the spectacle do you?

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Labels: Football

Woman standing up: "Have you eaten anything?"
Woman in a wheelchair: "I asked Nath to get me some Pot Noodle, 'e asked me what colour I wanted; i said brown and 'e got me red.... 'im and Naomi are going down the carvery today. S'pose they'd be finished by now."

As if to reinforce this, Emma overheard this as a woman had an internal examination:

Nurse: "Right, this could be a bit uncomfortable, so think of something nice."
Woman: "Oooh, MacDonalds."

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Labels: News

It was, for once, a classic Cup Final. The first Cup Final I remember was in 1978 when Ipswich beat Arsenal 1-0. Since then, of the 28 finals (and 5 replays) only a handful have fallen into the 'classic' category. This year's had everything; goals, near misses, lots of 'what could have beens' and a proper man of the match performance by Steven Gerrard. Oh, and cramp, lots of cramp. All great Cup Finals finish with the pitch looking like a particularly colourful interpretation of the Battle of the Somme. Yes, it was a very satisfying final indeed.

The Cup Final is the one game the super casual football fan will take time out to watch, after all, it is still the only domestic cup final that you can watch live without a SKY subscription. Unfortunately, this means it has become infested with the modern day phenomenon of ' celebrity communal singing'.

Presumably some marketing bod in a record company sees the Cup Final on the BBC as the single most valuable opportunity to present their stars of classical-light opera singing to a captured audience. Therefore, we get Michael Ball and Lesley Garret ladling their shrill talents all over the otherwise rousing FA Cup haka of Abide With Me. This is an corporate occupation of a national institution resulting from the increasing marketability of sexy, accessible, classical artistes such as Charlotte Church and Katherine Jenkins. With good promotion, a smile and a bit of cleavage (or nice hair, in Ball's case) there's good money to be made from selling your £9.97 'Emotions' CD from Tesco without disturbing the tawdry side issues of talent or originality; Jenkins, Church, Garret and Ball all have renditions of Ave Maria on their 'Best of' compilations.

I understand that a corporate marketing executive from EMI will pay a good few grand to the FA to get their man or woman pitchside for 3 minutes but I doubt anyone has been offered a Cup Final ticket and asked who's doing the pre-match sing-a-long before accepting. 70,000 emotionally charged football fans already singing themselves hoarse has, for many years, been quite enough to get the hairs on the back of the neck standing up thank you very much.

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Labels: Football