These are the latest sets of alphabet influenced playlists that I have listened to on my travels in the past couple of weeks. These last 5 playlists have completed the letter I, which resulted in 123 songs beginning with that letter being played, the most of any letter so far. As ever, each playlist has conjured up a diverse mixture of old and new songs and tracks from mainstream and less household names. Playlist number 48 must ranks among the best to date and was appropriately played on 8 December, the thirtieth anniversary of John Lennon's murder, given that this playlist includes arguably his finest (and certainly most iconic) solo track, as well as one of The Beatles' best ever compositions. Some great tracks by The Cure, Oasis, The Manics, Amy Winehouse and even REM (who I don't usually like) make this one of my personal favourite playlists to date. Refer below to see which of these latest playlists tickles your fancy.
PLAYLIST #47 (Brighton to Croydon train journey)
Garbage - I Think I'm Paranoid
Johnny Cash - I Walk The Line
The Stone Roses - I Wanna Be Adored
Prince - I Wanna Be Your Lover
Queen - I Want It All
Embrace - I Want The World
The White Stripes - I Want To Be The Boy
Queen - I Want To Break Free
Kooks - I Want You Back
Stevie Wonder - I Was Made To Love Her
Sandi Thom - I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker
Port O'Brien - I Woke Up Today
Sharleen Spiteri - I Wonder
Corinne Bailey Rae - I Would Like To Call It Beauty
Echo & The Bunnymen - The Idolness Of The Gods
PLAYLIST #48 (Croydon to Brighton train journey)
Sharleen Spiteri - If I Can't Have You
Jack Johnson - If I Could
Sheryl Crow - If It Makes You Happy
Kooks - If Only
Snow Patrol - If There's A Rocket Tie Me To It
Matchbox Twenty - If You're Gone
Simply Red - If You Don't Know Me By Now
Manic Street Preachers - If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next
REM - Imitation Of Life
Oasis - The Importance Of Being Idle
The Cure - In Between Days
Texas - In Demand
U2 - In God's Country
Amy Winehouse - In My Bed
The Beatles - In My Life
Moby - In My Heart
John Lennon - Imagine
PLAYLIST #49 (London Victoria to Faversham train journey)
Dodgy - In A Room
Coldplay - In My Place
The Last Shadow Puppets - In My Room
Texas - In Our Lifetime
Alanis Morissette - In Praise Of The Vulnerable Man
The Eagles - In The City
The Coral - In The Forest
Dolores O'Riordan - In The Garden
Razorlight - In The Morning
The Rasmus - In The Shadows
Dirty Vegas - In This Life
Moby - In This World
Sleeper - Inbetweener
Massive Attack - Inertia Creeps
Neill MacColl & Kathryn Williams - Innocent When You Dream
Queen - Innuendo
Texas - Inner Smile
PLAYLIST #50 (Faversham to London Victoria train journey)
Texas - Insane
Moby - Inside
Stiltskin - Inside
John Lennon - Instant Karma
Crowded House - Instinct
Crystal Castles - Intimate
Madonna - Into The Groove
Rebecca Helmer - Intrigued
Feist - Intuition
Muse - Invincible
Morrissey - Irish Blood English Heart
The Thrills - The Irish Keep Gatecrashing
Bob Marley - Iron Lion Zion
Alanis Morissette - Ironic
Sade - Is It A Crime?
Joe Jackson - Is She Really Going Out With Him?
Squeeze - Is That Love?
Weezer - Island In The Sun
The xx - Islands
Stevie Wonder - Isn't She Lovely
PLAYLIST #51 (London Victoria to Brighton train journey)
Queen - It's A Hard Life
AC/DC - It's A Long Way To The Top
James Brown - It's A Man's Man's Man's World
Garbage - It's All Over But The Crying
The Rolling Stones - It's All Over Now
Oasis - It's Gettin' Better (Man!)
Talk Talk - It's My Life
Glasvegas - It's My Own Cheating Heart That Makes Me Cry
Klaxons - It's Not Over Yet
Manic Street Preachers - (It's Not War) Just The End Of Love
Simply Red - It's Only Love
Crowded House - It's Only Natural
The Rolling Stones - It's Only Rock N' Roll
James Brown - It's Too Funky In Here
The White Stripes - It's True That We Love One Another
John Legend - It Don't Have To Change
Madness - It Must Be Love
Sharleen Spiteri - It Was You
Saturday 18 December 2010
Saturday 4 December 2010
A winter warmer
Hello everyone.
I trust you have been enjoying the snow and ice of the past couple of weeks, either indulging in some well earned duvet days or guiding the most reliable method of transport during the cold snap, namely the sledge. Unfortunately some of us live close enough to our employer that we were not excused work on the grounds of inclemency. And I hope that none you experienced the kind of cold hearted, wicked crime that was reported by one Kent woman, who called emergency services to report the theft of her snowman, crafted by her own fair hands. As if this act of cruel opportunism was not enough, the woman suffered the further indignity of having her telephone call passed on to the media to highlight the waste on emergency resources. Give the woman a carrot. And maybe some coal.
Anyway, time to digest some of the other news stories of recent times.
Twenty-two unwise men
So, Thursday 2 December saw the result that the country had long been waiting for. Or, at least it did if the country concerned was Qatar. Football's world governing body FIFA announced the results of the Cypriot jury, sorry the results from its Executive Committee and the results spelt bad news for the English delegates and media corps. Predictably, the English reaction to a defeat was measured and philosophical, with every tabloid paper exhibiting the kind of imperialist, xenophobic stereotypes one hoped had been wiped out a generation ago.
As the wreckage of England's latest humiliating defeat was surveyed, several post-mortems were carried out as to how exactly England achieved just 2 votes from FIFA's assembled motley crew of 22 men, with one of those votes being cast by England's own representative. Many pointed to the Panorama documentary that the BBC screened just three days before the vote, while others suggested that it was because England's bid presentation was so polished, that FIFA decided to look to a land of Eastern promise, oil and gold reserves to stage the tournament instead.
First things first here. England actually reached the last four in the bidding rights for staging the 2018 competition. On recent form, that is actually progress for England, given that the last time they reached the semis in the World Cup, Nessun Dorma was all the rage and Paul Gascoigne had got too closely acquainted with Onion Bhajis. Maybe if future World Cup bids are decided by an in-house paper, scissors, stone competition, then football coming home will be a shoo-in.
Wisecracking aside, there is no point in applying logic to FIFA's decision making powers. Just as you are advised not to reason with terrorists, there is no point in arriving at a meaningful or logical conclusion in how FIFA makes its decisions, other than to say that the country's approval rating with FIFA appears to be even lower than its approval rating with Eurovision. What we can at least be certain of is that FIFA's decision to award the World Cup to Russia was not made for pure footballing reasons. FIFA made clear that the English delegation made the best technical bid and the strongest presentation, and also identified that the two countries that posed the greatest risk in hosting the tournaments in 2018 and 2022 were Russia and Qatar, the two countries that ended up winning the day. Just like the girl that is always drawn to the bad boys, FIFA clearly like a challenge.
From what I have read and seen of the bidding process, I certainly felt that England presented the strongest business case for hosting the 2018 World Cup. The beautiful game has a rich heritage and tradition within England, with the world's oldest professional club found within these shores and the oldest cup competition being played here too. But in the here and now, England also has the infrastructure and the transport links in place to host such a grand scale sporting event, as well as having most of its stadia already built and spread throughout a wide area of the country. Sure, the cynics will scoff at the transport point and say that the trains will struggle at the first sign of snow or rain, but the point is that in usual circumstances, you can usually travel from one major city at one end of the country to a major city at the other end within a matter of two or three hours. The sport's place within the DNA of English society, factored in with the transport links and purpose-built stadia all appeared to add up to the most robust package in the field.
The English party's attitude to presenting on match day to FIFA's suited and booted seasoned internationals also seemed to tick all the boxes of how to win friends and influence people. The English entourage was strong with more household names than Proctor & Gamble in the room. Their posse was headed up by three wise men comprising the man in charge of the country, a future king of the country, plus two toffs who support Aston Villa. Or I may have got part of that wrong.
Whatever one felt about 'Just Call Me Dave' Cameron devoting three days of his time to supporting the bid by being present in Zurich at a time when there are other pressing concerns closer to home like a faltering economy, student mutiny and Ann Widdecombe's continued presence in Strictly Come Dancing to deal with, it certainly makes a strong statement of intent about the country's seriousness in wanting to stage the tournament. But maybe where messrs Cameron, Beckham and Wales could only detect the sweet smell of success, the FIFA delegates present detected the not so pleasant smell of desperation.
It is worth reiterating what I said at the top that I do not think FIFA's decisions in awarding the tournament in either 2018 or 2022 were made on football related grounds. If they were, then England and Australia appeared to be the strongest candidates for each of those tournaments, with both countries being passionate sporting hotbeds and having purpose-built stadia already in place. However, England secured just 2 votes for 2018, while Australia managed only 1 for 2022.
England's shortage of support in FIFA's corridors of power goes much further back beyond the recent Panorama expose and there is a long historical context, one which sees the same levels of mutual contempt in place as is seen between the United Kingdom and the European Union. Although founded in 1903, FIFA was not graced by English presence until 1950, presumably on the grounds that the old school tie brigade that were in charge of the English FA did not think FIFA had anything to teach them. By this stage, England's absence from FIFA meant they missed out in participating in any of the first 3 World Cup tournaments, participating for the Jules Rimet Trophy.
Relations between England and the world's governing body have always been a little strained, but this has been particularly apparent during the reign of current FIFA President, Sepp Blatter, a man whose innovative ideas for his favourite sport have been unsurpassed given that he once suggested that women footballers should be encouraged to remove their shirts when scoring a goal, while he is continually opposed to introducing any sensible form of goal-line technology. Blatter, however, has a vice like grip on FIFA and it was his words that allegedly saw FIFA's other delegates withdrawing their support for England.
There are those that would argue that England's lack of love in FIFA corridors is due to their perceived arrogance and conceit and that banging on about having invented the game irritates FIFA. There is some truth in this and we have to accept that just because football has a strong heritage in this country, our country does not have the monopoly on heritage, and therefore has no divine right to host the World Cup. As an island nation, we are sometimes insular when it comes to appreciating what other countries bring to the table. However, England’s lack of friends in Geneva’s marbled halls is also due to their lack of dexterity in the dark arts of schmoozing and brown nosing.
The dynamics in FIFA appear to share a number of similarities to those that are in place in a Masonic lodge. Much like the Masons, FIFA’s Executive Committee consists exclusively of middle aged men who appreciate a fine dine and a good wine (and maybe a Bryan Adams summer), especially if they are not picking up the tab. The other parallel that is shared with the Masons is that FIFA tend to operate a closed shop. To be influential in decision making, you need to sit within the inner circle. England currently appear to be situated nearer to the Arctic Circle than the inner circle. In Masonic parlance, England’s World Cup bid was black-balled.
The timing of the Panorama documentary that made allegations of vote rigging and other corrupt practices within FIFA was far from ideal from a bidding point of view. There were even some accusations of the BBC being ‘unpatriotic’ in some quarters. But, surely it is the media’s responsibility to uncover any supposed wrongdoing and corruption in order to name and shame the culprits concerned, rather than to sweep it under the carpet. If the BBC did not report this, they would not be fulfilling their journalistic integrity. And it made more sense for them to air the programme three days before the bid rather than six months before or after because the items it uncovered would have a more powerful impact on its audience, with the programme still fresh in the minds of the viewers when Sepp Blatter was on envelope opening duties in Zurich.
The double edged sword to this, of course, is that certain FIFA delegates may have spent their Monday night watching the documentary and choking on their olives, and even those that found alternative recreation will have been aware of the allegations raised. Against this backdrop, you would have hoped that the evidence that the BBC was fresh, relevant and damning, meaning that the FIFA bigwigs were caught red handed, banged to rights. Sadly, however, the Panorama documentary just covered old ground and the total sum of their investigation was to refer to incidents that occurred ten years earlier and which had been reported before. The journalist reporting his findings, a Scotsman by the name of Andrew Jennings so happened to be someone that had been banned from FIFA's premises because of previous accusations he had made. In terms of hard hitting journalism, this was a long way removed from The Cook Report. So much for not sacrificing journalistic integrity, this was as lame an effort as England's showing in South Africa in the summer from a point-scoring journalist with a grudge. The irony of a Scotsman possibly being responsible for England's World Cup bid failing is richer than Roman Abramovich, Bill Gates and Sir Fred Goodwin all being covered in Black Forest Gateau.
This is not to say that Jennings' fundamental point was wrong, of course. This point being that FIFA are corruptible and accountable only to themselves. If anything, the results of the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments demonstrates this, as does the bidding process itself. First of all, it does not take a quantum physicist or a brain surgeon to understand that by putting two tournaments up for tender in one foul swoop that this increases the potential for corruptibility because it allows for the kind of back-scratching and horsetrading between delegates where deals are done to suit both parties. So for example, Qatari delegate says to Russian delegate 'I will vote for Russia to host the tournament so long as you vote for us to host it in 2022'. The banker on Deal Or No Deal never drives such an easy bargain as that. FIFA's banqueting halls in the days leading up to the big decision will have bore an uncanny similarity to the Deal Or No Deal studio, except for the absence of a self-important, bearded middle aged man wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Or maybe not. Even the man who gave the world Mr Blobby could not surely be as unpopular with the English public as Sepp Blatter.
But just as bad as the blatant opportunity for deal-making that putting two tournaments up for tender in one block presented was the actual configuring of the FIFA Executive Committee that voted on the destination of the World Cups in 2018 and 2022. The 22 men responsible for determining the England bid's fate were made up of gentlemen who came from countries with a vested interest, namely countries that were bidding for the World Cup in either 2018 and 2022. Now, in most professional circles, this is what would generally be regarded as a conflict of interest. How can you have a Committee adjudicating on a decision where they have their own interests being represented? This is akin to a company carrying out a job interview where the head of the interview panel is the drinking companion of one of the interviewees. The interviewer would be obliged to declare an interest in this situation and would have to withdraw from the panel. Why does the same principle not apply to FIFA's management of its Executive Committee? Oh, silly me, I forgot what a self-serving, unaccountable organisation FIFA are.
But it should not be this way. How difficult can it be to appoint the Executive Committee for a term in office once it becomes apparent who the bidding parties will be for the next World Cup that is up for tender? So, for example, let's imagine that the 2026 World Cup attracts bids from England, France, Japan, the United States, plus a joint bid from Bolivia and Venezuela. Once these bids have been confirmed, FIFA can determine that its Executive Committee that decides on the destination of the World Cup hosting sixteen years thus must not be made up of representatives from any of these six countries. As my right honourable friend Alexander the Meerkat would say, 'Simples!'. There are still over 190 other nations that have a FIFA membership from whom the delegation can be drawn and the representatives from these countries can then be free to focus their energies on championing their country's bid. The simplicity of this concept is there for all to see, but the odds of FIFA ever implementing it are about the same as the ones you would get on Frankie Boyle becoming a UN diplomat, or Russell Brand becoming a monk.
So the die has been cast and the decisions made for 2018 and 2022 and where does that leave everybody? Well, Russia is one of the world's great footballing nations and one of the notable absentees from the list of top nations that have hitherto hosted international football's showpiece event. There is no reason why a country that gave the footballing world Lev Yashin, Andrei Arshavin, and some of the great Spartak Moscow sides should not have the World Cup experience in their neighbourhood. There are undoubtedly going to be challenges though, and Russia's ability to cope with these challenges will determine whether it is the right time for it to be staging a major sporting event. Several of Russia's World Cup venues have yet to be built and one hopes that lessons will be learnt from the debacle of this year's Commonwealth Games in Delhi, where parts of the stadium were still being completed days before the competition started. Fortunately for Russia, Poland is a neighbouring country and so obtaining builders should not be problem in an emergency, with Russia's oil oligarchs well equipped to pay above the minimum wage.
There are two greater issues for Russia to address, however. Firstly is its transport infrastructure. Russia is a vast country and whereas if the World Cup had been held in England then this would enable anyone to travel to one part of the country to another within a couple of hours, then the greater expanse of the largest country in the world by land area means a greater reliance on internal flights in order for players, officials and journalists to get from one venue to another. The concern that this need raises is the recent safety record among Russian air carriers, and most notably, its national carrier Aeroflot. Traditionally, Aeroflot used to be the butt of bar-room jokes in the same way that Skoda used to attract one liners about the quality of its cars. But whereas the input of German engineering has meant that Skoda jokes no longer ring true, concerns persist about Aeroflot and there have been several air crashes in Russia within the past five years which have resulted in fatality. The pressures of hosting a major event will only test Russia's aviation resources further and so clearly things will need to improve within the next seven and a half years, otherwise the potential for a tragedy is prominent, unless people decide that the Trans-Siberian Express is their preferred method of transport.
The social attitudes of some backward thinking natives is also a problem that cannot be swept under the carpet. The West Bromwich Albion forward Peter Odemwingie is testament to this. Odemwingie is a Nigerian international of Uzbek birth and prior to carrying out his day job in the West Midlands, he previously turned out for Lokomotiv Moscow, one of several notable club sides that play in the Russian capital. Despite a respectable return of 21 goals in 75 appearances, it appears that a section of Lokomotiv supporters were not disappointed by Odemwingie's departure to the land of Balti Pie and Lenny Henry, given that in Lokomotiv's next match following his move, a number of supporters unfurled a banner saying 'Thanks West Brom', accompanied by the image of a banana. Such attitudes are fortunately few and far between in the United Kingdom these days outside of the BNP's garden party, but this is sadly far from an isolated example of racial intolerance in Russia, although they are far from the only country where social understanding is backward. In the past few months there have been examples of racist chanting and behaviour at football matches in Italy, Serbia and Poland. This is particularly concerning in the latter's case given that they will be co-hosting the European Championships in less than 2 years from now.
The cynical side of me thinks, however, that Russia's social attitudes and one-dimensional thinking will not have a major bearing on the 2018 tournament for one very simple reason. Not many Russians will be in a position where they can afford to attend World Cup matches. A significant percentage of the tickets for World Cups end up in the hands of the corporates. Attending World Cup matches is a beany for the employees of the sponsors, the Coca-Colas, Fuji Films and Philips of this world, a modern day team building alternative to an afternoon on the golf course or orienteering in the nearest forest. Whether the corporates find attending Russia an enticing prospect is another matter. What is more likely than racist chanting blighting the World Cup in eight years time is that mouth-watering international contests will get played out in front of rows of empty seats, particularly in the more remote venues staging matches.
The potential for empty seats is only going to be increased four years later when the World Cup bandwagon moves on to Qatar. As a country situated in the middle of the Arabian desert, it will come as no surprise that the consumption of alcohol in Qatar is illegal and any contravention of the local laws will result in a permanent and painful forfeit for the consumer. While this might appear like a good strategy for keeping football hooligans away from the tournament, it will also deter a lot of genuine football supporters as well as the corporately entitled from travelling, given that having ready and available access to suitable liquids before and after the match is an essential part of the matchday experience, particularly for supporters travelling from the lager belt countries in central Europe.
There is then the interesting dilemma of whether to stage the tournament in the Qatari summer or the Qatari winter. What a quandary to weigh up! If the World Cup is staged during the summer months, as is tradition, then the temperature outside the stadia will be unbearably hot, possibly in excess of 40 degrees Celsius, even if the stadia themselves happen to be specially air conditioned. Alternatively, FIFA's masterplan to combat this meterological inconvenience would be to stage the tournament in the middle of winter, probably in January. A curious idea given that this would mean playing the tournament midway through most Western European countries' domestic season. One imagines that the Arsenal and Manchester United managers of 2022 will be somewhat overcome by apoplectic rage at the prospect of their players being taken away for a month halfway through a season to accommodate a World Cup. Already club managers are unhappy when they lose African players for a month every two years when the African Cup of Nations is held at a time when the local weather is not oppressive.
Then there is the issue of legacy. It is widely believed that FIFA like to make their decisions on World Cup hosts based upon where staging the tournament can leave lasting social benefits to the hosts and allow the country develop as a footballing nation. This is a somewhat flawed notion, however, in the case of Qatar given that most of the purpose-built stadia that are being constructed specifically to stage the World Cup are going to be demolished soon after the 2022 tournament's end. Far from leaving a legacy, this smacks of desperate short-termism. Would it not make sense to retain the stadia in order to stage further international sporting events? The World Club Championship perhaps, or even staging other sports such as the World Athletics Championships. Building a stadium to be used for just one month only to then bulldoze it straight afterwards seems like a criminal waste, especially at a time when much of the world is experiencing austerity.
As with the Olympics, it is only right that the World Cup is taken around the world so that all figurative corners of the globe are able to have opportunity to sample a sport that provides a common link and language across borders, races and religions. Football's ability to transcend these multinational boundaries is real and can unite otherwise disparate groups of people. But this does not mean that the tournament hosts should be exempt from meeting the practicalities of hosting a major event, and ultimately the decision on where to stage an event should be reached purely on the basis of which country presents the strongest business case and has the most robust package in place. Given that England and Australia already have the majority of their stadia built and have comparatively advanced transport, amenities and communications already in place, their cases appeared to be the strongest. So their shortage of friends when the votes were cast tells you that FIFA's decisions are concluded through political bargaining far more than they are through meritocracy.
This is frustrating and disappointing, but there is little that can be done. England are paying for years of being the white sheep amongst the brown-nosers and back-slappers at the top table, but they cannot just quit FIFA and keep their own counsel. Sure, there are countries that do not have FIFA membership, but playing regular matches against Greenland, Vatican City and Western Sahara is not going to be enough of a sufficiently lucrative prospect to keep the public interested in international football. England supporters want to see their team play against France, Germany, Brazil and Argentina, and these countries are never going to resign from FIFA. Whatever way you look at it, FIFA hold all the cards because however much they treat England like some chewing gum on the sole of the Governor's shoe, England still need FIFA far more than FIFA need England.
Chris fits the bill as Apprentice
This blog is usually suitably under-whelmed by the excess column inches and media output devoted to televisual reality shows. Not least because, in whose universe do they deem that such shows are reality? There is, however, one glorious exception in this genre, namely the BBC's self-proclaimed 'job interview from hell', The Apprentice. This weekend sees the climax of the sixth series of the unofficial idiot's-guide-of-how-not-to-conduct-business and has seen something of a return to form for the programme, after a couple of years where the format was becoming increasingly stale and the candidates were becoming less credible.
This series, however, has been one of the more memorable ones. I would say that the alumni of series 2 or series 3 probably remain the best and most entertaining to date, but this year's crop are certainly an improvement on many of the candidates that participated in series 4 and 5. That is not to say that the series has been devoid of the deluded and the dim-witted types that make the series an entertainment programme rather than a business educational supplement. But there has been a fine balance between the moments of stupidity and hilarity and also the moments of genuine inspiration. The clever editing can, of course, paint a caricature highlighting the moments of weakness demonstrated by the candidates and ignoring some of the hard graft which may be commendable, but which does not make for entertaining television. But on reflection, it certainly seems as though the calibre of candidates in this latest series has gone up a notch from some of the previous terms.
As with every series of the programme, there was a pantomime villain and this year it was the turn of Isle of Man telecoms entrepreneur, Stuart Baggs. Baggs set a record this year by being the youngest ever candidate to enter the senior version of the show, participating at the age of just 21. Baggs demonstrated throughout the process that he was an alpha male of questionable principles, but setting up a business at the age of 18 showed that he was no entrepreneurial lightweight and this will no doubt have made Lord Sugar identify certain parallels with his own formative years, given that he started his business from scratch at the age of 16. The problem for Lord Sugar you sense is that because his own rags to riches story is so well documented, this results in a lot of candidates trying to pass themselves as his second coming, whereas they are only pale imitators.
Nonetheless, the fruits of Baggs' labours which he claimed was without any financial assistance from his parents certainly seemed to strike a chord with the bearded peer and it resulted in a rare misjudgement from the chief firer. In week 10, an empassioned board room speech from Baggs in which he informed Sugar of how he came to set up his business at an early age saw Baggs defy the odds and retain his place in the competition for the interview stage, resulting in the firing of Liz Locke, the attractive Brummie who had been the favourite to gain employment within the AMS empire until that point. Sugar thought that Baggs' maverick nature and technical expertise would provide him with something that none of the candidates had, but it would only take a week for him to realise the error of his ways.
In week 11, the traditional interview roasting took place from Lord Sugar's quartet of troubleshooting Rottweilers, including the welcome return of former aide Margaret Mountford. As well as Margaret's return, the ankle-biter in chief amongst Sugar's cross examiners was his one-time global troubleshooter Claude Littner, a man seemingly with such limited personality that its totality could be stored in a tin of fish paste. And on the subject of fish, Littner provided the memorable line of 'You're not a big fish, you're not even a fish' in response to messr Baggs' assertion that he was a major player in the telecoms business. Further revelations about the questionable status of Baggs' telecoms licence that he had advertised on his CV culminated in a boardroom explosion from Sugar amid the realisation that he had fired the wrong candidate the previous week, resulting in Baggs' sudden but overdue expulsion from the competition.
Baggs' extended stay and Miss Locke's premature departure aside, it has to be said that Lord Sugar's finger has been on the pulse throughout this series with pretty much all of his other firings being spot on and the other four candidates rightly making the interview stage. His decision on the two candidates to put through to the final was also a close call, but on reflection, it would seem like he made the correct decisions again. Property developer Jamie Lester marked himself down as an early favourite to win the candidacy, but his performance seemed to regress as the series wore on while some of his competitors saw their trajectory head in the other direction. Lester is certainly a strong negotiator and salesman, as one would expect from someone who honed their skills in the real estate business, but he seemed to lose his focus at times.
Then there was Joanne Riley, a 25 year old proprietor of a cleaning business from Leicester. Riley, by her own admission, was no scholar and her lack of business acumen became evident during the interview process when she struggled to identify Lord Sugar's main business interests. Riley, however, did show how The Apprentice can be a force for good for its participating candidates by improving significantly throughout the duration of the process. She started out as mouthy and over-opinionated and rather defensive due to her insecurities about her own background. But she also demonstrated that she was nobody's fool and seemed to work hard to take on board any feedback she received from the board. Riley was not a strong enough candidate to win the apprenticeship, but she left with a different perspective on her career, with Lord Sugar advising her to persist with growing her own business.
So to the final two. As quite often seems to be the case with The Apprentice, the two finalists are polar opposites. One male, one female. One born with a silver spoon in their mouth, the other born with a plastic spoon in theirs. One a twenty-something with only nine months work experience since graduating from university. The other a thirty-something with ten years experience of climbing the corporate ladder having left school with no qualifications. In a lot of ways this final particularly reminds me of the series 3 final that was contested between posh graduate Simon Ambrose and the Irish Account Manager with a difficult upbringing, Kristina Grimes. On that occasion it was Ambrose that prevailed.
Assuming the Ambrose role this time is posh graduate Chris Bates, while up against him assuming the Kristina Grimes role is Stella English, who to an untrained eye bears a slight resemblance to a young Amanda Redman, the star of geriatric detective series, New Tricks. Bates' place in the final looked like a long shot in the early stages of the process given that he was on the losing team in five out of the first seven tasks, being brought back into the boardroom and into the line of fire on more than one occasion. This point was not lost on Lord Sugar, who advised the Politics graduate to buck his ideas up. Bates certainly seemed to do this and he will have particularly impressed Sugar on the week 10 tourism task where he took a calculated risk in his negotiation with the London Tourist Centre, given them a 20 per cent cut of all revenue his team made, much to his colleagues' disgust. That this was a gamble was unquestionable and had it gone wrong, Bates could well have ended up getting fired, but Sugar himself will know that entrepreneurship is about taking risks to be successful and this risk was gloriously successful. It was a smart move on his part and he has demonstrated in previous tasks that he has a good business brain and does not shirk his responsibility when it comes to the hard sell either.
Bates' obvious weakness is his monotonous presentational style which has been highlighted more than once during the process, but this in itself is not going to hold him back. The winner two years ago, Lee McQueen, was an even worse presenter but that did not prevent him from being hired. The clue is in the title of the programme, it is to be expected that there are some items that will need to be ironed out in the event of employment being taken up.
His opponent in the final task, Stella English, has consistently performed well throughout the course of the series, despite having to fend off accusations of being wooden, cold and corporate. Some of these accusations are natural and have a grain of truth about them. The Londoner's background as an employee of a Japanese investment bank for some ten years means that she is used to an institutionalised, corporate culture. But it is also worth highlighting that her employers have effectively created roles for her, thereby recognising her importance and abilities. She has also shown a certain steeliness about her during the process and it would appear that she has kept a certain amount of distance between herself and her competitors. But, as she acknowledged herself, she is not there to win friends, she is there because she is ambitious and wants to gain employment in the Sugar empire.
It is worth remembering how well Stella did when managing a team of disorganised, in-fighting men during the second week of the process and her task-focused approach produced the desired result with her team winning the task. But she has also been equally adept at working hard when she has not been Team Leader, coming out of her natural comfort zone when being a tour guide in week 10 and also acting as a beachwear model in one of the other tasks. 'Taking one for the team' as one of the other candidates put it does not appear to be a problem for her if it is a means to an end. Apart from being typecast as robotic, she does not appear to have many points of weakness other than not being the most natural salesperson or negotiator. This was demonstrated in the purchasing task where she bought items for a higher price because she did not barter effectively, which led to her team losing the task.
The final task sees both candidates having to pitch an idea for a new brand of alcoholic drink, targetting adults aged over 25. Given that one of the candidates is called Stella, this seems like an unfair advantage! On the surface, it seems like there is little to choose between the two candidates and the performance on the final task could end up having a bearing on who wins the whole shooting match. However, I can see Chris being a better fit for Sugar's organisation, which is why I make him favourite to win. He is that much younger than Stella and has a comparatively short business career behind him, whereas Stella has worked under one organisational culture for ten years and will require more of an adjustment to then acclimatise to Sugar's enterprises, which will be far removed from the corporate setup that Stella will have experienced working in a bank.
Chris will be prone to mistakes and will sometimes need to be reined in from his instincts, but he has shown that he is able to produce results when working independently. The only question mark that Sugar may have is whether he would be using this as a career stepping stone, seeing him move on within a year to something more lucrative. But I would not think this would deter Sugar from hiring him, and for much the same reason as Simon Ambrose won the third series, I expect this vintage sixth series to close with Chris Bates taking the honours.
Music on television striking a low note
Flicking the channels one Sunday night recently, I stumbled across the Strictly Come Dancing results show, featuring the television presenter I like to call the bookcase, Claudia Winkleman. This epithet I have provided is not because I imagine Eve Pollard's doe-eyed daughter to be an avid user of a bibliotheque, but more that her presentational style is decidedly, well, wooden. But I digress. What was more disturbing than Claudia's apparent difficulty at even uttering her own name without referring to the autocue was the choice of musical guest as the antipasta to the succulent main course of Anne Widdecombe finally being asked to leave the dancefloor. Given that such light entertainment, family oriented shows usually see musical interludes from such accomplished music legends as James Blunt, Michael Buble and Jamie Cullum, I had to do a double take when I realised who was performing. Surely not it couldn't be. I must be hallucinating. This must be my imagination. But no, no it really is them. There in the flesh, on Sunday primetime television on a dancing programme performing their new single was.....THE MANIC STREET PREACHERS!!!
This was no wind-up, this was for real. The Welsh dragons on the drumkit was the telltale sign that here on a family light entertainment show designed for the mainstream was a band who once wanted to start revolutions and rebellions and tear down the walls held up by the mainstream and their MOR preferences. How can it be that this band of musical revolutionaries, who have done more to put the voice of protest into musical form than arguably any other British band of the past two decades, found themselves resorting to plugging their new single in the company of Eastenders cast-offs and professional dancers, and to a watching television audience consisting in no small number of people from the blue rinse brigade?
On one level, this development was just indicative of the ageing process. John Lydon was once uncouth simply for the sake of keeping down with the kids. These days his uncouthness is presented on demand for the purposes of product placement in exchange for a pile of paper with the head of the woman he once condemned in punk prose. Paul Weller was once an angry young man that challenged the elite with such anthemic attacks on the privileged classes as 'Eton Rifles' but in later years, his sound has become more soothing and mellow, much like the musical equivalent of Horlicks. The Manics have been in the business for 20 years as men and boys and messrs Bradfield and Wire are now at a stage where Saga holidays in the Brecon Beacons are looming on the horizon, while jolly boys' outings to Llandudno are becoming a hazy memory.
But there was a more practical reason for the Manics' purposeful selling out to the mainstream. Music television as a platform is a very limited and disjointed medium in the current climate. Back in the day, it was much more simple than this. Band would get airplay on Radio 1 and would get in the charts. Band would then put themselves out in the public consciousness further by performing on Top Of The Pops. These days, competition for places in the charts is fiercer than ever due to the vast amount of choice available through downloading media, be it iTunes, Spotify or whoever else you care to mention. It only takes an advertising campaign which uses a certain song to get that back into the public's consciousness and it can re-enter the charts. Failing that, some out-of-tune wannabe that attracts the support of Louis Walsh can commit falsetto homicide on the X-Factor and propel the original, previously long forgotten track back into the charts. And then at this time of year, there is always the seasonal effect that sees people getting merry on the sherry and coming under the influence while in control of iTunes, resulting in the wholesale purchase of Christmas novelty songs.
Nowadays, the range of choice in terms of radio stations mean that promoting a new single via that medium is that much harder simply because people's listening pleasures are much more diverse, whereas once upon a time music radio's audience would essentially be drawn from two national stations, plus one commercial radio station in the local area. Getting the requisite attention in an ever more competitive music chart has become much harder and this has meant that bands and musicians have had to make themselves available to appear in settings that they would never have dreamt as being an option even five years ago.
The lack of specialist music platforms available to recording artists on terrestrial television is a rather disturbing development at present and it means that children and teenagers in particular are being deprived the opportunity of seeing many of the genuine stars of recorded music, while being subjected to the artificial side of the music industry. Think back a decade and television had several music oriented programmes, most notably with Top of the Pops, but also including the ITV Chart Show, TFI Friday, Friday Night With Jonathan Ross and Later with Jools Holland. Jools remains to this day and his show is fantastic at managing bring together artists and transcending traditional music genres, but the problem is that his show is not on every week of the year. When the Crown Jools of music television is off air (you've got to appreciate what I did there!) there are few other music platforms available, other than T4 and the Album Chart Show on Channel 4. How, and more pertinently why has music television eaten itself up in this way?
The simple answer to this appears to be a case of short-term thinking by television executives. It was the men in grey suits that deemed that Top Of The Pops had come to the end of the road because of consumer buying habits and falling ratings. Yet, there was a much simpler explanation for Top Of The Pops' falling ratings, namely that it was being scheduled at the wrong time. The programme was habitually screened at 7:30 on a Friday night, in direct competition with Coronation Street on ITV1. Given that Corrie has generally been the first or second highest rated television programme for the vast majority of the past two decades, it stands to reason that the BBC's flagship programme was taking a kicking in the ratings. Had it not occurred to the schedulers that simply moving the programme to another night or another time might have made more sense? Wednesday night at 7:00 maybe, or even run the programme as a live show on a Sunday night an hour after the charts have aired on Radio 1 and that way the chart news would be hot off the press and would make the programme feel fresh. Top Of The Pops typically returns twice a year over Christmas and New Year, including its special Christmas Day episode that prefixes the Queen's Speech. It will not take Paddy Power to identify that this episode will poll high in the Christmas ratings list.
The absence of specialist music television shows dedicated to live performances means that established acts have to be more creative and accommodating about where they go to perform their new material and this is beginning to result in credible acts performing their latest numbers in the most curious of settings. For the Manics in the Strictly studio, read also KT Tunstall performing on the Andrew Marr Show and Daybreak. This is perhaps less of a concern for upcoming acts who are more technology savvy in using the likes of YouTube, Twitter and MySpace in order to publicise their material and live performances. But it would seem myopic to believe that just because social media platforms are available that more conventional media should become redundant for the purposes of performing live music.
There is a real possibility that a whole new generation of the British public will grow up and only see live music segments performed on the likes of the X-Factor and as a short interlude on gentle, breezy chat programmes where the material cannot be too edgy in case it frightens the horses, or wakens Alan Titchmarsh from his almost permanent comatosed state. This seems like a terrible waste because the likes of TFI Friday were once programmes where the audience could discover previously untapped gems. The equivalent programmes in 2010 are conspicuous by their absence and only serves to prove that the major media platforms are obsessively concerned with bending over to meet the demands of advertisers and grabbing the all-important ratings, regardless of whether they are removing the contents of their network's soul at one and the same time.
I trust you have been enjoying the snow and ice of the past couple of weeks, either indulging in some well earned duvet days or guiding the most reliable method of transport during the cold snap, namely the sledge. Unfortunately some of us live close enough to our employer that we were not excused work on the grounds of inclemency. And I hope that none you experienced the kind of cold hearted, wicked crime that was reported by one Kent woman, who called emergency services to report the theft of her snowman, crafted by her own fair hands. As if this act of cruel opportunism was not enough, the woman suffered the further indignity of having her telephone call passed on to the media to highlight the waste on emergency resources. Give the woman a carrot. And maybe some coal.
Anyway, time to digest some of the other news stories of recent times.
Twenty-two unwise men
So, Thursday 2 December saw the result that the country had long been waiting for. Or, at least it did if the country concerned was Qatar. Football's world governing body FIFA announced the results of the Cypriot jury, sorry the results from its Executive Committee and the results spelt bad news for the English delegates and media corps. Predictably, the English reaction to a defeat was measured and philosophical, with every tabloid paper exhibiting the kind of imperialist, xenophobic stereotypes one hoped had been wiped out a generation ago.
As the wreckage of England's latest humiliating defeat was surveyed, several post-mortems were carried out as to how exactly England achieved just 2 votes from FIFA's assembled motley crew of 22 men, with one of those votes being cast by England's own representative. Many pointed to the Panorama documentary that the BBC screened just three days before the vote, while others suggested that it was because England's bid presentation was so polished, that FIFA decided to look to a land of Eastern promise, oil and gold reserves to stage the tournament instead.
First things first here. England actually reached the last four in the bidding rights for staging the 2018 competition. On recent form, that is actually progress for England, given that the last time they reached the semis in the World Cup, Nessun Dorma was all the rage and Paul Gascoigne had got too closely acquainted with Onion Bhajis. Maybe if future World Cup bids are decided by an in-house paper, scissors, stone competition, then football coming home will be a shoo-in.
Wisecracking aside, there is no point in applying logic to FIFA's decision making powers. Just as you are advised not to reason with terrorists, there is no point in arriving at a meaningful or logical conclusion in how FIFA makes its decisions, other than to say that the country's approval rating with FIFA appears to be even lower than its approval rating with Eurovision. What we can at least be certain of is that FIFA's decision to award the World Cup to Russia was not made for pure footballing reasons. FIFA made clear that the English delegation made the best technical bid and the strongest presentation, and also identified that the two countries that posed the greatest risk in hosting the tournaments in 2018 and 2022 were Russia and Qatar, the two countries that ended up winning the day. Just like the girl that is always drawn to the bad boys, FIFA clearly like a challenge.
From what I have read and seen of the bidding process, I certainly felt that England presented the strongest business case for hosting the 2018 World Cup. The beautiful game has a rich heritage and tradition within England, with the world's oldest professional club found within these shores and the oldest cup competition being played here too. But in the here and now, England also has the infrastructure and the transport links in place to host such a grand scale sporting event, as well as having most of its stadia already built and spread throughout a wide area of the country. Sure, the cynics will scoff at the transport point and say that the trains will struggle at the first sign of snow or rain, but the point is that in usual circumstances, you can usually travel from one major city at one end of the country to a major city at the other end within a matter of two or three hours. The sport's place within the DNA of English society, factored in with the transport links and purpose-built stadia all appeared to add up to the most robust package in the field.
The English party's attitude to presenting on match day to FIFA's suited and booted seasoned internationals also seemed to tick all the boxes of how to win friends and influence people. The English entourage was strong with more household names than Proctor & Gamble in the room. Their posse was headed up by three wise men comprising the man in charge of the country, a future king of the country, plus two toffs who support Aston Villa. Or I may have got part of that wrong.
Whatever one felt about 'Just Call Me Dave' Cameron devoting three days of his time to supporting the bid by being present in Zurich at a time when there are other pressing concerns closer to home like a faltering economy, student mutiny and Ann Widdecombe's continued presence in Strictly Come Dancing to deal with, it certainly makes a strong statement of intent about the country's seriousness in wanting to stage the tournament. But maybe where messrs Cameron, Beckham and Wales could only detect the sweet smell of success, the FIFA delegates present detected the not so pleasant smell of desperation.
It is worth reiterating what I said at the top that I do not think FIFA's decisions in awarding the tournament in either 2018 or 2022 were made on football related grounds. If they were, then England and Australia appeared to be the strongest candidates for each of those tournaments, with both countries being passionate sporting hotbeds and having purpose-built stadia already in place. However, England secured just 2 votes for 2018, while Australia managed only 1 for 2022.
England's shortage of support in FIFA's corridors of power goes much further back beyond the recent Panorama expose and there is a long historical context, one which sees the same levels of mutual contempt in place as is seen between the United Kingdom and the European Union. Although founded in 1903, FIFA was not graced by English presence until 1950, presumably on the grounds that the old school tie brigade that were in charge of the English FA did not think FIFA had anything to teach them. By this stage, England's absence from FIFA meant they missed out in participating in any of the first 3 World Cup tournaments, participating for the Jules Rimet Trophy.
Relations between England and the world's governing body have always been a little strained, but this has been particularly apparent during the reign of current FIFA President, Sepp Blatter, a man whose innovative ideas for his favourite sport have been unsurpassed given that he once suggested that women footballers should be encouraged to remove their shirts when scoring a goal, while he is continually opposed to introducing any sensible form of goal-line technology. Blatter, however, has a vice like grip on FIFA and it was his words that allegedly saw FIFA's other delegates withdrawing their support for England.
There are those that would argue that England's lack of love in FIFA corridors is due to their perceived arrogance and conceit and that banging on about having invented the game irritates FIFA. There is some truth in this and we have to accept that just because football has a strong heritage in this country, our country does not have the monopoly on heritage, and therefore has no divine right to host the World Cup. As an island nation, we are sometimes insular when it comes to appreciating what other countries bring to the table. However, England’s lack of friends in Geneva’s marbled halls is also due to their lack of dexterity in the dark arts of schmoozing and brown nosing.
The dynamics in FIFA appear to share a number of similarities to those that are in place in a Masonic lodge. Much like the Masons, FIFA’s Executive Committee consists exclusively of middle aged men who appreciate a fine dine and a good wine (and maybe a Bryan Adams summer), especially if they are not picking up the tab. The other parallel that is shared with the Masons is that FIFA tend to operate a closed shop. To be influential in decision making, you need to sit within the inner circle. England currently appear to be situated nearer to the Arctic Circle than the inner circle. In Masonic parlance, England’s World Cup bid was black-balled.
The timing of the Panorama documentary that made allegations of vote rigging and other corrupt practices within FIFA was far from ideal from a bidding point of view. There were even some accusations of the BBC being ‘unpatriotic’ in some quarters. But, surely it is the media’s responsibility to uncover any supposed wrongdoing and corruption in order to name and shame the culprits concerned, rather than to sweep it under the carpet. If the BBC did not report this, they would not be fulfilling their journalistic integrity. And it made more sense for them to air the programme three days before the bid rather than six months before or after because the items it uncovered would have a more powerful impact on its audience, with the programme still fresh in the minds of the viewers when Sepp Blatter was on envelope opening duties in Zurich.
The double edged sword to this, of course, is that certain FIFA delegates may have spent their Monday night watching the documentary and choking on their olives, and even those that found alternative recreation will have been aware of the allegations raised. Against this backdrop, you would have hoped that the evidence that the BBC was fresh, relevant and damning, meaning that the FIFA bigwigs were caught red handed, banged to rights. Sadly, however, the Panorama documentary just covered old ground and the total sum of their investigation was to refer to incidents that occurred ten years earlier and which had been reported before. The journalist reporting his findings, a Scotsman by the name of Andrew Jennings so happened to be someone that had been banned from FIFA's premises because of previous accusations he had made. In terms of hard hitting journalism, this was a long way removed from The Cook Report. So much for not sacrificing journalistic integrity, this was as lame an effort as England's showing in South Africa in the summer from a point-scoring journalist with a grudge. The irony of a Scotsman possibly being responsible for England's World Cup bid failing is richer than Roman Abramovich, Bill Gates and Sir Fred Goodwin all being covered in Black Forest Gateau.
This is not to say that Jennings' fundamental point was wrong, of course. This point being that FIFA are corruptible and accountable only to themselves. If anything, the results of the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments demonstrates this, as does the bidding process itself. First of all, it does not take a quantum physicist or a brain surgeon to understand that by putting two tournaments up for tender in one foul swoop that this increases the potential for corruptibility because it allows for the kind of back-scratching and horsetrading between delegates where deals are done to suit both parties. So for example, Qatari delegate says to Russian delegate 'I will vote for Russia to host the tournament so long as you vote for us to host it in 2022'. The banker on Deal Or No Deal never drives such an easy bargain as that. FIFA's banqueting halls in the days leading up to the big decision will have bore an uncanny similarity to the Deal Or No Deal studio, except for the absence of a self-important, bearded middle aged man wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Or maybe not. Even the man who gave the world Mr Blobby could not surely be as unpopular with the English public as Sepp Blatter.
But just as bad as the blatant opportunity for deal-making that putting two tournaments up for tender in one block presented was the actual configuring of the FIFA Executive Committee that voted on the destination of the World Cups in 2018 and 2022. The 22 men responsible for determining the England bid's fate were made up of gentlemen who came from countries with a vested interest, namely countries that were bidding for the World Cup in either 2018 and 2022. Now, in most professional circles, this is what would generally be regarded as a conflict of interest. How can you have a Committee adjudicating on a decision where they have their own interests being represented? This is akin to a company carrying out a job interview where the head of the interview panel is the drinking companion of one of the interviewees. The interviewer would be obliged to declare an interest in this situation and would have to withdraw from the panel. Why does the same principle not apply to FIFA's management of its Executive Committee? Oh, silly me, I forgot what a self-serving, unaccountable organisation FIFA are.
But it should not be this way. How difficult can it be to appoint the Executive Committee for a term in office once it becomes apparent who the bidding parties will be for the next World Cup that is up for tender? So, for example, let's imagine that the 2026 World Cup attracts bids from England, France, Japan, the United States, plus a joint bid from Bolivia and Venezuela. Once these bids have been confirmed, FIFA can determine that its Executive Committee that decides on the destination of the World Cup hosting sixteen years thus must not be made up of representatives from any of these six countries. As my right honourable friend Alexander the Meerkat would say, 'Simples!'. There are still over 190 other nations that have a FIFA membership from whom the delegation can be drawn and the representatives from these countries can then be free to focus their energies on championing their country's bid. The simplicity of this concept is there for all to see, but the odds of FIFA ever implementing it are about the same as the ones you would get on Frankie Boyle becoming a UN diplomat, or Russell Brand becoming a monk.
So the die has been cast and the decisions made for 2018 and 2022 and where does that leave everybody? Well, Russia is one of the world's great footballing nations and one of the notable absentees from the list of top nations that have hitherto hosted international football's showpiece event. There is no reason why a country that gave the footballing world Lev Yashin, Andrei Arshavin, and some of the great Spartak Moscow sides should not have the World Cup experience in their neighbourhood. There are undoubtedly going to be challenges though, and Russia's ability to cope with these challenges will determine whether it is the right time for it to be staging a major sporting event. Several of Russia's World Cup venues have yet to be built and one hopes that lessons will be learnt from the debacle of this year's Commonwealth Games in Delhi, where parts of the stadium were still being completed days before the competition started. Fortunately for Russia, Poland is a neighbouring country and so obtaining builders should not be problem in an emergency, with Russia's oil oligarchs well equipped to pay above the minimum wage.
There are two greater issues for Russia to address, however. Firstly is its transport infrastructure. Russia is a vast country and whereas if the World Cup had been held in England then this would enable anyone to travel to one part of the country to another within a couple of hours, then the greater expanse of the largest country in the world by land area means a greater reliance on internal flights in order for players, officials and journalists to get from one venue to another. The concern that this need raises is the recent safety record among Russian air carriers, and most notably, its national carrier Aeroflot. Traditionally, Aeroflot used to be the butt of bar-room jokes in the same way that Skoda used to attract one liners about the quality of its cars. But whereas the input of German engineering has meant that Skoda jokes no longer ring true, concerns persist about Aeroflot and there have been several air crashes in Russia within the past five years which have resulted in fatality. The pressures of hosting a major event will only test Russia's aviation resources further and so clearly things will need to improve within the next seven and a half years, otherwise the potential for a tragedy is prominent, unless people decide that the Trans-Siberian Express is their preferred method of transport.
The social attitudes of some backward thinking natives is also a problem that cannot be swept under the carpet. The West Bromwich Albion forward Peter Odemwingie is testament to this. Odemwingie is a Nigerian international of Uzbek birth and prior to carrying out his day job in the West Midlands, he previously turned out for Lokomotiv Moscow, one of several notable club sides that play in the Russian capital. Despite a respectable return of 21 goals in 75 appearances, it appears that a section of Lokomotiv supporters were not disappointed by Odemwingie's departure to the land of Balti Pie and Lenny Henry, given that in Lokomotiv's next match following his move, a number of supporters unfurled a banner saying 'Thanks West Brom', accompanied by the image of a banana. Such attitudes are fortunately few and far between in the United Kingdom these days outside of the BNP's garden party, but this is sadly far from an isolated example of racial intolerance in Russia, although they are far from the only country where social understanding is backward. In the past few months there have been examples of racist chanting and behaviour at football matches in Italy, Serbia and Poland. This is particularly concerning in the latter's case given that they will be co-hosting the European Championships in less than 2 years from now.
The cynical side of me thinks, however, that Russia's social attitudes and one-dimensional thinking will not have a major bearing on the 2018 tournament for one very simple reason. Not many Russians will be in a position where they can afford to attend World Cup matches. A significant percentage of the tickets for World Cups end up in the hands of the corporates. Attending World Cup matches is a beany for the employees of the sponsors, the Coca-Colas, Fuji Films and Philips of this world, a modern day team building alternative to an afternoon on the golf course or orienteering in the nearest forest. Whether the corporates find attending Russia an enticing prospect is another matter. What is more likely than racist chanting blighting the World Cup in eight years time is that mouth-watering international contests will get played out in front of rows of empty seats, particularly in the more remote venues staging matches.
The potential for empty seats is only going to be increased four years later when the World Cup bandwagon moves on to Qatar. As a country situated in the middle of the Arabian desert, it will come as no surprise that the consumption of alcohol in Qatar is illegal and any contravention of the local laws will result in a permanent and painful forfeit for the consumer. While this might appear like a good strategy for keeping football hooligans away from the tournament, it will also deter a lot of genuine football supporters as well as the corporately entitled from travelling, given that having ready and available access to suitable liquids before and after the match is an essential part of the matchday experience, particularly for supporters travelling from the lager belt countries in central Europe.
There is then the interesting dilemma of whether to stage the tournament in the Qatari summer or the Qatari winter. What a quandary to weigh up! If the World Cup is staged during the summer months, as is tradition, then the temperature outside the stadia will be unbearably hot, possibly in excess of 40 degrees Celsius, even if the stadia themselves happen to be specially air conditioned. Alternatively, FIFA's masterplan to combat this meterological inconvenience would be to stage the tournament in the middle of winter, probably in January. A curious idea given that this would mean playing the tournament midway through most Western European countries' domestic season. One imagines that the Arsenal and Manchester United managers of 2022 will be somewhat overcome by apoplectic rage at the prospect of their players being taken away for a month halfway through a season to accommodate a World Cup. Already club managers are unhappy when they lose African players for a month every two years when the African Cup of Nations is held at a time when the local weather is not oppressive.
Then there is the issue of legacy. It is widely believed that FIFA like to make their decisions on World Cup hosts based upon where staging the tournament can leave lasting social benefits to the hosts and allow the country develop as a footballing nation. This is a somewhat flawed notion, however, in the case of Qatar given that most of the purpose-built stadia that are being constructed specifically to stage the World Cup are going to be demolished soon after the 2022 tournament's end. Far from leaving a legacy, this smacks of desperate short-termism. Would it not make sense to retain the stadia in order to stage further international sporting events? The World Club Championship perhaps, or even staging other sports such as the World Athletics Championships. Building a stadium to be used for just one month only to then bulldoze it straight afterwards seems like a criminal waste, especially at a time when much of the world is experiencing austerity.
As with the Olympics, it is only right that the World Cup is taken around the world so that all figurative corners of the globe are able to have opportunity to sample a sport that provides a common link and language across borders, races and religions. Football's ability to transcend these multinational boundaries is real and can unite otherwise disparate groups of people. But this does not mean that the tournament hosts should be exempt from meeting the practicalities of hosting a major event, and ultimately the decision on where to stage an event should be reached purely on the basis of which country presents the strongest business case and has the most robust package in place. Given that England and Australia already have the majority of their stadia built and have comparatively advanced transport, amenities and communications already in place, their cases appeared to be the strongest. So their shortage of friends when the votes were cast tells you that FIFA's decisions are concluded through political bargaining far more than they are through meritocracy.
This is frustrating and disappointing, but there is little that can be done. England are paying for years of being the white sheep amongst the brown-nosers and back-slappers at the top table, but they cannot just quit FIFA and keep their own counsel. Sure, there are countries that do not have FIFA membership, but playing regular matches against Greenland, Vatican City and Western Sahara is not going to be enough of a sufficiently lucrative prospect to keep the public interested in international football. England supporters want to see their team play against France, Germany, Brazil and Argentina, and these countries are never going to resign from FIFA. Whatever way you look at it, FIFA hold all the cards because however much they treat England like some chewing gum on the sole of the Governor's shoe, England still need FIFA far more than FIFA need England.
Chris fits the bill as Apprentice
This blog is usually suitably under-whelmed by the excess column inches and media output devoted to televisual reality shows. Not least because, in whose universe do they deem that such shows are reality? There is, however, one glorious exception in this genre, namely the BBC's self-proclaimed 'job interview from hell', The Apprentice. This weekend sees the climax of the sixth series of the unofficial idiot's-guide-of-how-not-to-conduct-business and has seen something of a return to form for the programme, after a couple of years where the format was becoming increasingly stale and the candidates were becoming less credible.
This series, however, has been one of the more memorable ones. I would say that the alumni of series 2 or series 3 probably remain the best and most entertaining to date, but this year's crop are certainly an improvement on many of the candidates that participated in series 4 and 5. That is not to say that the series has been devoid of the deluded and the dim-witted types that make the series an entertainment programme rather than a business educational supplement. But there has been a fine balance between the moments of stupidity and hilarity and also the moments of genuine inspiration. The clever editing can, of course, paint a caricature highlighting the moments of weakness demonstrated by the candidates and ignoring some of the hard graft which may be commendable, but which does not make for entertaining television. But on reflection, it certainly seems as though the calibre of candidates in this latest series has gone up a notch from some of the previous terms.
As with every series of the programme, there was a pantomime villain and this year it was the turn of Isle of Man telecoms entrepreneur, Stuart Baggs. Baggs set a record this year by being the youngest ever candidate to enter the senior version of the show, participating at the age of just 21. Baggs demonstrated throughout the process that he was an alpha male of questionable principles, but setting up a business at the age of 18 showed that he was no entrepreneurial lightweight and this will no doubt have made Lord Sugar identify certain parallels with his own formative years, given that he started his business from scratch at the age of 16. The problem for Lord Sugar you sense is that because his own rags to riches story is so well documented, this results in a lot of candidates trying to pass themselves as his second coming, whereas they are only pale imitators.
Nonetheless, the fruits of Baggs' labours which he claimed was without any financial assistance from his parents certainly seemed to strike a chord with the bearded peer and it resulted in a rare misjudgement from the chief firer. In week 10, an empassioned board room speech from Baggs in which he informed Sugar of how he came to set up his business at an early age saw Baggs defy the odds and retain his place in the competition for the interview stage, resulting in the firing of Liz Locke, the attractive Brummie who had been the favourite to gain employment within the AMS empire until that point. Sugar thought that Baggs' maverick nature and technical expertise would provide him with something that none of the candidates had, but it would only take a week for him to realise the error of his ways.
In week 11, the traditional interview roasting took place from Lord Sugar's quartet of troubleshooting Rottweilers, including the welcome return of former aide Margaret Mountford. As well as Margaret's return, the ankle-biter in chief amongst Sugar's cross examiners was his one-time global troubleshooter Claude Littner, a man seemingly with such limited personality that its totality could be stored in a tin of fish paste. And on the subject of fish, Littner provided the memorable line of 'You're not a big fish, you're not even a fish' in response to messr Baggs' assertion that he was a major player in the telecoms business. Further revelations about the questionable status of Baggs' telecoms licence that he had advertised on his CV culminated in a boardroom explosion from Sugar amid the realisation that he had fired the wrong candidate the previous week, resulting in Baggs' sudden but overdue expulsion from the competition.
Baggs' extended stay and Miss Locke's premature departure aside, it has to be said that Lord Sugar's finger has been on the pulse throughout this series with pretty much all of his other firings being spot on and the other four candidates rightly making the interview stage. His decision on the two candidates to put through to the final was also a close call, but on reflection, it would seem like he made the correct decisions again. Property developer Jamie Lester marked himself down as an early favourite to win the candidacy, but his performance seemed to regress as the series wore on while some of his competitors saw their trajectory head in the other direction. Lester is certainly a strong negotiator and salesman, as one would expect from someone who honed their skills in the real estate business, but he seemed to lose his focus at times.
Then there was Joanne Riley, a 25 year old proprietor of a cleaning business from Leicester. Riley, by her own admission, was no scholar and her lack of business acumen became evident during the interview process when she struggled to identify Lord Sugar's main business interests. Riley, however, did show how The Apprentice can be a force for good for its participating candidates by improving significantly throughout the duration of the process. She started out as mouthy and over-opinionated and rather defensive due to her insecurities about her own background. But she also demonstrated that she was nobody's fool and seemed to work hard to take on board any feedback she received from the board. Riley was not a strong enough candidate to win the apprenticeship, but she left with a different perspective on her career, with Lord Sugar advising her to persist with growing her own business.
So to the final two. As quite often seems to be the case with The Apprentice, the two finalists are polar opposites. One male, one female. One born with a silver spoon in their mouth, the other born with a plastic spoon in theirs. One a twenty-something with only nine months work experience since graduating from university. The other a thirty-something with ten years experience of climbing the corporate ladder having left school with no qualifications. In a lot of ways this final particularly reminds me of the series 3 final that was contested between posh graduate Simon Ambrose and the Irish Account Manager with a difficult upbringing, Kristina Grimes. On that occasion it was Ambrose that prevailed.
Assuming the Ambrose role this time is posh graduate Chris Bates, while up against him assuming the Kristina Grimes role is Stella English, who to an untrained eye bears a slight resemblance to a young Amanda Redman, the star of geriatric detective series, New Tricks. Bates' place in the final looked like a long shot in the early stages of the process given that he was on the losing team in five out of the first seven tasks, being brought back into the boardroom and into the line of fire on more than one occasion. This point was not lost on Lord Sugar, who advised the Politics graduate to buck his ideas up. Bates certainly seemed to do this and he will have particularly impressed Sugar on the week 10 tourism task where he took a calculated risk in his negotiation with the London Tourist Centre, given them a 20 per cent cut of all revenue his team made, much to his colleagues' disgust. That this was a gamble was unquestionable and had it gone wrong, Bates could well have ended up getting fired, but Sugar himself will know that entrepreneurship is about taking risks to be successful and this risk was gloriously successful. It was a smart move on his part and he has demonstrated in previous tasks that he has a good business brain and does not shirk his responsibility when it comes to the hard sell either.
Bates' obvious weakness is his monotonous presentational style which has been highlighted more than once during the process, but this in itself is not going to hold him back. The winner two years ago, Lee McQueen, was an even worse presenter but that did not prevent him from being hired. The clue is in the title of the programme, it is to be expected that there are some items that will need to be ironed out in the event of employment being taken up.
His opponent in the final task, Stella English, has consistently performed well throughout the course of the series, despite having to fend off accusations of being wooden, cold and corporate. Some of these accusations are natural and have a grain of truth about them. The Londoner's background as an employee of a Japanese investment bank for some ten years means that she is used to an institutionalised, corporate culture. But it is also worth highlighting that her employers have effectively created roles for her, thereby recognising her importance and abilities. She has also shown a certain steeliness about her during the process and it would appear that she has kept a certain amount of distance between herself and her competitors. But, as she acknowledged herself, she is not there to win friends, she is there because she is ambitious and wants to gain employment in the Sugar empire.
It is worth remembering how well Stella did when managing a team of disorganised, in-fighting men during the second week of the process and her task-focused approach produced the desired result with her team winning the task. But she has also been equally adept at working hard when she has not been Team Leader, coming out of her natural comfort zone when being a tour guide in week 10 and also acting as a beachwear model in one of the other tasks. 'Taking one for the team' as one of the other candidates put it does not appear to be a problem for her if it is a means to an end. Apart from being typecast as robotic, she does not appear to have many points of weakness other than not being the most natural salesperson or negotiator. This was demonstrated in the purchasing task where she bought items for a higher price because she did not barter effectively, which led to her team losing the task.
The final task sees both candidates having to pitch an idea for a new brand of alcoholic drink, targetting adults aged over 25. Given that one of the candidates is called Stella, this seems like an unfair advantage! On the surface, it seems like there is little to choose between the two candidates and the performance on the final task could end up having a bearing on who wins the whole shooting match. However, I can see Chris being a better fit for Sugar's organisation, which is why I make him favourite to win. He is that much younger than Stella and has a comparatively short business career behind him, whereas Stella has worked under one organisational culture for ten years and will require more of an adjustment to then acclimatise to Sugar's enterprises, which will be far removed from the corporate setup that Stella will have experienced working in a bank.
Chris will be prone to mistakes and will sometimes need to be reined in from his instincts, but he has shown that he is able to produce results when working independently. The only question mark that Sugar may have is whether he would be using this as a career stepping stone, seeing him move on within a year to something more lucrative. But I would not think this would deter Sugar from hiring him, and for much the same reason as Simon Ambrose won the third series, I expect this vintage sixth series to close with Chris Bates taking the honours.
Music on television striking a low note
Flicking the channels one Sunday night recently, I stumbled across the Strictly Come Dancing results show, featuring the television presenter I like to call the bookcase, Claudia Winkleman. This epithet I have provided is not because I imagine Eve Pollard's doe-eyed daughter to be an avid user of a bibliotheque, but more that her presentational style is decidedly, well, wooden. But I digress. What was more disturbing than Claudia's apparent difficulty at even uttering her own name without referring to the autocue was the choice of musical guest as the antipasta to the succulent main course of Anne Widdecombe finally being asked to leave the dancefloor. Given that such light entertainment, family oriented shows usually see musical interludes from such accomplished music legends as James Blunt, Michael Buble and Jamie Cullum, I had to do a double take when I realised who was performing. Surely not it couldn't be. I must be hallucinating. This must be my imagination. But no, no it really is them. There in the flesh, on Sunday primetime television on a dancing programme performing their new single was.....THE MANIC STREET PREACHERS!!!
This was no wind-up, this was for real. The Welsh dragons on the drumkit was the telltale sign that here on a family light entertainment show designed for the mainstream was a band who once wanted to start revolutions and rebellions and tear down the walls held up by the mainstream and their MOR preferences. How can it be that this band of musical revolutionaries, who have done more to put the voice of protest into musical form than arguably any other British band of the past two decades, found themselves resorting to plugging their new single in the company of Eastenders cast-offs and professional dancers, and to a watching television audience consisting in no small number of people from the blue rinse brigade?
On one level, this development was just indicative of the ageing process. John Lydon was once uncouth simply for the sake of keeping down with the kids. These days his uncouthness is presented on demand for the purposes of product placement in exchange for a pile of paper with the head of the woman he once condemned in punk prose. Paul Weller was once an angry young man that challenged the elite with such anthemic attacks on the privileged classes as 'Eton Rifles' but in later years, his sound has become more soothing and mellow, much like the musical equivalent of Horlicks. The Manics have been in the business for 20 years as men and boys and messrs Bradfield and Wire are now at a stage where Saga holidays in the Brecon Beacons are looming on the horizon, while jolly boys' outings to Llandudno are becoming a hazy memory.
But there was a more practical reason for the Manics' purposeful selling out to the mainstream. Music television as a platform is a very limited and disjointed medium in the current climate. Back in the day, it was much more simple than this. Band would get airplay on Radio 1 and would get in the charts. Band would then put themselves out in the public consciousness further by performing on Top Of The Pops. These days, competition for places in the charts is fiercer than ever due to the vast amount of choice available through downloading media, be it iTunes, Spotify or whoever else you care to mention. It only takes an advertising campaign which uses a certain song to get that back into the public's consciousness and it can re-enter the charts. Failing that, some out-of-tune wannabe that attracts the support of Louis Walsh can commit falsetto homicide on the X-Factor and propel the original, previously long forgotten track back into the charts. And then at this time of year, there is always the seasonal effect that sees people getting merry on the sherry and coming under the influence while in control of iTunes, resulting in the wholesale purchase of Christmas novelty songs.
Nowadays, the range of choice in terms of radio stations mean that promoting a new single via that medium is that much harder simply because people's listening pleasures are much more diverse, whereas once upon a time music radio's audience would essentially be drawn from two national stations, plus one commercial radio station in the local area. Getting the requisite attention in an ever more competitive music chart has become much harder and this has meant that bands and musicians have had to make themselves available to appear in settings that they would never have dreamt as being an option even five years ago.
The lack of specialist music platforms available to recording artists on terrestrial television is a rather disturbing development at present and it means that children and teenagers in particular are being deprived the opportunity of seeing many of the genuine stars of recorded music, while being subjected to the artificial side of the music industry. Think back a decade and television had several music oriented programmes, most notably with Top of the Pops, but also including the ITV Chart Show, TFI Friday, Friday Night With Jonathan Ross and Later with Jools Holland. Jools remains to this day and his show is fantastic at managing bring together artists and transcending traditional music genres, but the problem is that his show is not on every week of the year. When the Crown Jools of music television is off air (you've got to appreciate what I did there!) there are few other music platforms available, other than T4 and the Album Chart Show on Channel 4. How, and more pertinently why has music television eaten itself up in this way?
The simple answer to this appears to be a case of short-term thinking by television executives. It was the men in grey suits that deemed that Top Of The Pops had come to the end of the road because of consumer buying habits and falling ratings. Yet, there was a much simpler explanation for Top Of The Pops' falling ratings, namely that it was being scheduled at the wrong time. The programme was habitually screened at 7:30 on a Friday night, in direct competition with Coronation Street on ITV1. Given that Corrie has generally been the first or second highest rated television programme for the vast majority of the past two decades, it stands to reason that the BBC's flagship programme was taking a kicking in the ratings. Had it not occurred to the schedulers that simply moving the programme to another night or another time might have made more sense? Wednesday night at 7:00 maybe, or even run the programme as a live show on a Sunday night an hour after the charts have aired on Radio 1 and that way the chart news would be hot off the press and would make the programme feel fresh. Top Of The Pops typically returns twice a year over Christmas and New Year, including its special Christmas Day episode that prefixes the Queen's Speech. It will not take Paddy Power to identify that this episode will poll high in the Christmas ratings list.
The absence of specialist music television shows dedicated to live performances means that established acts have to be more creative and accommodating about where they go to perform their new material and this is beginning to result in credible acts performing their latest numbers in the most curious of settings. For the Manics in the Strictly studio, read also KT Tunstall performing on the Andrew Marr Show and Daybreak. This is perhaps less of a concern for upcoming acts who are more technology savvy in using the likes of YouTube, Twitter and MySpace in order to publicise their material and live performances. But it would seem myopic to believe that just because social media platforms are available that more conventional media should become redundant for the purposes of performing live music.
There is a real possibility that a whole new generation of the British public will grow up and only see live music segments performed on the likes of the X-Factor and as a short interlude on gentle, breezy chat programmes where the material cannot be too edgy in case it frightens the horses, or wakens Alan Titchmarsh from his almost permanent comatosed state. This seems like a terrible waste because the likes of TFI Friday were once programmes where the audience could discover previously untapped gems. The equivalent programmes in 2010 are conspicuous by their absence and only serves to prove that the major media platforms are obsessively concerned with bending over to meet the demands of advertisers and grabbing the all-important ratings, regardless of whether they are removing the contents of their network's soul at one and the same time.
Monday 29 November 2010
Playlists 27 to 46
I realised that it has been around 2 months since I last updated my playlist pleasures on this blogspace. Since then, I have had occasion on assorted journeys to listen to another 20 alphabetically influenced playlists via my iPod. When I last provided an update, the musical journey had got as far as the letter E. As you will see below, the journey has swiftly moved on now to the letter I, with a few surprise calling points along the way.
PLAYLIST #27
Manic Street Preachers - Everything Must Go
The Killers - Everything Will Be Alright
Ash - Evil Eye
Massive Attack - Exchange
U2 - Exit
Madonna - Express Yourself
Travis - Eyes Wide Open
Billy Idol - Eyes Without A Face
Ian Brown - FEAR
Oasis - Fade Away
The Thrills - Faded Beauty Queens
The National - Fake Empire
Razorlight - Fall, Fall, Fall
Crowded House - Fall At Your Feet
PLAYLIST #28
McAlmont & Butler - Falling
The Rifles - Fall To Sorrow
Oasis - Falling Down
Cherry Ghost - False Alarm
KT Tunstall - False Alarm
Pink - Family Portrait
White Lies - Farewell To The Fairground
David Bowie - Fashion
Fyfe Dangerfield - Faster Than The Setting Sun
Queen - Fat Bottomed Girls
Lily Allen - The Fear
Muse - Feeling Good
Jamiroquai - Feels Just Like It Should
Deacon Blue - Fergus Sings The Blues
U2 - Fez (Being Born)
PLAYLIST #29
Corinne Bailey Rae - Feels Like The First Time
Sting - Fields Of Gold
White Lies - Fifty On Our Foreheads
Moby - Find My Baby
Snow Patrol - The Finish Line
Fyfe Dangerfield - Firebird
Embrace - Fireworks
Morrissey - The First Of The Gang To Die
Lotus Eaters - The First Picture Of You
Roberta Flack - The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
The Waterboys - Fisherman's Blues
Port O'Brien - Fisherman's Son
Elbow - The Fix
PLAYLIST #30
Coldplay - Fix You
Queen - Flash
Massive Attack - Flat Of The Blade
Travis - Flowers In The Windows
Lene Marlin - Flown Away
U2 - The Fly
Regina Spektor - Folding Chair
The Beatles - The Fool On The Hill
Rolling Stones - Fool To Cry
The Killers - For Reasons Unknown
Simply Red - For Your Babies
Oasis - Force Of Nature
The Cure - A Forest
Moby - Forever
PLAYLIST #31
The Magic Numbers - Forever Lost
The Pretenders - Forever Young
Alanis Morissette - Forgiven
The Thrills - Found My Rosebud
Echo & The Bunnymen - The Fountain
Crowded House - Four Seasons In One Day
Sharleen Spiteri - Francoise
Kings Of Convenience - Freedom And Its Owner
The Cure - Friday I'm In Love
Elbow - Friends Of Ours
White Lies - From The Stars
The Beatles - From Me To You
Madonna - Frozen
PLAYLIST #32
Johnny Cash - Fulsom Prison Blues
Massive Attack - Future Proof
Lamb - Gabriel
Chemical Brothers - Galvanize
Echo & The Bunnymen - The Game
Oasis - Gas Panic
Nerina Pallot - Geek Love
Regina Spektor - Genius Next Door
Glasvegas - Geraldine
The Beatles - Get Back
Texas - Get Down To Night
The Dandy Warhols - Get Off
Rolling Stones - Get Off Of My Cloud
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Get On Top
U2 - Get On Your Boots
The Eagles - Get Over It
PLAYLIST #33
Pink - Get The Party Started
Athlete - The Getaway
Texas - Getaway
Prince - Gett Off
Electronic - Getting Away With It
Simple Minds - Ghostdancing
The Specials - Ghost Town
Alanis Morissette - Giggling Again For No Reason
Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter
Oasis - The Girl In The Dirty Shirt
The Beatles - Girl
PLAYLIST #34
Edwyn Collins - A Girl Like You
The White Stripes - Girl You Have No Faith In Medicine
Supertramp - Give A Little Bit
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Give It Away
Hothouse Flowers - Give It Up
Green Day - Give Me Novocaine
Dirty Vegas - Given You Everything
The Killers - Glamorous Indie Rock N' Roll
Bat For Lashes - Glass
Coldplay - Glass Of Water
Simple Minds - Glittering Prize
RPA/UN Of Sound - Glory
Portishead - Glory Box
Oasis - Go Let It Out
Fleetwood Mac - Go Your Own Way
PLAYLIST #35
The Beach Boys - God Only Knows
Coldplay - God Put A Smile Upon Your Face
The Dandy Warhols - Godless
Shed Seven - Going For Gold
Oasis - Going Nowhere
The Jam - Going Underground
Lamb - Gold
Kings Of Convenience - Gold In The Air Of Summer
Manic Street Preachers - Golden Platitudes
Klaxons - Golden Skans
Razorlight - Golden Touch
David Bowie - Golden Years
U2 - Gone
Texas - Good Advice
Feargal Sharkey - A Good Heart
Bat For Lashes - Good Love
PLAYLIST #36
RPA/UN Of Sound - Good Lovin'
Queen - Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy
Jack Johnson - Good People
Green Day - Good Riddance
The Courteneers - Good Times Are Calling
The Hoosiers - Goodbye Mr A
Supertramp - Goodbye Stranger
Kooks - Got No Love
Hard-Fi - Gotta Reason
Embrace - Gravity
PLAYLIST #37
U2 - Gloria
Rumer - Goodbye Girl
The Killers - Goodnight, Travel Well
Snow Patrol - Grazed Knees
Moby - Great Escape
The Rifles - The Great Escape
Coldplay - Green Eyes
The National - Green Gloves
Madness - Grey Day
Elbow - Grounds For Divorce
Oasis - Guess God Thinks I'm Abel
Delphic - Halcyon
Texas - Halo
PLAYLIST #38
Oasis - Half The World Away
Nerina Pallot - Halfway Home
Queen - Hammer To Fall
Garbage - Hammering In My Head
Alanis Morissette - Hand In My Pocket
U2 - The Hands That Built America
Blondie - Hanging On The Telephone
Moby/Sinead O'Connor - Harbour
The Beatles - A Hard Day's Night
Brandon Flowers - Hard Enough
Alanis Morissette - Hands Clean
PLAYLIST #39
Hard-Fi - Hard To Beat
Sheryl Crow - Hard To Make A Stand
The White Stripes - The Hardest Button To Button
Coldplay - The Hardest Part
The Hollies - He Ain't Heavy
Reverend & The Makers - He Said He Loved Me
Alanis Morissette - Head Over Feet
Tears For Fears - Head Over Heels
Arcade Fire - Headlights Look Like Diamonds
Snow Patrol - Headlights On Dark Roads
Echo & The Bunnymen - Heads Will Roll
KT Tunstall - Heal Over
Rumer - Healer
Nerina Pallot - Heart Attack
PLAYLIST #40
Blondie - Heart Of Glass
The Eagles - Heartache Tonight
Bryan Adams - Heaven
Queen - Heaven For Everyone
Reverend & The Makers - Heavyweight Champion Of The World
Skunk Anansie - Hedonism
Bloc Party - Helicopter
Oasis - Hello
AC/DC - Hells Bells
The Beatles - Help!
The Fratellis - Henrietta
The Sundays - Here's Where The Story Ends
Whitesnake - Here I Go Again
David Bowie - Heroes
PLAYLIST #41
The Beatles - Here Comes The Sun
Icehouse - Hey Little Girl
Fyfe Dangerfield - High On The Tide
Coldplay - High Speed
Jamiroquai - High Times
Echo & The Bunnymen - Higher Hell
Oasis - The Hindu Times
The Rifles - History
The Propellerheads - History Repeating
U2 - Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me
Razorlight - Hold On
Joss Stone - Holding Out For A Hero
Green Day - Holiday
The Thrills - Hollywood Kids
PLAYLIST #42
Sheryl Crow - Home
Dirty Vegas - Home Again
Kings Of Convenience - Homesick
Simon & Garfunkel - Homeward Bound
Moby - Honey
Rolling Stones - Honky Tonk Women
Muse - Hoodoo
The Dandy Warhols - Horse Pills
America - A Horse With No Name
Razorlight - Hostage Of Love
The Eagles - Hotel California
Squeeze - Hourglass
The Futureheads - Hounds Of Love
PLAYLIST #43
Madness - House Of Fun
Doves - House Of Mirrors
The Animals - The House Of The Rising Sun
The Courteeners - How Come
RPA/UN Of Sound - How Deep Is Your Man
Travis - How Many Hearts
Snow Patrol - How To Be Dead
James - How Was It For You
The Killers - Human
Nerina Pallot - Human
The Pretenders - Human
Dirty Vegas - Human Love
Regina Spektor - Human Of The Year
Bruce Springsteen - Human Touch
The Beatles - Hey Jude
PLAYLIST #44
Oasis - Hey Now
Dolores O'Riordan - Human Spirit
Travis - The Humpty Dumpty Love Song
Madonna - Hung Up
Bruce Springsteen - Hungry Heart
Dido - Hunter
Johnny Cash - Hurt
Simple Minds - Hypnotised
Muse - Hysteria
The Pretenders - Hymn To Her
PLAYLIST #45
Corinne Bailey Rae - I'd Do It All Again
Kings Of Convenience - I'd Rather Dance With You
U2 - I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight
Deacon Blue - I'll Never Fall In Love Again
The Pretenders - I'll Stand By You
Sharleen Spiteri - I'm Going To Haunt You
Blondie - I'm Always Touched By Your Presence Dear
The Passions - I'm In Love With A German Film Star
Pigeon Detectives - I'm Not Sorry
Bruce Springsteen - I'm On Fire
Oasis - I'm Outta Time
Morrissey - I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris
The Stone Roses - I Am The Resurrection
The Beatles - I Am The Walrus
Elvis Costello - I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down
PLAYLIST #46
Rolling Stones - I Can't Get No Satisfaction
The Killers - I Can't Stay
Razorlight - I Can't Stop This Feeling I've Got
The Eagles - I Can't Tell You Why
Red Hot Chili Peppers - I Could Die For You
Last Shadow Puppets - I Don't Like You Anymore
KT Tunstall - I Don't Want You Now
Texas - I Don't Want A Lover
The Beatles - I Feel Fine
Crowded House - I Feel Possessed
Pigeon Detectives - I Found Out
Mumford & Sons - I Gave You All
The Pretenders - I Go To Sleep
Ray Charles - I Got A Woman
James Brown - I Got You (I Feel Good)
Oasis - I Hope, I Think, I Know
The White Stripes - I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself
Split Enz - I Got You
Kaiser Chiefs - I Predict A Riot
The Coral - I Remember When
U2 - I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
PLAYLIST #27
Manic Street Preachers - Everything Must Go
The Killers - Everything Will Be Alright
Ash - Evil Eye
Massive Attack - Exchange
U2 - Exit
Madonna - Express Yourself
Travis - Eyes Wide Open
Billy Idol - Eyes Without A Face
Ian Brown - FEAR
Oasis - Fade Away
The Thrills - Faded Beauty Queens
The National - Fake Empire
Razorlight - Fall, Fall, Fall
Crowded House - Fall At Your Feet
PLAYLIST #28
McAlmont & Butler - Falling
The Rifles - Fall To Sorrow
Oasis - Falling Down
Cherry Ghost - False Alarm
KT Tunstall - False Alarm
Pink - Family Portrait
White Lies - Farewell To The Fairground
David Bowie - Fashion
Fyfe Dangerfield - Faster Than The Setting Sun
Queen - Fat Bottomed Girls
Lily Allen - The Fear
Muse - Feeling Good
Jamiroquai - Feels Just Like It Should
Deacon Blue - Fergus Sings The Blues
U2 - Fez (Being Born)
PLAYLIST #29
Corinne Bailey Rae - Feels Like The First Time
Sting - Fields Of Gold
White Lies - Fifty On Our Foreheads
Moby - Find My Baby
Snow Patrol - The Finish Line
Fyfe Dangerfield - Firebird
Embrace - Fireworks
Morrissey - The First Of The Gang To Die
Lotus Eaters - The First Picture Of You
Roberta Flack - The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
The Waterboys - Fisherman's Blues
Port O'Brien - Fisherman's Son
Elbow - The Fix
PLAYLIST #30
Coldplay - Fix You
Queen - Flash
Massive Attack - Flat Of The Blade
Travis - Flowers In The Windows
Lene Marlin - Flown Away
U2 - The Fly
Regina Spektor - Folding Chair
The Beatles - The Fool On The Hill
Rolling Stones - Fool To Cry
The Killers - For Reasons Unknown
Simply Red - For Your Babies
Oasis - Force Of Nature
The Cure - A Forest
Moby - Forever
PLAYLIST #31
The Magic Numbers - Forever Lost
The Pretenders - Forever Young
Alanis Morissette - Forgiven
The Thrills - Found My Rosebud
Echo & The Bunnymen - The Fountain
Crowded House - Four Seasons In One Day
Sharleen Spiteri - Francoise
Kings Of Convenience - Freedom And Its Owner
The Cure - Friday I'm In Love
Elbow - Friends Of Ours
White Lies - From The Stars
The Beatles - From Me To You
Madonna - Frozen
PLAYLIST #32
Johnny Cash - Fulsom Prison Blues
Massive Attack - Future Proof
Lamb - Gabriel
Chemical Brothers - Galvanize
Echo & The Bunnymen - The Game
Oasis - Gas Panic
Nerina Pallot - Geek Love
Regina Spektor - Genius Next Door
Glasvegas - Geraldine
The Beatles - Get Back
Texas - Get Down To Night
The Dandy Warhols - Get Off
Rolling Stones - Get Off Of My Cloud
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Get On Top
U2 - Get On Your Boots
The Eagles - Get Over It
PLAYLIST #33
Pink - Get The Party Started
Athlete - The Getaway
Texas - Getaway
Prince - Gett Off
Electronic - Getting Away With It
Simple Minds - Ghostdancing
The Specials - Ghost Town
Alanis Morissette - Giggling Again For No Reason
Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter
Oasis - The Girl In The Dirty Shirt
The Beatles - Girl
PLAYLIST #34
Edwyn Collins - A Girl Like You
The White Stripes - Girl You Have No Faith In Medicine
Supertramp - Give A Little Bit
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Give It Away
Hothouse Flowers - Give It Up
Green Day - Give Me Novocaine
Dirty Vegas - Given You Everything
The Killers - Glamorous Indie Rock N' Roll
Bat For Lashes - Glass
Coldplay - Glass Of Water
Simple Minds - Glittering Prize
RPA/UN Of Sound - Glory
Portishead - Glory Box
Oasis - Go Let It Out
Fleetwood Mac - Go Your Own Way
PLAYLIST #35
The Beach Boys - God Only Knows
Coldplay - God Put A Smile Upon Your Face
The Dandy Warhols - Godless
Shed Seven - Going For Gold
Oasis - Going Nowhere
The Jam - Going Underground
Lamb - Gold
Kings Of Convenience - Gold In The Air Of Summer
Manic Street Preachers - Golden Platitudes
Klaxons - Golden Skans
Razorlight - Golden Touch
David Bowie - Golden Years
U2 - Gone
Texas - Good Advice
Feargal Sharkey - A Good Heart
Bat For Lashes - Good Love
PLAYLIST #36
RPA/UN Of Sound - Good Lovin'
Queen - Good Old Fashioned Lover Boy
Jack Johnson - Good People
Green Day - Good Riddance
The Courteneers - Good Times Are Calling
The Hoosiers - Goodbye Mr A
Supertramp - Goodbye Stranger
Kooks - Got No Love
Hard-Fi - Gotta Reason
Embrace - Gravity
PLAYLIST #37
U2 - Gloria
Rumer - Goodbye Girl
The Killers - Goodnight, Travel Well
Snow Patrol - Grazed Knees
Moby - Great Escape
The Rifles - The Great Escape
Coldplay - Green Eyes
The National - Green Gloves
Madness - Grey Day
Elbow - Grounds For Divorce
Oasis - Guess God Thinks I'm Abel
Delphic - Halcyon
Texas - Halo
PLAYLIST #38
Oasis - Half The World Away
Nerina Pallot - Halfway Home
Queen - Hammer To Fall
Garbage - Hammering In My Head
Alanis Morissette - Hand In My Pocket
U2 - The Hands That Built America
Blondie - Hanging On The Telephone
Moby/Sinead O'Connor - Harbour
The Beatles - A Hard Day's Night
Brandon Flowers - Hard Enough
Alanis Morissette - Hands Clean
PLAYLIST #39
Hard-Fi - Hard To Beat
Sheryl Crow - Hard To Make A Stand
The White Stripes - The Hardest Button To Button
Coldplay - The Hardest Part
The Hollies - He Ain't Heavy
Reverend & The Makers - He Said He Loved Me
Alanis Morissette - Head Over Feet
Tears For Fears - Head Over Heels
Arcade Fire - Headlights Look Like Diamonds
Snow Patrol - Headlights On Dark Roads
Echo & The Bunnymen - Heads Will Roll
KT Tunstall - Heal Over
Rumer - Healer
Nerina Pallot - Heart Attack
PLAYLIST #40
Blondie - Heart Of Glass
The Eagles - Heartache Tonight
Bryan Adams - Heaven
Queen - Heaven For Everyone
Reverend & The Makers - Heavyweight Champion Of The World
Skunk Anansie - Hedonism
Bloc Party - Helicopter
Oasis - Hello
AC/DC - Hells Bells
The Beatles - Help!
The Fratellis - Henrietta
The Sundays - Here's Where The Story Ends
Whitesnake - Here I Go Again
David Bowie - Heroes
PLAYLIST #41
The Beatles - Here Comes The Sun
Icehouse - Hey Little Girl
Fyfe Dangerfield - High On The Tide
Coldplay - High Speed
Jamiroquai - High Times
Echo & The Bunnymen - Higher Hell
Oasis - The Hindu Times
The Rifles - History
The Propellerheads - History Repeating
U2 - Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me
Razorlight - Hold On
Joss Stone - Holding Out For A Hero
Green Day - Holiday
The Thrills - Hollywood Kids
PLAYLIST #42
Sheryl Crow - Home
Dirty Vegas - Home Again
Kings Of Convenience - Homesick
Simon & Garfunkel - Homeward Bound
Moby - Honey
Rolling Stones - Honky Tonk Women
Muse - Hoodoo
The Dandy Warhols - Horse Pills
America - A Horse With No Name
Razorlight - Hostage Of Love
The Eagles - Hotel California
Squeeze - Hourglass
The Futureheads - Hounds Of Love
PLAYLIST #43
Madness - House Of Fun
Doves - House Of Mirrors
The Animals - The House Of The Rising Sun
The Courteeners - How Come
RPA/UN Of Sound - How Deep Is Your Man
Travis - How Many Hearts
Snow Patrol - How To Be Dead
James - How Was It For You
The Killers - Human
Nerina Pallot - Human
The Pretenders - Human
Dirty Vegas - Human Love
Regina Spektor - Human Of The Year
Bruce Springsteen - Human Touch
The Beatles - Hey Jude
PLAYLIST #44
Oasis - Hey Now
Dolores O'Riordan - Human Spirit
Travis - The Humpty Dumpty Love Song
Madonna - Hung Up
Bruce Springsteen - Hungry Heart
Dido - Hunter
Johnny Cash - Hurt
Simple Minds - Hypnotised
Muse - Hysteria
The Pretenders - Hymn To Her
PLAYLIST #45
Corinne Bailey Rae - I'd Do It All Again
Kings Of Convenience - I'd Rather Dance With You
U2 - I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight
Deacon Blue - I'll Never Fall In Love Again
The Pretenders - I'll Stand By You
Sharleen Spiteri - I'm Going To Haunt You
Blondie - I'm Always Touched By Your Presence Dear
The Passions - I'm In Love With A German Film Star
Pigeon Detectives - I'm Not Sorry
Bruce Springsteen - I'm On Fire
Oasis - I'm Outta Time
Morrissey - I'm Throwing My Arms Around Paris
The Stone Roses - I Am The Resurrection
The Beatles - I Am The Walrus
Elvis Costello - I Can't Stand Up For Falling Down
PLAYLIST #46
Rolling Stones - I Can't Get No Satisfaction
The Killers - I Can't Stay
Razorlight - I Can't Stop This Feeling I've Got
The Eagles - I Can't Tell You Why
Red Hot Chili Peppers - I Could Die For You
Last Shadow Puppets - I Don't Like You Anymore
KT Tunstall - I Don't Want You Now
Texas - I Don't Want A Lover
The Beatles - I Feel Fine
Crowded House - I Feel Possessed
Pigeon Detectives - I Found Out
Mumford & Sons - I Gave You All
The Pretenders - I Go To Sleep
Ray Charles - I Got A Woman
James Brown - I Got You (I Feel Good)
Oasis - I Hope, I Think, I Know
The White Stripes - I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself
Split Enz - I Got You
Kaiser Chiefs - I Predict A Riot
The Coral - I Remember When
U2 - I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Sunday 10 October 2010
The good pub guide - Part 1
Whilst engaging in an exchange of bar-room musings with a friend of mine, we got into talking about pubs. During the conversation, my friend asked me how many pubs and bars within Brighton and Hove I had ventured into in my life on this planet up to now. This prompted me to go away and raid the old memory bank and see if I could hit upon something like a definitive ball park figure. I hope that over the course of this blog, I will be able to provide exactly that, as well as sharing some of my experiences and memories of pubs that I have been in and saying which of Brighton and Hove's hostelries are worth frequenting, and which should be given a wide berth.
Deciding on what should make the list though required some basic guidelines. The question I was posed was "how many pubs had I visited in Brighton and Hove", so it was only right and proper that the boundaries I confined my retrospective pub crawl to remained in that area. Therefore, pubs that I have visited in Shoreham-By-Sea, Lewes, Burgess Hill and Hassocks are not included in the tally. Portslade was the most obvious boundary to the west, while Telscombe Cliffs is as far as the eligibility criteria stretches to the east. The corridor around the bypass that includes Devils Dyke, Patcham and Falmer were what I settled on as being the appropriate boundary. As for the southern boundary, I figured that anything at the other end of the blue aquatic expanse would be French terra-firma.
The other main guideline was deciding on what establishments would be eligible for a listing. If all of the watering holes I had visited followed the convention of being a classic British spit and sawdust establishment, then finding a definitive figure would have been more straightforward. The issue that presented itself was that a number of said hostelries I have visited were borderline as to whether they were bars or nightclubs. In the end, I felt that I could only list places that essentially were bars with a club, rather than clubs with a bar. Hence, I have not included such joints as Oceana (or its predecessor Event II) or the Casablanca jazz club, but I have included a couple of bars with established club nights, such as Revolution (previously The Standard) and The Arc. I have also excluded restaurants from the tally, but I have included what you might term "gastro pubs" that I have visited.
There are also certain places where I have comsumed drinks for a bar, although the primary reason for being at the venue was for another activity. I am particularly thinking of sports venues where drinks were consumed as part of day's activity or after the activity had finished. I have decided that it would be wrong to exclude such venues from the overall tally, but I have decided not to provide any rating for these venues.
As you might expect, there are some establishments that have had a refit or a name change during my years of legal drinking. Some pubs in fact have had 2 or 3 name changes in that time. I have decided, for the purposes of clarity, to just list one entry for each venue, but make a reference to the other names the venue has had where that applies.
Despite having been to a good many pubs and bars in my hitherto fourteen years of legal drinking, upon tapping into my memory bank, it would appear that there are still a good number of pubs and bars within Brighton and Hove where I have yet to sample the core products.
I will list the pubs I have visited by each area of Brighton and Hove, along with a short summary and a rating. Without giving away the total pubs/bars I have visited at this juncture, this is likely to require 3 or 4 instalments in total.
So let's get down to business. This is thirsty work though, so I'll have a pint of Guinness regular from the tap, if you don't mind.
QUEENS PARK/HANOVER AREA
1. The Hanover - Older readers will recall that this pub was once called the Queens Park Tavern and it was my local all the while I lived at home. Strangely, given that it was a local, I never set foot in the place under its old guise. The pub had a bad reputation and it was not until the pub was re-opened and re-branded as The Hanover that I paid a visit. There are examples of name changes to pubs that ruin their character, but The Hanover has been greatly enhanced by the change. It has a relaxed, chilled out atmosphere and also does some good food, particularly at weekends. The pub is spacious and uncluttered and the bad days of the QPT are a hazy memory. Rating 8/10
2. Duke of Beaufort - Situated on the corner of Queens Park Road and Islingword Road, almost opposite the iconic Pepper Pot, the Duke is a no-frills pub that I think has had the same owners for the whole time since I first set foot in the establishment over 10 years ago. The pub is perhaps best known for having a Thai restaurant upstairs, although I cannot say that I have had the pleasure. The pub has all the usual pub amenities such as a big screen, digital jukebox and a pool table (it had one in its beer garden at one point) but on the downside, it has also inherited some of the clientele that previously frequented the Queens Park Tavern. Nothing terribly bad about the pub, but not as appealing as some other places that are nearby. Rating 4/10
3. Walmer Castle - If The Hanover is a prime example of how a pub can be positively transformed by a refit, then sadly the Walmer Castle is the polar opposite. I used to regard the Walmer Castle as the best of Hanover's many fine hostelries when it had a vibrant, outlandish exterior and a calm and relaxing interior, including two fish tanks which added well to the ambience. It was the perfect place to unwind on a slow Sunday after a heavy Saturday night. A refit late last year, however, has stripped the place of its character with the bright exterior replaced by a dull grey, while the inside has become a soulless and deserted place. Sad when it happens, but the Walmer has fallen upon hard times. Rating 8/10 pre-refit, 3/10 now
4. The Racehorse Inn - Pub at the junction of Queens Park Road and Elm Grove which has recently had a name change, with the new pub setting itself out to be a food oriented venue. I have not visited the new venue and in fact only visited its predecessor once, when I did not find the place to be a welcoming or luxuriating location. Rating 3/10
5. The Constant Service - This pub used to very deliberately set itself as a no-frills and no-gimmicks pub that just knew how to serve a good pint. In recent times, the pub has moved a little from its original standpoint and now has a couple of television screens that broadcast live sport. As a Harvey's pub, it also retains a following among the local real ale drinkers. Overall, a friendly and cheerful pub with a pleasant courtyard for drinking on those warm summer days. Rating 7/10
6. The Horse & Groom - Another example of a pub that never recovered from an ownership change. This used to be a regular haunt of mine on Sunday afternoons in the early part of the noughties for the Super Sunday football and a few pints of Boddingtons (a beer served in very few pubs in Brighton or Hove). The licensees had run the pub for over 10 years but when they moved out of the area around 5 years ago, sadly the pub's fortunes rapidly ran south. After an incident in which thieves attempted to steal beer from the cellar, it was long after that the pub closed altogether. A great shame as the H&G was a vibrant and lively alehouse when I first sampled it and it also had 2 memorable features that made it stand out. These being the deliberate wall of graffiti in the men's toilets and the lovely warm, open fire on winter days. Rating 7/10 pre-ownership change, 2/10 afterwards
7. The London Unity - This pub is a few doors down from the now closed Horse & Groom yet its clientele and atmosphere could almost be a million miles away. Whereas the H&G was the classic spit and sawdust establishment, The London Unity is well known as a vibrant, student oriented venue with regular live music and DJs playing at the venue. I have not visited the place for a few years now, but I can remember back in the day that it was a very cramped and busy venue on Friday nights when a DJ was playing. Despite this, the pub also retained a slightly homely feel, with a range of board games being available to play in the back room. If you dislike noisy pubs, this place is probably not for you, but it is definitely a place for the latest crop of freshers to check out. Rating 7/10
8. The Cobden Arms - I tend to find pubs situated in backstreets are either hidden gems or insular, cliquey dives that time forgot. Sadly, in the case of the Cobden Arms, my two visits have led me to believe that this place belongs in the second category. All of us at some time or another will have experienced that feeling of being stared at as a stranger on someone else's patch. This particular experience came when I visited the Cobden Arms for the first time. I was half expecting the landlord to set an Alsatian on me and force me to leave the premises due to me being this illegal alien invading their space. Avoid like the plague. Rating 1/10
9. Reservoir - Like the Cobden Arms, this place is found in one of the backstreets lying between Islingword Road and Elm Grove. Unlike the Cobden Arms, it is quite a decent watering hole, although first impressions could leave you feeling a little bit cold. The pub is a little bit soulless as it does not have the feel of a traditional pub and it is also a pub that is largely deserted during daylight hours. Yet, this strangely makes the Reservoir a good place to unwind for a quiet drink away from the hustle and bustle and it has a small, but perfectly formed beer garden. The place also tends to come alive on Friday and Saturday nights, with it being popular with young professionals and students. Not the most atmospheric of pubs, but it is quite a welcoming place to unwind for a couple of pints before heading somewhere bigger and brasher. Rating 7/10
10. The Pub With No Name - The pub with the identity crisis is actually a lot more savvy than it sounds. Hell's own hill Southover Street helpfully has five pubs on it to retire to for a much needed rest, with the Pub With No Name situated at the very top of both the hill and the billing. There is a lot to like about the place which seems to be popular with both families venturing out for Sunday lunch and weekend sports fans watching the match on the big screen. The mixture of the 2 groups is not always an easy alliance, but the welcoming nature of the pub and its well spread layout means that generally it is not a major problem. The drinks are relatively inexpensive compared to other places in the area and the food is popular too. Rating 8/10
11. Sir Charles Napier - Southover Street pubs seem to have something for everybody and the Sir Charles Napier is the pub for the more traditional alehouse drinker and it generally serves an older clientele. It is renowned as a pub that is a keen supporter of real ale and so several of the beers available on tap are relatively unheralded regional ales. This makes the pub very popular in CAMRA pub guides and the like and it does have the feel of a local's local. Those that are looking for a bit more vibrancy and action, however, will find that this place is not for them. Quirky, but not really a pub for the fashionistas. Rating 5/10
12. Dover Castle - Situated on the next turning down from the Sir Charles Napier, the Dover Castle is the complete antithesis. This is very much a student oriented pub and it does not have the spit and sawdust feel that its near neighbour has. This makes it off-putting for some, but I think it actually works to its advantage. The pub used to get (and I imagine still does) very busy on Friday and Saturday nights and it has certain parallels with the London Unity in its vibrancy and liking for DJs. Like other pubs in Hanover, it is the kind of pub that you would have a couple of drinks in rather than stay for a whole evening, but it is not a bad starting point for an evening out. Rating 6/10
13. The Greys - Alehouse fanatics in the area will know that The Greys is situated directly opposite The Geese and that the two pubs have what might be termed as a friendly rivalry. The Greys tends to be quite popular with the local culture vultures and the pub has been known to put on both live music and have poetry evenings. I have only visited the place a couple of times myself, but was quite struck by how unspoilt the place was. For those that want to avoid pubs with televisions, music and pub games, The Greys is the perfect antidote for you and it also has a highly acclaimed kitchen. Not been back for a while, but it is no indictment on the pub. Rating 7/10
14. The Geese - Directly opposite The Greys and generally attracts a younger audience and is particularly popular when live football is shown at the venue. Word of warning though, the place can sometimes get quite cramped on such days, not helped by how small and narrow the gangway is around by the bar. Traditionally an Irish pub, you can always be certain of a decent pint of Guinness at The Geese, which always goes down well with me. There just seems to be a missing ingredient to this place that I cannot quite put my finger on and so I tend to visit other pubs in the area as a rule. Rating 5/10
15. The Albion Inn - Albion Hill has four pubs situated on it, if you include the Walmer Castle at the very top of the road. Sadly, there is little to recommend in any of them and one visit to The Albion Inn was more than enough for me. My experience of visiting was similar to the one I experienced at the Cobden Arms and again it is the very definition of the locals' local. But even the locals seem to have deserted the place now. If you have never visited the pub, count yourself fortunate. Rating 1/10
16. Spread Eagle - There is one thing I liked about this pub and that was the colour of the exterior, a rich shade of green. Apart from that, there is very little else to recommend about the pub just further down from the aforementioned Albion Inn. The pub has become a victim of the recession and has been closed for several months. Forgive my churlishness, but I doubt anyone has noticed. Rating 1/10
17. The Setting Sun - For people that like a settle in a beer garden on a summer's afternoon, I cannot think of a pub garden anywhere in Brighton or Hove that is better to chill out in. Situated at the top of a steep hill, you can view all of Brighton's famous landmarks whilst sitting in the Setting Sun's beer garden. Like the Walmer Castle, this place used to be a hair of the dog location on a Sunday morning after the Saturday night before. The pub can be almost deserted on school nights, but it tends to flourish at weekends during the summer months. Has friendly bar staff and a homely feel to the pub as though you are sitting in someone's living room. If spicy food is your thing, this place always used to tick the boxes too. Not been back for a while, but should imagine it still retains its best features. Rating 7/10
18. The Cuthbert - This pub is no longer called The Cuthbert and has recently been turned into a gastro-pub, which I must admit seems like a curious decision given its location in a residential area between Queens Park and Craven Vale. The old Cuthbert was a slightly strange pub, mixing local hardened drinkers with young families wanting to make use of the beer garden. The garden was by far the best feature of the pub, being both spacious and also providing good views of Craven Vale and the Whitehawk hills. The pub was never the most welcoming of places and it will be interesting to see how its successor does given that its location means it will not draw that many clientele from outside the area. Rating 5/10 (as The Cuthbert)
19. The Cornerstone - This is a pub that has had a number of name changes over the years, starting out as The Admrial Napier, before becoming The Flying Pig and then The Sun before finally settling on its current name around 4 or 5 years ago. The Cornerstone is quite a cosy pub to retire to of an evening and it has some comfortable seating as well as the opportunity to prop up the bar. Apart from background music, the venue does not really do mod-cons, but it relies on its clientele to provide the atmosphere. On a quiet night, it can seem quite flat. Far worse places in the area though. Rating 6/10
20. The Wellington - My hazy memory has some recollection of having visited this pub in Elm Grove just the once on the way home from work several years ago. I think I may have stopped for one drink, decided the place was so dull and then left. This is renowned as more of a traditional drinker's haven which tends to mean you will either love the place or give it a wide berth, depending on your viewpoint. As I have not returned since my only visit, you can see where I stand. Rating 3/10
Notable absentees: The Montreal Arms, The Winner, Freshfield Inn
BRIGHTON STATION/SEVEN DIALS
21. The Tin Drum - Local franchise The Tin Drum has 4 or 5 pubs in the Brighton area where it differentiates itself from the traditional type of pub by offering table service for both drinks and food. The Tin Drum's origins are Polish and this is reflected in both their food menu and some of the drinks available from the bar. The place is a little bit on the expensive side, and food wise, they are not always the most generous with their portions. But, the service is always friendly, it is a pub you can retire to with your laptop to finish your work and there are also a good range of books and newspapers to choose from and a couple of leather sofas to recline on. A trip for fried breakfast on a Saturday morning while reading the Saturday supplements is recommended. Rating 7/10
22. The Crescent - Pub situated next to the Streamline taxi office on Clifton Hill and which is a popular after-work haunt for people working in the area. Has the feel of a very traditional pub with snug style seating in areas of the pub, plus a reasonably sized beer garden with further seating on the pavement at the front of the pub. People that tend to take the 'less is more' attitude with regards to pubs will probably warm to this place. Rating 7/10
23. The Good Companions - Here is a pub that holds many memories for me. I used to go to sixth form college just up the road and so many a free period in my college days was spent in this pub. Purely in the name of research, you will understand. Fast forward eight years and this pub would become my local, once I moved to the Seven Dials area. At first, the pub had not changed at all in the intervening period and still in fact had the same owners. In the five and a half years I have resided in the area since though, the pub has gone through three changes of ownership and two refits, in a bid to rid itself of undesirable customers. The latest change of ownership has seen the pub discontinue its showing of Sky Sports, which I think may prove to detrimental to its revenues at weekends. A pub with plenty of potential, if only it could attract the right customers. Also a pub where the earth regularly moves, owing the Hove to Brighton railway line going straight under the pub, hence the train on the sign outside. Rating 6/10
24. The Chimney House (formerly the Marquess of Exeter) - As the Marquess of Exeter, I visited this establishment on my final day at sixth form college when the pub resembled a place that time forgot with its dishevelled carpet and portable television. A decade later, I returned to discover that the Marquess was no more and that the pub had become a gastro-pub by the name of The Chimney House. The pub seemed pleasant enough, although a little bit short on atmosphere. I have not been back again since, but I would regard this to be a pub that is most suitable for having a couple of leisurely drinks and a spot of lunch in at the weekend. Rating 6/10 as Chimney House, 3/10 as Marquess of Exeter
25. Shakespeare's Head - There are 2 pubs in Brighton by this name, but the superior pub is the one located just down the hill from the Seven Dials. Although the pub is not the biggest place and subsequently it can get rather cramped on weekend nights, the pub retains some good qualities. Top of the list being its food menu, with the pub particularly noted for its sausage menu. I can also vouch for the good quality of their Sunday roasts. Although a compact pub, it is a pleasant place to relax over a pint or five and a popular venue for works drinks. Rating 7/10
26. The West Hill (formerly The Belle Vue) - This pub changed its name around eighteen months ago having previously been long established as the Belle Vue. As the Belle Vue, the venue was well renowned as being one of the few conventional pubs with a late licence at weekends, usually closing at 3 am on Friday and Saturday nights. I am not sure if this remains the case, but previously this resulted in the pub being vibrant and busy in the early hours, but conversely, it would be empty during daylight hours. Due to doing its best trade in the small hours, this occasionally meant the pub got a few people that had not paced themselves well by the end of the evening. Being a pub that stayed open late though was the main selling point, otherwise there were no outstanding features. Rating 5/10
27. Zuma - The site of a former bank at the Seven Dials junction, this kind of has the feel of a "trendy wine bar", with a quirky and arty feel to the way in which the bar is laid out. From recollection, the drinks there were a little bit on the pricey side, but the place seemed reasonably popular with a good mix of people present. Rating 5/10
28. Couch/The Rat & Trumpet - Back in the mists of time, this place just down from Seven Dials was called The Compton Arms and had a reputation for being a trouble spot. Subsequently, the pub has gone on to have three re-brandings, the latest of which sees it called 'Foggs'. As Couch and The Rat and Trumpet, the venue very rarely seemed to attract regular punters and lacked the friendly charm that the best pubs in the area have. The challenge as 'Foggs' remains in its location and I cannot see the new name making this hostelry any more appealing. Rating 2/10
29. The Battle of Trafalgar - One of my favourite retreats in my part of town, The Battle of Traf is the ideal 'hair of the dog' pub in the Dials/station area. The pub has a couple of in-house chefs and the pub is particularly well known for its Sunday roasts, which this author has sampled on several occasions. Apart from one minor criticism at the chef's penchant for peas, there is little fault to find in the Battle's menu. The pub has a homely feel with a round dining table in one corner, plus a cosy fireplace surrounded by some old hardback books. If the fireplace is the vantage point of choice in winter, then the beer garden is the place to be in summer and it is one of the best beer gardens to have a cool beer with your friends in the warmer months. A very good pub for all seasons and occasions. Rating 9/10
30. Sussex Yeoman - The Sussex Yeoman is located directly opposite the Trafalgar and is another pub well regarded for its food menu. I first encountered this pub when I was at university and ended up in there one day after lectures. Since those days, the pub has tidied itself up after it had a re-fit when it changed hands a few years ago. The pub has got some comfortable seating and is generally a busy and popular haunt on a Friday or Saturday night. There are other pubs I prefer in the area, but the Yeoman has a lot going for it. Rating 6/10
31. The Eddy - Another pub that has had a few names in its time, although in my drinking years, it has mainly been known as The Eddy or its predecessor, The Tap & Spile. I did not sample the pub when it was the Tap & Spile, but as The Eddy, the pub has carved itself a niche as a pub that attracts young professional types and as a sports bar with a big screen, it tends to be at its busiest on Sunday afternoons for big football matches. The Eddy also has an extensive food menu, although I have not eaten there myself. A decent pub and for those that are looking for somewhere to watch televised football at the weekend, this offers a plausible option. Rating 6/10
32. Duke of Wellington - Sometimes there are pubs that you become attached to and which add up to more than the sum of their parts. The Duke is one such place. In some senses, the pub defies convention because the only food it serves are pizzas, plus sandwiches and baguettes on Brighton & Hove Albion match days, whose supporters frequent the pub pre-kick off, while its beer garden is essentially a very small patio. Where the pub scores high though is in terms of its welcoming charm. When I was first introduced to the pub over 10 years ago by a university friend, the pub was a family run pub with a close knit set of regulars who would very quickly learn your name. Only one member of the family remains involved in running the pub and some of the regulars of yesteryear have moved on to be replaced by some new faces, but the Duke has retained its character. The pub had a major refit three and a half years ago and lost some of its regulars in the aftermath. However, the Duke has gradually rediscovered its mojo and is always a good place to prop up the bar and watch televised sport. Its Sunday night quiz nights are good craic too. Definitely one for the shortlist of best Brightonian boozers. Rating 9/10
33. Caxton Arms - Here is a pub that is a good example of a hidden gem tucked up a Brighton backstreet. This is another place with fond memories for me as it was the location of my works leaving do after leaving my previous job after six and a half years. Situated in the road that runs parallel to Queens Road, this pub's name pays homage to the man who invented the printing press and there are little decorative props in the pub that pay further homage. The pub has 2 bar rooms, with the back room also having a pool table and book case and has also occasionally had a television screen. In addition, the Caxton offers a range of traditional British pub grub until 9:00 pm most nights. Despite being in a backstreet, this pub gets very busy after work on a Friday night and is also popular at weekends. That is a sign of the Caxton's quality and I always look forward to a visit there. Rating 9/10
34. Royal Standard - This is a tiny pub that is situated on Queens Road just down from Brighton station. I have some recollection of a visit to this pub on St Patrick's Day a decade ago when they were serving Irish stew. The stew was delicious, but subsequent visits to the Royal Standard have been somewhat underwhelming. Generally, the pub seems to be pretty empty and lacking life. Because of its size, there is possibly not much that can be done to revitalise this pub, but it certainly seems as though it needs a new lease of life. Rating 3/10
35. The Queens Head - In terms of geography, this pub probably just wins the award for being the nearest pub to Brighton station, although there are 2 or 3 other pubs that can state a legitimate claim too. I broke my duck in visiting this pub earlier this year and was quite impressed with it, with the staff being friendly and the seating being comfortable, while the drinks were reasonably priced. There are other pubs in the vicinity that I prefer, but for a post-work drink near to the station, the Queens Head has a relaxing charm that makes it suitable for that occasion. Rating 6/10
36. The Railway Bell - For those of you that have not visited The Railway Bell, consider yourselves lucky. I have visited only once and walked past many hundreds of times more and these experiences are enough to tell me that my life is not void from having not returned. Aggravation seems to go hand in hand with the pub and the staff I encountered when I went there did not go out of their way to be welcoming. I have not returned for several years, but accounts I hear from others I have spoken to indicate that the place has not improved with advancing years. Rating 1/10
37. Grand Central - There are not many pubs around that can boast a theatre being upstairs, but the Grand Central is one such place. It was (and I guess still is) notable for having a roof terrace that was worth putting the world to rights in on a sunny summer's day. Inside, the pub is a little bit on the flat side and lacks some of the atmosphere that a more traditional pub tends to have. Not bad, but not great either. Rating 5/10
38. The Windmill - I remember this pub as being unique in the sense that I cannot think of any pub that had a red telephone box in its beer garden. Not sure if the box is still in the garden, but it was certainly different. The Windmill is located along Upper North Street and so tends to attract a mix of people from Seven Dials, as well as people working nearby in Western Road. The pub has a low ceiling and because of this, getting a mobile phone signal there is always a challenge. The pub has a bit edge to it which makes it not to everyone's taste, but it is decent enough to go to for a couple of pints. Rating 6/10
39. Prestonville Arms - Quiet Youngs pub situated in a backstreet between the Seven Dials and Old Shoreham Road, this is the kind of place that you could go to for a peaceful pint in midweek. I think the pub used to run a music quiz night on one night of the week that gained a cult following. I have only been there on a couple of occasions, but it seemed like a decent enough local pub, but it is a little bit out of the way for me to frequent. Rating 5/10
40. The Dyke Tavern - The curious thing about Brighton is that one area of town that is chronically lacking in pubs is the Withdean and Westdene area and so on one occasion, after having been to watch Brighton play at Withdean Stadium, in trying to find a pub showing the evening match, I had to walk all the way down Dyke Road to the Dyke Tavern before I found a suitable resting place. Apart from having a big screen, there was little reason for me to have visited the pub, which had a strange mix of customers and looked in need of a few licks of paint. Subsequently, the pub has had a makeover and is another to go down the route of targetting gastro-heads. I have no particular desire to return, however. Rating 2/10
Notable absentees: The Evening Star
This completes part 1 of my pub crawl. In part 2, I will mention which North Laine and town centre pubs I have visited, before moving on to the Hove pubs in my later instalments.
Deciding on what should make the list though required some basic guidelines. The question I was posed was "how many pubs had I visited in Brighton and Hove", so it was only right and proper that the boundaries I confined my retrospective pub crawl to remained in that area. Therefore, pubs that I have visited in Shoreham-By-Sea, Lewes, Burgess Hill and Hassocks are not included in the tally. Portslade was the most obvious boundary to the west, while Telscombe Cliffs is as far as the eligibility criteria stretches to the east. The corridor around the bypass that includes Devils Dyke, Patcham and Falmer were what I settled on as being the appropriate boundary. As for the southern boundary, I figured that anything at the other end of the blue aquatic expanse would be French terra-firma.
The other main guideline was deciding on what establishments would be eligible for a listing. If all of the watering holes I had visited followed the convention of being a classic British spit and sawdust establishment, then finding a definitive figure would have been more straightforward. The issue that presented itself was that a number of said hostelries I have visited were borderline as to whether they were bars or nightclubs. In the end, I felt that I could only list places that essentially were bars with a club, rather than clubs with a bar. Hence, I have not included such joints as Oceana (or its predecessor Event II) or the Casablanca jazz club, but I have included a couple of bars with established club nights, such as Revolution (previously The Standard) and The Arc. I have also excluded restaurants from the tally, but I have included what you might term "gastro pubs" that I have visited.
There are also certain places where I have comsumed drinks for a bar, although the primary reason for being at the venue was for another activity. I am particularly thinking of sports venues where drinks were consumed as part of day's activity or after the activity had finished. I have decided that it would be wrong to exclude such venues from the overall tally, but I have decided not to provide any rating for these venues.
As you might expect, there are some establishments that have had a refit or a name change during my years of legal drinking. Some pubs in fact have had 2 or 3 name changes in that time. I have decided, for the purposes of clarity, to just list one entry for each venue, but make a reference to the other names the venue has had where that applies.
Despite having been to a good many pubs and bars in my hitherto fourteen years of legal drinking, upon tapping into my memory bank, it would appear that there are still a good number of pubs and bars within Brighton and Hove where I have yet to sample the core products.
I will list the pubs I have visited by each area of Brighton and Hove, along with a short summary and a rating. Without giving away the total pubs/bars I have visited at this juncture, this is likely to require 3 or 4 instalments in total.
So let's get down to business. This is thirsty work though, so I'll have a pint of Guinness regular from the tap, if you don't mind.
QUEENS PARK/HANOVER AREA
1. The Hanover - Older readers will recall that this pub was once called the Queens Park Tavern and it was my local all the while I lived at home. Strangely, given that it was a local, I never set foot in the place under its old guise. The pub had a bad reputation and it was not until the pub was re-opened and re-branded as The Hanover that I paid a visit. There are examples of name changes to pubs that ruin their character, but The Hanover has been greatly enhanced by the change. It has a relaxed, chilled out atmosphere and also does some good food, particularly at weekends. The pub is spacious and uncluttered and the bad days of the QPT are a hazy memory. Rating 8/10
2. Duke of Beaufort - Situated on the corner of Queens Park Road and Islingword Road, almost opposite the iconic Pepper Pot, the Duke is a no-frills pub that I think has had the same owners for the whole time since I first set foot in the establishment over 10 years ago. The pub is perhaps best known for having a Thai restaurant upstairs, although I cannot say that I have had the pleasure. The pub has all the usual pub amenities such as a big screen, digital jukebox and a pool table (it had one in its beer garden at one point) but on the downside, it has also inherited some of the clientele that previously frequented the Queens Park Tavern. Nothing terribly bad about the pub, but not as appealing as some other places that are nearby. Rating 4/10
3. Walmer Castle - If The Hanover is a prime example of how a pub can be positively transformed by a refit, then sadly the Walmer Castle is the polar opposite. I used to regard the Walmer Castle as the best of Hanover's many fine hostelries when it had a vibrant, outlandish exterior and a calm and relaxing interior, including two fish tanks which added well to the ambience. It was the perfect place to unwind on a slow Sunday after a heavy Saturday night. A refit late last year, however, has stripped the place of its character with the bright exterior replaced by a dull grey, while the inside has become a soulless and deserted place. Sad when it happens, but the Walmer has fallen upon hard times. Rating 8/10 pre-refit, 3/10 now
4. The Racehorse Inn - Pub at the junction of Queens Park Road and Elm Grove which has recently had a name change, with the new pub setting itself out to be a food oriented venue. I have not visited the new venue and in fact only visited its predecessor once, when I did not find the place to be a welcoming or luxuriating location. Rating 3/10
5. The Constant Service - This pub used to very deliberately set itself as a no-frills and no-gimmicks pub that just knew how to serve a good pint. In recent times, the pub has moved a little from its original standpoint and now has a couple of television screens that broadcast live sport. As a Harvey's pub, it also retains a following among the local real ale drinkers. Overall, a friendly and cheerful pub with a pleasant courtyard for drinking on those warm summer days. Rating 7/10
6. The Horse & Groom - Another example of a pub that never recovered from an ownership change. This used to be a regular haunt of mine on Sunday afternoons in the early part of the noughties for the Super Sunday football and a few pints of Boddingtons (a beer served in very few pubs in Brighton or Hove). The licensees had run the pub for over 10 years but when they moved out of the area around 5 years ago, sadly the pub's fortunes rapidly ran south. After an incident in which thieves attempted to steal beer from the cellar, it was long after that the pub closed altogether. A great shame as the H&G was a vibrant and lively alehouse when I first sampled it and it also had 2 memorable features that made it stand out. These being the deliberate wall of graffiti in the men's toilets and the lovely warm, open fire on winter days. Rating 7/10 pre-ownership change, 2/10 afterwards
7. The London Unity - This pub is a few doors down from the now closed Horse & Groom yet its clientele and atmosphere could almost be a million miles away. Whereas the H&G was the classic spit and sawdust establishment, The London Unity is well known as a vibrant, student oriented venue with regular live music and DJs playing at the venue. I have not visited the place for a few years now, but I can remember back in the day that it was a very cramped and busy venue on Friday nights when a DJ was playing. Despite this, the pub also retained a slightly homely feel, with a range of board games being available to play in the back room. If you dislike noisy pubs, this place is probably not for you, but it is definitely a place for the latest crop of freshers to check out. Rating 7/10
8. The Cobden Arms - I tend to find pubs situated in backstreets are either hidden gems or insular, cliquey dives that time forgot. Sadly, in the case of the Cobden Arms, my two visits have led me to believe that this place belongs in the second category. All of us at some time or another will have experienced that feeling of being stared at as a stranger on someone else's patch. This particular experience came when I visited the Cobden Arms for the first time. I was half expecting the landlord to set an Alsatian on me and force me to leave the premises due to me being this illegal alien invading their space. Avoid like the plague. Rating 1/10
9. Reservoir - Like the Cobden Arms, this place is found in one of the backstreets lying between Islingword Road and Elm Grove. Unlike the Cobden Arms, it is quite a decent watering hole, although first impressions could leave you feeling a little bit cold. The pub is a little bit soulless as it does not have the feel of a traditional pub and it is also a pub that is largely deserted during daylight hours. Yet, this strangely makes the Reservoir a good place to unwind for a quiet drink away from the hustle and bustle and it has a small, but perfectly formed beer garden. The place also tends to come alive on Friday and Saturday nights, with it being popular with young professionals and students. Not the most atmospheric of pubs, but it is quite a welcoming place to unwind for a couple of pints before heading somewhere bigger and brasher. Rating 7/10
10. The Pub With No Name - The pub with the identity crisis is actually a lot more savvy than it sounds. Hell's own hill Southover Street helpfully has five pubs on it to retire to for a much needed rest, with the Pub With No Name situated at the very top of both the hill and the billing. There is a lot to like about the place which seems to be popular with both families venturing out for Sunday lunch and weekend sports fans watching the match on the big screen. The mixture of the 2 groups is not always an easy alliance, but the welcoming nature of the pub and its well spread layout means that generally it is not a major problem. The drinks are relatively inexpensive compared to other places in the area and the food is popular too. Rating 8/10
11. Sir Charles Napier - Southover Street pubs seem to have something for everybody and the Sir Charles Napier is the pub for the more traditional alehouse drinker and it generally serves an older clientele. It is renowned as a pub that is a keen supporter of real ale and so several of the beers available on tap are relatively unheralded regional ales. This makes the pub very popular in CAMRA pub guides and the like and it does have the feel of a local's local. Those that are looking for a bit more vibrancy and action, however, will find that this place is not for them. Quirky, but not really a pub for the fashionistas. Rating 5/10
12. Dover Castle - Situated on the next turning down from the Sir Charles Napier, the Dover Castle is the complete antithesis. This is very much a student oriented pub and it does not have the spit and sawdust feel that its near neighbour has. This makes it off-putting for some, but I think it actually works to its advantage. The pub used to get (and I imagine still does) very busy on Friday and Saturday nights and it has certain parallels with the London Unity in its vibrancy and liking for DJs. Like other pubs in Hanover, it is the kind of pub that you would have a couple of drinks in rather than stay for a whole evening, but it is not a bad starting point for an evening out. Rating 6/10
13. The Greys - Alehouse fanatics in the area will know that The Greys is situated directly opposite The Geese and that the two pubs have what might be termed as a friendly rivalry. The Greys tends to be quite popular with the local culture vultures and the pub has been known to put on both live music and have poetry evenings. I have only visited the place a couple of times myself, but was quite struck by how unspoilt the place was. For those that want to avoid pubs with televisions, music and pub games, The Greys is the perfect antidote for you and it also has a highly acclaimed kitchen. Not been back for a while, but it is no indictment on the pub. Rating 7/10
14. The Geese - Directly opposite The Greys and generally attracts a younger audience and is particularly popular when live football is shown at the venue. Word of warning though, the place can sometimes get quite cramped on such days, not helped by how small and narrow the gangway is around by the bar. Traditionally an Irish pub, you can always be certain of a decent pint of Guinness at The Geese, which always goes down well with me. There just seems to be a missing ingredient to this place that I cannot quite put my finger on and so I tend to visit other pubs in the area as a rule. Rating 5/10
15. The Albion Inn - Albion Hill has four pubs situated on it, if you include the Walmer Castle at the very top of the road. Sadly, there is little to recommend in any of them and one visit to The Albion Inn was more than enough for me. My experience of visiting was similar to the one I experienced at the Cobden Arms and again it is the very definition of the locals' local. But even the locals seem to have deserted the place now. If you have never visited the pub, count yourself fortunate. Rating 1/10
16. Spread Eagle - There is one thing I liked about this pub and that was the colour of the exterior, a rich shade of green. Apart from that, there is very little else to recommend about the pub just further down from the aforementioned Albion Inn. The pub has become a victim of the recession and has been closed for several months. Forgive my churlishness, but I doubt anyone has noticed. Rating 1/10
17. The Setting Sun - For people that like a settle in a beer garden on a summer's afternoon, I cannot think of a pub garden anywhere in Brighton or Hove that is better to chill out in. Situated at the top of a steep hill, you can view all of Brighton's famous landmarks whilst sitting in the Setting Sun's beer garden. Like the Walmer Castle, this place used to be a hair of the dog location on a Sunday morning after the Saturday night before. The pub can be almost deserted on school nights, but it tends to flourish at weekends during the summer months. Has friendly bar staff and a homely feel to the pub as though you are sitting in someone's living room. If spicy food is your thing, this place always used to tick the boxes too. Not been back for a while, but should imagine it still retains its best features. Rating 7/10
18. The Cuthbert - This pub is no longer called The Cuthbert and has recently been turned into a gastro-pub, which I must admit seems like a curious decision given its location in a residential area between Queens Park and Craven Vale. The old Cuthbert was a slightly strange pub, mixing local hardened drinkers with young families wanting to make use of the beer garden. The garden was by far the best feature of the pub, being both spacious and also providing good views of Craven Vale and the Whitehawk hills. The pub was never the most welcoming of places and it will be interesting to see how its successor does given that its location means it will not draw that many clientele from outside the area. Rating 5/10 (as The Cuthbert)
19. The Cornerstone - This is a pub that has had a number of name changes over the years, starting out as The Admrial Napier, before becoming The Flying Pig and then The Sun before finally settling on its current name around 4 or 5 years ago. The Cornerstone is quite a cosy pub to retire to of an evening and it has some comfortable seating as well as the opportunity to prop up the bar. Apart from background music, the venue does not really do mod-cons, but it relies on its clientele to provide the atmosphere. On a quiet night, it can seem quite flat. Far worse places in the area though. Rating 6/10
20. The Wellington - My hazy memory has some recollection of having visited this pub in Elm Grove just the once on the way home from work several years ago. I think I may have stopped for one drink, decided the place was so dull and then left. This is renowned as more of a traditional drinker's haven which tends to mean you will either love the place or give it a wide berth, depending on your viewpoint. As I have not returned since my only visit, you can see where I stand. Rating 3/10
Notable absentees: The Montreal Arms, The Winner, Freshfield Inn
BRIGHTON STATION/SEVEN DIALS
21. The Tin Drum - Local franchise The Tin Drum has 4 or 5 pubs in the Brighton area where it differentiates itself from the traditional type of pub by offering table service for both drinks and food. The Tin Drum's origins are Polish and this is reflected in both their food menu and some of the drinks available from the bar. The place is a little bit on the expensive side, and food wise, they are not always the most generous with their portions. But, the service is always friendly, it is a pub you can retire to with your laptop to finish your work and there are also a good range of books and newspapers to choose from and a couple of leather sofas to recline on. A trip for fried breakfast on a Saturday morning while reading the Saturday supplements is recommended. Rating 7/10
22. The Crescent - Pub situated next to the Streamline taxi office on Clifton Hill and which is a popular after-work haunt for people working in the area. Has the feel of a very traditional pub with snug style seating in areas of the pub, plus a reasonably sized beer garden with further seating on the pavement at the front of the pub. People that tend to take the 'less is more' attitude with regards to pubs will probably warm to this place. Rating 7/10
23. The Good Companions - Here is a pub that holds many memories for me. I used to go to sixth form college just up the road and so many a free period in my college days was spent in this pub. Purely in the name of research, you will understand. Fast forward eight years and this pub would become my local, once I moved to the Seven Dials area. At first, the pub had not changed at all in the intervening period and still in fact had the same owners. In the five and a half years I have resided in the area since though, the pub has gone through three changes of ownership and two refits, in a bid to rid itself of undesirable customers. The latest change of ownership has seen the pub discontinue its showing of Sky Sports, which I think may prove to detrimental to its revenues at weekends. A pub with plenty of potential, if only it could attract the right customers. Also a pub where the earth regularly moves, owing the Hove to Brighton railway line going straight under the pub, hence the train on the sign outside. Rating 6/10
24. The Chimney House (formerly the Marquess of Exeter) - As the Marquess of Exeter, I visited this establishment on my final day at sixth form college when the pub resembled a place that time forgot with its dishevelled carpet and portable television. A decade later, I returned to discover that the Marquess was no more and that the pub had become a gastro-pub by the name of The Chimney House. The pub seemed pleasant enough, although a little bit short on atmosphere. I have not been back again since, but I would regard this to be a pub that is most suitable for having a couple of leisurely drinks and a spot of lunch in at the weekend. Rating 6/10 as Chimney House, 3/10 as Marquess of Exeter
25. Shakespeare's Head - There are 2 pubs in Brighton by this name, but the superior pub is the one located just down the hill from the Seven Dials. Although the pub is not the biggest place and subsequently it can get rather cramped on weekend nights, the pub retains some good qualities. Top of the list being its food menu, with the pub particularly noted for its sausage menu. I can also vouch for the good quality of their Sunday roasts. Although a compact pub, it is a pleasant place to relax over a pint or five and a popular venue for works drinks. Rating 7/10
26. The West Hill (formerly The Belle Vue) - This pub changed its name around eighteen months ago having previously been long established as the Belle Vue. As the Belle Vue, the venue was well renowned as being one of the few conventional pubs with a late licence at weekends, usually closing at 3 am on Friday and Saturday nights. I am not sure if this remains the case, but previously this resulted in the pub being vibrant and busy in the early hours, but conversely, it would be empty during daylight hours. Due to doing its best trade in the small hours, this occasionally meant the pub got a few people that had not paced themselves well by the end of the evening. Being a pub that stayed open late though was the main selling point, otherwise there were no outstanding features. Rating 5/10
27. Zuma - The site of a former bank at the Seven Dials junction, this kind of has the feel of a "trendy wine bar", with a quirky and arty feel to the way in which the bar is laid out. From recollection, the drinks there were a little bit on the pricey side, but the place seemed reasonably popular with a good mix of people present. Rating 5/10
28. Couch/The Rat & Trumpet - Back in the mists of time, this place just down from Seven Dials was called The Compton Arms and had a reputation for being a trouble spot. Subsequently, the pub has gone on to have three re-brandings, the latest of which sees it called 'Foggs'. As Couch and The Rat and Trumpet, the venue very rarely seemed to attract regular punters and lacked the friendly charm that the best pubs in the area have. The challenge as 'Foggs' remains in its location and I cannot see the new name making this hostelry any more appealing. Rating 2/10
29. The Battle of Trafalgar - One of my favourite retreats in my part of town, The Battle of Traf is the ideal 'hair of the dog' pub in the Dials/station area. The pub has a couple of in-house chefs and the pub is particularly well known for its Sunday roasts, which this author has sampled on several occasions. Apart from one minor criticism at the chef's penchant for peas, there is little fault to find in the Battle's menu. The pub has a homely feel with a round dining table in one corner, plus a cosy fireplace surrounded by some old hardback books. If the fireplace is the vantage point of choice in winter, then the beer garden is the place to be in summer and it is one of the best beer gardens to have a cool beer with your friends in the warmer months. A very good pub for all seasons and occasions. Rating 9/10
30. Sussex Yeoman - The Sussex Yeoman is located directly opposite the Trafalgar and is another pub well regarded for its food menu. I first encountered this pub when I was at university and ended up in there one day after lectures. Since those days, the pub has tidied itself up after it had a re-fit when it changed hands a few years ago. The pub has got some comfortable seating and is generally a busy and popular haunt on a Friday or Saturday night. There are other pubs I prefer in the area, but the Yeoman has a lot going for it. Rating 6/10
31. The Eddy - Another pub that has had a few names in its time, although in my drinking years, it has mainly been known as The Eddy or its predecessor, The Tap & Spile. I did not sample the pub when it was the Tap & Spile, but as The Eddy, the pub has carved itself a niche as a pub that attracts young professional types and as a sports bar with a big screen, it tends to be at its busiest on Sunday afternoons for big football matches. The Eddy also has an extensive food menu, although I have not eaten there myself. A decent pub and for those that are looking for somewhere to watch televised football at the weekend, this offers a plausible option. Rating 6/10
32. Duke of Wellington - Sometimes there are pubs that you become attached to and which add up to more than the sum of their parts. The Duke is one such place. In some senses, the pub defies convention because the only food it serves are pizzas, plus sandwiches and baguettes on Brighton & Hove Albion match days, whose supporters frequent the pub pre-kick off, while its beer garden is essentially a very small patio. Where the pub scores high though is in terms of its welcoming charm. When I was first introduced to the pub over 10 years ago by a university friend, the pub was a family run pub with a close knit set of regulars who would very quickly learn your name. Only one member of the family remains involved in running the pub and some of the regulars of yesteryear have moved on to be replaced by some new faces, but the Duke has retained its character. The pub had a major refit three and a half years ago and lost some of its regulars in the aftermath. However, the Duke has gradually rediscovered its mojo and is always a good place to prop up the bar and watch televised sport. Its Sunday night quiz nights are good craic too. Definitely one for the shortlist of best Brightonian boozers. Rating 9/10
33. Caxton Arms - Here is a pub that is a good example of a hidden gem tucked up a Brighton backstreet. This is another place with fond memories for me as it was the location of my works leaving do after leaving my previous job after six and a half years. Situated in the road that runs parallel to Queens Road, this pub's name pays homage to the man who invented the printing press and there are little decorative props in the pub that pay further homage. The pub has 2 bar rooms, with the back room also having a pool table and book case and has also occasionally had a television screen. In addition, the Caxton offers a range of traditional British pub grub until 9:00 pm most nights. Despite being in a backstreet, this pub gets very busy after work on a Friday night and is also popular at weekends. That is a sign of the Caxton's quality and I always look forward to a visit there. Rating 9/10
34. Royal Standard - This is a tiny pub that is situated on Queens Road just down from Brighton station. I have some recollection of a visit to this pub on St Patrick's Day a decade ago when they were serving Irish stew. The stew was delicious, but subsequent visits to the Royal Standard have been somewhat underwhelming. Generally, the pub seems to be pretty empty and lacking life. Because of its size, there is possibly not much that can be done to revitalise this pub, but it certainly seems as though it needs a new lease of life. Rating 3/10
35. The Queens Head - In terms of geography, this pub probably just wins the award for being the nearest pub to Brighton station, although there are 2 or 3 other pubs that can state a legitimate claim too. I broke my duck in visiting this pub earlier this year and was quite impressed with it, with the staff being friendly and the seating being comfortable, while the drinks were reasonably priced. There are other pubs in the vicinity that I prefer, but for a post-work drink near to the station, the Queens Head has a relaxing charm that makes it suitable for that occasion. Rating 6/10
36. The Railway Bell - For those of you that have not visited The Railway Bell, consider yourselves lucky. I have visited only once and walked past many hundreds of times more and these experiences are enough to tell me that my life is not void from having not returned. Aggravation seems to go hand in hand with the pub and the staff I encountered when I went there did not go out of their way to be welcoming. I have not returned for several years, but accounts I hear from others I have spoken to indicate that the place has not improved with advancing years. Rating 1/10
37. Grand Central - There are not many pubs around that can boast a theatre being upstairs, but the Grand Central is one such place. It was (and I guess still is) notable for having a roof terrace that was worth putting the world to rights in on a sunny summer's day. Inside, the pub is a little bit on the flat side and lacks some of the atmosphere that a more traditional pub tends to have. Not bad, but not great either. Rating 5/10
38. The Windmill - I remember this pub as being unique in the sense that I cannot think of any pub that had a red telephone box in its beer garden. Not sure if the box is still in the garden, but it was certainly different. The Windmill is located along Upper North Street and so tends to attract a mix of people from Seven Dials, as well as people working nearby in Western Road. The pub has a low ceiling and because of this, getting a mobile phone signal there is always a challenge. The pub has a bit edge to it which makes it not to everyone's taste, but it is decent enough to go to for a couple of pints. Rating 6/10
39. Prestonville Arms - Quiet Youngs pub situated in a backstreet between the Seven Dials and Old Shoreham Road, this is the kind of place that you could go to for a peaceful pint in midweek. I think the pub used to run a music quiz night on one night of the week that gained a cult following. I have only been there on a couple of occasions, but it seemed like a decent enough local pub, but it is a little bit out of the way for me to frequent. Rating 5/10
40. The Dyke Tavern - The curious thing about Brighton is that one area of town that is chronically lacking in pubs is the Withdean and Westdene area and so on one occasion, after having been to watch Brighton play at Withdean Stadium, in trying to find a pub showing the evening match, I had to walk all the way down Dyke Road to the Dyke Tavern before I found a suitable resting place. Apart from having a big screen, there was little reason for me to have visited the pub, which had a strange mix of customers and looked in need of a few licks of paint. Subsequently, the pub has had a makeover and is another to go down the route of targetting gastro-heads. I have no particular desire to return, however. Rating 2/10
Notable absentees: The Evening Star
This completes part 1 of my pub crawl. In part 2, I will mention which North Laine and town centre pubs I have visited, before moving on to the Hove pubs in my later instalments.
Playlists 23 to 26 - D & E
PLAYLIST #23
Moby - Dream About Me
Newton Faulkner - Dream Catch Me
Blondie - Dreaming
The Coral - Dreaming Of You
The Cranberries - Dreams
Fleetwood Mac - Dreams
Travis - Driftwood
The Cars - Drive
REM - Drive
The Beatles - Drive My Car
Garbage - Drive You Home
Madness - Driving In My Car
Madonna - Drowned World
The Verve - The Drugs Don't Work
PLAYLIST #24
Garbage - Dumb
Ladyhawke - Dusk Till Dawn
Mumford & Sons - Dust Bowl Dance
The Killers - A Dustland Fairytale
White Lies - EST
Ryan Adams - Easy Plateau
Martha & The Muffins - Echo Beach
Klaxons - Echoes
Dolores O'Riordan - Ecstasy
The Kooks - Eddie's Gun
Regina Spektor - Eet
The Beatles - Eleanor Rigby
Squeeze - Electric Trains
U2 - Electrical Storm
Stone Roses - Elephant Stone
PLAYLIST #25
The Beatles - Eight Days A Week
Rachael Yamagata - Elephants
U2 - Elevation
Madness - Embarrassment
Jamiroquai - Emergency On Planet Earth
Corinne Bailey Rae - Enchantment
Don Henley - The End Of The Innocence
Muse - Endlessly
Snow Patrol - Engines
Nerina Pallot - English
Metallica - Enter Sandman
The Killers - Enterlude
Delphic - Ephemera
The Cardigans - Erase/Rewind
The Coral - Eskimo Lament
Crowded House - Even A Child
PLAYLIST #26
The Jam - The Eton Rifles
U2 - Even Better Than The Real Thing
Manic Street Preachers - The Everlasting
Echo & The Bunnymen - Everlasting Neverendless
Moby - Everloving
Sheryl Crow - Every Day Is A Winding Road
The Noisettes - Every Now And Then
Richard Ashcroft - Everybody
Keane - Everybody's Changing
Nerina Pallot - Everybody's Gone To War
The Kinks - Everybody's Gonna Be Happy
Tears For Fears - Everybody Wants To Rule The World
Kaiser Chiefs - Everyday I Love You Less And Less
Morrissey - Everyday Is Like Sunday
Texas - Everyday Now
Moby - Dream About Me
Newton Faulkner - Dream Catch Me
Blondie - Dreaming
The Coral - Dreaming Of You
The Cranberries - Dreams
Fleetwood Mac - Dreams
Travis - Driftwood
The Cars - Drive
REM - Drive
The Beatles - Drive My Car
Garbage - Drive You Home
Madness - Driving In My Car
Madonna - Drowned World
The Verve - The Drugs Don't Work
PLAYLIST #24
Garbage - Dumb
Ladyhawke - Dusk Till Dawn
Mumford & Sons - Dust Bowl Dance
The Killers - A Dustland Fairytale
White Lies - EST
Ryan Adams - Easy Plateau
Martha & The Muffins - Echo Beach
Klaxons - Echoes
Dolores O'Riordan - Ecstasy
The Kooks - Eddie's Gun
Regina Spektor - Eet
The Beatles - Eleanor Rigby
Squeeze - Electric Trains
U2 - Electrical Storm
Stone Roses - Elephant Stone
PLAYLIST #25
The Beatles - Eight Days A Week
Rachael Yamagata - Elephants
U2 - Elevation
Madness - Embarrassment
Jamiroquai - Emergency On Planet Earth
Corinne Bailey Rae - Enchantment
Don Henley - The End Of The Innocence
Muse - Endlessly
Snow Patrol - Engines
Nerina Pallot - English
Metallica - Enter Sandman
The Killers - Enterlude
Delphic - Ephemera
The Cardigans - Erase/Rewind
The Coral - Eskimo Lament
Crowded House - Even A Child
PLAYLIST #26
The Jam - The Eton Rifles
U2 - Even Better Than The Real Thing
Manic Street Preachers - The Everlasting
Echo & The Bunnymen - Everlasting Neverendless
Moby - Everloving
Sheryl Crow - Every Day Is A Winding Road
The Noisettes - Every Now And Then
Richard Ashcroft - Everybody
Keane - Everybody's Changing
Nerina Pallot - Everybody's Gone To War
The Kinks - Everybody's Gonna Be Happy
Tears For Fears - Everybody Wants To Rule The World
Kaiser Chiefs - Everyday I Love You Less And Less
Morrissey - Everyday Is Like Sunday
Texas - Everyday Now
Sunday 3 October 2010
Playlists 19 to 22
PLAYLIST #19
The Kinks - Days
The Beatles - Day Tripper
Cherry Ghost - Dead Man's Suit
Travis - Dear Diary
White Lies - Death
Coldplay - Death and All His Friends
The Thrills - Deckchairs & Cigarettes
The Kinks - Dedicated Follower of Fashion
Jamiroquai - Deeper Underground
Fatboy Slim & Macy Gray - Demons
Blondie - Denis
Manic Street Preachers - A Design For Life
U2 - Desire
The Eagles - Desperado
James - Destiny Calling
PLAYLIST #20
Prince - Diamonds and Pearls
Madonna - Die Another Day
Sheryl Crow - The Difficult Kind
Deacon Blue - Dignity
Oasis - Digsy's Dinner
Michael Jackson - Dirty Diana
INXS - Disappear
Snow Patrol - Disaster Button
Pulp - Disco 2000
Mercury Rev - The Distance From Her To There
Crowded House - Distant Sun
Corinne Bailey Rae - Diving For Hearts
Echo & The Bunnymen - Do It Clean
PLAYLIST #21
Pulp - Do You Remember The First Time
Basement Jaxx - Do Your Thing
Fyfe Dangerfield - Don't Be Shy
Joss Stone - Don't Cha Wanna Ride
Crowded House - Don't Dream It's Over
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Don't Forget Me
Richard Hawley - Don't Get Hung Up In Your Soul
The Pretenders - Don't Get Me Wrong
Hothouse Flowers - Don't Go
Oasis - Don't Go Away
Razorlight - Don't Go Back To Dalston
Sharleen Spiteri - Don't Keep Me Waiting
The Beatles - Don't Let Me Down
Coldplay - Don't Panic
The Thrills - Don't Steal Our Sun
PLAYLIST #22
Oasis - Don't Look Back In Anger
The Libertines - Don't Look Back Into The Sun
Fleetwood Mac - Don't Stop
Michael Jackson - Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough
Queen - Don't Stop Me Now
Crowded House - Don't Stop Now
Madonna - Don't Tell Me
Amy MacDonald - Don't Tell Me That It's Over
The Coral - Don't Think You're The First
Dirty Vegas - Don't Throw It Away
The Noisettes - Don't Upset The Rhythm
Simple Minds - Don't You (Forget About Me)
Manic Street Preachers - Door To The River
Delphic - Doubt
Men At Work - Down Under
Texas - Drawing Crazy Patterns
The Kinks - Days
The Beatles - Day Tripper
Cherry Ghost - Dead Man's Suit
Travis - Dear Diary
White Lies - Death
Coldplay - Death and All His Friends
The Thrills - Deckchairs & Cigarettes
The Kinks - Dedicated Follower of Fashion
Jamiroquai - Deeper Underground
Fatboy Slim & Macy Gray - Demons
Blondie - Denis
Manic Street Preachers - A Design For Life
U2 - Desire
The Eagles - Desperado
James - Destiny Calling
PLAYLIST #20
Prince - Diamonds and Pearls
Madonna - Die Another Day
Sheryl Crow - The Difficult Kind
Deacon Blue - Dignity
Oasis - Digsy's Dinner
Michael Jackson - Dirty Diana
INXS - Disappear
Snow Patrol - Disaster Button
Pulp - Disco 2000
Mercury Rev - The Distance From Her To There
Crowded House - Distant Sun
Corinne Bailey Rae - Diving For Hearts
Echo & The Bunnymen - Do It Clean
PLAYLIST #21
Pulp - Do You Remember The First Time
Basement Jaxx - Do Your Thing
Fyfe Dangerfield - Don't Be Shy
Joss Stone - Don't Cha Wanna Ride
Crowded House - Don't Dream It's Over
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Don't Forget Me
Richard Hawley - Don't Get Hung Up In Your Soul
The Pretenders - Don't Get Me Wrong
Hothouse Flowers - Don't Go
Oasis - Don't Go Away
Razorlight - Don't Go Back To Dalston
Sharleen Spiteri - Don't Keep Me Waiting
The Beatles - Don't Let Me Down
Coldplay - Don't Panic
The Thrills - Don't Steal Our Sun
PLAYLIST #22
Oasis - Don't Look Back In Anger
The Libertines - Don't Look Back Into The Sun
Fleetwood Mac - Don't Stop
Michael Jackson - Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough
Queen - Don't Stop Me Now
Crowded House - Don't Stop Now
Madonna - Don't Tell Me
Amy MacDonald - Don't Tell Me That It's Over
The Coral - Don't Think You're The First
Dirty Vegas - Don't Throw It Away
The Noisettes - Don't Upset The Rhythm
Simple Minds - Don't You (Forget About Me)
Manic Street Preachers - Door To The River
Delphic - Doubt
Men At Work - Down Under
Texas - Drawing Crazy Patterns
Sunday 26 September 2010
Playlist update - playlists 15 to 18
Continuing my alphabetically themed playlists, I have now made it as far as D. Here are my recent musical listening pleasures for your delectation.
PLAYLIST #15
David Bowie - China Girl
Nerina Pallot - Cigarette
Oasis - Cigarettes & Alcohol
U2 - City Of Blinding Lights
Muse - City Of Delusion
Arcade Fire - City With No Children
Delphic - Clarion Call
Coldplay - Clocks
Corinne Bailey Rae - Closer
Dirty Vegas - Closer
Semisonic - Closing Time
Simple Minds - Colours Fly and Catherine Wheel
Nirvana - Come As You Are
PLAYLIST #16
Embrace - Come Back To What You Know
James - Come Home
The Beatles - Come Together
Neill MacColl & Kathryn Williams - Come With Me
Travis - Coming Around
Paolo Nutini - Coming Up Easy
Pulp - Common People
The Coral - Confessions of ADDD
Squeeze - Cool For Cats
Midlake - Core Of Nature
Jamiroquai - Cosmic Girl
Delphic - Counterpoint
Primal Scream - Country Girl
Bruce Springsteen - Cover Me
PLAYLIST #17
Richard Ashcroft - C'mon People (We're Making It Now)
Dandy Warhols - Country Leaver
Snow Patrol - Crack The Shutters
James - Crazy
Queen - Crazy Little Thing Called Love
Ladyhawke - Crazy World
Prince - Cream
Echo & The Bunnymen - Crocodiles
The Courteneers - Cross My Heart & Hope To Fly
Brandon Flowers - Crossfire
Jimi Hendrix - Crosstown Traffic
U2 - Crumbs From Your Table
Texas - Cry
The Charlatans - Cry Yourself To Sleep
New Order - Crystal
PLAYLIST #18
The xx - Crystalised
The Thrills - The Curse of Comfort
Echo & The Bunnymen - The Cutter
Oasis - D'You Know What I Mean
Glasvegas - Daddy's Gone
Nerina Pallot - Damascus
Regina Spektor - Dance Anthem Of The 80s
Bruce Springsteen - Dancing In The Dark
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Dani California
Bat For Lashes - Daniel
Mercury Rev - The Dark Is Rising
The Kinks - David Watts
Sharleen Spiteri - Day Tripping
Coldplay - Daylight
The Beatles - A Day In The Life
PLAYLIST #15
David Bowie - China Girl
Nerina Pallot - Cigarette
Oasis - Cigarettes & Alcohol
U2 - City Of Blinding Lights
Muse - City Of Delusion
Arcade Fire - City With No Children
Delphic - Clarion Call
Coldplay - Clocks
Corinne Bailey Rae - Closer
Dirty Vegas - Closer
Semisonic - Closing Time
Simple Minds - Colours Fly and Catherine Wheel
Nirvana - Come As You Are
PLAYLIST #16
Embrace - Come Back To What You Know
James - Come Home
The Beatles - Come Together
Neill MacColl & Kathryn Williams - Come With Me
Travis - Coming Around
Paolo Nutini - Coming Up Easy
Pulp - Common People
The Coral - Confessions of ADDD
Squeeze - Cool For Cats
Midlake - Core Of Nature
Jamiroquai - Cosmic Girl
Delphic - Counterpoint
Primal Scream - Country Girl
Bruce Springsteen - Cover Me
PLAYLIST #17
Richard Ashcroft - C'mon People (We're Making It Now)
Dandy Warhols - Country Leaver
Snow Patrol - Crack The Shutters
James - Crazy
Queen - Crazy Little Thing Called Love
Ladyhawke - Crazy World
Prince - Cream
Echo & The Bunnymen - Crocodiles
The Courteneers - Cross My Heart & Hope To Fly
Brandon Flowers - Crossfire
Jimi Hendrix - Crosstown Traffic
U2 - Crumbs From Your Table
Texas - Cry
The Charlatans - Cry Yourself To Sleep
New Order - Crystal
PLAYLIST #18
The xx - Crystalised
The Thrills - The Curse of Comfort
Echo & The Bunnymen - The Cutter
Oasis - D'You Know What I Mean
Glasvegas - Daddy's Gone
Nerina Pallot - Damascus
Regina Spektor - Dance Anthem Of The 80s
Bruce Springsteen - Dancing In The Dark
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Dani California
Bat For Lashes - Daniel
Mercury Rev - The Dark Is Rising
The Kinks - David Watts
Sharleen Spiteri - Day Tripping
Coldplay - Daylight
The Beatles - A Day In The Life
Sunday 12 September 2010
No pets have been harmed in the writing of this blog!
Greetings.
I trust the summer recess has been good to you all. The summer was good while it lasted, which as usual, was for all of a fortnight. And plenty has happened while I have abstained from rambling in these parts. We have a new coalition Government which largely led to condemnation (did you see what I did there?).
Staying on the political scene, a former premier decided to release his memoirs recently and was seemingly keen to stress that dossiers were not the only thing he had occasion to sex up. The publication of his book provoked riotous scenes at a book signing event in Dublin. Such violent behaviour had not been witnessed in the Emerald Isle's chief Metropolis since the Great Guinness Shortage of 1987.
And in a summer where there have been scenes of harrowing poverty in certain parts of the world, it has been good to see that the British press has, as ever, provided people with a true sense of perspective by devoting most of its column inches to philandering footballers and a woman whose idea of a cheap laugh was to put a cat in a wheelie bin. It was quite appropriate that the woman in question came from Coventry, given that her detractors did not need to send her very far in their condemnation. Perhaps she should get a job as an RSPCA inspector. I mean, in the history of inappropriate jobs, it would be about as appropriate as, say, making a world leader who committed to 2 conflicts in the Middle East a peace envoy for the region. I can assure all my readers, however, that no animals have been subjected to cruelty in writing of the latest instalment of this blog.
Right, well duty calls. So let's get down to business.
9 years and what have we learnt?
I sit here writing this blog as 12 September is soon to become 13 September, but it was Saturday's date that has left a lasting impression on everyone. September 11, 9/11 as the Americans call it. 911 is of course the American emergency services number and it is somewhat poignant to recall how members of the emergency services made incredible sacrifices almost 9 years to the day in the commercial heart of New York City.
Every generation has those "I remember where I was when..." days that defines their era, that provides an association to a particular moment in their life. I would think people currently in their 40s and 50s would put the day of Elvis Presley's death in that category. People in their 60s could possibly recall where they were when they heard of the news of JFK's assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald on a grassy knoll in Dallas. More recently, the death of Michael Jackson being announced last year via the various breaking news channel brought an almost surreal twist to what, in essence, was not a huge shock.
To say that 9/11 was one of those days though does not really do it justice. It has probably been the most significant, defining news event of all of our lives. It is said that when America sneezes, the United Kingdom catches a cold, but it would not just have been the UK that caught the contagion that fateful day 9 years ago. The whole world had their eyes transfixed on their television screens, made only too aware of their own vulnerability in a dangerous world.
It goes without saying that I remember exactly where I was on 11 September 2001 and what I was doing. I remember the afternoon in almost precise detail. Back then, I was a slip of a lad at 23 years and 1 month old and had graduated from university earlier that summer and like many graduates, hoped that my scroll would lead me to shiny and prosperous places the other side of the rainbow. I had started work in my new job a few weeks earlier, except that my place of work was not altogether new as I had previously completed a work placement with my employers while at university.
On that afternoon, some 9 years ago, I found myself asked to carry out a job for which I barely felt qualified. I was to participate on an interview panel to interview an interim manager of the organisation's fledgling catering project. Given that my culinary skills have never quite matched those of Gordon Ramsay or even Rusty Lee, this was something of an unusual request. The interview itself was largely forgettable in the detail except that the person interviewed was successful in their recruitment and held the fort until a permanent manager was found, a manager who I believe remains in that job to this day.
What happened after the interview should have been mundane but it was the first glimpse I had into the reality that while my working day had been comparatively unusual, it would not be changing the path of my life. The interview had been taking place at my organisation's head office which was not where I usually worked. I had to go and retrieve some belongings from my usual office and collect the post before making my way home. The usual office was just slightly more than a 10 minute walk from head office. For the hardened Brightonians amongst you, it was situated next to the site of the old Co-op department store off the London Road.
The first consciousness I had of the life changing events across the pond was when I strolled past a newsagents along my walk back to the office. Outside was a newspaper placard with the headline 'plane hits Twin Towers'. Normally the words on newspaper placards tend to pass me by, but there was something about the power of these few, short words that resonated in me. I just remember thinking 'that's got to have caused some damage'.
The possibility that a big event was taking place was reinforced as I walked up the side street en route back to the usual office. The road, (which again for the Brightonians amongst you, was Upper Lewes Road), is a completely residential road with rows of terraced houses and where a lot of the properties' front doors are not shielded from the main road by a garden path, and therefore you get a good glimpse of people's living rooms. On that afternoon, nearly every living room of every property I had occasion to glance at had a television on and from what I could make out, nearly every one of them seemed to have their television tuned to the BBC News. There was also a remarkable quietness on the streets; there was barely anybody around, which given that this was around 4:45 pm on an early September afternoon a week after children had gone back to school did not seem quite right. By this time, I realised that something dramatic must have been unfolding and I should get home and see what the extent of the developments were.
There are thousands of images that people will recall from that horrific day and the moments when they first watched the scenes of atrocity on their television. What particularly stays with me is that Arsenal were playing a Champions League football match on the television that night in Mallorca, which in their infinite wisdom, UEFA allowed to go ahead despite nobody being in the mood for the contest given the more significant events in New York. Thankfully, UEFA saw sense the next day and all of the matches scheduled for the Wednesday night, including Manchester United's match in Greece, were rightly postponed.
Nine years on from this life affirming day, when ordinary New Yorkers reported to their offices for what they expected to be a fruitful Tuesday at work only to never be able to return home to tell their loved ones of their achievements and the deals of the century they clinched during the day, it is pertinent to ask what has the world learnt from what happened that day and what the future holds. One has to say that the uncertainty and terror that gripped the world then remains as much of a problem now, albeit perhaps the sources of both is more widespread than it was in 2001.
What has become more apparent is that the "Special Relationship" that the United Kingdom believes it enjoys with the US is not as mutually beneficial as it would like to hope it is. Indeed, closeness with the US has exposed the UK to greater risk of terror on its shores due to it being damned by association by those opposed to the US's values, or perceived lack of them. This was tangibly demonstrated by the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005, a day which I also remember with clarity. I remember going for a job interview in London less than a fortnight later which was held a stone's throw away from The Oval tube station. A couple of days after my interview, an explosion was detonated at that very tube station.
The anniversary of 9/11, as well as the release of Tony Blair's memoirs serve as a reminder of the great work and sacrifices that British troops have made to attempt to keep the peace in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sadly, many of these servants to their country have made the ultimate sacrifice for their country and become martyrs, statistics of a Government atrocity chart. The grey numbers do not do justice to their work, fighting for a cause they believed in, if not necessarily in conflicts they agreed with.
The two key conflicts which the UK have committed their troops to post-9/11 have been in Iraq and Afghanistan and in both cases, there seems to be no sign of the original objectives for taking troops to those countries being met. The purpose of being in Iraq was misreported at the time and while removing an evil dictator by using what was tantamount to illegal force may be seen as a victory by some, the initial reservations that I had of there being no coherent exit strategy and no thought given to what backlash there could be after Saddam Hussein was overthrown appear to remain as salient now as they were in 2003.
I think that there was an expectation that all Iraqi people would be eternally grateful to the western forces for overthrowing the oppressive regime running their country, forgetting that to a good many people, Saddam Hussein and his henchmen were regarded as heroes, standing up to the might of overbearing western forces who were sticking their nose in a trough that was not theirs. Added to which, many Iraqis would have lost their livelihoods during the course of the conflict which damaged land and crops and so the average Iraqi who earned his living from his or her country's natural resources saw their prospects of future prosperity greatly diminished, not enhanced from the events leading to Saddam's very public execution. And yet these people were expected to just be grateful? Hmm, doesn't sound very plausible, does it?
And then we have Afghanistan, where the UK's presence in the aftermath of 9/11 was to try to aid in the tracking down of Osama Bin Laden. Nine years on, and Bin Laden is still at large, presumed to still be alive, but whose presence is only confirmed by occasional speeches appearing on AlJazeera and via YouTube. The real fight is taking place with the Taliban and with splinter groups who have made their way across the border from Pakistan. The clock is ticking and yet no-one appears to be any nearer to resolving the original issues, all the while barely a week passes without there being a news report of another atrocity of a British serviceperson on Afghan shores.
Despite there being no resolution in sight in these Middle Eastern countries and no sign of short term wholesale withdrawals of troops, the United Kingdom still seems happy to provide unwielding support to the United States in their tackling of the enemy of the day who does not share their Capitalist ideals. This suggests that 9/11 and what followed with the July bombings in London in 2005 has not completely taught us of the perils of getting drawn into other people's battles. The next generation of possible terror comes from countries whose potential hording of nuclear weapons is not known but should not be under-estimated. If China or North Korea have a serious grudge against an overzealous enemy, they could have the nuclear warhead that could cause lasting damage, so the UK must be selective in any future causes it chooses to fight. The danger is if the United States elects a Republican candidate in 2 years time. Barack Obama's popularity ratings are low in his home country right now, primarily because of the global recession. Should Obama be usurped in 2 years time, however, the alternative could spell bad news for those who prefer a peaceful existence.
The behaviour of the American pastor, Terry Jones, only further inflames religious tensions between Muslim devotees and the Western world. In fact, as his namesake from a certain British comedy troupe might attest to, he is not the Messiah just a very naughty boy. Jones' bugbear about a mosque being situated in the World Trade Center regeneration area of New York was flawed on the grounds that it is accusing Islam and all of its followers of being responsible for, and damned by associated with the 9/11 bombings. This type of generalisation does nobody any favours and it is why people in their everyday surroundings display negative behaviour in the company of their fellow citizens from an Islamic persuasion, at least on a sub-conscious level. By this I mean that when we have been on a train journey and we see a bearded Arabian gentleman get up from his seat, carrying his backpack and walking through the double doors, a good many of us will, sometimes without realising it at the time, keep our gaze focused on where they are going. There will always be an innocent explanation, usually involving the carrying out of essential bodily functions, but this is the impact that Terry Jones and other self-appointed spokespeople have in our everyday lives. If there's no smoke, there should be no fire.
You would hope and wish that the office workers who perished in the rubble in 2001 did not die in vain and that the lifelong trauma that emergency crews suffered that day would at least lead people to learning some lessons. But, can any of us say that life is any more certain now than it was then? The net has widened so far as potential future feuds are concerned, while existing ones seem no nearer to a peaceful conclusion. People may not think about the dangers facing them on a daily basis, but the culture of fear has definitely intensified in the years since 9/11 and fear and ignorance added to fundamental cultural or religious differences are the ingrained characteristics in every conflict of note ever fought, right back to the Battle of Hastings. The difference is that back then the enemy came armed with a crossbow, now their weapon of choice is not known for certain, but the not knowing only adds to the fear.
The 9 years have been a paradox in that the world has advanced so much, and yet the challenges remain as complex as they were then and the lessons heeded appear minimal.
Hague should man up
It seems to be the season to be slinging mud at the moment, with the popular press printing a series of exposes on celebrities involved in acts of debauchery and treachery. Even the broadsheets have been getting in on the act, with the Daily Telegraph highly prominent in the press coverage of William Hague's sharing of a hotel room with an advisor. In case you missed this earth shattering story, in reality, it was a mistral in a Wedgwood.
According to what we were told, Hague shared a room with his "special advisor" (special advisor, nudge nudge, wink wink) when he had an overnight stay in Birmingham after one of the televised pre-electoral leader debates. The pair shared a twin room rather than each getting their own single room. On the surface this just seems like a cost cutting initiative when you can imagine that every last hanger-on with the three political parties would have been booking up rooms for an overnight stay in England's second city.
There will be those that find two men sharing a room an unusual circumstance. Yet, why is this exactly? There was a time when this was quite an innocent occurrence. Lest we forget that Morecambe and Wise shared a bed for comic effect in many of their sketches and yet I do not recall there being any sexual liaison suggested about these long standing comic partners. You will say of course that people would know that they were acting, it was not for real, but there are those that believe that soap operas are real, so surely someone, somewhere must have sniggered, must have wondered if Eric really did have a thing for his little Ern, but I am not aware of anyone believing this.
I have shared a hotel room on a few occasions on overnight stays with male friends without, at least to my knowledge, there being any amusement or rumour. On a holiday once in the glorious city of Prague, I shared a room with my holiday companion in which twin beds were provided. Upon arriving in the room, the first 5 minutes were spent trying to find suitable enough distance between the 2 beds so that we would not disturb one another with our post-Staropramen and dumplings influenced snoring.
William Hague's mistake in this situation was not that he shared a room with an aide, which seems pretty trivial the more you think about it, but that he chose to tackle the issue in quite a confrontational way, resulting in those that wanted to believe he was gay actually having more amunition for their argument. Hague has always tried to present himself with a slightly faux, regular alpha male image. The tough Yorkshire lad from humble beginnings who could drink 14 pints if the occasion demanded. You kind of sensed that he was striving to relive his early 20s when rather than enjoying a cocktail of pints and kebabs, he was more likely propping up the bar at the Conservative Club discussing the possible reform of the House of Lords.
Mentioning that he and his wife had been trying, unsuccessfully, to produce offspring seemed a really unnecessary disclosure which compromised his wife's privacy after what surely for her had been a distressing ordeal. And this compromise achieved absolutely nothing other than getting people to gossip more fervently than they had before.
It would have helped also, if Hague had taken more care over his attire when photo opportunities arose. Allowing himself to be caught on camera wearing a tight fitting, plain long-sleeved white T-shirt and baseball cap while in the company of his aide, wearing a cheesy grin was not a smart move. In fact, the photograph could only have been made camper had Graham Norton and Gok Wan hovered into the background while wearing spandex, dancing to the tune of YMCA.
What is particularly disturbing about this episode is why Hague is ashamed to be suggested as being a homosexual by a very small minority of ill informed nobodies. Why does Hague feel this undermines the ability for him to his job or makes him a potential figure of ridicule, when he holds other traits that are more likely to make him a social outcast and for which he should feel a sense of shame; namely that he is a Conservative MP. It also calls into question why one's sexuality is of crucial importance to the media other than providing the source of idle gossip, or indeed why someone's sexuality is of any relevance to the job they are undertaking. There are several MPs from within Hague's own party who are openly gay and it does not seem to have impaired their progress untowardly within the Westminster corridors.
William Hague has shown himself to be a heavyweight figure in British politics over the past decade or so and has generally fostered respect on all sides of the house, despite his party allegiance and his quirky persona. Given this level of respect, Hague really should not have got embroiled in full scale confrontation with the press concerning the rumour mill because he has now only added credence to nasty rumours where no genuine foundations previously existed.
Cricket in a fix
From William Hague to William Hill. The sports pages that have not focused on the extra curricular activities of Wayne Rooney have focused on the spot fixing allegations concerning the three Pakistani cricketers alleged to have bowled no balls at specific times in the fourth test against England on the hallowed turf of Lord's.
For those of you not up on cricketing terminology; and let's face it, cricket is a sport that polarises people more than most between those that feel a day's play is a less appealing alternative than a paint drying convention and those that feel the games subtleties and idiocyncracies make it a thing of beauty; what is being suggested is that three Pakistani cricketers conspired so that bowlers would put the whole of their front foot over the crease when delivering the ball, thereby invalidating the delivery and allowing a punter somewhere in deepest Asia to make a killing if the illegal delivery occurred at the time of the punter's choosing.
The three Pakistani cricketers alleged to be involved in the conspiracy included the Pakistan captain Salman Butt, plus two Pakistan seam bowlers, Mohammad Asif and 18 year old Mohammad Aamir, who had caught the eye during England's innings in the Lord's test match by taking 6 wickets during the first 2 sessions of the match. It was also Aamir who unwittingly seemed to give the game away by being shown to bowl a no-ball where his front foot was not just over the line, but almost halfway up the pitch. At least his colleague Mohammad Asif had only narrowly put his foot over the line, showing that he knew exactly what was required.
It is important to emphasise that nothing has been proven against the Pakistani trio as yet, however damning the News of the World's video evidence would appear to be and how it fits with when no-balls were bowled during the match. It is also important to distinguish between "spot fixing" which is the crime alleged to have been perpetrated in the Lord's test match and "match fixing", where a team supposedly conspires to throw a match in order to produce monetary reward either for themselves or a third party. That is not to condone the actions of the perpetrators if they are found guilty, but a distinguishment does need to be made, particularly because of the circumstances within this particular test match.
On the first day, England had endured one of their typical batting collapses with the Pakistani bowlers taking full advantage of the low cloud cover on an overcast day in St John's Wood. The aforementioned Mohammad Aamir had produced a golden spell of bowling, taking six wickets as England had stumbled to 102 for 7 just after lunch on the first afternoon. If Pakistan could skittle the three remaining England wickets quickly, Pakistan would have a session and a half to bat themselves and likely make mincemeat of the England total. Given what was to be exposed by the News of the World, what happened next would only arouse suspicion amongst the cynics.
Pakistan did not take three quick wickets, in fact they did not take another wicket for the rest of the day. Eventually, Pakistan did take a wicket, but it was not until after lunch the following day by which time England had added another 331 runs and both Jonathan Trott and Stuart Broad had scored huge centuries. Broad finally perished for 169, having played the innings of his life and produced a score he is never likely to surpass given that he is more renowned as a bowler. South African born Trott was last man out for England having scored 184. The innings that these two players had produced had turned the whole match on its head, with England posting an imposing score of 446 for their first innings which would barely have been conceivable just 24 hours earlier.
This massive partnership between Trott and Broad completely demoralised Pakistan and during the course of the second afternoon, their team lost 14 wickets. Firstly they were bowled out for a paltry 74 runs and as they were so far behind England's first innings total were asked to follow on. They did so and found themselves 41 for 4 by the close of play on day 2, staring down the barrel of a heavy innings defeat. By the time the third day's play commenced on Sunday morning, The News of the World had released their allegations both in print and via video media and England wrapped up a crushing victory with muted celebrations when Pakistan were bowled out for 147 just after lunch. An excellent score at snooker, but a sub-standard one in test cricket.
It is easy to see, given the nature of the allegations and given the previous history of controversy surrounding Pakistan, how people could believe that Pakistan had conspired to throw the match. It maybe true that certain Pakistan players had been made aware of the story about to break in the Sunday press and they took their eye off the ball, to speak in appropriate cricketing parlance. But I think this does not take into account the match situation. Pakistan had put England in trouble when the conditions favoured their swing bowlers. England started to get themselves out of trouble when the sun came out on the first day, which meant conditions became less favourable for the bowlers and the longer messrs Trott and Broad stayed in and were seeing the cherry like a football, so the Pakistan bowlers became more erratic as they became tired and demoralised.
The possibility that Pakistan could have contributed to the throwing of the match should not be completely dismissed, but there is no real evidence to suggest that their capitulation was anything more than a classic example of the schizophrenic make-up of their nation's cricketers. Both Pakistan, and to a certain extent India, have always been countries that have had two faces when playing the game and you can never be certain of whether Dr Jekyll or Mr Hyde will be in town on any given day. The manner of Pakistan's meek surrender was certainly unfortunate given the timing of the spot fixing allegations becoming public knowledge, but it just seemed to show all the classic signs of Pakistan giving up the ghost when the match got away from them rather than appearing to be a deliberate attempt to make financial gain.
There have been calls in the aftermath of this scandal to review the place of betting in sport, with critics of the vice accusing it of intoxicating sport with the rife aftertaste of corruption. There is no question that betting does expose sport to the dangers of illegal fixing. Serial gamblers who wish to make a killing have their contacts and have their ways of influencing outcomes to make individual gain. This has been seen in horse racing over the years, a sport that is possibly only matched in the mainstream by boxing for its potential for corruption.
People that are suggesting that betting should be banned, however, are missing a fundamental point. That point is that the gamblers who are betting on the timing of no-balls in cricket matches and other specific outcomes are often people who are betting in countries where gambling is illegal, therefore they are betting "underground". Betting cartels in South East Asia are particularly rife and are notorious for making a killing on unusual outcomes. Followers of Premier League football will recall that in the latter part of the 1990s, three top flight matches in London were abandoned due to floodlight failure, which it transpired was influenced by a Malaysian betting sting. Although cricket is not played in Malaysia, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that major bets could have been placed there, although it is equally feasible that bets were placed underground in Pakistan, which being an Islamic country does not recognise gambling as an acceptable pastime.
It is also interesting to note that the whistleblower in this story happened to be a gentleman called Mazhar Majeed, who apart from being a man who seemingly likes a flutter on two flies crawling up a wall also happens to be chairman of Croydon Athletic football club, who play in the Ryman League division one. Seemingly the FA's plan to ensure that all football club owners in this country are passing a fit and proper ownership test is working impeccably. Majeed was shown on camera by the News of the World informing its readers of the precise moments when his plan was carried out to order by Pakistan's bowlers. It is somewhat sickening to think that Majeed could have profited twice from this fiasco, firstly by winning his bet on the contrived timing of the no-balls and secondly by selling his story to the Murdoch corporation to blow the whistle on his windfall.
The world's moralists have poured scorn on the Pakistani cricketers incriminated and have encouraged the cricketing authorities to throw the book at the offenders if they are found guilty of wrongdoing. It is hard to see there being any alternative to a long term ban for the offenders if guilt is proven. However, while it is not the intention of this blog to offer excuses for immoral behaviour, it is worth considering the social, economic and safety factors that could sway a young Pakistani cricketer to risk their career in order to make a short term financial gain.
As the harrowing scenes of the recent Pakistani floods have shown, Pakistan is a poverty stricken country that is vulnerable to natural disaster, as well as being a volatile, socially damaged nation. Unlike in England where most leading cricketers come from affluent and privileged backgrounds, in Pakistan several of its leading players come from slums and shanty towns. The riches that cricketers can make from their profession can help keep a roof over the heads of their families and give them access to clean water. With this in mind, it is not hard to understand how a persuasive, quick talking businessman offering a large sum of a cash in order to overstep a white line on three occasions could prove too great a temptation.
But there is also another consideration to make, which is what could happen if the request was turned down. If the player just told the fixer they wanted no part of their scam and hung up the telephone, do they know who they are dealing with? As we know, money corrupts individuals and it can turn people to violent crime. A rejection of the fixer's advances could potentially not only put the individual player's personal safety in jeopardy, but also that of their family. In an ideal world, the player would just have the strength to say no and report what had happened to the Team Manager or the captain. But in this situation, the captain has been implicated himself, so it is unlikely that a young player like Mohammed Aamir would have been lent a sympathetic ear.
What does not help Pakistan and their players right now is that they are already ostracised by the cricket community. A lot of this is, sadly, of their own making due to previous indiscretions and they currently are unable to play home test matches because of the serious social unrest in their country which means that opposing teams will not risk their safety by touring the country. But it is the ban on Pakistani players from the Indian Premier League that is particularly crippling Pakistan's top players. From what I can see, this ban is effectively a restraint on trade made by the Indian cricketing authorities for no other reason than good, old fashioned prejudice. The IPL hypes itself as the greatest showcase of its sport, featuring all the world's best players but because Pakistan are the noisy neighbour that could end up trashing the party, the authorities have decided to ban them from attending. Given how lucrative the IPL is for a cricketer to carry out six weeks work at about 4 hours a time, it is clear to see how Pakistan's top players are missing out while their counterparts from other countries are cashing in.
Imposing any blanket ban on betting on sporting events is a non-starter and it would end up doing more harm than good, because as was discussed earlier, a lot of the major fixing scandals have occurred from betting cartels in places where gambling is illegal and therefore not properly regulated. What should be looked at in countries where gambling is legal and has clear regulations is the impact of spread betting. Spread betting is where a punter can bet on almost outcome or occurrence in a given sport. This is particularly common in football betting and so could include the number of throw-ins in a match, the number of corners or yellow cards, or the minute in which the first goal was scored.
The problem with spread betting is that it can lead to potential examples of spot fixing, as in the case of the Pakistani no-balls, without having a direct impact on the actual result of the match. I recall a football match between Manchester United and West Ham on the final day of the 1996/97 Premier League season which was effectively a dead rubber as the Red Devils had already won the Premier League title and the Hammers were safe from relegation. At the start of the match, West Ham kicked off and their forward Paul Kitson kicked the ball straight out of play 3 seconds after kick off. There was no team-mate in the vicinity of where the ball went out to whom he could have been intending his pass and so Manchester United were awarded a cheap throw-in, while people at the time speculated that Paul Kitson or an associate could have won a tidy sum on the timing of the first throw-in. One suspects there must have been many more of these types of incident in football and in other sports over the years which have passed without investigation.
Spread betting seems to be a way of nerds making money. Prior to becoming compulsive gamblers, I am imagining that the typical spread better used to turn up their local rail terminus with a notepad and Bic. When you consider that the type of bet that Mr Majeed and his associates was supposedly placed on Pakistan bowlers wasting a delivery with a foot fault at an allotted time in the match, you would think that if anyone was to set foot into Betfred or Ladbrokes in this country wishing to place a similar bet, the precise nature of the bet would arouse suspicion and the customer would be politely advised of where the door was. Where gambling is not properly regulated, unusual betting patterns are not recognised and this only increases the risk of lucrative fixes. This is the best argument for ensuring gambling is legal and stringently regulated.
A sight to put you off your breakfast
They have been re-arranging the furniture again on the Titanic, or at least the sinking ship that is breakfast television. GMTV finally bowed out after 17 years of comfy sofa chat in order to make way for the brave new world of a revolutionary breakfast programme, Daybreak, which is such a diversion from its predecessor that it seems to have retained most of the reporters that had worked on GMTV. The great mystery is that GMTV managed to last 17 years. I mean, I would have thought they would have run out of furniture as I assumed that whenever there was a set change it was because Eamonn Holmes had eaten the upholstery.
Strangely, Daybreak does not seem to differ at all from GMTV except that the rebranded show has decided to go for two marquee names to front the programme. Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley, fresh from their departure from the BBC, find themselves waking the nation up with their mixture of whimsical chat and pouting to the cameras. You decide who provides which service better. Personally, not being the best morning person, I prefer to see a photogenic face when I am coming around and getting my eye in and Chiles' bulldog chewing a wasp features are perhaps better served for evenings as he is likely to scare small children and thereby make sure they go to bed on time.
I found it strange that Daybreak dispensed with the services of the frosty but downright sexy Emma Crosby whilst retaining a place for Kate Garraway, albeit a demotion to their Showbiz Editor, which one would assume also means a demotion in pay. Crosby never seemed to be warmed to by the largely female audience on GMTV which I can only speculate was because they thought Crosby was the kind of girl that wouldn't think twice of stealing their spouse. There was something of a glint in her eye that sugggested mischief, but to me at least, Daybreak have traded down by replacing Crosby with Christine Bleakley, although I am sure Frank Lampard disagrees with me.
So what of Daybreak's dream ticket? Chiles and Bleakley were greater than the sum of their parts on The One Show, but then there was no real expectation on them there. Chiles served a very long apprenticeship at the BBC before coming to the attention of a primetime audience, but his laid back style is far more suited to a BBC audience where no adverts curtail the broadcasts. Chiles is already missed on Match Of The Day 2 which was infinitely more watchable on a Sunday night than Gary Lineker's cliquey gentleman's club version on a Saturday night primarily because of Chiles' bar room banter where he knew exactly what questions the average football supporter would want to ask a football pundit. In his place, the BBC have given his former slot to the abysmal Colin Murray, who looks like a child left in charge of Bournville and only adds to the long list of Radio 1 DJs who make for moronic television presenters.
Chiles could do no wrong at the BBC and as well as being the perfectly laid back choice of host for The One Show and Match of the Day 2, he showed a great gift for observational humour on The Apprentice: You're Fired programme which seemed like a tailor made televisual vehicle for him. With the next series of The Apprentice scheduled before the end of the year, it will be interesting to see who the BBC replace Chiles with on this show. My prediction is that the former Blue Peter presenter Richard Bacon will get the gig, who lacks the gift for self-effacement that Chiles always used to possess.
Now, you will notice I say "used to possess". I cannot help but wonder whether Chiles has started to believe his own hype in recent times. Every time I have seen him since he has defected to ITV, he has seemed to be playing the galleries for laughs, whereas his style once came very naturally. His presentation on ITV's World Cup coverage seemed a little bit forced, spending so much time laughing at North Korean players' warm-up routines that he left little time for the game that was being screened to have any meaningful pre-match analysis. My early impressions from what I have seen of Daybreak so far is that Chiles again seems to be trying to dominate the show with cheap humour. Ironically, it seems he is trying to borrow from the Big Breakfast, a show fronted by his nemesis and the man who forced him out of the BBC, Chris Evans.
Bleakley was always the straightwoman in the Chiles-Bleakley axis on The One Show and it would appear that this is the role that the tangerine perma-tanned Ulsterwoman will be providing on Daybreak. Bleakley seems to be quite content to sit in the background and play second fiddle to Chiles' erratic line of questioning, but if reading the autocue effectively is the key part of your brief, there is no doubt that Bleakley carries out this duty to the best of her ability. Again though, I question whether morning television makes best use of Bleakley's abilities and after 13 years working for the BBC mainly at a regional level, the fast paced nature that fronting a breakfast programme on a commercial network requires does not seem ideally suited to her.
So what of the show that the pair left behind? I have always been intrigued by the success that The One Show has enjoyed because, to my mind, it just seems like a classic example of cheaply assembled, formulaic television. You get the sense that most of the show's budget goes on hiring a high profile guest but the actual content of the programme is confused, not least because the format of the show allows for little time for the guest to contribute anything meaningful. Authors expect to come on to plug their new book, recording artists expect to plug their new CD and comedians expect to plug their tour dates, but perhaps do not expect to be asked for their opinion on the hazards of rising damp or for their favourite type of confection, or to experience the mild inconvenience of sharing a sofa with Gyles Brandreth. One can only conclude that the success of the programme is dependent upon the presenters.
The BBC's choice of replacement presenters for the departing Chiles and Bleakley was certainly a risk, but in a way they are sticking with the tried and tested. Jason Manford provides the comedic angle, although he has played his role quite straight in the early weeks of his involvement on the show. Manford is a decent stand-up comedian, although there are funnier stand-ups of his type, such as Lee Mack who are around on the circuit. You get the impression, however, that Manford who is father to a couple of young children is wanting to cut back on the hard grind of touring and is therefore looking to carve out a career in the mainstream, just as many stand-ups have done before.
Alongside Manford, the BBC have again invaded their regional television pool of talent and have selected Alex Jones, who looks disturbingly like a Welsh identikit version of her predecessor. Jones has looked quite accomplished in her new role to date, although it is worth remembering that she has a number of years of television presenting experience behind her, which means she should be able to guide Manford who is more used to sitting the other side of the coffee table as a guest. The pairing shows early promise but the problem they face is one of association. The One Show is always about the presenters rather than its loose fitting content and for many they will be damned by association. To many, that programme will be remembered as a Chiles-Bleakley vehicle and the new pair will need to take ownership at an early stage in order to retain the core viewers.
Chiles' departure because of the BBC's decision to hire Chris Evans for one night a week was a curious case of throwing your toys out of the pram and one can only conclude that Chiles felt that Evans' presence was a threat to his long term future. I mean, looking at it simplistically, how could Chiles complain about being asked to work one night less a week? But Evans' decision to join The One Show and the BBC's decision to approach him for that programme were both equally curious. Evans hardly needs the money that fronting one 30 minute primetime television show a week would provide him with and he already has plenty on his plate by presenting a 2 and a half hour breakfast show for five days a week. Evans is known in the business for choosing his projects carefully. He mentions in his autobiography how he rejected the chance to present Deal Or No Deal before the show was offered to Noel Edmonds.
Yet, it seems to me that Evans has signed up to present a show that is not the best vehicle to showcase his talents. For starters, The One Show is only on for 30 minutes. There was a spell where the BBC extended the programme to an hour on a Friday night, but it seems they have discontinued with that experiment. In order to get best use out of Evans though, the programme needs to be longer than 30 minutes. You also would think that the brief for the Friday show will need to change. If the show follows the same pattern as the other 4 nights per week and just takes the form of a magazine show discussing items such as health, local history and the arts, I can see Evans very quickly becoming bored. This is a man who once launched people's weekends with a highly energised, risk taking show which had the biggest guests and the best music of its era. If TFI Friday was the perfect warm-up for a Friday night out, then The One Show is the perfect warm-up for an early night. Then again, maybe this is just a telling sign of the ageing process.
With Jonathan Ross having left the BBC in readiness for a defection to ITV next year, the BBC had a spare Friday night entertainments slot available. Ross' show was produced by the former producer of TFI Friday and the show was heavily influential on the format of that programme, which was a successful vehicle for Ross for many years before the fallout from Sachsgate lowered his stock. With this in mind, Evans would have been the perfect host of any replacement show on a Friday night, but as he is older and wiser now, it could have been a cleaner and more family oriented programme than TFI Friday. The One Show occupies the right time slot on a Friday night for this type of show, but the wrong kind of format. Instead, the BBC have decided to move Graham Norton's show to Fridays and have made him the king (or should that be the queen) of Friday nights, when I would say that his show was better suited to the slot it was in already at 10:30 on a Monday night.
The good news for the BBC is that the prototype for a perfect Friday night entertainments show is out there at the moment. The bad news is that ITV have already launched it and it is being hosted by Paul O'Grady. O'Grady's defection from Channel 4, allied with Jonathan Ross' departure from Auntie means that ITV have the services of two of the best light entertainment talents in the country at their disposal, while also have the added bonus of having offloaded the hideous Piers Morgan, who has bizarrely landed a slot presenting Larry King's former chat show in the United States. O'Grady is a great family entertainer with a sharp wit and a true appreciation of his audience and he now has what looks like the right type of programme and time slot on a Friday night with his new live chat show to truly establish himself as one of the televisual elite and leave the BBC trailing in ITV's wake.
My advice to the BBC would be to reduce The One Show as we know it to being a 4 nights per week project, leaving the 7:00 pm slot on Fridays free for a new light entertainment and music extravaganza. Evans should be the man to host the new show and he could perhaps have a younger sidekick to present the show with him. I would leave Alex Jones free to focus on One Show duties and would instead look to someone like Lauren Laverne, who seems free of a lot of the hubris that the BBC's main music presenters have and seems like someone who does not take herself too seriously. The show should go out live and run for an hour at least, maybe even an hour and a half which then would leave time for three guests, plus at least three music acts, as well as some comic segments. The show should loosely set out to be a cross between Top Of The Pops, TFI Friday and Later With Jools Holland.
Music, guests and family entertainment is what Friday primetime viewing calls for, not cowboy builders, strangely shaped vegetables and Dominic Littlewood.
That's your lot for now, or if you are an onion, that's chalot. I hope to be back with some more musings on life's finer and trivial points again soon.
I trust the summer recess has been good to you all. The summer was good while it lasted, which as usual, was for all of a fortnight. And plenty has happened while I have abstained from rambling in these parts. We have a new coalition Government which largely led to condemnation (did you see what I did there?).
Staying on the political scene, a former premier decided to release his memoirs recently and was seemingly keen to stress that dossiers were not the only thing he had occasion to sex up. The publication of his book provoked riotous scenes at a book signing event in Dublin. Such violent behaviour had not been witnessed in the Emerald Isle's chief Metropolis since the Great Guinness Shortage of 1987.
And in a summer where there have been scenes of harrowing poverty in certain parts of the world, it has been good to see that the British press has, as ever, provided people with a true sense of perspective by devoting most of its column inches to philandering footballers and a woman whose idea of a cheap laugh was to put a cat in a wheelie bin. It was quite appropriate that the woman in question came from Coventry, given that her detractors did not need to send her very far in their condemnation. Perhaps she should get a job as an RSPCA inspector. I mean, in the history of inappropriate jobs, it would be about as appropriate as, say, making a world leader who committed to 2 conflicts in the Middle East a peace envoy for the region. I can assure all my readers, however, that no animals have been subjected to cruelty in writing of the latest instalment of this blog.
Right, well duty calls. So let's get down to business.
9 years and what have we learnt?
I sit here writing this blog as 12 September is soon to become 13 September, but it was Saturday's date that has left a lasting impression on everyone. September 11, 9/11 as the Americans call it. 911 is of course the American emergency services number and it is somewhat poignant to recall how members of the emergency services made incredible sacrifices almost 9 years to the day in the commercial heart of New York City.
Every generation has those "I remember where I was when..." days that defines their era, that provides an association to a particular moment in their life. I would think people currently in their 40s and 50s would put the day of Elvis Presley's death in that category. People in their 60s could possibly recall where they were when they heard of the news of JFK's assassination by Lee Harvey Oswald on a grassy knoll in Dallas. More recently, the death of Michael Jackson being announced last year via the various breaking news channel brought an almost surreal twist to what, in essence, was not a huge shock.
To say that 9/11 was one of those days though does not really do it justice. It has probably been the most significant, defining news event of all of our lives. It is said that when America sneezes, the United Kingdom catches a cold, but it would not just have been the UK that caught the contagion that fateful day 9 years ago. The whole world had their eyes transfixed on their television screens, made only too aware of their own vulnerability in a dangerous world.
It goes without saying that I remember exactly where I was on 11 September 2001 and what I was doing. I remember the afternoon in almost precise detail. Back then, I was a slip of a lad at 23 years and 1 month old and had graduated from university earlier that summer and like many graduates, hoped that my scroll would lead me to shiny and prosperous places the other side of the rainbow. I had started work in my new job a few weeks earlier, except that my place of work was not altogether new as I had previously completed a work placement with my employers while at university.
On that afternoon, some 9 years ago, I found myself asked to carry out a job for which I barely felt qualified. I was to participate on an interview panel to interview an interim manager of the organisation's fledgling catering project. Given that my culinary skills have never quite matched those of Gordon Ramsay or even Rusty Lee, this was something of an unusual request. The interview itself was largely forgettable in the detail except that the person interviewed was successful in their recruitment and held the fort until a permanent manager was found, a manager who I believe remains in that job to this day.
What happened after the interview should have been mundane but it was the first glimpse I had into the reality that while my working day had been comparatively unusual, it would not be changing the path of my life. The interview had been taking place at my organisation's head office which was not where I usually worked. I had to go and retrieve some belongings from my usual office and collect the post before making my way home. The usual office was just slightly more than a 10 minute walk from head office. For the hardened Brightonians amongst you, it was situated next to the site of the old Co-op department store off the London Road.
The first consciousness I had of the life changing events across the pond was when I strolled past a newsagents along my walk back to the office. Outside was a newspaper placard with the headline 'plane hits Twin Towers'. Normally the words on newspaper placards tend to pass me by, but there was something about the power of these few, short words that resonated in me. I just remember thinking 'that's got to have caused some damage'.
The possibility that a big event was taking place was reinforced as I walked up the side street en route back to the usual office. The road, (which again for the Brightonians amongst you, was Upper Lewes Road), is a completely residential road with rows of terraced houses and where a lot of the properties' front doors are not shielded from the main road by a garden path, and therefore you get a good glimpse of people's living rooms. On that afternoon, nearly every living room of every property I had occasion to glance at had a television on and from what I could make out, nearly every one of them seemed to have their television tuned to the BBC News. There was also a remarkable quietness on the streets; there was barely anybody around, which given that this was around 4:45 pm on an early September afternoon a week after children had gone back to school did not seem quite right. By this time, I realised that something dramatic must have been unfolding and I should get home and see what the extent of the developments were.
There are thousands of images that people will recall from that horrific day and the moments when they first watched the scenes of atrocity on their television. What particularly stays with me is that Arsenal were playing a Champions League football match on the television that night in Mallorca, which in their infinite wisdom, UEFA allowed to go ahead despite nobody being in the mood for the contest given the more significant events in New York. Thankfully, UEFA saw sense the next day and all of the matches scheduled for the Wednesday night, including Manchester United's match in Greece, were rightly postponed.
Nine years on from this life affirming day, when ordinary New Yorkers reported to their offices for what they expected to be a fruitful Tuesday at work only to never be able to return home to tell their loved ones of their achievements and the deals of the century they clinched during the day, it is pertinent to ask what has the world learnt from what happened that day and what the future holds. One has to say that the uncertainty and terror that gripped the world then remains as much of a problem now, albeit perhaps the sources of both is more widespread than it was in 2001.
What has become more apparent is that the "Special Relationship" that the United Kingdom believes it enjoys with the US is not as mutually beneficial as it would like to hope it is. Indeed, closeness with the US has exposed the UK to greater risk of terror on its shores due to it being damned by association by those opposed to the US's values, or perceived lack of them. This was tangibly demonstrated by the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005, a day which I also remember with clarity. I remember going for a job interview in London less than a fortnight later which was held a stone's throw away from The Oval tube station. A couple of days after my interview, an explosion was detonated at that very tube station.
The anniversary of 9/11, as well as the release of Tony Blair's memoirs serve as a reminder of the great work and sacrifices that British troops have made to attempt to keep the peace in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sadly, many of these servants to their country have made the ultimate sacrifice for their country and become martyrs, statistics of a Government atrocity chart. The grey numbers do not do justice to their work, fighting for a cause they believed in, if not necessarily in conflicts they agreed with.
The two key conflicts which the UK have committed their troops to post-9/11 have been in Iraq and Afghanistan and in both cases, there seems to be no sign of the original objectives for taking troops to those countries being met. The purpose of being in Iraq was misreported at the time and while removing an evil dictator by using what was tantamount to illegal force may be seen as a victory by some, the initial reservations that I had of there being no coherent exit strategy and no thought given to what backlash there could be after Saddam Hussein was overthrown appear to remain as salient now as they were in 2003.
I think that there was an expectation that all Iraqi people would be eternally grateful to the western forces for overthrowing the oppressive regime running their country, forgetting that to a good many people, Saddam Hussein and his henchmen were regarded as heroes, standing up to the might of overbearing western forces who were sticking their nose in a trough that was not theirs. Added to which, many Iraqis would have lost their livelihoods during the course of the conflict which damaged land and crops and so the average Iraqi who earned his living from his or her country's natural resources saw their prospects of future prosperity greatly diminished, not enhanced from the events leading to Saddam's very public execution. And yet these people were expected to just be grateful? Hmm, doesn't sound very plausible, does it?
And then we have Afghanistan, where the UK's presence in the aftermath of 9/11 was to try to aid in the tracking down of Osama Bin Laden. Nine years on, and Bin Laden is still at large, presumed to still be alive, but whose presence is only confirmed by occasional speeches appearing on AlJazeera and via YouTube. The real fight is taking place with the Taliban and with splinter groups who have made their way across the border from Pakistan. The clock is ticking and yet no-one appears to be any nearer to resolving the original issues, all the while barely a week passes without there being a news report of another atrocity of a British serviceperson on Afghan shores.
Despite there being no resolution in sight in these Middle Eastern countries and no sign of short term wholesale withdrawals of troops, the United Kingdom still seems happy to provide unwielding support to the United States in their tackling of the enemy of the day who does not share their Capitalist ideals. This suggests that 9/11 and what followed with the July bombings in London in 2005 has not completely taught us of the perils of getting drawn into other people's battles. The next generation of possible terror comes from countries whose potential hording of nuclear weapons is not known but should not be under-estimated. If China or North Korea have a serious grudge against an overzealous enemy, they could have the nuclear warhead that could cause lasting damage, so the UK must be selective in any future causes it chooses to fight. The danger is if the United States elects a Republican candidate in 2 years time. Barack Obama's popularity ratings are low in his home country right now, primarily because of the global recession. Should Obama be usurped in 2 years time, however, the alternative could spell bad news for those who prefer a peaceful existence.
The behaviour of the American pastor, Terry Jones, only further inflames religious tensions between Muslim devotees and the Western world. In fact, as his namesake from a certain British comedy troupe might attest to, he is not the Messiah just a very naughty boy. Jones' bugbear about a mosque being situated in the World Trade Center regeneration area of New York was flawed on the grounds that it is accusing Islam and all of its followers of being responsible for, and damned by associated with the 9/11 bombings. This type of generalisation does nobody any favours and it is why people in their everyday surroundings display negative behaviour in the company of their fellow citizens from an Islamic persuasion, at least on a sub-conscious level. By this I mean that when we have been on a train journey and we see a bearded Arabian gentleman get up from his seat, carrying his backpack and walking through the double doors, a good many of us will, sometimes without realising it at the time, keep our gaze focused on where they are going. There will always be an innocent explanation, usually involving the carrying out of essential bodily functions, but this is the impact that Terry Jones and other self-appointed spokespeople have in our everyday lives. If there's no smoke, there should be no fire.
You would hope and wish that the office workers who perished in the rubble in 2001 did not die in vain and that the lifelong trauma that emergency crews suffered that day would at least lead people to learning some lessons. But, can any of us say that life is any more certain now than it was then? The net has widened so far as potential future feuds are concerned, while existing ones seem no nearer to a peaceful conclusion. People may not think about the dangers facing them on a daily basis, but the culture of fear has definitely intensified in the years since 9/11 and fear and ignorance added to fundamental cultural or religious differences are the ingrained characteristics in every conflict of note ever fought, right back to the Battle of Hastings. The difference is that back then the enemy came armed with a crossbow, now their weapon of choice is not known for certain, but the not knowing only adds to the fear.
The 9 years have been a paradox in that the world has advanced so much, and yet the challenges remain as complex as they were then and the lessons heeded appear minimal.
Hague should man up
It seems to be the season to be slinging mud at the moment, with the popular press printing a series of exposes on celebrities involved in acts of debauchery and treachery. Even the broadsheets have been getting in on the act, with the Daily Telegraph highly prominent in the press coverage of William Hague's sharing of a hotel room with an advisor. In case you missed this earth shattering story, in reality, it was a mistral in a Wedgwood.
According to what we were told, Hague shared a room with his "special advisor" (special advisor, nudge nudge, wink wink) when he had an overnight stay in Birmingham after one of the televised pre-electoral leader debates. The pair shared a twin room rather than each getting their own single room. On the surface this just seems like a cost cutting initiative when you can imagine that every last hanger-on with the three political parties would have been booking up rooms for an overnight stay in England's second city.
There will be those that find two men sharing a room an unusual circumstance. Yet, why is this exactly? There was a time when this was quite an innocent occurrence. Lest we forget that Morecambe and Wise shared a bed for comic effect in many of their sketches and yet I do not recall there being any sexual liaison suggested about these long standing comic partners. You will say of course that people would know that they were acting, it was not for real, but there are those that believe that soap operas are real, so surely someone, somewhere must have sniggered, must have wondered if Eric really did have a thing for his little Ern, but I am not aware of anyone believing this.
I have shared a hotel room on a few occasions on overnight stays with male friends without, at least to my knowledge, there being any amusement or rumour. On a holiday once in the glorious city of Prague, I shared a room with my holiday companion in which twin beds were provided. Upon arriving in the room, the first 5 minutes were spent trying to find suitable enough distance between the 2 beds so that we would not disturb one another with our post-Staropramen and dumplings influenced snoring.
William Hague's mistake in this situation was not that he shared a room with an aide, which seems pretty trivial the more you think about it, but that he chose to tackle the issue in quite a confrontational way, resulting in those that wanted to believe he was gay actually having more amunition for their argument. Hague has always tried to present himself with a slightly faux, regular alpha male image. The tough Yorkshire lad from humble beginnings who could drink 14 pints if the occasion demanded. You kind of sensed that he was striving to relive his early 20s when rather than enjoying a cocktail of pints and kebabs, he was more likely propping up the bar at the Conservative Club discussing the possible reform of the House of Lords.
Mentioning that he and his wife had been trying, unsuccessfully, to produce offspring seemed a really unnecessary disclosure which compromised his wife's privacy after what surely for her had been a distressing ordeal. And this compromise achieved absolutely nothing other than getting people to gossip more fervently than they had before.
It would have helped also, if Hague had taken more care over his attire when photo opportunities arose. Allowing himself to be caught on camera wearing a tight fitting, plain long-sleeved white T-shirt and baseball cap while in the company of his aide, wearing a cheesy grin was not a smart move. In fact, the photograph could only have been made camper had Graham Norton and Gok Wan hovered into the background while wearing spandex, dancing to the tune of YMCA.
What is particularly disturbing about this episode is why Hague is ashamed to be suggested as being a homosexual by a very small minority of ill informed nobodies. Why does Hague feel this undermines the ability for him to his job or makes him a potential figure of ridicule, when he holds other traits that are more likely to make him a social outcast and for which he should feel a sense of shame; namely that he is a Conservative MP. It also calls into question why one's sexuality is of crucial importance to the media other than providing the source of idle gossip, or indeed why someone's sexuality is of any relevance to the job they are undertaking. There are several MPs from within Hague's own party who are openly gay and it does not seem to have impaired their progress untowardly within the Westminster corridors.
William Hague has shown himself to be a heavyweight figure in British politics over the past decade or so and has generally fostered respect on all sides of the house, despite his party allegiance and his quirky persona. Given this level of respect, Hague really should not have got embroiled in full scale confrontation with the press concerning the rumour mill because he has now only added credence to nasty rumours where no genuine foundations previously existed.
Cricket in a fix
From William Hague to William Hill. The sports pages that have not focused on the extra curricular activities of Wayne Rooney have focused on the spot fixing allegations concerning the three Pakistani cricketers alleged to have bowled no balls at specific times in the fourth test against England on the hallowed turf of Lord's.
For those of you not up on cricketing terminology; and let's face it, cricket is a sport that polarises people more than most between those that feel a day's play is a less appealing alternative than a paint drying convention and those that feel the games subtleties and idiocyncracies make it a thing of beauty; what is being suggested is that three Pakistani cricketers conspired so that bowlers would put the whole of their front foot over the crease when delivering the ball, thereby invalidating the delivery and allowing a punter somewhere in deepest Asia to make a killing if the illegal delivery occurred at the time of the punter's choosing.
The three Pakistani cricketers alleged to be involved in the conspiracy included the Pakistan captain Salman Butt, plus two Pakistan seam bowlers, Mohammad Asif and 18 year old Mohammad Aamir, who had caught the eye during England's innings in the Lord's test match by taking 6 wickets during the first 2 sessions of the match. It was also Aamir who unwittingly seemed to give the game away by being shown to bowl a no-ball where his front foot was not just over the line, but almost halfway up the pitch. At least his colleague Mohammad Asif had only narrowly put his foot over the line, showing that he knew exactly what was required.
It is important to emphasise that nothing has been proven against the Pakistani trio as yet, however damning the News of the World's video evidence would appear to be and how it fits with when no-balls were bowled during the match. It is also important to distinguish between "spot fixing" which is the crime alleged to have been perpetrated in the Lord's test match and "match fixing", where a team supposedly conspires to throw a match in order to produce monetary reward either for themselves or a third party. That is not to condone the actions of the perpetrators if they are found guilty, but a distinguishment does need to be made, particularly because of the circumstances within this particular test match.
On the first day, England had endured one of their typical batting collapses with the Pakistani bowlers taking full advantage of the low cloud cover on an overcast day in St John's Wood. The aforementioned Mohammad Aamir had produced a golden spell of bowling, taking six wickets as England had stumbled to 102 for 7 just after lunch on the first afternoon. If Pakistan could skittle the three remaining England wickets quickly, Pakistan would have a session and a half to bat themselves and likely make mincemeat of the England total. Given what was to be exposed by the News of the World, what happened next would only arouse suspicion amongst the cynics.
Pakistan did not take three quick wickets, in fact they did not take another wicket for the rest of the day. Eventually, Pakistan did take a wicket, but it was not until after lunch the following day by which time England had added another 331 runs and both Jonathan Trott and Stuart Broad had scored huge centuries. Broad finally perished for 169, having played the innings of his life and produced a score he is never likely to surpass given that he is more renowned as a bowler. South African born Trott was last man out for England having scored 184. The innings that these two players had produced had turned the whole match on its head, with England posting an imposing score of 446 for their first innings which would barely have been conceivable just 24 hours earlier.
This massive partnership between Trott and Broad completely demoralised Pakistan and during the course of the second afternoon, their team lost 14 wickets. Firstly they were bowled out for a paltry 74 runs and as they were so far behind England's first innings total were asked to follow on. They did so and found themselves 41 for 4 by the close of play on day 2, staring down the barrel of a heavy innings defeat. By the time the third day's play commenced on Sunday morning, The News of the World had released their allegations both in print and via video media and England wrapped up a crushing victory with muted celebrations when Pakistan were bowled out for 147 just after lunch. An excellent score at snooker, but a sub-standard one in test cricket.
It is easy to see, given the nature of the allegations and given the previous history of controversy surrounding Pakistan, how people could believe that Pakistan had conspired to throw the match. It maybe true that certain Pakistan players had been made aware of the story about to break in the Sunday press and they took their eye off the ball, to speak in appropriate cricketing parlance. But I think this does not take into account the match situation. Pakistan had put England in trouble when the conditions favoured their swing bowlers. England started to get themselves out of trouble when the sun came out on the first day, which meant conditions became less favourable for the bowlers and the longer messrs Trott and Broad stayed in and were seeing the cherry like a football, so the Pakistan bowlers became more erratic as they became tired and demoralised.
The possibility that Pakistan could have contributed to the throwing of the match should not be completely dismissed, but there is no real evidence to suggest that their capitulation was anything more than a classic example of the schizophrenic make-up of their nation's cricketers. Both Pakistan, and to a certain extent India, have always been countries that have had two faces when playing the game and you can never be certain of whether Dr Jekyll or Mr Hyde will be in town on any given day. The manner of Pakistan's meek surrender was certainly unfortunate given the timing of the spot fixing allegations becoming public knowledge, but it just seemed to show all the classic signs of Pakistan giving up the ghost when the match got away from them rather than appearing to be a deliberate attempt to make financial gain.
There have been calls in the aftermath of this scandal to review the place of betting in sport, with critics of the vice accusing it of intoxicating sport with the rife aftertaste of corruption. There is no question that betting does expose sport to the dangers of illegal fixing. Serial gamblers who wish to make a killing have their contacts and have their ways of influencing outcomes to make individual gain. This has been seen in horse racing over the years, a sport that is possibly only matched in the mainstream by boxing for its potential for corruption.
People that are suggesting that betting should be banned, however, are missing a fundamental point. That point is that the gamblers who are betting on the timing of no-balls in cricket matches and other specific outcomes are often people who are betting in countries where gambling is illegal, therefore they are betting "underground". Betting cartels in South East Asia are particularly rife and are notorious for making a killing on unusual outcomes. Followers of Premier League football will recall that in the latter part of the 1990s, three top flight matches in London were abandoned due to floodlight failure, which it transpired was influenced by a Malaysian betting sting. Although cricket is not played in Malaysia, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that major bets could have been placed there, although it is equally feasible that bets were placed underground in Pakistan, which being an Islamic country does not recognise gambling as an acceptable pastime.
It is also interesting to note that the whistleblower in this story happened to be a gentleman called Mazhar Majeed, who apart from being a man who seemingly likes a flutter on two flies crawling up a wall also happens to be chairman of Croydon Athletic football club, who play in the Ryman League division one. Seemingly the FA's plan to ensure that all football club owners in this country are passing a fit and proper ownership test is working impeccably. Majeed was shown on camera by the News of the World informing its readers of the precise moments when his plan was carried out to order by Pakistan's bowlers. It is somewhat sickening to think that Majeed could have profited twice from this fiasco, firstly by winning his bet on the contrived timing of the no-balls and secondly by selling his story to the Murdoch corporation to blow the whistle on his windfall.
The world's moralists have poured scorn on the Pakistani cricketers incriminated and have encouraged the cricketing authorities to throw the book at the offenders if they are found guilty of wrongdoing. It is hard to see there being any alternative to a long term ban for the offenders if guilt is proven. However, while it is not the intention of this blog to offer excuses for immoral behaviour, it is worth considering the social, economic and safety factors that could sway a young Pakistani cricketer to risk their career in order to make a short term financial gain.
As the harrowing scenes of the recent Pakistani floods have shown, Pakistan is a poverty stricken country that is vulnerable to natural disaster, as well as being a volatile, socially damaged nation. Unlike in England where most leading cricketers come from affluent and privileged backgrounds, in Pakistan several of its leading players come from slums and shanty towns. The riches that cricketers can make from their profession can help keep a roof over the heads of their families and give them access to clean water. With this in mind, it is not hard to understand how a persuasive, quick talking businessman offering a large sum of a cash in order to overstep a white line on three occasions could prove too great a temptation.
But there is also another consideration to make, which is what could happen if the request was turned down. If the player just told the fixer they wanted no part of their scam and hung up the telephone, do they know who they are dealing with? As we know, money corrupts individuals and it can turn people to violent crime. A rejection of the fixer's advances could potentially not only put the individual player's personal safety in jeopardy, but also that of their family. In an ideal world, the player would just have the strength to say no and report what had happened to the Team Manager or the captain. But in this situation, the captain has been implicated himself, so it is unlikely that a young player like Mohammed Aamir would have been lent a sympathetic ear.
What does not help Pakistan and their players right now is that they are already ostracised by the cricket community. A lot of this is, sadly, of their own making due to previous indiscretions and they currently are unable to play home test matches because of the serious social unrest in their country which means that opposing teams will not risk their safety by touring the country. But it is the ban on Pakistani players from the Indian Premier League that is particularly crippling Pakistan's top players. From what I can see, this ban is effectively a restraint on trade made by the Indian cricketing authorities for no other reason than good, old fashioned prejudice. The IPL hypes itself as the greatest showcase of its sport, featuring all the world's best players but because Pakistan are the noisy neighbour that could end up trashing the party, the authorities have decided to ban them from attending. Given how lucrative the IPL is for a cricketer to carry out six weeks work at about 4 hours a time, it is clear to see how Pakistan's top players are missing out while their counterparts from other countries are cashing in.
Imposing any blanket ban on betting on sporting events is a non-starter and it would end up doing more harm than good, because as was discussed earlier, a lot of the major fixing scandals have occurred from betting cartels in places where gambling is illegal and therefore not properly regulated. What should be looked at in countries where gambling is legal and has clear regulations is the impact of spread betting. Spread betting is where a punter can bet on almost outcome or occurrence in a given sport. This is particularly common in football betting and so could include the number of throw-ins in a match, the number of corners or yellow cards, or the minute in which the first goal was scored.
The problem with spread betting is that it can lead to potential examples of spot fixing, as in the case of the Pakistani no-balls, without having a direct impact on the actual result of the match. I recall a football match between Manchester United and West Ham on the final day of the 1996/97 Premier League season which was effectively a dead rubber as the Red Devils had already won the Premier League title and the Hammers were safe from relegation. At the start of the match, West Ham kicked off and their forward Paul Kitson kicked the ball straight out of play 3 seconds after kick off. There was no team-mate in the vicinity of where the ball went out to whom he could have been intending his pass and so Manchester United were awarded a cheap throw-in, while people at the time speculated that Paul Kitson or an associate could have won a tidy sum on the timing of the first throw-in. One suspects there must have been many more of these types of incident in football and in other sports over the years which have passed without investigation.
Spread betting seems to be a way of nerds making money. Prior to becoming compulsive gamblers, I am imagining that the typical spread better used to turn up their local rail terminus with a notepad and Bic. When you consider that the type of bet that Mr Majeed and his associates was supposedly placed on Pakistan bowlers wasting a delivery with a foot fault at an allotted time in the match, you would think that if anyone was to set foot into Betfred or Ladbrokes in this country wishing to place a similar bet, the precise nature of the bet would arouse suspicion and the customer would be politely advised of where the door was. Where gambling is not properly regulated, unusual betting patterns are not recognised and this only increases the risk of lucrative fixes. This is the best argument for ensuring gambling is legal and stringently regulated.
A sight to put you off your breakfast
They have been re-arranging the furniture again on the Titanic, or at least the sinking ship that is breakfast television. GMTV finally bowed out after 17 years of comfy sofa chat in order to make way for the brave new world of a revolutionary breakfast programme, Daybreak, which is such a diversion from its predecessor that it seems to have retained most of the reporters that had worked on GMTV. The great mystery is that GMTV managed to last 17 years. I mean, I would have thought they would have run out of furniture as I assumed that whenever there was a set change it was because Eamonn Holmes had eaten the upholstery.
Strangely, Daybreak does not seem to differ at all from GMTV except that the rebranded show has decided to go for two marquee names to front the programme. Adrian Chiles and Christine Bleakley, fresh from their departure from the BBC, find themselves waking the nation up with their mixture of whimsical chat and pouting to the cameras. You decide who provides which service better. Personally, not being the best morning person, I prefer to see a photogenic face when I am coming around and getting my eye in and Chiles' bulldog chewing a wasp features are perhaps better served for evenings as he is likely to scare small children and thereby make sure they go to bed on time.
I found it strange that Daybreak dispensed with the services of the frosty but downright sexy Emma Crosby whilst retaining a place for Kate Garraway, albeit a demotion to their Showbiz Editor, which one would assume also means a demotion in pay. Crosby never seemed to be warmed to by the largely female audience on GMTV which I can only speculate was because they thought Crosby was the kind of girl that wouldn't think twice of stealing their spouse. There was something of a glint in her eye that sugggested mischief, but to me at least, Daybreak have traded down by replacing Crosby with Christine Bleakley, although I am sure Frank Lampard disagrees with me.
So what of Daybreak's dream ticket? Chiles and Bleakley were greater than the sum of their parts on The One Show, but then there was no real expectation on them there. Chiles served a very long apprenticeship at the BBC before coming to the attention of a primetime audience, but his laid back style is far more suited to a BBC audience where no adverts curtail the broadcasts. Chiles is already missed on Match Of The Day 2 which was infinitely more watchable on a Sunday night than Gary Lineker's cliquey gentleman's club version on a Saturday night primarily because of Chiles' bar room banter where he knew exactly what questions the average football supporter would want to ask a football pundit. In his place, the BBC have given his former slot to the abysmal Colin Murray, who looks like a child left in charge of Bournville and only adds to the long list of Radio 1 DJs who make for moronic television presenters.
Chiles could do no wrong at the BBC and as well as being the perfectly laid back choice of host for The One Show and Match of the Day 2, he showed a great gift for observational humour on The Apprentice: You're Fired programme which seemed like a tailor made televisual vehicle for him. With the next series of The Apprentice scheduled before the end of the year, it will be interesting to see who the BBC replace Chiles with on this show. My prediction is that the former Blue Peter presenter Richard Bacon will get the gig, who lacks the gift for self-effacement that Chiles always used to possess.
Now, you will notice I say "used to possess". I cannot help but wonder whether Chiles has started to believe his own hype in recent times. Every time I have seen him since he has defected to ITV, he has seemed to be playing the galleries for laughs, whereas his style once came very naturally. His presentation on ITV's World Cup coverage seemed a little bit forced, spending so much time laughing at North Korean players' warm-up routines that he left little time for the game that was being screened to have any meaningful pre-match analysis. My early impressions from what I have seen of Daybreak so far is that Chiles again seems to be trying to dominate the show with cheap humour. Ironically, it seems he is trying to borrow from the Big Breakfast, a show fronted by his nemesis and the man who forced him out of the BBC, Chris Evans.
Bleakley was always the straightwoman in the Chiles-Bleakley axis on The One Show and it would appear that this is the role that the tangerine perma-tanned Ulsterwoman will be providing on Daybreak. Bleakley seems to be quite content to sit in the background and play second fiddle to Chiles' erratic line of questioning, but if reading the autocue effectively is the key part of your brief, there is no doubt that Bleakley carries out this duty to the best of her ability. Again though, I question whether morning television makes best use of Bleakley's abilities and after 13 years working for the BBC mainly at a regional level, the fast paced nature that fronting a breakfast programme on a commercial network requires does not seem ideally suited to her.
So what of the show that the pair left behind? I have always been intrigued by the success that The One Show has enjoyed because, to my mind, it just seems like a classic example of cheaply assembled, formulaic television. You get the sense that most of the show's budget goes on hiring a high profile guest but the actual content of the programme is confused, not least because the format of the show allows for little time for the guest to contribute anything meaningful. Authors expect to come on to plug their new book, recording artists expect to plug their new CD and comedians expect to plug their tour dates, but perhaps do not expect to be asked for their opinion on the hazards of rising damp or for their favourite type of confection, or to experience the mild inconvenience of sharing a sofa with Gyles Brandreth. One can only conclude that the success of the programme is dependent upon the presenters.
The BBC's choice of replacement presenters for the departing Chiles and Bleakley was certainly a risk, but in a way they are sticking with the tried and tested. Jason Manford provides the comedic angle, although he has played his role quite straight in the early weeks of his involvement on the show. Manford is a decent stand-up comedian, although there are funnier stand-ups of his type, such as Lee Mack who are around on the circuit. You get the impression, however, that Manford who is father to a couple of young children is wanting to cut back on the hard grind of touring and is therefore looking to carve out a career in the mainstream, just as many stand-ups have done before.
Alongside Manford, the BBC have again invaded their regional television pool of talent and have selected Alex Jones, who looks disturbingly like a Welsh identikit version of her predecessor. Jones has looked quite accomplished in her new role to date, although it is worth remembering that she has a number of years of television presenting experience behind her, which means she should be able to guide Manford who is more used to sitting the other side of the coffee table as a guest. The pairing shows early promise but the problem they face is one of association. The One Show is always about the presenters rather than its loose fitting content and for many they will be damned by association. To many, that programme will be remembered as a Chiles-Bleakley vehicle and the new pair will need to take ownership at an early stage in order to retain the core viewers.
Chiles' departure because of the BBC's decision to hire Chris Evans for one night a week was a curious case of throwing your toys out of the pram and one can only conclude that Chiles felt that Evans' presence was a threat to his long term future. I mean, looking at it simplistically, how could Chiles complain about being asked to work one night less a week? But Evans' decision to join The One Show and the BBC's decision to approach him for that programme were both equally curious. Evans hardly needs the money that fronting one 30 minute primetime television show a week would provide him with and he already has plenty on his plate by presenting a 2 and a half hour breakfast show for five days a week. Evans is known in the business for choosing his projects carefully. He mentions in his autobiography how he rejected the chance to present Deal Or No Deal before the show was offered to Noel Edmonds.
Yet, it seems to me that Evans has signed up to present a show that is not the best vehicle to showcase his talents. For starters, The One Show is only on for 30 minutes. There was a spell where the BBC extended the programme to an hour on a Friday night, but it seems they have discontinued with that experiment. In order to get best use out of Evans though, the programme needs to be longer than 30 minutes. You also would think that the brief for the Friday show will need to change. If the show follows the same pattern as the other 4 nights per week and just takes the form of a magazine show discussing items such as health, local history and the arts, I can see Evans very quickly becoming bored. This is a man who once launched people's weekends with a highly energised, risk taking show which had the biggest guests and the best music of its era. If TFI Friday was the perfect warm-up for a Friday night out, then The One Show is the perfect warm-up for an early night. Then again, maybe this is just a telling sign of the ageing process.
With Jonathan Ross having left the BBC in readiness for a defection to ITV next year, the BBC had a spare Friday night entertainments slot available. Ross' show was produced by the former producer of TFI Friday and the show was heavily influential on the format of that programme, which was a successful vehicle for Ross for many years before the fallout from Sachsgate lowered his stock. With this in mind, Evans would have been the perfect host of any replacement show on a Friday night, but as he is older and wiser now, it could have been a cleaner and more family oriented programme than TFI Friday. The One Show occupies the right time slot on a Friday night for this type of show, but the wrong kind of format. Instead, the BBC have decided to move Graham Norton's show to Fridays and have made him the king (or should that be the queen) of Friday nights, when I would say that his show was better suited to the slot it was in already at 10:30 on a Monday night.
The good news for the BBC is that the prototype for a perfect Friday night entertainments show is out there at the moment. The bad news is that ITV have already launched it and it is being hosted by Paul O'Grady. O'Grady's defection from Channel 4, allied with Jonathan Ross' departure from Auntie means that ITV have the services of two of the best light entertainment talents in the country at their disposal, while also have the added bonus of having offloaded the hideous Piers Morgan, who has bizarrely landed a slot presenting Larry King's former chat show in the United States. O'Grady is a great family entertainer with a sharp wit and a true appreciation of his audience and he now has what looks like the right type of programme and time slot on a Friday night with his new live chat show to truly establish himself as one of the televisual elite and leave the BBC trailing in ITV's wake.
My advice to the BBC would be to reduce The One Show as we know it to being a 4 nights per week project, leaving the 7:00 pm slot on Fridays free for a new light entertainment and music extravaganza. Evans should be the man to host the new show and he could perhaps have a younger sidekick to present the show with him. I would leave Alex Jones free to focus on One Show duties and would instead look to someone like Lauren Laverne, who seems free of a lot of the hubris that the BBC's main music presenters have and seems like someone who does not take herself too seriously. The show should go out live and run for an hour at least, maybe even an hour and a half which then would leave time for three guests, plus at least three music acts, as well as some comic segments. The show should loosely set out to be a cross between Top Of The Pops, TFI Friday and Later With Jools Holland.
Music, guests and family entertainment is what Friday primetime viewing calls for, not cowboy builders, strangely shaped vegetables and Dominic Littlewood.
That's your lot for now, or if you are an onion, that's chalot. I hope to be back with some more musings on life's finer and trivial points again soon.
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