Bangladeshis don't travel light. Our flight to Dhaka from Dubai was delayed last night, mainly so that the returning passengers could finish emptying Duty Free. They trotted on to the plane clutching half a dozen plastic bags each, which they somehow stowed in the lockers, under the seats and, for all I knew, up their jumpers.
They could have been asked to put their Duty Free in the hold, but that was already bursting to the gills to judge by the volume of baggage that was put on to the carousel. I waited for an hour as more and more bags were added to the pile and was starting to worry that mine hadn't made it, but when it did arrive there was still half a planeload of passengers waiting for their luggage. Most of it seemed to be wrapped up in duvets tied together with string.
I'm out here for the cricket World Cup - "the cup that counts" as the local advertising campaign rather defensively describes it - and the streets have been decked with lights to mark the occasion. Apparently the Government have also taken all unsafe vehicles off the road and we drove past a graveyard of skeletal and burnt-out coaches on our way to Fatullah for England's warm-up match today.
I dread to think what congestion in Dhaka would have been like if they hadn't taken this measure. The taxi ride from the airport to the hotel last night, a ten-mile trip, took over an hour. London can be pretty clogged too, of course, but these roads were jammed five or six vehicles wide.
That doesn't mean that they were five-lane roads, though. Lane discipline is merely a nice idea here and the standard driving procedure is for short accelerations whenever the merest whiff of a gap emerges, followed by sharp breaking and a toot on the horn at whoever stopped your passage.
Nothing so far, however, has quite matched the Indian taxi driver I once had who drove up on to the pavement to get round one bit of gridlock.
It is all part of the impatient approach to life here and it is charming to a point. Our plane had barely landed and was still making its taxi when there was a stampede by the Bangladeshis on board to line up by the exits. Despite the pleas of the stewardesses to sit down, none of them did even though they must have known they would have an enormous wait come baggage reclaim.
There was a swarm of mosquitoes around the carousels and I have spent much of today scratching at bites. I never got round to getting a malaria vaccination but one local told me there is nothing to fear. "Our mosquitoes are very friendly," he said. "No malaria here."
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Lucky 13?
The England cricket team's selection policy for opening batsmen is similar to that used by successive British governments for picking transport ministers. Everyone gets a go in the end.
I'm in Dhaka for the start of the World Cup and this morning's big news is that Kevin Pietersen is being given a go as Andrew Strauss's opening partner in their warm-up match with Canada. I'm surprised that Pietersen hasn't been tried in the position before. His natural aggression would seem suited to the powerplay overs at the start of a match where there are more gaps in the field.
Assuming that he is retained for the first proper match of the tournament, against the Netherlands on Tuesday, Pietersen would be Strauss's thirteenth opening partner in one-day matches and they would be the 21st different first-wicket pair tried since the start of the last World Cup, which is remarkable inconsistency even for England.
The previous 12 to open with Strauss are Trescothick, Bell, Loye, Joyce, Vaughan, Wright, Bopara, Davies, Denly, Kieswetter, Trott and Prior.
I'm in Dhaka for the start of the World Cup and this morning's big news is that Kevin Pietersen is being given a go as Andrew Strauss's opening partner in their warm-up match with Canada. I'm surprised that Pietersen hasn't been tried in the position before. His natural aggression would seem suited to the powerplay overs at the start of a match where there are more gaps in the field.
Assuming that he is retained for the first proper match of the tournament, against the Netherlands on Tuesday, Pietersen would be Strauss's thirteenth opening partner in one-day matches and they would be the 21st different first-wicket pair tried since the start of the last World Cup, which is remarkable inconsistency even for England.
The previous 12 to open with Strauss are Trescothick, Bell, Loye, Joyce, Vaughan, Wright, Bopara, Davies, Denly, Kieswetter, Trott and Prior.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Death row, Terminal 3
There probably are more hellish places to be on a Monday night than Heathrow Terminal 3. Guantanamo Bay, I suppose. The less safe parts of Helmand. At a dinner party with Julian Assange. But not many.
I fly quite a bit for work, usually once a month, and I have spent a fair chunk of the past decade in airports. I don't like the places, from the petty security checks (that ridiculous belief that toothpaste becomes less explosive if placed in a clear plastic bag) to the mark-up that Starbucks charge on a tuna melt panini.
But the worse thing about airports is other people and nowhere quite brings you into contact with the great unwashed like T3. First you are forced to go through Duty Free after passport control and have to barge your way past people who can't go on holiday without stocking up on eight bottles of Smirnoff and a couple of hundred B&H.
Then you are squeezed through a tiny corridor into a barely bigger waiting room where you are packed in like turkeys on a Bernard Matthews farm. If you want to walk anywhere, you trip over bags and limbs.
You just about find a seat between two large ladies reading what I imagine they call "books" but seem to feature 100 pages of photos of Katie Price and Natalie Portman, and then you realise that you cannot read the status of your flight on the iPads that pass for departure boards and so you have to get up and barge past the masses again. At least most flights seem to be taking off. God knows how desperate conditions were here during the great snow-in last December.
Oh well, such is the glamorous life of a journalist. In about an hour, my flight is due to take off for Dhaka, Bangladesh, via Dubai, where I will be covering the cricket World Cup. The waiter in my local Indian tells me that Dhaka is an overcrowded city but surely compared with Heathrow Terminal 3 it will be like the Scottish Highlands.
I fly quite a bit for work, usually once a month, and I have spent a fair chunk of the past decade in airports. I don't like the places, from the petty security checks (that ridiculous belief that toothpaste becomes less explosive if placed in a clear plastic bag) to the mark-up that Starbucks charge on a tuna melt panini.
But the worse thing about airports is other people and nowhere quite brings you into contact with the great unwashed like T3. First you are forced to go through Duty Free after passport control and have to barge your way past people who can't go on holiday without stocking up on eight bottles of Smirnoff and a couple of hundred B&H.
Then you are squeezed through a tiny corridor into a barely bigger waiting room where you are packed in like turkeys on a Bernard Matthews farm. If you want to walk anywhere, you trip over bags and limbs.
You just about find a seat between two large ladies reading what I imagine they call "books" but seem to feature 100 pages of photos of Katie Price and Natalie Portman, and then you realise that you cannot read the status of your flight on the iPads that pass for departure boards and so you have to get up and barge past the masses again. At least most flights seem to be taking off. God knows how desperate conditions were here during the great snow-in last December.
Oh well, such is the glamorous life of a journalist. In about an hour, my flight is due to take off for Dhaka, Bangladesh, via Dubai, where I will be covering the cricket World Cup. The waiter in my local Indian tells me that Dhaka is an overcrowded city but surely compared with Heathrow Terminal 3 it will be like the Scottish Highlands.
Wednesday, February 09, 2011
Archaeology today
So serious is Ms D'Errico about her new career that she has even turned down a place in Dancing with the Stars to go hunting those long-lost cubits.
"This has been a dream of mine since I was 9 or 10," D'Errico told AOL News, which is surely kosher enough for this not to be some weird hoax. "I went to Catholic school and was fascinated by Noah's ark. I would do class projects based on the ark.
"I've been studying this for years and know where the sightings have been. According to my research, the ark lays broken into at least two, but most likely three, pieces. I believe that one of those pieces is in the uppermost Ahora Gorge area, an extremely dangerous area to climb and explore."
Archaeology was never this glamorous when I did it at university, but shouldn't she serve her apprenticeship by prodding muddy fields in Wiltshire with a trowel for a few years first?
Fruitloops have been seeking the ark for centuries, apparently unable to accept that after such a long time the wood might have just rotted. One question that no one seems to have answered, or even considered, is if the ark really did come to rest on top of a mountain, how did Noah get all the animals down the mountain safely?
Maybe he ripped up the ark to make skis for the elephants?
(Hat-tip to the Retronaut)
Monday, February 07, 2011
A question of rock
A couple of months ago I posted the style diktat of Richard Dixon, the Times's chief revise editor, about the difference between rocks and stones. A rock is too big to be thrown by protestors, apparently. We should more correctly say that they throw stones. That's when they are not throwing fire extinguishers.
Protests are so prolific these days that Richard felt moved to circulate his memo again last week, reminding us that even in north Africa, a rock is something you build pyramids with, while a stone is what you throw. All understood.
But what about the difference between rock musicians and blues musicians? That was bothering me today when I read the obituaries of the much-missed guitarist Gary Moore. The BBC, Times, Independent, ABC and most other news outlets called him a rock legend. A few others, including RTE, said that the Belfast-born guitarist was a blues legend.
This is where I confess, to great embarrassment, that I never knew Moore was in Thin Lizzy, the Irish 1970s group who you would definitely call, on the evidence of The Boys Are Back in Town, a rock group. Although Whiskey in the Jar, one of their other hits, is a folk number.
Anyway, to me he had always been a pure out-and-out blues guitarist. One of the finest. And I had never thought of him as a rock guitarist.
On the way in to work this morning, I listened to his Blues Alive album. Other albums of the past 15 years had such titles as Blues for Greeny, Back to the Blues, Power of the Blues and Old New Ballads Blues.
It shouldn't matter that a bluesman was called a rock guitarist, but it jarred. A life defined in one word and it seemed to be the wrong one.
It got me thinking about what is the difference. As and when Eric Clapton breaks his last guitar string, will old Slowhand be called a rock guitarist or a blues legend by the obituarists? I rather think the latter. But what about Jack Bruce, his bandmate in Cream?
How do you categorise Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page or Keith Richards? All were very strongly influenced by the blues, but I suspect that unlike Clapton history will regard them as rockers. Where do the boundaries lie?
I know this is only semantics and that we should just celebrate Moore and his like as wonderfully inventive talents who cannot be pigeonholed, but it should matter. No one ever described Miles Davis as anything other than a jazz trumpeter when he died, for all the weird electronic, hip-hop, trippy stuff he did later in his career. So, I would like to think that we have lost a bluesman first and a rocker second.
Protests are so prolific these days that Richard felt moved to circulate his memo again last week, reminding us that even in north Africa, a rock is something you build pyramids with, while a stone is what you throw. All understood.
This is where I confess, to great embarrassment, that I never knew Moore was in Thin Lizzy, the Irish 1970s group who you would definitely call, on the evidence of The Boys Are Back in Town, a rock group. Although Whiskey in the Jar, one of their other hits, is a folk number.
Anyway, to me he had always been a pure out-and-out blues guitarist. One of the finest. And I had never thought of him as a rock guitarist.
On the way in to work this morning, I listened to his Blues Alive album. Other albums of the past 15 years had such titles as Blues for Greeny, Back to the Blues, Power of the Blues and Old New Ballads Blues.
It shouldn't matter that a bluesman was called a rock guitarist, but it jarred. A life defined in one word and it seemed to be the wrong one.
It got me thinking about what is the difference. As and when Eric Clapton breaks his last guitar string, will old Slowhand be called a rock guitarist or a blues legend by the obituarists? I rather think the latter. But what about Jack Bruce, his bandmate in Cream?
How do you categorise Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page or Keith Richards? All were very strongly influenced by the blues, but I suspect that unlike Clapton history will regard them as rockers. Where do the boundaries lie?
I know this is only semantics and that we should just celebrate Moore and his like as wonderfully inventive talents who cannot be pigeonholed, but it should matter. No one ever described Miles Davis as anything other than a jazz trumpeter when he died, for all the weird electronic, hip-hop, trippy stuff he did later in his career. So, I would like to think that we have lost a bluesman first and a rocker second.
A grand day out
I wonder why they are wearing their rucksacks on the wrong way round. Is it so that they can get to their sandwiches more easily?
Saturday, January 29, 2011
The forgotten Waugh
What first stirred his rage was an anonymous staff recommendation in the Piccadilly store for Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, which the reviewer had called "her most evocative novel".
"Exceptional ignorance," Hendo says and charges off to find a salesperson at whom he brandishes the transgendered card. "Doesn't that strike you as odd?" he asks. "There's a rather embarrassing mistake." The shop assistant looks blank and says that he has never read Brideshead.
"But you must have heard of Evelyn Waugh," Henderson continues. "He was a great writer and it is a he. You work in a bookshop. You should know such things."
Irritated, Hendo stomps round a selection of other London Waterstone's stores, collecting evidence that the staff who write their recommendations are idiots. He found lots of poor spelling, worse grammar and, in a woeful misunderstanding of the date of the Peloponnesian War, a volume of Thucydides that is described as "an overview and analysis of the early 20th century".
Henderson laments Waterstone's no longer employing people with degrees in English Literature. I suppose one advantage of the recession and the rocketing graduate unemployment is that he may soon find plenty of those again stacking shelves in bookshops.
Abu Derby
I'm in Abu Dhabi for a few days to cover the first English club rugby match to be played outside England. London Wasps v Harlequins at the seven-star Emirates Palace, tomorrow night in front of half a dozen bored camels and a crowd of up to 5,000.
They're playing on a turf pitch that looks lush and immaculate, a far cry from the bog that these two London teams played on when they met at the Twickenham Stoop three weeks ago. Genuine Colombian grass, I was told by a photographer. I think he was talking about the pitch, maybe he was offering me something. He did have a funny squint.
Perhaps the Wasps management were on the Colombian stuff when they came up with the idea of moving the match out here. It's a bold venture to take a sport out of its natural habitat. Football hasn't yet had the courage to move a competitive fixture out of the UK, for all the talk a few years ago of a "39th game" being played in Singapore and such places.
You risk annoying your season ticket-holders for a start, although the NFL seemingly put fan loyalty behind money with little difficulty when they decided to stage an annual league match in London. And in American football you only get eight home games a season.
But tomorrow's match is only an LV Cup game, little more than a competition for development sides, shoved in between the Heineken Cup and the Six Nations. I wonder how many of the Wasps season ticket-holders who are griping would have bothered to go to Adams Park this weekend. Wasps say that 200 of them have made the flight at Lord knows what expense, while those who haven't travelled will get a refund.
I appear to be the only British reporter out here, although others may fly in for the game tonight. To justify the expense, the paper wanted 1,000 words on the venture yesterday, which is all well and good and, you know, sort of my job, but it did mean that I missed the chance to see Daniel Barenboim, the maestro pianist and conductor, performing with the Berliner Staatskapelle last night.
The Wasps fans, an uncultured bunch, were oblivious that Barenboim was playing in their hotel auditorium. They were more concerned with whether Serge Betsen would be playing rugby tomorrow.
Told earlier in the day that the concert (Mozart piano concerto, played by Barenboim, and Tchaikovsky's fifth symphony) was sold out, I did my usual trick when I have a big writing assignment and too much time in which to get it done: I titted around on the internet.
Eventually, with an hour and a half to go to the concert (but still three hours before my deadline), I went for a stroll in the hope that I might get inspiration and bumped into a woman selling a spare ticket.
£50, probably a snip for Barenboim. Certainly the cheapest thing that I could find to buy in the hotel, where even the buffet lunch cost more than that.
I was so tempted but I hadn't even started writing my piece. 1,000 words in an hour and a half is doable when you have done the research, but it would have been pushing it and I could have churned out bilge.
My colleague Simon Barnes, when asked what he does when he can't find the inspiration to write a great piece, likes to reply: "Simple, I write a bad one." Which is a nice line, but he can probably afford to write a bad piece more often than someone making their way like I am.
So conscience prevailed. I returned to my laptop and wrote a semi-decent 1,000 words. The subs didn't mess around with it, anyway, which is normally a good sign. But I was kicking myself.
And then blessed providence smiled on me. I discovered that Barenboim was doing a second concert, of Tchaikovsky's fourth, at 11am this morning for schoolchildren. My days of passing for 18 being long gone, I trotted down to the hotel prepared to nab a child from the swimming pool if it meant that I could get a ticket as their guardian. Although now I think about it, I could have got more than just a ticket for child-snatching.
No need for it, though. A kind teacher had a few spares and was happy to let me have one free of charge. I offered cash but she refused. The tickets had been given free to her school and she was glad that a seat wasn't going to waste. It was so nice in this country that seem so wealth-obsessed to see such generosity. The concert was good, too. But rather too many children.
They're playing on a turf pitch that looks lush and immaculate, a far cry from the bog that these two London teams played on when they met at the Twickenham Stoop three weeks ago. Genuine Colombian grass, I was told by a photographer. I think he was talking about the pitch, maybe he was offering me something. He did have a funny squint.
Perhaps the Wasps management were on the Colombian stuff when they came up with the idea of moving the match out here. It's a bold venture to take a sport out of its natural habitat. Football hasn't yet had the courage to move a competitive fixture out of the UK, for all the talk a few years ago of a "39th game" being played in Singapore and such places.
You risk annoying your season ticket-holders for a start, although the NFL seemingly put fan loyalty behind money with little difficulty when they decided to stage an annual league match in London. And in American football you only get eight home games a season.
But tomorrow's match is only an LV Cup game, little more than a competition for development sides, shoved in between the Heineken Cup and the Six Nations. I wonder how many of the Wasps season ticket-holders who are griping would have bothered to go to Adams Park this weekend. Wasps say that 200 of them have made the flight at Lord knows what expense, while those who haven't travelled will get a refund.
The Wasps fans, an uncultured bunch, were oblivious that Barenboim was playing in their hotel auditorium. They were more concerned with whether Serge Betsen would be playing rugby tomorrow.
Told earlier in the day that the concert (Mozart piano concerto, played by Barenboim, and Tchaikovsky's fifth symphony) was sold out, I did my usual trick when I have a big writing assignment and too much time in which to get it done: I titted around on the internet.
Eventually, with an hour and a half to go to the concert (but still three hours before my deadline), I went for a stroll in the hope that I might get inspiration and bumped into a woman selling a spare ticket.
£50, probably a snip for Barenboim. Certainly the cheapest thing that I could find to buy in the hotel, where even the buffet lunch cost more than that.
I was so tempted but I hadn't even started writing my piece. 1,000 words in an hour and a half is doable when you have done the research, but it would have been pushing it and I could have churned out bilge.
My colleague Simon Barnes, when asked what he does when he can't find the inspiration to write a great piece, likes to reply: "Simple, I write a bad one." Which is a nice line, but he can probably afford to write a bad piece more often than someone making their way like I am.
So conscience prevailed. I returned to my laptop and wrote a semi-decent 1,000 words. The subs didn't mess around with it, anyway, which is normally a good sign. But I was kicking myself.
And then blessed providence smiled on me. I discovered that Barenboim was doing a second concert, of Tchaikovsky's fourth, at 11am this morning for schoolchildren. My days of passing for 18 being long gone, I trotted down to the hotel prepared to nab a child from the swimming pool if it meant that I could get a ticket as their guardian. Although now I think about it, I could have got more than just a ticket for child-snatching.
No need for it, though. A kind teacher had a few spares and was happy to let me have one free of charge. I offered cash but she refused. The tickets had been given free to her school and she was glad that a seat wasn't going to waste. It was so nice in this country that seem so wealth-obsessed to see such generosity. The concert was good, too. But rather too many children.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Shades of Andy Gray
Julian Assange must be kicking himself that he didn't break the news on WikiLeaks first that a middle-aged former footballer from Glasgow is a bit of a sexist. It fits into the same "does the Pope shit in the woods" camp as all those telegrams revealing that diplomats can be a bit bitchy about other countries.
I'm generalising, of course. Not all fiftysomething Glaswegian ex-sportsmen have unenlightened views on equality. Some are too pissed to say anything coherent.
What was so wrong about the Andy Gray/Richard Keys double act (now taking bookings for the touring production of Life on Mars on Ice) was not the patronising assumption that a woman who has passed all her refereeing exams and had already been a linesman in a men's Premier League match without crisis (Sunderland v Blackpool in December) might not know the offside rule.
It was the suggestion that the offside rule is difficult to understand. It may take up 200 words of the rule book, but the basic principle is pretty straightforward. There is no hidden mystery.
What is hard is applying the rule - ie, being able to look at three points of play at once (where two attackers are and where the last defender is in relation to them), which one might assume a multitasking woman could do more easily than a man - and having the courage to back your judgment, especially in the face of half a dozen snarling louts, plus the mob in the stands, who think you are blind.
Not to mention the idiots like Gray and Keys in the studio who then use super slow-motion to expose you. Why any man or woman would want to be in that position is beyond me.
Of course, Massey made these neanderthals look even more stupid by showing superb judgment and courage in deciding not to rule Liverpool's opening goal offside.
The Wolves supporters and players may have questioned her ability then, but TV supported her professionalism. It was not her knowledge of the rule, but her application of it that counted.
Anyway, the offside rule as it stands is stupid, in my opinion. Too often, a fine attacking move is stopped by a very marginal decision.
Even when the linesman is correct, the defence usually has more than enough time to respond to an attacking move that begins with an offside pass. I'd personally change the rule so that you are only offside if you are five yards or so in front of the last defender.
Then again, I'd also amend the rules of football to legalise hacking and tripping, which was one of the sticking points that led to the split from rugby in 1863.
The sooner defences are allowed to mow down attackers and get away with it, the sooner we lose the sight of players diving over imaginary boots to try and con the referees into giving them a free kick.
What was so wrong about the Andy Gray/Richard Keys double act (now taking bookings for the touring production of Life on Mars on Ice) was not the patronising assumption that a woman who has passed all her refereeing exams and had already been a linesman in a men's Premier League match without crisis (Sunderland v Blackpool in December) might not know the offside rule.
It was the suggestion that the offside rule is difficult to understand. It may take up 200 words of the rule book, but the basic principle is pretty straightforward. There is no hidden mystery.
What is hard is applying the rule - ie, being able to look at three points of play at once (where two attackers are and where the last defender is in relation to them), which one might assume a multitasking woman could do more easily than a man - and having the courage to back your judgment, especially in the face of half a dozen snarling louts, plus the mob in the stands, who think you are blind.
Not to mention the idiots like Gray and Keys in the studio who then use super slow-motion to expose you. Why any man or woman would want to be in that position is beyond me.
Of course, Massey made these neanderthals look even more stupid by showing superb judgment and courage in deciding not to rule Liverpool's opening goal offside.
The Wolves supporters and players may have questioned her ability then, but TV supported her professionalism. It was not her knowledge of the rule, but her application of it that counted.
Anyway, the offside rule as it stands is stupid, in my opinion. Too often, a fine attacking move is stopped by a very marginal decision.
Even when the linesman is correct, the defence usually has more than enough time to respond to an attacking move that begins with an offside pass. I'd personally change the rule so that you are only offside if you are five yards or so in front of the last defender.
Then again, I'd also amend the rules of football to legalise hacking and tripping, which was one of the sticking points that led to the split from rugby in 1863.
The sooner defences are allowed to mow down attackers and get away with it, the sooner we lose the sight of players diving over imaginary boots to try and con the referees into giving them a free kick.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Spin doctor kept diary shocker
Well would you believe it? The Mail on the Sunday has the scoop - and has dedicated almost 30 paragraphs to it - that Andy Coulson kept a diary while he was David Cameron's press secretary.
This story fits into the same "no shit" category as the "Football manager says his team can win on Saturday" stories that somehow get page-leads every day of the week.
Surely it would be a better story if Coulson, who stood down last week because of an investigation into "phone hacking" while he was a tabloid editor, had not kept one and had suddenly realised that his memory was a bit ropey.
Suppose Coulson had started in the job with all sorts of good intentions, like the rest of us on January 1, and just found that he never got round to it? This would be a far better story...
"Former journalist with access to lots of gossip forgets to write any of it down"
By Philippa Page
Andy Coulson was frantically ringing round all his contacts in the Conservative Party last night asking if anyone could remember what Nick said to Dave when they were trying to form a coalition.
The former Downing Street spin doctor is trawling through emails and blogs desperate to find some snippets of gossip that he can use to pad out his forthcoming memoirs after suddenly realising on resigning his post that he had forgotten to keep a diary.
"Bugger, bugger, bugger," Coulson told this paper when contacted. "I kept meaning to find a quiet evening to go back and update the blank pages but just never found the time. Before I knew it, I was three years behind and frankly I struggle to remember what happened last week.
"If I just make it all up, will anyone notice? Surely that's what Alastair Campbell did and he got a million quid for his diary."
He was also hoping that Eric Pickles had forgotten to delete the past three years of voicemails on his mobile phone. "Eric's always got good stories, he won't mind if I nick some of them," Coulson said.
Among the events of the past three years that Coulson wishes he had jotted down some thoughts on at the time is the entire general election campaign in 2010. "We won, didn't we?" he asked. "Oh no, hang on..."
When pressed on whether he could name any turning points in the campaign, he referred to the three party leaders appearing on "that TV programme where they stood behind lecterns and said they agreed with Nick ... was it called The Weakest Link?" and said that he was sure that someone called Mrs Duffy played an important role in making Gordon Brown look stupid.
"Was she the woman who put the cat in the bin?" he asked. "I'm sure Guido blogged something about her. I'll just rewrite what he said."
Asked to discuss the private conversations he had with David Cameron about policy, Coulson said: "Huskies. And Hoodies. I think we like both of them. And, er, there was something about inheritance tax. Oh I wish I'd bothered to write it down."
A substantial part of the book will detail the tempestuous relationship Coulson had with Steve Hilton, Cameron's strategist. At the moment the chapter reads: "Why Hilton is a cock: No 1...."
"I'll ask some of the research department boys how to pad that out," Coulson said.
Publishing sources said that if he could scrape together enough legally-defensible titbits to form a book, it would cause the same kind of controversy as diaries published by Dale Winton or Bungle from Rainbow.
This story fits into the same "no shit" category as the "Football manager says his team can win on Saturday" stories that somehow get page-leads every day of the week.
Surely it would be a better story if Coulson, who stood down last week because of an investigation into "phone hacking" while he was a tabloid editor, had not kept one and had suddenly realised that his memory was a bit ropey.
Suppose Coulson had started in the job with all sorts of good intentions, like the rest of us on January 1, and just found that he never got round to it? This would be a far better story...
"Former journalist with access to lots of gossip forgets to write any of it down"
By Philippa Page
The former Downing Street spin doctor is trawling through emails and blogs desperate to find some snippets of gossip that he can use to pad out his forthcoming memoirs after suddenly realising on resigning his post that he had forgotten to keep a diary.
"Bugger, bugger, bugger," Coulson told this paper when contacted. "I kept meaning to find a quiet evening to go back and update the blank pages but just never found the time. Before I knew it, I was three years behind and frankly I struggle to remember what happened last week.
"If I just make it all up, will anyone notice? Surely that's what Alastair Campbell did and he got a million quid for his diary."
He was also hoping that Eric Pickles had forgotten to delete the past three years of voicemails on his mobile phone. "Eric's always got good stories, he won't mind if I nick some of them," Coulson said.
Among the events of the past three years that Coulson wishes he had jotted down some thoughts on at the time is the entire general election campaign in 2010. "We won, didn't we?" he asked. "Oh no, hang on..."
When pressed on whether he could name any turning points in the campaign, he referred to the three party leaders appearing on "that TV programme where they stood behind lecterns and said they agreed with Nick ... was it called The Weakest Link?" and said that he was sure that someone called Mrs Duffy played an important role in making Gordon Brown look stupid.
"Was she the woman who put the cat in the bin?" he asked. "I'm sure Guido blogged something about her. I'll just rewrite what he said."
Asked to discuss the private conversations he had with David Cameron about policy, Coulson said: "Huskies. And Hoodies. I think we like both of them. And, er, there was something about inheritance tax. Oh I wish I'd bothered to write it down."
A substantial part of the book will detail the tempestuous relationship Coulson had with Steve Hilton, Cameron's strategist. At the moment the chapter reads: "Why Hilton is a cock: No 1...."
"I'll ask some of the research department boys how to pad that out," Coulson said.
Publishing sources said that if he could scrape together enough legally-defensible titbits to form a book, it would cause the same kind of controversy as diaries published by Dale Winton or Bungle from Rainbow.
Tea-bagging the Chancellor
Labour's change of Shadow Chancellor last week led to a few smutty jokes about Ed Miliband losing the use of his Johnson and jiggling his Balls, but the best puerile comment came from an unexpected source.
Hallelujah for the Financial Times sub-editor, perhaps a frustated Carry On script-writer, who latched on to a comment by George Osborne about the tenacity of Ed Balls and puffed it as a pull-quote. According to the FT, "Osborne expects Balls to be down his throat 24 hours a day".
Well, no one can blame an old public school boy for hankering after a few pleasures, but surely he has an economy to sort out.
Hallelujah for the Financial Times sub-editor, perhaps a frustated Carry On script-writer, who latched on to a comment by George Osborne about the tenacity of Ed Balls and puffed it as a pull-quote. According to the FT, "Osborne expects Balls to be down his throat 24 hours a day".
Well, no one can blame an old public school boy for hankering after a few pleasures, but surely he has an economy to sort out.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Speaking banal of the dead
One of my bugbears about modern journalism is how editors feel the need to personalise stories about murdered women or children (but very rarely men) by using their first name in headlines. Even my own paper follows this convention, which to me always seems disrespectful to the dead and their families.
The tragic death of Joanna Yeates over Christmas has been covered with an array of headlines featuring "Joanna" or "Jo". I'm asuming she liked to be known as Jo, although suspect it would not have made any difference, Jo being a nice short word to puff in 72 point on the front page and flog some extra papers off a sensationalised claim.
Nothing, though, has been written about this desperately sad story that is more offensive than this drivel churned out by Liz Jones in the Daily Mail over the weekend.
Under the yucky headline "Is lovely Jo just becoming another thumbnail on the police website?", the banal Jones woman follows Yeates's final steps, primarily whingeing about irrelevancies and demonstrating her own hideous slavishness to consumerism.
Who cares that the food served in the last pub Yeates ate in is a bit crap or that they can't spell Laurent Perrier? Would it really have made her death more bearable if her last night out had been a bit more swanky, as Jones suggests? How on earth does this woman know what Yeates was feeling as she bought her pizza or neared her home?
Is it really a travesty that cars aren't slowing as they pass the place where the body was found, or that someone left flowers but didn't write on the card?
Worse of all is her dreadful conclusion, suggesting that the killer avoided the Clifton Suspension Bridge because he didn't want to pay the 50p toll and then giving us a very boring anecdote about how the traffic hooted at Jones because she didn't have enough change for the bridge herself.
Ghastly woman.
Every time I feel depressed that I am going nowhere in my career, I need to be grateful that I don't work for the Daily Mail and that I don't write such self-absorbed toss as Liz Jones.
And then I look at the sales figures for the Mail compared with The Times and feel depressed again.
The tragic death of Joanna Yeates over Christmas has been covered with an array of headlines featuring "Joanna" or "Jo". I'm asuming she liked to be known as Jo, although suspect it would not have made any difference, Jo being a nice short word to puff in 72 point on the front page and flog some extra papers off a sensationalised claim.
Nothing, though, has been written about this desperately sad story that is more offensive than this drivel churned out by Liz Jones in the Daily Mail over the weekend.
Under the yucky headline "Is lovely Jo just becoming another thumbnail on the police website?", the banal Jones woman follows Yeates's final steps, primarily whingeing about irrelevancies and demonstrating her own hideous slavishness to consumerism.
Who cares that the food served in the last pub Yeates ate in is a bit crap or that they can't spell Laurent Perrier? Would it really have made her death more bearable if her last night out had been a bit more swanky, as Jones suggests? How on earth does this woman know what Yeates was feeling as she bought her pizza or neared her home?
Is it really a travesty that cars aren't slowing as they pass the place where the body was found, or that someone left flowers but didn't write on the card?
Worse of all is her dreadful conclusion, suggesting that the killer avoided the Clifton Suspension Bridge because he didn't want to pay the 50p toll and then giving us a very boring anecdote about how the traffic hooted at Jones because she didn't have enough change for the bridge herself.
Ghastly woman.
Every time I feel depressed that I am going nowhere in my career, I need to be grateful that I don't work for the Daily Mail and that I don't write such self-absorbed toss as Liz Jones.
And then I look at the sales figures for the Mail compared with The Times and feel depressed again.
Going round the clock
In the unlikely event that you are reading Questing Vole as I type, you have only a few minutes to get over to this website and see something historic happening.
At just after 5.15pm today, the national debt in Great Britain will tick over to £1 trillion. It has been increasing at the rate of £7,000 every second and the interest paid on it last year amounted to more than £42 billion.
A rather sobering thought whenever we hear people moan about the odd million being trimmed off council spending here and there. How on earth do we get out of this mess?
At just after 5.15pm today, the national debt in Great Britain will tick over to £1 trillion. It has been increasing at the rate of £7,000 every second and the interest paid on it last year amounted to more than £42 billion.
A rather sobering thought whenever we hear people moan about the odd million being trimmed off council spending here and there. How on earth do we get out of this mess?
Thought for the day
I find Sunday morning church like watching cricket matches played in Australia: I like the experience but it is always on at the wrong time. Whenever I can stir myself, I have a good time. Mostly I prefer my bed more.
Disgraceful, but I do try to redeem myself with a once-a-month evensong. Last night, after a beautiful service at All Saints in Blackheath, I was buttonholed by the vicar who tried to persuade me to come along to a 10.30am one Sunday.
"Ah, um, but it clashes with the Archers omnibus," I stuttered, expecting to be sent straight to hell for preferring a radio soap opera to holy communion, but the priest's response was charming.
"Yes, but you can't get me on the iPlayer," he said.
A fellow congregant then suggested that I bring a small radio to listen to The Archers during the service. It's things like that which make me like the Church of England. It is religion for the masses, not the Masses.
Disgraceful, but I do try to redeem myself with a once-a-month evensong. Last night, after a beautiful service at All Saints in Blackheath, I was buttonholed by the vicar who tried to persuade me to come along to a 10.30am one Sunday.
"Ah, um, but it clashes with the Archers omnibus," I stuttered, expecting to be sent straight to hell for preferring a radio soap opera to holy communion, but the priest's response was charming.
"Yes, but you can't get me on the iPlayer," he said.
A fellow congregant then suggested that I bring a small radio to listen to The Archers during the service. It's things like that which make me like the Church of England. It is religion for the masses, not the Masses.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Miliband talks tough on strike action, possibly
Words of wisdom from Ross on Unenlightened Commentary:
But the batsman missed, so the bowler, being a sporting sort, sent another easier-to-hit ball down at Graveney and was duly the first to congratulate him when he reached his hundred.
Marr's interview tactic is similar, softer even than David Frost ("Good morning minister, and what did you have for breakfast?"), whom he replaced, and there are some who think that he goes easier on Labour politicians, although it could also be argued that the gentler they are treated, the more likely they might be to let their true feelings out.
Anyway, Miliband did get a soft run this morning and still came across as an over-earnest sixth former but he has hardly come up with any policy to be quizzed on in his four months in the job and bashing him for the policies of the last Government would just be dull.
What was interesting, though, were the strong terms in which he condemned the planned transport and public sector strikes due to coincide with the royal wedding on April 29.
They weren't weasel-words or prevarication, he said that he was "appalled" at the idea and that strikes were a sign of failure on the unions' part as much as on the employers'. I hope we'll see him walking with the police if there are any protests on wedding day.
Of course, having won the leadership only with union support, Miliband has to make it clear he is not under their thumb, but it is also true that Miliband can argue for the sort of change in the unions that David Cameron would find harder to achieve.
If Miliband is to take his party back towards the centre and reassure people that Labour is on their side (and I can't believe that most people agree with the militant unions), he has to take them on.
This needs to be about more than words. He should make it clear that he will not accept funding from unions that hold strikes nor invite them to social or political party occasions. The day that Ed Miliband tells Bob Crow to grow up and stop being such a selfish pillock would be the day when he becomes a credible alternative PM.
"I don't want to be too harsh on Ed Miliband because I think we've got a lot in common. I'm never going to be Prime Minister either."The Labour Party leader's appearance on the Andrew Marr show this morning reminded me of a story I was once told by Tom Graveney, the former England and Worcestershire batsman of the match in which he made his 100th first-class hundred. Graveney had got to 96 when the bowler, knowing of the landmark, sent down the gentlest of leg-side long-hops, expecting Graveney to smack it to the boundary.
But the batsman missed, so the bowler, being a sporting sort, sent another easier-to-hit ball down at Graveney and was duly the first to congratulate him when he reached his hundred.
Marr's interview tactic is similar, softer even than David Frost ("Good morning minister, and what did you have for breakfast?"), whom he replaced, and there are some who think that he goes easier on Labour politicians, although it could also be argued that the gentler they are treated, the more likely they might be to let their true feelings out.
Anyway, Miliband did get a soft run this morning and still came across as an over-earnest sixth former but he has hardly come up with any policy to be quizzed on in his four months in the job and bashing him for the policies of the last Government would just be dull.
What was interesting, though, were the strong terms in which he condemned the planned transport and public sector strikes due to coincide with the royal wedding on April 29.
They weren't weasel-words or prevarication, he said that he was "appalled" at the idea and that strikes were a sign of failure on the unions' part as much as on the employers'. I hope we'll see him walking with the police if there are any protests on wedding day.
Of course, having won the leadership only with union support, Miliband has to make it clear he is not under their thumb, but it is also true that Miliband can argue for the sort of change in the unions that David Cameron would find harder to achieve.
If Miliband is to take his party back towards the centre and reassure people that Labour is on their side (and I can't believe that most people agree with the militant unions), he has to take them on.
This needs to be about more than words. He should make it clear that he will not accept funding from unions that hold strikes nor invite them to social or political party occasions. The day that Ed Miliband tells Bob Crow to grow up and stop being such a selfish pillock would be the day when he becomes a credible alternative PM.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Badda-bing
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A case could be made that Palin's target poster is more aggressive, more active than the Democrats. The crosshairs show the act of shooting from the point of view of the shooter; the bull's-eye shows it from the view of the shot. I say that both are irrelevant.
Look, Republicans like guns. That is not news. Sometimes they even shoot their friends in the face with one, as Dick Cheney did while out duck-hunting a few years ago (something for which, it was claimed last year, he has still not apologised). It's all harmless, they might say, and understandable that some will use military metaphors or symbols in their campaigning.
But generally almost all Republicans, especially, one trusts, those running for public office, do not advocate using firearms as the way to make a debating point. And their supporters do understand that if a crosshair is painted over a state it is not a call to arms.
Jared Loughner, who is registered as an independent voter in Arizona rather than a Republican and who did not vote in the November mid-terms, appears to have been a mentally unhinged, loner with a history of drug use and a hatred of society. Textbook dickhead, in other words.
But the fact that he shot a Democratic congresswoman does not make the Republicans accessories to his actions, no matter how supportive they are of the second amendment or how polemical their campaigning imagery. To recoin a phrase, Fox News and Rush Limbaugh do not kill people; dickheads kill people.
Similarly, it really is quite lame of the Republicans to try to defend themselves by digging up examples of the Democrats using military metaphors. Who cares? You almost feel that some Republicans want one of their own to be gunned down by a man in a Che Guevara T-shirt so they can prove that fruitloops come from the Left as well.
In their responses to the tragedy yesterday, Barack Obama and Sarah Palin showed why one of them is suited to national politics and why one is second-grade. The Palin 2012 campaign had its chance to make her look presidential and instead she appeared petty, while Obama, even if some found his tears insincere and his words too scripted, caught the right mood.
It is a time for sympathy, regret and being part of a community, not for playing the victim or shouting "we'll they're just as bad as us".
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Charity drive for Queensland
Normally at this stage of an England cricket tour, I would be writing a piece about how desperately boring it is that a thrilling series of Test matches should be followed by one unmemorable one-day match after another, but some good may yet come from the two Twenty20 matches and seven 50-over games.
England's players have agreed to donate part of their match fees from this morning's match to the Queensland flood relief and after the game players from both sides went into the crowd to press the flesh and pass the donations bucket. With 40,000 spectators, it is hoped that a fair bit was raised.
Charity is to continue. Kevin Pietersen has said he will auction his Ashes shirt and bat for the flood relief effort, while Shane Warne and Darren Gough are arranging a match between "legends" to raise more money. New South Wales cricket team has agreed to donate the gate receipts from their match with Queensland the day before England play Australia in Brisbane on January 29.
It is easy to forget that natural disasters hurt developed countries just as much as third world countries. People rightly give money when there are floods in Bangladesh or hurricanes in the Caribbean, but the disruption to life and the cost of remedying it in Queensland after these floods - which have covered an area the size of France and Germany - is just as great, probably greater. Those who have a quality of life miss it more when it is taken away.
It is heartwarming that in the aftermath of the Ashes victory and a few days after the multimillion-dollar auction for the Indian Premier League, cricketers and cricket fans can dig deep to help our fellow humans in need.
England's players have agreed to donate part of their match fees from this morning's match to the Queensland flood relief and after the game players from both sides went into the crowd to press the flesh and pass the donations bucket. With 40,000 spectators, it is hoped that a fair bit was raised.
Charity is to continue. Kevin Pietersen has said he will auction his Ashes shirt and bat for the flood relief effort, while Shane Warne and Darren Gough are arranging a match between "legends" to raise more money. New South Wales cricket team has agreed to donate the gate receipts from their match with Queensland the day before England play Australia in Brisbane on January 29.
It is easy to forget that natural disasters hurt developed countries just as much as third world countries. People rightly give money when there are floods in Bangladesh or hurricanes in the Caribbean, but the disruption to life and the cost of remedying it in Queensland after these floods - which have covered an area the size of France and Germany - is just as great, probably greater. Those who have a quality of life miss it more when it is taken away.
It is heartwarming that in the aftermath of the Ashes victory and a few days after the multimillion-dollar auction for the Indian Premier League, cricketers and cricket fans can dig deep to help our fellow humans in need.
Friday, January 07, 2011
OK, we can celebrate now
Blimey, we won the Ashes. Never in doubt, of course, not even after the Perth defeat. Rather swamped with tasks for the paper on this whole Ashes-winning malarkey, but will jot some thoughts down later.
Just leave you with this quote from Duncan Fletcher, the former England coach: "In the next few years, England will need to beat better sides than Australia."
Possibly the most damning verdict on the strength of Australia. And he is right: there are bigger fish to fry and while this win is jolly nice, it is not quite the same as the win in 2005, when England had to beat some of the all-time greats of the game.
Australia are so weak at the moment that an England second XI, certainly our second-string bowlers, could have the better of them. An England Reserves of Carberry, Adams (or Lyth or, even better, Trescothick), Bopara, Hildreth, Morgan, Davies, Rashid, Broad, Finn, Onions, Panesar/Shahzad would be pretty impressive.
India, the world's No 1 side, come to England this summer. Beat them, Sri Lanka and South Africa and then we can start swanking about as if we rule the roost.
Just leave you with this quote from Duncan Fletcher, the former England coach: "In the next few years, England will need to beat better sides than Australia."
Possibly the most damning verdict on the strength of Australia. And he is right: there are bigger fish to fry and while this win is jolly nice, it is not quite the same as the win in 2005, when England had to beat some of the all-time greats of the game.
Australia are so weak at the moment that an England second XI, certainly our second-string bowlers, could have the better of them. An England Reserves of Carberry, Adams (or Lyth or, even better, Trescothick), Bopara, Hildreth, Morgan, Davies, Rashid, Broad, Finn, Onions, Panesar/Shahzad would be pretty impressive.
India, the world's No 1 side, come to England this summer. Beat them, Sri Lanka and South Africa and then we can start swanking about as if we rule the roost.
Sunday, January 02, 2011
Death List 2011
Well that was a miserable start to the new year. The writers of The Archers, the Radio 4 soap opera, marked the show's 60th anniversary this evening by killing off nice, bumbling Nigel Pargetter, the village toff. At least, I think they have deaded him. The episode ended with him falling off the roof of Lower Loxley, his stately home, having climbed up there in a Force 8 gale to unhitch a Happy New Year banner that was tied to the chimneys.
It is possible that Nigel is not dead - we shall find out at 7pm tomorrow - and will instead spend the next few months or years (depending on how much the actor needs the money and how good he is at begging the editor) in a coma in Felperham General Hospital. Much like Ariel Sharon, in fact.
Which brings me to the Death List for 2011, which for the fifth year in a row has the former Israeli Prime Minister named as one of the 50 celebrities most likely to shuffle off during the next 12 months.
I have been fascinated by the Death List since I discovered it ten years ago. The list was first drawn up in 1987 by a bunch of students in a pub at Warwick University, who were surprised to hear the news of the death of Cary Grant and thought they would see if they could predict which other famous people would pass away that year. Only one of their original list - bizarrely, the Spanish guitarist Andres Segovia - obliged them. Since the internet came along, the Death List has grown from a private gag to a global death-hunt.
Each year, they select a list of 50 people whose death will be noted by the mass media and see how many don't make it to New Year's Eve. It may sound macabre, but it is also a sort of tribute to the accomplishments of the people on the list, some of whom we may have thought died years ago.
You can only have 25 people from the previous year's list, which shows the faith they have placed in Sharon finally slipping out of his coma. Looking through their lists, it seems to be an in-joke that Clive Dunn, who played Corporal Jones in Dad's Army and is still only 89, has to be included each year.
2010 was a poor year for the list. Only nine of their 50 died (Michael Foot, Norman Wisdom, Simon Maccorkindale, Laurent Fignon, Dino de Laurentiis, JD Salinger, Dennis Hopper, Blake Edwards and Cyril Smith), the fewest since 1998 and some way shy of the record of 14.
So this year they have gone for some new faces. Intriguingly, last year's No 1 pick, the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al Megrahi, has been dropped altogether. He may have been given only three months to live when released from prison in 2009, but the Death List panel have clearly decided not to fall for that again.
Among the names who have not appeared on the list before are Gerry Rafferty, who was treated for kidney failure two months ago, Aretha Franklin, who has pancreatic cancer, and Helmut Schmidt, the former German Chancellor who is now 93.
Surprisingly, no one thought it worth putting Nigel Pargetter on the list too.
It is possible that Nigel is not dead - we shall find out at 7pm tomorrow - and will instead spend the next few months or years (depending on how much the actor needs the money and how good he is at begging the editor) in a coma in Felperham General Hospital. Much like Ariel Sharon, in fact.
I have been fascinated by the Death List since I discovered it ten years ago. The list was first drawn up in 1987 by a bunch of students in a pub at Warwick University, who were surprised to hear the news of the death of Cary Grant and thought they would see if they could predict which other famous people would pass away that year. Only one of their original list - bizarrely, the Spanish guitarist Andres Segovia - obliged them. Since the internet came along, the Death List has grown from a private gag to a global death-hunt.
Each year, they select a list of 50 people whose death will be noted by the mass media and see how many don't make it to New Year's Eve. It may sound macabre, but it is also a sort of tribute to the accomplishments of the people on the list, some of whom we may have thought died years ago.
You can only have 25 people from the previous year's list, which shows the faith they have placed in Sharon finally slipping out of his coma. Looking through their lists, it seems to be an in-joke that Clive Dunn, who played Corporal Jones in Dad's Army and is still only 89, has to be included each year.
2010 was a poor year for the list. Only nine of their 50 died (Michael Foot, Norman Wisdom, Simon Maccorkindale, Laurent Fignon, Dino de Laurentiis, JD Salinger, Dennis Hopper, Blake Edwards and Cyril Smith), the fewest since 1998 and some way shy of the record of 14.
So this year they have gone for some new faces. Intriguingly, last year's No 1 pick, the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al Megrahi, has been dropped altogether. He may have been given only three months to live when released from prison in 2009, but the Death List panel have clearly decided not to fall for that again.
Among the names who have not appeared on the list before are Gerry Rafferty, who was treated for kidney failure two months ago, Aretha Franklin, who has pancreatic cancer, and Helmut Schmidt, the former German Chancellor who is now 93.
Surprisingly, no one thought it worth putting Nigel Pargetter on the list too.
Friday, December 31, 2010
My sporting year
As 2010 is cast into the litter bin of time and we finger the wrapping of 2011 with anticipation, I present my sporting highlights of the year, all events that I had the privilege to see in person and people who I interviewed.
The life of a sports journalist is not as glamorous as some would think. Lots of travelling but little sight-seeing and after a while the run of airports, hotels, stadiums, motorways and being away from my family can pall. But that is not a moan, I am privileged to watch sport for a living. Here are the moments I will remember best from 2010 and links to the articles (all behind the paywall, I'm afraid, but a snip at only 5p each or £1 for 20)
1) The marathon tennis match In terms of events about which you would like to say "I was there", the first-round match on Court No 18 at Wimbledon between John Isner v Nicolas Mahut trumps many a final. It went to five sets, spread over three days, and ended with Isner winning 70-68 in the decider. I was courtside for the final 20 games of the match, sitting a few seats away from John McEnroe and Tracy Austin. The things I most remember are not to do with play, but the fact that McEnroe was incongrously wearing a red baseball cap with his grey suit and tie and that Andy Roddick later described Isner's feet after the match as looking like "deli meat".
2) The Boat Race Because the right crew won in the best fashion. I'm biased, but this year's Cambridge side were particularly likeable and very welcoming whenever I went to visit them. Oxford had the Winklevoss twins, the Olympic rowers who claimed to have invented Facebook, but Cambridge had team spirit. Although they were almost a length behind at Hammersmith Bridge, they fought back to win. Helpfully, their victory netted me £70 at the bookies.
3) Rory McIlroy's first round at the Open My third Open Championship but my first in Scotland. When I arrived at St Andrews it was shrouded in mist and there were questions about whether play would start. I was first asked to follow Tiger Woods but when he failed to tear up the course or blow his top, I switched across to watch a promising young Ulsterman instead. With a round of 63, McIlroy took the first-round lead. Two days later, I played my first round of golf in St Andrews, at the Castle course, and went round in a mere 55 strokes more than McIlroy.
4) Somerset throw away the County Championship I had not been to Durham before - it's a smashing ground - but was sent up there for the final day of the county season as Somerset eyed a first ever Championship. Special request of the Deputy Editor, who is a Somerset fan. Alas, they were unable to beat Durham and so Notts took the title, but I did get to meet a fascinating character called Tractor Driver, who travels the country watching Somerset with his keg of cider and had managed to drink Durham dry.
5) Nadal v Soderling at Wimbledon I have several more special memories from Wimbledon, including watching Roger Federer and Serena Williams on Centre Court, but the quarter-final between Rafael Nadal and Robin Soderling on Court 1 stands out. As Soderling took a 5-0 lead in the first set, word went round that Federer had been knocked out by Toma Berdych. Could there be a double shock? No, Nadal found his mojo and won in four sets, but he had been briefly made to look mortal.
6) England v Pakistan at the Rose Bowl A one-sided match, England winning by 121 runs, but the end of a topsy-turvy one-day series, which the home side won 3-2, and the end of a fractious summer in which the game's morality was called into question. I spent the game chatting to the Pakistan fans, some of whom had travelled from as far as Glasgow.
7) Women's rugby World Cup semi-final They lost the final to New Zealand, although they competed all the way, but England's women looked wonderful on their way there, including this 15-0 last-four win over Australia. Maggie "The Machine" Alphonsi, the England flanker, was the star of the tournament for the way she bulldozed through everyone in her way.
8) Australia v Pakistan at Lord's The Ashes win started here, with Australia's batsmen made to look vulnerable. And all this while Pakistan's bowlers were deliberately underperforming for money.
9) England win Dubai Sevens In four successive must-win games, they beat the four sides who finished above them in last year's Sevens World Series to claim the title, playing spectacular rugby and proving that teams can win in orange shirts (eh, Holland?)
10) Yani Tseng wins the women's Open Royal Birkdale is one of my favourite golf courses, made all the better by the lack of spectators. Hurrah for women's golf. What those who didn't attend missed was some splendid golf by a 21-year-old Taiwanese golfer with superb iron play, a red-hot putter and a charming personality.
And the ten interviews I most enjoyed doing this year
1) Billie Jean King. I spoke to her on the phone for almost an hour while sitting on the floor behind the press box at the Oval as I supposedly covered a one-day match between Pakistan and England. Even an hour wasn't long enough as Billie Jean kept me engrossed with tales of the fight for equality 40 years ago.
2) Paul Collingwood. I had three one-to-one interviews with Collingwood in 2010 and each time he had something fresh to say. A modest, frank, intelligent cricketer, who gives good copy without coming across as a berk, unlike some of his team-mates.
3) An unnamed 17-year-old Afghan. I was unable to name the captain or any of the team who played cricket against MCC in a game I watched at Chigwell. That is because they were all child refugees who had escaped horrors in search of a better life. One of those interviews that really makes you appreciate how lucky we are.
4) Steve Brown Speaking of inspirational tales about people who fight adversity, I found speaking to Steve Brown, a wheelchair rugby player, very moving. After a fall from a balcony, he did not even know if he would survive surgery. Now he has his eyes on a place at the 2012 Paralympics.
5) John Woodcock The 83-year-old former Times cricket correspondent is one of the last survivors of a golden age of sports journalism, when reporters travelled by ship to Ashes tours and were able to socialise freely with players. Better still, they only had to write 400 words a month. I chaired a round-table discussion with Woodcock, Mike Atherton, Christopher Martin-Jenkins and Richard Hobson and then filmed a discussion about Woodcock's personal memories of playing deck quoits with Alec Bedser.
6) Pete Goss Returned to sailing 13 years after he rescued a fellow sailor in the middle of the Southern Ocean. I spoke to him briefly before the start of the Route du Rhum, in which he finished fourteenth.
7) Greg Searle Another great comeback. Eighteen years after winning an Olympic rowing gold with his brother Johnny, Searle decided to get back in a boat and try to qualify for the 2012 Olympics, when he will be 40. It was a pretty good season, in which he won a silver at the World Championships in the eight. We talked about his lucky socks, which are older than half his new crew-mates.
8) Jonah Lomu The former New Zealand rugby player talked about pimping his rides. Worth reading if only for the words "Tongan ukelele music".
9) Rebecca Adlington. Talking Delhi belly with the Olympic swimming champion after the Commonwealth Games at the site of the 2012 Olympics.
10) General Sir David Richards. Not a sportsman, but a highlight none the less. I was asked to interview the head of the Army, now Chief of the Defence Staff, about a new play on Afghanistan. Quite why I was asked, I don't know, but I was up in Birkdale at the women's Open and spoke to him on the phone from my hotel room while wearing only a towel. Certainly an interview I will never forget... It's nice to take a break from sport and use my brain occasionally.
Finally, three events I wish I had seen:
1) The Ryder Cup I was down to report on this but decided to pull out because my wife was due to give birth the next week. Naturally she was two weeks late...
2) England v Australia at rugby The third match of the year, when Chris Ashton ran the length of the field for his second try in a 35-18 win. I covered England's match the next week at Twickenham, but Samoa is a rather less glamorous tie.
3) The Melbourne Test Or any of the Ashes Tests for that matter, but Mike Atherton and Richard Hobson pulled the seniority rank on me there... Still, I am heading to the cricket World Cup in February, so that is something to look forward to.
The life of a sports journalist is not as glamorous as some would think. Lots of travelling but little sight-seeing and after a while the run of airports, hotels, stadiums, motorways and being away from my family can pall. But that is not a moan, I am privileged to watch sport for a living. Here are the moments I will remember best from 2010 and links to the articles (all behind the paywall, I'm afraid, but a snip at only 5p each or £1 for 20)
2) The Boat Race Because the right crew won in the best fashion. I'm biased, but this year's Cambridge side were particularly likeable and very welcoming whenever I went to visit them. Oxford had the Winklevoss twins, the Olympic rowers who claimed to have invented Facebook, but Cambridge had team spirit. Although they were almost a length behind at Hammersmith Bridge, they fought back to win. Helpfully, their victory netted me £70 at the bookies.
3) Rory McIlroy's first round at the Open My third Open Championship but my first in Scotland. When I arrived at St Andrews it was shrouded in mist and there were questions about whether play would start. I was first asked to follow Tiger Woods but when he failed to tear up the course or blow his top, I switched across to watch a promising young Ulsterman instead. With a round of 63, McIlroy took the first-round lead. Two days later, I played my first round of golf in St Andrews, at the Castle course, and went round in a mere 55 strokes more than McIlroy.
4) Somerset throw away the County Championship I had not been to Durham before - it's a smashing ground - but was sent up there for the final day of the county season as Somerset eyed a first ever Championship. Special request of the Deputy Editor, who is a Somerset fan. Alas, they were unable to beat Durham and so Notts took the title, but I did get to meet a fascinating character called Tractor Driver, who travels the country watching Somerset with his keg of cider and had managed to drink Durham dry.
5) Nadal v Soderling at Wimbledon I have several more special memories from Wimbledon, including watching Roger Federer and Serena Williams on Centre Court, but the quarter-final between Rafael Nadal and Robin Soderling on Court 1 stands out. As Soderling took a 5-0 lead in the first set, word went round that Federer had been knocked out by Toma Berdych. Could there be a double shock? No, Nadal found his mojo and won in four sets, but he had been briefly made to look mortal.
6) England v Pakistan at the Rose Bowl A one-sided match, England winning by 121 runs, but the end of a topsy-turvy one-day series, which the home side won 3-2, and the end of a fractious summer in which the game's morality was called into question. I spent the game chatting to the Pakistan fans, some of whom had travelled from as far as Glasgow.
7) Women's rugby World Cup semi-final They lost the final to New Zealand, although they competed all the way, but England's women looked wonderful on their way there, including this 15-0 last-four win over Australia. Maggie "The Machine" Alphonsi, the England flanker, was the star of the tournament for the way she bulldozed through everyone in her way.
8) Australia v Pakistan at Lord's The Ashes win started here, with Australia's batsmen made to look vulnerable. And all this while Pakistan's bowlers were deliberately underperforming for money.
9) England win Dubai Sevens In four successive must-win games, they beat the four sides who finished above them in last year's Sevens World Series to claim the title, playing spectacular rugby and proving that teams can win in orange shirts (eh, Holland?)
10) Yani Tseng wins the women's Open Royal Birkdale is one of my favourite golf courses, made all the better by the lack of spectators. Hurrah for women's golf. What those who didn't attend missed was some splendid golf by a 21-year-old Taiwanese golfer with superb iron play, a red-hot putter and a charming personality.
And the ten interviews I most enjoyed doing this year
2) Paul Collingwood. I had three one-to-one interviews with Collingwood in 2010 and each time he had something fresh to say. A modest, frank, intelligent cricketer, who gives good copy without coming across as a berk, unlike some of his team-mates.
3) An unnamed 17-year-old Afghan. I was unable to name the captain or any of the team who played cricket against MCC in a game I watched at Chigwell. That is because they were all child refugees who had escaped horrors in search of a better life. One of those interviews that really makes you appreciate how lucky we are.
4) Steve Brown Speaking of inspirational tales about people who fight adversity, I found speaking to Steve Brown, a wheelchair rugby player, very moving. After a fall from a balcony, he did not even know if he would survive surgery. Now he has his eyes on a place at the 2012 Paralympics.
5) John Woodcock The 83-year-old former Times cricket correspondent is one of the last survivors of a golden age of sports journalism, when reporters travelled by ship to Ashes tours and were able to socialise freely with players. Better still, they only had to write 400 words a month. I chaired a round-table discussion with Woodcock, Mike Atherton, Christopher Martin-Jenkins and Richard Hobson and then filmed a discussion about Woodcock's personal memories of playing deck quoits with Alec Bedser.
6) Pete Goss Returned to sailing 13 years after he rescued a fellow sailor in the middle of the Southern Ocean. I spoke to him briefly before the start of the Route du Rhum, in which he finished fourteenth.
7) Greg Searle Another great comeback. Eighteen years after winning an Olympic rowing gold with his brother Johnny, Searle decided to get back in a boat and try to qualify for the 2012 Olympics, when he will be 40. It was a pretty good season, in which he won a silver at the World Championships in the eight. We talked about his lucky socks, which are older than half his new crew-mates.
8) Jonah Lomu The former New Zealand rugby player talked about pimping his rides. Worth reading if only for the words "Tongan ukelele music".
9) Rebecca Adlington. Talking Delhi belly with the Olympic swimming champion after the Commonwealth Games at the site of the 2012 Olympics.
10) General Sir David Richards. Not a sportsman, but a highlight none the less. I was asked to interview the head of the Army, now Chief of the Defence Staff, about a new play on Afghanistan. Quite why I was asked, I don't know, but I was up in Birkdale at the women's Open and spoke to him on the phone from my hotel room while wearing only a towel. Certainly an interview I will never forget... It's nice to take a break from sport and use my brain occasionally.
Finally, three events I wish I had seen:
1) The Ryder Cup I was down to report on this but decided to pull out because my wife was due to give birth the next week. Naturally she was two weeks late...
2) England v Australia at rugby The third match of the year, when Chris Ashton ran the length of the field for his second try in a 35-18 win. I covered England's match the next week at Twickenham, but Samoa is a rather less glamorous tie.
3) The Melbourne Test Or any of the Ashes Tests for that matter, but Mike Atherton and Richard Hobson pulled the seniority rank on me there... Still, I am heading to the cricket World Cup in February, so that is something to look forward to.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Hold the celebrations: we haven't won the Ashes yet
Honestly, anyone would think we had won the Ashes series. I've done broadcasts on Australian radio and Indian TV today about England's win at Melbourne, while the story was leading all the British news items today. England retain the Ashes - but retaining is not the same as winning. We still lead by one with one match to play.
England have done marvellously well in winning two Tests in Australia for the first time since 1986 and by winning two by an innings for the first time since the series at home in 1985. Their win in Melbourne is the heaviest winning margin in the Ashes since Jim Laker did his spinning tricks in 1956. These are feats worthy of celebration, but the celebration should wait a week.
Delightful though it was to see the whole England team do the Sprinkler dance on the outfield after play, like the cast of The Full Monty only with the jockstraps under their whites, the job is not yet complete. They must avoid losing in Sydney next week to be sure of winning the Ashes. A 2-2 draw will seem like a mighty anticlimax.
If sport's version of Sod's Law works properly, Australia will call someone up for the last Test who they have ignored all series and they will make the difference in winning the match. Perhaps Nathan Hauritz will get a start on his home turf and take 16 wickets; maybe Usman Khawaja will make a double hundred on debut. This would take the gloss off England retaining the Ashes.
Andrew Strauss, the captain, is right to urge against complacency. It was not that long ago, after a heavy defeat in Perth, that people were writing that the wheels were coming off the Ashes wagon. What we have learnt is that Australia and England are remarkably inconsistent. The Melbourne party could be followed by a Sydney hangover.
If we were 2-0 up, I'd suggest that we could let Australia have one for morale's sake. It's what they often did with us, taking their feet off the jugular once the series was won. But England should have more ambition than a mere 2-2 shared series. A 2-1 win is the minimum requirement, 3-1 starts to look like a proper beating.
It could be argued that a 3-1 defeat would be in the best interests of Australian cricket too. Share the series and they can claim that basically everything is OK. But for some bad luck (like losing the toss at Melbourne), they would have won. I think this would be bunk, but Cricket Australia like all governing bodies will be looking for excuses rather than problems.
A 3-1 defeat means that Australia need to look at the coaching, the selection, the scheduling, the development. They need to go through rebuilding and perhaps jettison some members of the current set-up, and not just the players.
They need to confront the systemic failings that it took England several Ashes defeats to face up to. Then they may just be in a position to win the urn back in 2013.
England have done marvellously well in winning two Tests in Australia for the first time since 1986 and by winning two by an innings for the first time since the series at home in 1985. Their win in Melbourne is the heaviest winning margin in the Ashes since Jim Laker did his spinning tricks in 1956. These are feats worthy of celebration, but the celebration should wait a week.
Delightful though it was to see the whole England team do the Sprinkler dance on the outfield after play, like the cast of The Full Monty only with the jockstraps under their whites, the job is not yet complete. They must avoid losing in Sydney next week to be sure of winning the Ashes. A 2-2 draw will seem like a mighty anticlimax.
If sport's version of Sod's Law works properly, Australia will call someone up for the last Test who they have ignored all series and they will make the difference in winning the match. Perhaps Nathan Hauritz will get a start on his home turf and take 16 wickets; maybe Usman Khawaja will make a double hundred on debut. This would take the gloss off England retaining the Ashes.
Andrew Strauss, the captain, is right to urge against complacency. It was not that long ago, after a heavy defeat in Perth, that people were writing that the wheels were coming off the Ashes wagon. What we have learnt is that Australia and England are remarkably inconsistent. The Melbourne party could be followed by a Sydney hangover.
If we were 2-0 up, I'd suggest that we could let Australia have one for morale's sake. It's what they often did with us, taking their feet off the jugular once the series was won. But England should have more ambition than a mere 2-2 shared series. A 2-1 win is the minimum requirement, 3-1 starts to look like a proper beating.
It could be argued that a 3-1 defeat would be in the best interests of Australian cricket too. Share the series and they can claim that basically everything is OK. But for some bad luck (like losing the toss at Melbourne), they would have won. I think this would be bunk, but Cricket Australia like all governing bodies will be looking for excuses rather than problems.
A 3-1 defeat means that Australia need to look at the coaching, the selection, the scheduling, the development. They need to go through rebuilding and perhaps jettison some members of the current set-up, and not just the players.
They need to confront the systemic failings that it took England several Ashes defeats to face up to. Then they may just be in a position to win the urn back in 2013.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Ponting nears the end
At some point in the next two or three days, barring an astounding rearguard batting effort by Australia to match the way England batted at Brisbane a month ago, Australia will lose the fourth Test and fail to regain the Ashes.
If they do not win the final Test in Sydney, which starts on January 3, they will lose the series and Ponting will become the third Australia captain to lose three Ashes contests, the first for more than a century.
It is hard to see him continuing as captain for much longer, although it would be rather late in the day for Australia to get rid of him as one-day captain, with the World Cup starting in mid-February. Ponting will presumably lead Australia into the tournament, where they have not lost a match since the final in 1996, and then stand aside. Bangladesh are Australia's next Test opponents and it would make sense to let a new captain take the team on.
Generally, Australian captains do not stay in the side after handing over command. In the past 40 years, Waugh, Taylor, Border, Greg Chappell and Bill Lawry all retired straight away.
Kim Hughes lasted one Test after resigning as captain before a pair of ducks ended his career. Graeme Yallop stayed for another five years after his seven-Test captaincy reign ended, but he was only ever a stop-gap while Greg Chappell was away making money off Kerry Packer, while Ian Chappell came out of retirement to serve under his brother.
So, it is possible that Ricky Ponting has only a dozen days and three innings left in his distinguished Test career. Mathematically, it would be nice if he only made two more runs, so that his final career aggregate stands for ever at 12,345, but that would be a humiliating end.
As a cricket-lover and someone who respects Ponting as a batsman, I would like him to go out with one more hundred. Maybe even two. Just so long as England go home with the urn.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
A traditional loony Christmas
The coachload of Chinese students who were decanted into Greenwich Park on Christmas morning to visit the historic observatory must have wondered at the eccentricities of the English.
Not only was Santa Claus jogging through the park (or at least a man wearing a red and white coat over his shorts, a Santa hat and a strap-on beard), but there were two men hitting a tennis ball to each other on the main road.
Traditions are important at Christmas and, like the Serpentine swimmers who refused to allow the frozen river and cancellation of their annual Christmas race to prevent them having a dip, so my father and I were determined to play tennis on Christmas morning whatever the weather.
It is a tradition going back at least 15 years (the last time I let him lose was in 1998) but it appeared that the cold snap in Britain might have broken the run when we arrived in the park yesterday morning and found the four courts covered in white ice.
No matter, we decided to play in the road instead, which was the only surface free of ice. My car marked the line of the net and the gutters formed tramlines. The baseline was a moveable feast but as we decided to dispense with scoring and just see how long we could keep each rally going, it didn't matter.
We stayed out there for an hour, despite the cold weather, batting the ball back and forth and sharing the odd joke with passing joggers and pedestrians, pausing occasionally to allow a car to drive through our court.
It was wonderfully eccentric, which is as it should be at Christmas. Some stony-faced sourpusses didn't understand why we would want to play tennis in the road on one of the coldest days of the year, but most raised a smile. One jogger deliberately hurdled our imaginary net, while Santa, as he jogged past, promised that next year he would leave a net in my stocking.
Most heartening, though, was the man who stopped to chat to us at the beginning of our match and then returned half an hour later with some mulled wine. "I thought you could do with this," he said. And there, in that kind gesture of a stranger to two madmen, is the true spirit of Christmas.
Not only was Santa Claus jogging through the park (or at least a man wearing a red and white coat over his shorts, a Santa hat and a strap-on beard), but there were two men hitting a tennis ball to each other on the main road.
Traditions are important at Christmas and, like the Serpentine swimmers who refused to allow the frozen river and cancellation of their annual Christmas race to prevent them having a dip, so my father and I were determined to play tennis on Christmas morning whatever the weather.
It is a tradition going back at least 15 years (the last time I let him lose was in 1998) but it appeared that the cold snap in Britain might have broken the run when we arrived in the park yesterday morning and found the four courts covered in white ice.
No matter, we decided to play in the road instead, which was the only surface free of ice. My car marked the line of the net and the gutters formed tramlines. The baseline was a moveable feast but as we decided to dispense with scoring and just see how long we could keep each rally going, it didn't matter.
We stayed out there for an hour, despite the cold weather, batting the ball back and forth and sharing the odd joke with passing joggers and pedestrians, pausing occasionally to allow a car to drive through our court.
It was wonderfully eccentric, which is as it should be at Christmas. Some stony-faced sourpusses didn't understand why we would want to play tennis in the road on one of the coldest days of the year, but most raised a smile. One jogger deliberately hurdled our imaginary net, while Santa, as he jogged past, promised that next year he would leave a net in my stocking.
Most heartening, though, was the man who stopped to chat to us at the beginning of our match and then returned half an hour later with some mulled wine. "I thought you could do with this," he said. And there, in that kind gesture of a stranger to two madmen, is the true spirit of Christmas.
Miracle on the 3rd or 4th strip
"And what did you ask Santa to bring you for Christmas, daddy?"
And so it came to pass that during the night after Christmas a miracle came true in Melbourne. And, even better, Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook made 157 without loss by the close.
So much for the controversies about the groundsman swapping the pitches he would use. There was no devil in this wicket. In fact, while it had quite a green tinge on it, the condition generally was reminiscent of an early-season English wicket. Lovely, what a Christmas present.
I wonder whether Ricky Ponting would have bowled first if he had won the toss? He has never inserted an opponent since England made 400 in a day at Edgbaston 2005 and I suspect that he would have thought about bowling only to bat out of superstition.
Either way, England bowled beautifully and caught well (although they dropped three chances and missed a run out), while Australia's batsmen looked as if they had been at the port the night before. There were some very careless dismissals, for all the quality of England's bowling.
Yet, unlike in Perth, England's success came from them hitting the right length consistently. The fact that all ten of Australia's wickets were caught behind square, six by the wicketkeeper, shows that. Whatever was being said about England a week ago, they are fast learners.
It is hard to see them losing from here, although who knows in this baffling series. Momentum has not just swung back and forth this series, it has shaken. Instead of a close series in which matches are settled by millimetres, as it was in 2005, this is a close series in which matches are settled by miles. We walloped them in Adelaide, they thrashed us in Perth and now, again, it is no contest.
Australia will probably demolish England in Sydney next week, but that of course will all be a bit late.
This match is not yet won, however. England may start Day 2 59 runs ahead with all wickets in hand, but if Australia can take those ten wickets for 100, maybe even 150 runs, they can regain hope of winning. More likely, they will just have to resign themselves to a deficit of more than 300 and try to bat for more than two days to get a draw.
You would really have to fancy England now, though. Poor Ricky Ponting, who may have only three Test innings left in his marvellous career. How Australia could do with him raging against the dying of the light.
And so it came to pass that during the night after Christmas a miracle came true in Melbourne. And, even better, Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook made 157 without loss by the close.
So much for the controversies about the groundsman swapping the pitches he would use. There was no devil in this wicket. In fact, while it had quite a green tinge on it, the condition generally was reminiscent of an early-season English wicket. Lovely, what a Christmas present.
I wonder whether Ricky Ponting would have bowled first if he had won the toss? He has never inserted an opponent since England made 400 in a day at Edgbaston 2005 and I suspect that he would have thought about bowling only to bat out of superstition.
Either way, England bowled beautifully and caught well (although they dropped three chances and missed a run out), while Australia's batsmen looked as if they had been at the port the night before. There were some very careless dismissals, for all the quality of England's bowling.
Yet, unlike in Perth, England's success came from them hitting the right length consistently. The fact that all ten of Australia's wickets were caught behind square, six by the wicketkeeper, shows that. Whatever was being said about England a week ago, they are fast learners.
It is hard to see them losing from here, although who knows in this baffling series. Momentum has not just swung back and forth this series, it has shaken. Instead of a close series in which matches are settled by millimetres, as it was in 2005, this is a close series in which matches are settled by miles. We walloped them in Adelaide, they thrashed us in Perth and now, again, it is no contest.
Australia will probably demolish England in Sydney next week, but that of course will all be a bit late.
This match is not yet won, however. England may start Day 2 59 runs ahead with all wickets in hand, but if Australia can take those ten wickets for 100, maybe even 150 runs, they can regain hope of winning. More likely, they will just have to resign themselves to a deficit of more than 300 and try to bat for more than two days to get a draw.
You would really have to fancy England now, though. Poor Ricky Ponting, who may have only three Test innings left in his marvellous career. How Australia could do with him raging against the dying of the light.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Pontifex pontificates
What a remarkably humourless, killjoy bunch the National Secular Society is. They must have been delighted when the Pope agreed to contribute a Thought for the Day on BBC Radio as it would give them something to whinge about over the festive period. A Christian message at Christmas? Disgraceful.
Naturally, the Pope should not be allowed to spread a message of love and peace, not even in a three-minute homily. He should have spent the whole time apologising for child abuse. Or that is what the secularists want. After all, isn't Christmas all about child abuse? Abandoning babies in mangers and all that. Why, I bet the shepherds hadn't even been CRB-checked.
The child abuse scandal has been a godsend for the secularists (well, maybe not a godsend but you know what I mean). In the actions of a few wicked men, those who despise religion have an excuse to portray everyone with faith or who practises religion as themselves evil or apologists for evil. As if those without faith don't abuse children too.
It is not a "slap in the face for child abuse victims" that the Pope was asked to broadcast on Radio 4. It is a recognition that this weekend marks a major Christian festival and as a major Christian leader he may have something interesting to say. He isn't Josef Fritzl.
And as for the criticism that the Pope was "pontificating", well isn't that what a pontifex is meant to do?
You may every right to disagree with the Pope on doctrine and Vatican policy, you can be godless yourself (I'm all in favour of Christmas not being a national holiday and people made to go into work unless they attend church), but it is a bit petty to complain about Christian messages at Christmas.
Worse than that, it is dull. Just go and watch X Factor highlights or whatever seculists get their kicks out of instead and stop boring us.
Naturally, the Pope should not be allowed to spread a message of love and peace, not even in a three-minute homily. He should have spent the whole time apologising for child abuse. Or that is what the secularists want. After all, isn't Christmas all about child abuse? Abandoning babies in mangers and all that. Why, I bet the shepherds hadn't even been CRB-checked.
The child abuse scandal has been a godsend for the secularists (well, maybe not a godsend but you know what I mean). In the actions of a few wicked men, those who despise religion have an excuse to portray everyone with faith or who practises religion as themselves evil or apologists for evil. As if those without faith don't abuse children too.
It is not a "slap in the face for child abuse victims" that the Pope was asked to broadcast on Radio 4. It is a recognition that this weekend marks a major Christian festival and as a major Christian leader he may have something interesting to say. He isn't Josef Fritzl.
And as for the criticism that the Pope was "pontificating", well isn't that what a pontifex is meant to do?
You may every right to disagree with the Pope on doctrine and Vatican policy, you can be godless yourself (I'm all in favour of Christmas not being a national holiday and people made to go into work unless they attend church), but it is a bit petty to complain about Christian messages at Christmas.
Worse than that, it is dull. Just go and watch X Factor highlights or whatever seculists get their kicks out of instead and stop boring us.
Christmas Quiz
Already bored? Struggling to find a new conversation to have with your family or just want an excuse to lock yourself in your room? Alex Massie's Christmas Quiz at the Spectator provides the answers. Or rather the questions. You'll have to find the answers, with a little help from Google...
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Snow tales
With the snow comes a wonderful silence. No trains pass along the tracks at the foot of the garden, no cars come sliding down the road in front. The satellite signal is disrupted so the TV is turned off and my eight-week-old daughter and I sit in blissful peace listening to carols through iTunes.
All very Narnia-like, although farther into Kent it has fallen so deep and crisp and even that, according to my cousin in Tonbridge Wells, it is more Scott of the Antarctic than The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Roads are chaotic throughout the southeast; airports closed. My friend Richard was due to fly to Turkey from Heathrow this morning. He made it out, a couple of hours before the runways were shut, but his luggage did not follow. How long he will have to wait to be reunited with his trousers is a point for debate.
At least they sell trousers in Istanbul. Of more concern to Richard is the fact that they don't sell gravy granules. In his luggage was a box of Bisto so that he could make gravy to go with his Christmas dinner next weekend. Already denied of pigs in blankets by his wife's religion, the possible absence of Bisto is too much to bear.
Miracles come true at Christmas, of course, and Richard may yet have something beefy to pour on his bird next Saturday. There's more chance of that miracle coming off than England snatching victory in the third Ashes Test after a dismal performance last night.
Well done Australia - particularly Mitchell Johnson and Mike Hussey, the two local boys - for getting back into the series. 1-1 and on to Melbourne. Let's hope that when England open their Christmas presents, the bowlers are gifted a better control of length and Kevin Pietersen rediscovers his brain.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Ashes fantasies
There is an excellent Nick Newman cartoon in the latest issue of The Wisden Cricketer titled "Ashes Nightmare" that first shows someone going to sleep while a voice from the radio announces "and Strauss moves on to nine". Then, below, the next picture shows the same person waking with the sun shining through the window and the radio saying "and Strauss moves on to four".
That is the problem with an overseas Ashes tour: it is always on at the wrong time of day and all sorts of horridness can happen to England while you sleep.
I tried to stay up late to watch the start of most days in the first two Tests, but the third match in Perth starts far too late at 2.30am. By the time I wake, there have been two sessions of play and for a few seconds before I can switch on the radio, I play "guess the score". This morning I was way off.
At the end of Day 1, England were going to win the Ashes. Having walloped Australia in Adelaide, they bowled them out for 268 in Perth and were 29 for nought when Day 2 started. As I reached for the radio, I thought: "Best case scenario, Cook or Strauss are still in; worst case, Swann and Prior are building a small lead."
And then the announcer said: "And Hughes moves on to three." Bugger. Australia batting again after bowling England out for 181.
It is very easy for people to get carried away with Ashes hyperbole. Victory in this Perth Test is no more beyond England after two days than the Ashes was done and dusted after one day. The thing that keeps drawing us cricket fans to the sport is the wonderful unpredictability.
I have tried to keep perspective. The gloating can wait until when (if) England win the series. Until then, let's enjoy the battle. Knowing cricket history helps: Australia may have been dismissed for a sub-par 268 on Thursday, but in 2006 they made 244 batting first against England and still won heavily.
Furthermore, Mitchell Johnson, their erratic bowler, loves Perth and had 22 wickets from his previous three Tests there. Now he has 28 from three and a half.
But if that should have been a warning for England not to assume the match was won after one day, here is a lesson for why Australia, who now lead by 200 at the start of the third day, should not assume their job is done.
Two years ago, Australia took a first-innings lead of 94 on South Africa, with Johnson taking eight wickets. Australia then made 319, setting South Africa 414 to win. The touring side achieved it for the loss of four wickets.
There is a lot of cricket still to be played and I envy those in Australia (or those with insomnia) who are able to watch all of it. For my part, I'll be waking around tea-time, hoping to hear the announcer say "and Strauss moves on to 57" rather than "and Watson moves on to 139".
That is the problem with an overseas Ashes tour: it is always on at the wrong time of day and all sorts of horridness can happen to England while you sleep.
I tried to stay up late to watch the start of most days in the first two Tests, but the third match in Perth starts far too late at 2.30am. By the time I wake, there have been two sessions of play and for a few seconds before I can switch on the radio, I play "guess the score". This morning I was way off.
At the end of Day 1, England were going to win the Ashes. Having walloped Australia in Adelaide, they bowled them out for 268 in Perth and were 29 for nought when Day 2 started. As I reached for the radio, I thought: "Best case scenario, Cook or Strauss are still in; worst case, Swann and Prior are building a small lead."
And then the announcer said: "And Hughes moves on to three." Bugger. Australia batting again after bowling England out for 181.
It is very easy for people to get carried away with Ashes hyperbole. Victory in this Perth Test is no more beyond England after two days than the Ashes was done and dusted after one day. The thing that keeps drawing us cricket fans to the sport is the wonderful unpredictability.
I have tried to keep perspective. The gloating can wait until when (if) England win the series. Until then, let's enjoy the battle. Knowing cricket history helps: Australia may have been dismissed for a sub-par 268 on Thursday, but in 2006 they made 244 batting first against England and still won heavily.
Furthermore, Mitchell Johnson, their erratic bowler, loves Perth and had 22 wickets from his previous three Tests there. Now he has 28 from three and a half.
But if that should have been a warning for England not to assume the match was won after one day, here is a lesson for why Australia, who now lead by 200 at the start of the third day, should not assume their job is done.
Two years ago, Australia took a first-innings lead of 94 on South Africa, with Johnson taking eight wickets. Australia then made 319, setting South Africa 414 to win. The touring side achieved it for the loss of four wickets.
There is a lot of cricket still to be played and I envy those in Australia (or those with insomnia) who are able to watch all of it. For my part, I'll be waking around tea-time, hoping to hear the announcer say "and Strauss moves on to 57" rather than "and Watson moves on to 139".
Facebooking the Nativity
This video of a very modern Nativity (seen on Cranmer) is superb. I'm not sure what any genuinely wise man is doing titting around on Twitter, though.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
"Get a life": Lib Dem MP tells constituent
Bob Russell, the Lib Dem MP for Colchester, is a bit of a pillock but a highly effective one, especially when it comes to self-promotion. When I was growing up in Colchester, he was never out of the local press, first as a councillor, then as town mayor and then as leader of the council before becoming MP in 1997.
As a former local journalist, he knew how to grab attention. He would attend the opening of an envelope if it got him more publicity.
His political skills have not yet been recognised by his own party, let alone the coalition Government (it probably says something about the esteem in which he is held that his most lofty job has been as spokesman on sport for the Lib Dems), yet he is happy being one of those backbenchers whose job is to ask important questions, on subjects like morris dancing and darts, in order to get another page lead in the Essex County Standard.
Today, though, Bob Russell leapt in my estimation for his blunt reply, below, to a constituent who had complained, no doubt in a particularly mean-spirited whinging way, about the cost of the royal wedding next year (seen on Guido). There are some who will criticise Russell for being rude and there are some who will suggest, without seeing the original letter, that the constituent may have had a point, but I salute him.
Why should constituents be toadied to when they behave like arses? Hurrah for MPs who speak their minds! A bit more contempt for the electorate is in order. All this "servants of the people" stuff is rot. MPs are paid (pretty low wages) to represent us, not to lick up to us.
My only concern is that, knowing Russell, he probably leaked this letter to the press himself for the attention. I'm slightly distressed by the poor quality of his English as well.
As a former local journalist, he knew how to grab attention. He would attend the opening of an envelope if it got him more publicity.
His political skills have not yet been recognised by his own party, let alone the coalition Government (it probably says something about the esteem in which he is held that his most lofty job has been as spokesman on sport for the Lib Dems), yet he is happy being one of those backbenchers whose job is to ask important questions, on subjects like morris dancing and darts, in order to get another page lead in the Essex County Standard.
Today, though, Bob Russell leapt in my estimation for his blunt reply, below, to a constituent who had complained, no doubt in a particularly mean-spirited whinging way, about the cost of the royal wedding next year (seen on Guido). There are some who will criticise Russell for being rude and there are some who will suggest, without seeing the original letter, that the constituent may have had a point, but I salute him.
Why should constituents be toadied to when they behave like arses? Hurrah for MPs who speak their minds! A bit more contempt for the electorate is in order. All this "servants of the people" stuff is rot. MPs are paid (pretty low wages) to represent us, not to lick up to us.
My only concern is that, knowing Russell, he probably leaked this letter to the press himself for the attention. I'm slightly distressed by the poor quality of his English as well.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Good English rocks
I love the esoteric and thought-provoking emails that get sent round the Times office by our chief revise editor, Richard Dixon. Such as this one:
"A stone is a small lump of rock that can be thrown by someone, eg, hypothetically, by an alleged protester at the police.I'm sure that I shall never confuse the two again. But what if someone throws a piece of Blackpool rock at the fuzz? Apart from the sticky mess it would leave on their day-glo jackets, I mean. Can we call that rock?
"In British English, a rock is too big to be thrown effectively in that way; however, chiefly in North American and Australian English, a stone that can be thrown is called a rock.
"As we aspire to British English, please make sure that we do not refer to a rock when we mean a stone."
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Little man with a big dream
Fortunately for fans of shaggy dog stories told by short men in Pringle sweaters, it was in his 37th year that Corbett got his big break on The Frost Report, met Ronnie Barker and the rest is Saturday evening history.
This gives me some reassurance as I agonise about my life's direction - three more years in which to polish my golf anecdotes and meet someone funny to hang out with - but after ten minutes' on Wikipedia (what passes for modern research in journalism) I can reveal why Corbett nearly gave up on the dream.
When he was 35, Corbett was appearing as Will Scarlett in a short-lived Robin Hood-themed musical called Twang!!
Despite a strong cast (well, Barbara Windsor and Bernard Bresslaw) and a score by Lionel Bart, creator of Oliver! (1960) and the moderately successful Blitz! (1962), who clearly thought that all you needed for a hit was a one-word title and a bit of punctuation, the play flopped and closed after three weeks.
Bart thus proved, as many people do every day on Twitter, that there is nothing that can't be made worse by adding an extra exclamation mark. Anyway, here's the title track. No wonder the 35-year-old Ronnie Corbett wondered if he was ever going to make it...
Google says... you're an illiterate pillock
Many years ago, when I worked in politics and had to write the daily "lines to take" for MPs, there was a more senior chap who used to go through what we had written and alter our punctuation if he felt it necessary.
If a semi-colon was more appropriate than a comma, he would reach for the red pen. It was pedantic but precise and with hindsight I appreciate it. Accuracy matters. Bear that in mind when you read the rant below.
Occasionally I have to write advertorials for The Times. These are paid-for adverts masquerading as written pieces in the advertiser's hope that readers will pay closer attention to them than a standard ad.
You can understand why marketing companies ask journalists to write advertorials rather than get someone in their company to bash out a few paragraphs. We, after all, are supposed to have a certain talent for speling and gramar and fings like that.
Yet I get more suggestions for how my copy could be improved from bozos in promo companies than I ever do from my day-job editors. Generally they want more "core messages" inserted (as if that will make it more readable), very occasionally they spot a genuine error for which I am blushingly grateful (although we have sub-editors to do that too). But mainly they just want to cock it up through their own ignorance.
In one recent campaign, a slack-jawed gopher from a marketing company didn't like me writing "band of brothers" in a piece on the essence of sport. "Can you make it team of brothers?" I was told. Shakespeare did a pirouette in his tomb.
But an email yesterday really made me splutter with rage.
I had written a headline for one advertorial that read "The Gentlemen's Code". To which I received this reply from a promotions guru:
For that matter, how did Google back him up? I just typed gentlemans' into the search engine and nothing leapt up to suggest it is accurate. Lots of gentleman's or gentlemen's but no s' option.
So not only did he rely on Google to support his intellectually stunted assertion but he then failed to read the results correctly.
This man has the title "managing director". I dread to think how dim his staff must be.
If a semi-colon was more appropriate than a comma, he would reach for the red pen. It was pedantic but precise and with hindsight I appreciate it. Accuracy matters. Bear that in mind when you read the rant below.
Occasionally I have to write advertorials for The Times. These are paid-for adverts masquerading as written pieces in the advertiser's hope that readers will pay closer attention to them than a standard ad.
You can understand why marketing companies ask journalists to write advertorials rather than get someone in their company to bash out a few paragraphs. We, after all, are supposed to have a certain talent for speling and gramar and fings like that.
Yet I get more suggestions for how my copy could be improved from bozos in promo companies than I ever do from my day-job editors. Generally they want more "core messages" inserted (as if that will make it more readable), very occasionally they spot a genuine error for which I am blushingly grateful (although we have sub-editors to do that too). But mainly they just want to cock it up through their own ignorance.
In one recent campaign, a slack-jawed gopher from a marketing company didn't like me writing "band of brothers" in a piece on the essence of sport. "Can you make it team of brothers?" I was told. Shakespeare did a pirouette in his tomb.
But an email yesterday really made me splutter with rage.
I had written a headline for one advertorial that read "The Gentlemen's Code". To which I received this reply from a promotions guru:
"Not being a grammar expert I think it might be Gentlemans' Code ie is singular and then the s with ' to indicate possession. We did a quick google check and this appears to be correct."Why would someone who admits to not being a grammar expert assume that we might be wrong? Why does he think that s' is the construction for indicating possession in the singular? And why does he use Google to check his ropey grammar?
For that matter, how did Google back him up? I just typed gentlemans' into the search engine and nothing leapt up to suggest it is accurate. Lots of gentleman's or gentlemen's but no s' option.
So not only did he rely on Google to support his intellectually stunted assertion but he then failed to read the results correctly.
This man has the title "managing director". I dread to think how dim his staff must be.
Monday, December 06, 2010
Country matters
It was witty, it had a grain of truth that few in Britain would disagree with and, spoken rather than written, it was indisputably filthy.
No one was in any doubt that the National Treasure was calling the then editor of the Daily Mirror a cunt. Quite premeditated and purely for laughs. And at lunchtime on a Sunday too.
I could be wrong, but I don't recall there being any outcry or newspapers running stories about it. There was certainly no apology issued by the BBC and, given that the programme is recorded, there clearly was no problem with what Fry said.
Most found it funny, to be fair, including Naughtie, right, who had a bout of coughs as he tried to carry on reading the news while sniggers went on in the background. My mother sent me a text message within half an hour calling it Naughtie's "Johnners moment", a reference to Brian Johnston's fit of giggles after Jonathan Agnew described Ian Botham not quite getting his leg over.
But Today reported 16 emails of complaint by mid-afternoon and presumably there will be more when the papers report the story tomorrow. The Daily Mail, for whom countryside seems too tame, has already ranted on its website about Naughtie, and Andrew Marr who repeated the profanity when discussing the story, "turning the air blue", calling it an "embarrassment" and a "bombshell".
It is surprising that in this day and age people can still get so upset about the C word. It can be horrid when said with anger or venom, of course, but so can a simple "oi" when yelled by a drunkard in the street. Likewise, while it can be offensively sexist, so can "bitch" or "cow" if snarled on EastEnders. Motive offends more, to my ear, than meaning.
When I started in journalism, working for Giles Coren on the Times Diary column, cunt was used adjectivally. "Where's the cunting Daily Mail?" he might ask although probably not to Rupert Murdoch.
It had the same outrageous force as the words pillock or twat, both of which denote body parts but which come a fair bit lower on the Mail's List of Outrage.
Personally, I prefer the term "twunt", a portmanteau of twat and cunt for someone who doesn't quite fit into either camp. Or both, like Julian Assange.
The word has been about since the Middle Ages, in various spelling forms. Gropecunte Lane was a common street name in red-light areas until it disappeared in the 16th century. Chaucer has both his Miller - "prively he caught her by the queynte" - and Wife of Bath - "you shall have queynte right enough at eve" - use his spelling of the word quite openly.
Shakespeare has Hamlet make a play on the word when he relaxes in Ophelia's lap with talk of "country matters", a sign that it had become Carry On smut but still not offensive, while Katherine in Henry V mishears her English tutor saying "foutre" and "coun" (French for fuck and cunt) when she meant "foot" and "gown" and tells her off for being rude. John Donne, Samuel Pepys and Robert Burns also use the C word fairly tamely.
By the 20th century it had clearly become crude, with Joyce and Lawrence using it, but does it still offend? After all, even Sir Robin Day once used the word, in an interview with Dennis Skinner. And he was so straight he wore a bow tie. (video from Guido)
Saturday, December 04, 2010
Cook only part of the story
My colleague Simon Barnes is right to devote his piece in the Times today (paywalled, sorry, but there's more than a quid's worth of good stuff on the website today) to Alastair Cook's marvellous start to the Ashes series.
Having arrived in Australia with people questioning his place in the team, Cook made a decent enough start in Brisbane with 67. He followed it with 235 not out in the second innings and is now 136 not out after a day's batting in Adelaide.
It has been 674 balls and pushing 1,000 minutes since an Australian last took his wicket and near the end of today's play he passed Len Hutton's record of 364 runs without being dismissed in an Ashes Test. If he carries on where he left off tomorrow, England can build a total that should be match-winning with three days left in the Test and mean that Australia need to win two of the last three Tests to regain the Ashes.
It is sublime form and even if he makes a duck in every innings he plays for the rest of the series, he will still leave Australia with an average from ten innings of at least 43 and probably, with even modest success, 60 or 70. But let us not get carried away just yet. As England saved the first Test by making a big second innings score, so Australia could bat their way to a draw in Adelaide.
Simon is wrong, though, to say that "it is a long, long time since an England batsman has been in such form in Australia". It was only eight years ago that Michael Vaughan made three hundreds in five Tests and ended the series with 633 runs, the best by England since 1970 and only 25 runs short of being the best since Wally Hammond in 1928-29.
England lost the first four matches in Vaughan's series heavily and the Ashes were surrendered in 11 days. The key to success is more than one batsman over-performing. You need several (hence Trott's support of Cook in both Tests has been crucial, as was Strauss's in Brisbane and Pietersen's today) and a strong bowling attack.
Ultimately, if England are to win the Ashes Down Under for the first time in 24 years, Cook's runs will play only a part. It is the wickets that the England bowlers take that are more important.
Having arrived in Australia with people questioning his place in the team, Cook made a decent enough start in Brisbane with 67. He followed it with 235 not out in the second innings and is now 136 not out after a day's batting in Adelaide.
It has been 674 balls and pushing 1,000 minutes since an Australian last took his wicket and near the end of today's play he passed Len Hutton's record of 364 runs without being dismissed in an Ashes Test. If he carries on where he left off tomorrow, England can build a total that should be match-winning with three days left in the Test and mean that Australia need to win two of the last three Tests to regain the Ashes.
It is sublime form and even if he makes a duck in every innings he plays for the rest of the series, he will still leave Australia with an average from ten innings of at least 43 and probably, with even modest success, 60 or 70. But let us not get carried away just yet. As England saved the first Test by making a big second innings score, so Australia could bat their way to a draw in Adelaide.
Simon is wrong, though, to say that "it is a long, long time since an England batsman has been in such form in Australia". It was only eight years ago that Michael Vaughan made three hundreds in five Tests and ended the series with 633 runs, the best by England since 1970 and only 25 runs short of being the best since Wally Hammond in 1928-29.
England lost the first four matches in Vaughan's series heavily and the Ashes were surrendered in 11 days. The key to success is more than one batsman over-performing. You need several (hence Trott's support of Cook in both Tests has been crucial, as was Strauss's in Brisbane and Pietersen's today) and a strong bowling attack.
Ultimately, if England are to win the Ashes Down Under for the first time in 24 years, Cook's runs will play only a part. It is the wickets that the England bowlers take that are more important.
Friday, December 03, 2010
Five reasons why Qatar should have lost World Cup bid
The Fifa World Cup vote was, of course, a travesty. Not so much that England did not win the rights to stage the 2018 tournament (although if Jack Warner, the Fifa vice-president, thinks he is getting an invite to Prince William's wedding now he is much mistaken), but that Qatar will host the World Cup in 2022. Here are five reasons why:
1) Qatar has never qualified for a World Cup before and probably will not qualify for the tournaments in 2014 and 2018 but will get to compete four years later as hosts even if they don't improve on their present world ranking of 113, which is lower than North Korea, who were embarrassingly bad at this year's World Cup, and even lower than Wales.
When South Africa were given the rights for the 2010 World Cup, they were No 41 in the world, only just outside the 32 that ideally should qualify. South Africa and the USA were 22nd in the world when they hosted the 2002 and 1994 World Cups. Qatar are nowhere near qualifying. There are 15 Asian nations ranked higher; it is simply unfair that Qatar can buy a place at the top table and deny one of those above them a spot.
2) Temperatures will be pushing 50C in the Gulf state at that time of year. But their air-conditioned stadiums, to be built like most baubles in the Middle East by virtual slave labour, will look magnificent and isn't expensive spangly arenas what the World Cup is all about, even if they get dismantled straight after the final?
3) They have a poor human rights record. Not that that stopped China hosting the Olympics. And anyway, do homosexuals, women and Jews, all of whom are persecuted in Qatar, really watch football?
4) The Fifa technical report on Qatar's suitability was, like Russia's for 2018, shockingly bad. They were able to overcome that by proming to spend $4 billion on the tournament. Some might suggest that Fifa should be pressing for that money to be spent on developing football in Asia rather than on building new air-conditioned dismantleable stadiums in a desert. Qatar should have proved its commitment to football, rather than wealth-creation, before being given the rights.
5) It is one of the smallest countries in the world. In terms of area, it comes in below Vanuatu and the Falkland Islands and is only five places higher than Cyprus. It is about 165,000 sq km smaller than Uruguay, the previous smallest World Cup host. It is a third the size of Belgium, who put in a joint bid with the Netherlands for the 2018 World Cup because they thought it would be silly to go it alone. I'm all in favour of the little guy getting a chance and for the World Cup to go to new countries, but this is simply a case of a country buying - some say bribing - its golden ticket and it stinks.
1) Qatar has never qualified for a World Cup before and probably will not qualify for the tournaments in 2014 and 2018 but will get to compete four years later as hosts even if they don't improve on their present world ranking of 113, which is lower than North Korea, who were embarrassingly bad at this year's World Cup, and even lower than Wales.
When South Africa were given the rights for the 2010 World Cup, they were No 41 in the world, only just outside the 32 that ideally should qualify. South Africa and the USA were 22nd in the world when they hosted the 2002 and 1994 World Cups. Qatar are nowhere near qualifying. There are 15 Asian nations ranked higher; it is simply unfair that Qatar can buy a place at the top table and deny one of those above them a spot.
2) Temperatures will be pushing 50C in the Gulf state at that time of year. But their air-conditioned stadiums, to be built like most baubles in the Middle East by virtual slave labour, will look magnificent and isn't expensive spangly arenas what the World Cup is all about, even if they get dismantled straight after the final?
3) They have a poor human rights record. Not that that stopped China hosting the Olympics. And anyway, do homosexuals, women and Jews, all of whom are persecuted in Qatar, really watch football?
4) The Fifa technical report on Qatar's suitability was, like Russia's for 2018, shockingly bad. They were able to overcome that by proming to spend $4 billion on the tournament. Some might suggest that Fifa should be pressing for that money to be spent on developing football in Asia rather than on building new air-conditioned dismantleable stadiums in a desert. Qatar should have proved its commitment to football, rather than wealth-creation, before being given the rights.
5) It is one of the smallest countries in the world. In terms of area, it comes in below Vanuatu and the Falkland Islands and is only five places higher than Cyprus. It is about 165,000 sq km smaller than Uruguay, the previous smallest World Cup host. It is a third the size of Belgium, who put in a joint bid with the Netherlands for the 2018 World Cup because they thought it would be silly to go it alone. I'm all in favour of the little guy getting a chance and for the World Cup to go to new countries, but this is simply a case of a country buying - some say bribing - its golden ticket and it stinks.
Australian collapse a perfect wake-me-up
Is there any better feeling than arriving in a foreign country after a seven-hour flight knowing that an Ashes Test has begun while you were somewhere over Iraq and then, on landing, discovering that Australia lost their first three wickets by the start of the third over?
I'm in Dubai for the rugby sevens (horrible country - the fact that Andrew Flintoff loves it tells you all you need to know - but a great tournament) and arrived at my hotel at 5am, three hours before I was due to leave it for the stadium.
Having risen at 6am the day before to catch a flight from Gatwick that was cancelled because of snow (I went via Heathrow in the end), I am dog-tired, but Australia's dismal start in Adelaide and the fact that they have just been dismissed for 245 puts a bit of a spring in my step.
Eighty-five TV channels in my hotel room, not one of them showing the cricket. You wouldn't know that Dubai is where cricket's world governing body is based from the coverage. Fortunately, a New Zealand friend finds a website where I can watch play live without charge.
He is delighted by Australia's woes, as are the South African pressmen here. "I don't care who wins as long as one side gets thrashed," a Saffer said, without much love for England or Australia. Looks like he may get his wish.
I'm in Dubai for the rugby sevens (horrible country - the fact that Andrew Flintoff loves it tells you all you need to know - but a great tournament) and arrived at my hotel at 5am, three hours before I was due to leave it for the stadium.
Having risen at 6am the day before to catch a flight from Gatwick that was cancelled because of snow (I went via Heathrow in the end), I am dog-tired, but Australia's dismal start in Adelaide and the fact that they have just been dismissed for 245 puts a bit of a spring in my step.
Eighty-five TV channels in my hotel room, not one of them showing the cricket. You wouldn't know that Dubai is where cricket's world governing body is based from the coverage. Fortunately, a New Zealand friend finds a website where I can watch play live without charge.
He is delighted by Australia's woes, as are the South African pressmen here. "I don't care who wins as long as one side gets thrashed," a Saffer said, without much love for England or Australia. Looks like he may get his wish.
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