Laugh material

It's a welcome return to form from the creators of Extras - no more Pinter-lite miserabilism or guachely-written cameos. The Christmas special was a comedy with the right balance of humour to pathos. The toe- and fingernail curling moments were superbly judged, making one cringe with amusement, but not to the length of time to give you a hunched back; the unwitting self-defenestration was kept to a mininum, so keeping keeping with reality too; and the cameos sparkled, Dean Gaffney doing humility well, Hale and Pace being the funniest they've ever been in their careers and Geroge Michael playing up to stereotypes about him, while Gordon Ramsey expertly dealt with a outing of onerous verbosity, plus many more. The episode even had a happy ending, while leaving open the possibility of future series.
I appreciated the sly piss-take of Carphone Warehouse and its unmentioned association with an unnamed reality show, which of the latter obviously refused consent to use its name and brand, just making the criticism all the more savage (but did CW know what it was letting itself in for?)
I also enjoyed a rare Morrissey sing-over in a sitcom - his voice sounded more youthful and it acrried echoes of The Smiths, though if it was one of their songs, I didn't recognise it.
The one point to demur over though, was for a show whose message is not to look down on people, the Ashley Jensen character says she's "given nothing to the world" and her job of cleaning is seen as depressing, with low lights and everything. The same treatment is for her bedsit. Let me tell you, cleaning is a job that does have little pleasures and the lighting is never so poor otherwise we wouldn't be able to do our job properly. Moreover, it is giving something to the world because without cleaners civilisation as we know it would collapse within days. Civilisation as a whole would not collapse, as evinced by the 1970s, but as we know it, it would. So don't look down on cleaning, a vital soft service provision. That section was obviously written by someone who's never been a cleaner and so resorts to cliches. As for bedsits, they are always more pleasing to come back to if you have someone to share it with. And in London you take what you can get. These were aberrations, however and formed a small portion of the show.
Few televisual presentiments are more pleasing than watching a favourite show regain what made it great and is still relevant. The Christmas special of Extras encapsulated that.

On another humorous line, when earlier this week, Arsene Wenger said England 'must consider' Manuel Almunia for goalkeeper, I have rarely laughed so heartily on a football issue since Graeme Souness told potential transfer target, defender Daniel van Buyten, in 2005, that Newcastle could win the Premiership and at least finish in the top four. Almunia - the most ill-starred Manuel since Andrew Sachs' character in Fawlty Towers (and don't they both come from Barcelona or was it just that Almunia once conceded five against Barca?).
Wenger has already engendered a foreign first XI at Arsenal and now he wants to do the same with England. Interestingly, though Almunia qualifies to play for Engalnd next year, Wenger himself qualified long ago, yet he moaned that he was the only one wanting an English coach to manage the English national team. If he practised what he preached for Almunia, he wouldn't have ruled himself out of contention for the coach's job, saying he would have been interested if he was English, but he wasn't and so wasn't and therefore would not put himself in the frame.
It's easy to be a good goalkeeper when behind a well-marshalled defence. Diving the right way in a few penalties does not make you the next David Seaman (though it helps). David James, on course to set a record number or Premiership appearances is, at the very least, the equal of Almunia (including errors).
Moroever, England maust not stifle the future development of Ben foster, Joe Hart and Robert Green by bunging in a Spaniard with no British lineage in seniority to them. But Almunia could qualify for the other three home-nations as well, since he is uncapped by his homeland. England are just the most high-profile of the struggling UK national teams. Anyway, Almunia is tested regularly now in the white heat of international competition and that's the Champions League.

Even in the midst of tragedy, democracy must happen

Assassinations are rarely for the good and the one of Benazir Bhutto yesterday is no different. It is always startling to have a pervasive personality wrenched from the scene so suddenly, but one has a right to feel angry that a beacon of hope, however, controversial, was extinguished. Anger has to be initially directed at the dullheaded dope who wrought the carnage at Rawalpindi, but afterwards against those who ordered it and here's where it gets confusing. Was it the Islamic existentialists or the old guard security officers who sponsored the Taliban until 2001 or a collusion of the latter with the former? Whoever it was obviously saw modern democracy, personified in Bhutto, as a threat to their power.
But Bhutto also has herself to blame for not campaigning behind a bullet- and bomb-proof perspex screen, in the manner of John Paul II's 'Popemobile' post-assassination attempt. she narrowly escaped being killed on her return to Pakistan earlier this year. There is bravery, there is courage and then there is recklessness. Bobby Kennedy ignored the lesson of his brother's untimely death and in a touchy-feely campaign was himself gunned down. Nowadays, a student gets tasered for heckling Senator John Kerry. Bhutto, in a far more volatile country, went for the opposite tack. She committed a final, fatal, indulgence, leaning out of her vehicle's sunroof to wave to her supporters. It was the bullets fired that killed her, not the subsequent explosion.
Assassins were widely used in the glory days of Islam, when the caliphs oversaw things from Baghdad, but the perpetrators expected to get away to strike another day. Charlie Falconer gets a lot of things wrong, but calling the modern movement a death cult is spot on. It may be borne of the frustration of impotence against Western superiority and mendacity, but suicide bombing is pathetic, especially against civilians. Bhutto's killer may have preferred instant death to being torn to pieces by the crowd, but that confirms his irreligiosity. All of the Abrahamic religions glorify the giving up of one's life to save others and expressingly condemn suicide when it is used to kill. How this fool could believe that his actions would send him to heaven to be surrounded by virgins to deflower at will really illustrates his limited intellect.
When Bhutto was in exile, I used to recoil at her media appearances, tarred as she was with corruption charges. My view of her changed when, even if for basic personal motives, she returned to Pakistan, because she wanted to bring back democracy to her troubled country. Bhutto may not have been corrupt, nor even her convicted husband, known as Mr-Ten-Per-Cent, it may all have been a political smear, but her subordinates were and under her second term in office, Pakistan sank to the bottom of the international corruption register. Things were little better under Nawaz Sharif, though since Pervez Musharraf took over in a bloodless military coup, there has been a modest, if inconsistent, improvement in that rating.
Bhutto, also, by personalisng the power structure of her party, may have plunged it into more confusion by her death than might otherwise have been the case. Family isn't always a bad thing. When Indira Ghandi was killed by her own bodyguard, there was her technocrat son to take over. When Rajiv was blown up by a Tamil assassin, his wife Sonia took up the torch. And Rajiv and Sonia's children will be expected to continue the political dynasty. But who will take over from Benazir Bhutto? Her father and brothers are all dead and unnaturally at that. Her husband is disgraced. She may well have been nurturing an heir apparent but experienced observers can't readily identify a groomed successor. Other Indians have stepped into the breach of the Congress Party when there was a vacuum between the deaths of the Nehru-Ghandi family, but what Pakistanis of note are there waiting in the wings of the People's Party?
Bhutto, however, whatever else she might have been, stood for progressiveness and her murder bears parallel with two other historical assassinations. Tsar Alexander II, the 'Tsar-Liberator' (for trying to abolish serfdom in Russia), was the subject of many an attempt on his life by anti-monarchical fanatics and in 1881, as he was on his way to sign a document that could have kickstarted a liberal eventual exit from autocracy, he was attacked again. Russian nihilists, who could find common ground with today's suicide bombers, believed that the Russian monarchy was unreformable, despite all that Alexander II had sought to achieve and that only through conflict, leading to the regime's destruction, could any good occur in Russia. They lobbed bombs at the Tsar's carriage, but once again, missed, killing and hurting a swathe of civilians. Out of pity, the tsar, instaed of hastening from the carnage, got out to try and give comfort to the injured victims. Another explosive was hurled and the tsar took the full force of the blast. He died in agony shortly after, his son shelved all idea of liberal reform, believing it the weakness that led to his father's death and the nihilists got their wish of making the monarchy reactionary and unpopular, thus justifying their own insane cause.
In 1914, agents of the Black Hand, a terrorist organisation sponsored by the Serbian government, gathered in Sarajevo. Their aim was to murder Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who was to visit the city. They wanted to eliminate him because he was heir apparent to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and was known to favour greater autonomy and parliaments, on a par with Hungary, for the Slavic peoples of the realm. This evolutionary federalism was a threat to Serbia's notion of itself as the self-proclaimed champion of the south Slavs. The Black Hand members attacked the Archduke's procession but miserably failed to harm him. Feeling the danger had passed, Ferdinand continued on his tour. Shortly after, as his retinue turned a corner, by chance ran into the path of another Serbian terrorist, Gavrilo Princip. He had been mulling over the botched job of his friends and could scarcely believe his luck. He killed Ferdinand and the world was plunged into war.
Whether a semi-democratic Russia would have waded into a world war in 1914 is a moot point, as is if the trigger for World War One could have been indefinietly postponed, the way the allaince system was set up. But both killings were a triumph for extremists over moderation and in a nuclear-armed Pakistan that cannot be allowed to derail progress. Bhutto believed this current strain of Muslim extremism would burn itself out over time, just as the plane hijackings by secular Muslims in the 1970s did. In that sense, democracy may not bring an immdeiate stop to it, but one person, one vote, is the best bulwark against it until that time.

Change forewarned, but recherche du temps?

Tony Blair's conversion to Roman Catholicism made the first item on the news over the weekend, but it does raise questions over how long he had planned to do this. From as long ago as 1994 even? Was he just waiting for the time when his political ambitions wee no longer in the way? And how sincere is that of expression of religious faith? It's no wonder that Rowan Williams wished Blair well on his 'spiritual journey' since it was the erstwhile PM who chose him; had Blair been RC at the time, many would have asked if his selection of Williams was Rome rule via the backdoor. I believe Blair chose Williams because he liked the latter's liberal sensibilities, but queries do hang over it.
Mind you, the BBC closed its ten o'clock Saturday news programme, talking of Blair's conversion that day while footage showed the current Quartet Middle East envoy in talks with the late Pope John Paul II - back from the dead! I know they are fast-tracking JP 2's sainthood, but this is ridiculous. It might have been wiser to show Blair in conversation with Pope Benedict XVI or even Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, the Vatican's representative in England (Dublin rule via the backdoor), but the BBC seems to have hit the Christmas pop early. All that weekend, the Beeb, both on the TV and FiveLive kept making footballing mistakes over who was playing whom and even results, strewn across the airwaves like used party poppers. One or two Beeb boobs would have been instantly forgotten, but a stream that would put any factory production line to shame provided a regular reminder not so much of Coleman's balls as incompetence balls. So what will they be like in the week between Christmas Day and New Year? On top of scything through the Isthmus of Kra, one dreads to think.

Get real

On the Wednesday night BBC 10 o'clock news, they had a feature within the topic of the week 'mad about food'. The story went that Scottish langoustine shrimps were formerly packaged close to where they were fished into scampi, but now travelled 17,000 miles to Bangkok and back to end up on British supermarkets. The defenders of this new way of processing scampi said that because the shrimp were deshelled by hand in Thailand it provided better quality for consumers and jobs for Thais and also it was ecologically more friendly as carbon emissions would have been greater at the British factory, than a slow boat to Thailand and back.
But where did the BBC show this slow boat going? The first map was heavily zoomed out to get an appreciation of how far in the world it has to go, but distinctly crossed the massive land barrier called the Isthmus of Kra that connects the Malay peninsula to Asia. The computer programmers compounded their ignorance of geological obstacles, by zooming in on South-East Asia for the return leg before zooming out, as again the route involved cutting through the Isthmus.
So are we meant to believe that only does the shrimp boat travel halfway around the world but also has not one Fitzcarraldo moment but two, on a regular basis? I know that the South-China Sea is plagued by pirates and that Sumatra is politically unstable, but all the rest of the tonnage heading that way doesn't obviate the Straits of Malacca in order to avoid this. Furthermore, to take the route the BBC suggests, the sailors would have to haul their boat not just through Thailand, but also Burma (Myanmar) to boot. Political as well as physical difficulties. What a boob from the Beeb.

Allied in a way to that story, is the Japanese whaling controversy. They've now decided to keep their whaling fleet intended for Antartica in harbour for one to two years after massive international pressure to avoid hunting the endangered humpback whales. The new Australian government garnered even more of my admiration by threatening to send a flotilla to closely shadow the Japanese fleet, as if the latter were a bunch of shady characters (which they kind of are). The Aussies have called the Japanese official motivations a sham in order to get whalemeat into sushi bars. They are right. Japan calls its whaling scientific. How? The 'science' comes in when the whalers kill the whales to see how many there are. That seems like a counter-intuitive argument. If you count the whales after they are already dead, then you will only know how many there really are by wiping them all out. Then you would never have to count them again. It just shows that if we can't persuade Japan to abandon its preference for whalemeat (Japanese children who were losing their taste for whalemeat have been virtually forcibly made to eat it to keep up the 'national culture'), what hope to persuade China to stop its manufacture of homeopathic medicine from vulnerable species? Japan needs to come clean and 'fess up over its real motives. It must lead East Asia by example. Shame that isn't going to happen. Pity the animals.

Orange is the colour, politics is the game

Congratulations Nick Clegg on ascending to the Liberal Democrat leadership. I was more of a Chris Huhne man, having enjoyed his economic briefings while an MEP in the Evening Standard when it was more consensual and moderate, all those years ago; and warmed to the policies of the man himself. But Nick Clegg does cut that extra bit of dash, clearly stemming from his ambition, whereas Huhn was more laidback. For voters of Lib Dem persuasion, you don't wait ages for a Lib Dem leadership contest (because everyone rather liked Charles Kennedy) and then three come along at once (well, three in two years). As for Vince Cable, he did well in Westminster but that didn't really travel far beyond the political classes. I'm not really bothered who leads the Lib Dems (with, of course, them adhering to liberal principles) just so long as they restore its vitality among the voters and, more importantly under current electoral arrangements, constituencies. Three-way party politics I find healthy to democracy.

Running away from the fuss towards the trouble

In Dr Johnson's oft-quoted (but not often enough) phrase, patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. Old Macavity Brown, however, has given a new spin to this - the House of Commons liaison committee is the last refuge of the scoundrel; anything to avoid being seen signing a proper, but unpopular document. If the Committee weren't in town he would have found a supermarket to open, brushing aside the Duke of Kent, or flying to Bali to make sure Hilary Benn stayed on message, instead of telling the Americans where to stick their obstruction. No, he would sign the treaty in Lisbon when all the fanfare had died away a few hours later, as people were getting stuck into the canapés.
But it won't matter to Macavity. Everyone will have forgotten about it in two or three years time, just as they did with all the hoo-ha over the Nice treaty in 2000. He's basing his electoral success on 'economic competence'. What a shame for him, that now he's in No. 10 on a permanent basis, the Iron Chancellor has become the rapidly rusting prime minister. Soon his reign will be nothing more than iron oxide and as dead as the surface of Mars, for woeful economic incompetence is being most impolite by rearing its head, irrespective of the data loss and party funding scandal.
Of course, even as Chancellor, Macavity was not immune to missteps over micromanagement. If you have a reputation among the civil service as Stalin, a man of steel, then you must flex your unbending will in being inflexible. Mistakes are made by capitalists and Tony Blair. Those civil servants should be grateful that he is not like Mao, for he would then have purged their bourgeois tendencies along with them. But was there even a smidgen of thanks that they didn't have to twist their tongues labelling him Djugvashilli? Answers, plus names, addresses, phone numbers, medical records and bank details on a postcard (or preferably an ID Card, but not if sent by HRMC internal courier procedure).
But mistakes there were since "things, can only get better." Bulldozing through the Public-Private Partnership on the Tube was a piece of political spite at that enemy of the revolution/Project, Red 'Trotsky' Ken. Mayor Livingstone I presume; have I introduced you to my icepick? Rated 14th out of 15 possible solutions to the Tube (the 15th was unregulated privatisation) and with such obscurantist maths in the hope that people would lose interest attacking it, the whole menagerie has come home to roost with one of the companies supposed to be running it going bust, as tube services remain the way they were in 1997 i.e. ropey. Things, can only stay the same.
Then there's the sale of the MoD's research arm, Qinetiq, known as the goose that lays the golden eggs, for a price that, after legal fees, is actually a cost to the taxpayer while company directors (including one Tory adviser, hence their quiet) dived into a pool of cash. Just as well it wasn't an infinity pool. Yet there's not enough money to improve soldiers' housing (or pay police officers or keep post offices open or...).
What about, as I read in Private Eye last year (under the heading "Gordon is a Moron"), sacking several score of revenue officers from HRMC, in the name of cutting red tape. Ah, but wasn't New Labour supposed to abandon dogma in favour of what worked? Yeah, right. The money those ex-revenue officers chased up was actually a greater sum than removing their wages from the department bill.
But in his Chancellor of the Exchequer capacity, Macavity's greatest blunder was unnecessarily selling gold at the bottom of the market. The subsequent rise in the value of gold, all told, is now higher than the losses on Black Wednesday which destroyed the Tories' reputation for economic competence.
And there were more, but Blair is just as interlinked as his bosom enemy. Such as the wilful thrusting of private enterprise, bizarrely subsidised by the taxpayer (which surely would violate the very principles of involving private finance, notably there's no safety net for failure), into the public sector. Healthcare is a particular bugbear that the new PM is trying to reverse, but what about HRMC to name one area where PFI is falling down on the job. The reason they didn't remove all the wanton details from the 25 million records they subsequently lost was because it cost too much. But as Private Eye reveals, HRMC's in-house audit team could have done it very quickly and for no cost, but that would have breached the contract with IT supplier EDS. All this wastage and inadequacy for the sake of dogma, it all feels very much like New Labour saying of the taxpayers "let them eat cake" (and we all know what happened to the person who coined that phrase).
The more this New Labour government goes on, the more one thinks that their only claim to economic prowess is not having mucked it up, rather than anything they’ve done, even if that involves the ordinary person being loaded with debt to keep the economy moving. In all truth, it is hard to think of a single successful fiscal policy that hasn’t involved throwing oil tanker-style oodles of money at it, whether appropriate or not. Apart from that is one early decision in 1997, that is, putting the Bank of England vis-à-vis the government on the same footing as East Germany to the USSR i.e. quasi-independent (setting the terms under which it operates).
Macavity’s hand-picked successor, Alistair Darling, is trying his best to emulate his boss in terms of results, if not presentation of those results. The reason Darling was thought a safe pair of hands was because as Work and Pensions Secretary and Transport Secretary, he did nothing of any value (as pensioners and rail commuters found out). To do nothing of any value at the Treasury, however, means bankruptcy. Therefore, the ‘streamlining’ of all government funding. As one potential bankrupt to another (very real one), he bailed out Northern Wreck, with Bank of England money and government-secured loans. An affinity can be the only reason why he blocked Lloyds TSB from taking over Northern Rock, at commercial rates of interest, in the first stages of the crisis. Other areas of the public sector must cut back as Darling blows a king’s, queen’s and whole royal household’s ransom because he created an entirely avoidable run on a bank. And where’s Macavity in all this - he’s trying desperately not to be found (out).

Festive football?

Yesterday I went up to London for the second week running. This time it was mainly for the football, seeing Newcastle United taking on Fulham at the Cottage. It was a fairly boring game. there was still the thrill of seeing famous footballers up close and being where the action was - but where was the action? The ball spent as much time in the air as on the ground - typified when it was kicked out of the ground. As one commentator said after a miserly 0-0 draw between Charlton Athletic and Southampton at the Valley a few years back after the same occurence, "unfortunately, someone found a new one [ball]." In the first half there was one effort on target, from Newcastle.
The second half improved marginally, but the crowd were reduced to cheering or jeering not-so-near misses. I looked at the clock as it showed 82 minutes and thought "next goal wins it." This was not because the defences were so well-marshalled as not afford a reply but because the quality was so low. Which is maybe not surprising from two exponents of the long ball game or, as it is politely called, 'the percentages game'. It was fitting that the only goal of the game came from the penalty spot since it certainly wasn't going to come from open play.
It left me to consider other things such as the crescent moon seemlessly inserting itself into the empty night sky or how David Healy is quite chunky for the squirt of a player he is. The kit lady of the half-time kids football had bizarrely a Chelsea FC boot bag - an odd encumbrance from the arch-rivals of Fulham. She had a sheepish smile after I joked about it with a fan sitting next to me. And it was so cold. I had with me some puff pastry mince-filled delicacies purchased from Tesco as my half-time snack, but more on those later.
To the penalty, Newcastle's second winner in injury-time in a row. As the ball shot in and the away section exploded, shockwaves coursed through the muscles of my upper body, but I remained still having primed myself. My legs, not having as many layers as my torso, were approaching numbness and so not as susceptible to move. I kept my cover after making agreeably ambiguous noises throughout the match.
It was an important win for four reasons other than the three points -it's the first time for one week shy of a year that the Toon have won two consecutive league matches; it's the first time since 11 November last year that Newcastle have not conceded any goals in an away match (and 17 September 2006 since that was coupled with an away win); it's the first time since November 1946 that Newcastle have kept a shut-out when playing at Fulham (and their occasional groundshares); and it's the Magpies' first away win since the opening day of the season.
Watching Match of the Day this morning, I felt sure that this game had to be last on the bill, but no, Birmingham's home 1-1 draw with Reading was, which these teams might feel aggrieved at. There certainly seemed to be more drama, even if the two of them are less-established top-flight sides than Newcastle Utd or Fulham.
But, as the saying goes, the result is everything. Newcastle fans left the ground chanting
"Jingle bells, jingle bells,
jingle all the way,
oh what fun it is to see
Newcastle win away -hey!"

I went on to Jon Williams' house-warming party afterwards for his new pad in Crouch End. It is miles better than his previous flatshare above a fruit n' veg shop and in decent surroundings as well, what with the well-appointed high street literally less than a stone's throw away. I rather got into the mulled wine as I deposited the premium cider and a second box of those puff pastry mince pies. It wasn't all out party, just good-humoured chat. I had to leave at 11pm to make sure I made my train and the bus ride to Archway tube station was pleasant, considering I had walked forty minutes, mostly uphill to get there in the first place. I might have satyed the night, but I had an appointment at church the next day which I needed to attend.

Last Saturday

I guess I should finally get around to what I did last weekend. It was a full Saturday. In the morning I went to see the film Ratatouille, which I think merited four out of five. It's the latest film from Brad Bird, who cut his creative and comic teeth on The Simpsons, and like The Incredibles, his previous movie, he knows how to make people laugh. Ratatouille, however, is not quite as sublime as The Incredibles, since it challenges the perceptions of the film characters more than the audience; we've been here before with this kind of anthropomorphism - after all, how long has Mickey Mouse been in business?
The high concept that a rat can cook is a one-thought, throwaway gag and they've made it into a feature-length film. But what a film! Bird keeps the jokes coming faster than orders from a hard-pressed waiter, while not neglecting plot development. French-baiting is, admirably, kept to a minimum though Collette and the imaginary Chef Gusteau are the only French-sounding people allowed to shine. This leads me on to the heroes, of which neither, rat nor human, are particularly Francophone, which I guess for a primarily Stateside audience is the way it has to be; nor is the fastidious food critic, whose cut-glass pronounciation reflects American stereotypes of those with an English accent. The other gripe is that you can see some parts of the plot coming before it happens, which I guess isn't the intention. Aside from these quibbles though, it is a thoroughly enjoyable and fun movie, which also teaches you about aspects of the chef's kitchen that a layman might not necessarily know. Altogether, a culinary treat.

That was the morning and early afternoon. I then went up to London for a theatre production. It was "Alex (live on stage)". It was a matinee performance that started at 5.15pm. A one man show by Robert Bathurst, out of Cold Feet, it was based on the cartoon series in the business section, formerly of The Independent, now of the Daily Telegraph.
When I saw a newspaper advert I was determined to see it and then I heard a preview on the Today programme on Radio 4, in which Bathurst in character explains the sub-prime market in far more lucid terms than Newsnight's Stephanie Flanders with her brown bags. Simply, the banks are like music companies and their debt payments are like releasing a compilation album. On their books, the music honchos have some excruciating artists (the sub-prime 'bad credit' people), but to make people buy the compilation album they put some of their best artists on it too (the super-prime, brilliant credit people). Now, the bad artists have released some songs worse than even their previous low standard and it just puts people (other banks) off buying the compilation album, even with the good artists on board. So, the music companies are left with loads of unsold stock that is rapidly depreciating in value and hence they don't want to buy the compliation albums of others. This is how the dreaded credit crunch came about because no-one wants to lend to each other or specifically buy each other's albums.
The play wasn't quite as topical as that and could have come from the 1980s or 1990s as much as today. It was the penultimate performance of a limited season at the Arts Theatre in Great Newport Street off Leicester Square (the final one being that night) so I reckoned that they would put in a lot of effort to go out on a high. It was tour de force by Bathurst as he played Alex as well as voicing the other characters most of the time (or summarisng via an Alex aside what they said). The other characters (and backgrounds to indicate a change in scene) appeared on projection boards as the cartoons drawn by the two guys behind Alex the strip. The jokes were good, but the play also had a decent plot to hang them on as well, such as Alex telling us in an aside "people say I'm a terrible snob. That's not true. I'm rather good at being one actually." It was very funny throughout its running time and would be worth a repeat viewing had this not been the second-to-last showing.

Afterwards, I went up to Highgate to see Alex, of the Goff variety. Dropped off my Christmas cards which was my original intention, but then I stayed longer and cracking open a big bottle of premium cider I had with me, carried on chatting to Alex and his flatmates and he made a great chili con carne meal for the both of us. I then popped of home having had a wonderful Saturday.

England need another Special One

What I thought was likely has come to pass - Jose Mourinho has pulled out of the running to become the next England manager. This came, ironically, on the day when the Gurardian's sport section smugly paraded its so-called scoop in the Observer, that Mourinho wanted to become the new England boss swiftly after the post became vacant. Mourinho must have thought "no-one second guesses the Special One, let alone some hack." Also, in the Guardian sport section was a provocative piece by a journalist trying to justify his job by finding even the tiniest angle to write about, namely that Mourinho would be mad to take the England post - be careful what you wish for.
I didn't think Mourinho was right for the post because he is a young manager at 44 and I could see him getting some itchy feet at taking charge of only 12 matches or so a year for at least four years. He himself has said international management is an old man's job.
That is why I instantly favoured Capello when I heard he had put his name forward. I intially confused him with Marcello Lippi, also on the shortlist, but once I had straightened it out in my head, Capello is even better than Lippi. Sure, the latter is a World Cup winner, but Italy were only impressive in the defeat of Germany in extra-time in the semi-finals in that campaign. It wasn't the most glorious way to win a World Cup. Capello, however, has won all there really is - outside England - and, at 61 years, has nothing left to prove. Yes, he received brickbats during his last stint at Real Madrid, but he still won La Liga; Barcelona and Sevilla repeatedly slipped up, but Madrid showed the steel to not follow suit when it mattered. A man who chastises himself for only winning the Champions League once having been to the final three times, is clearly a man who sets his own standards so high that he will demand it of his players too. If England win the World Cup and go to three finals if Capello took over, he would be lauded to the skies.
Reagrding the other two contenders, Martin O'Neill has done well with limited resources at Celtic and Leicester City, (something that might be said of the England team) but it has taken him time to mould Aston Villa in his own image and I think that is a project he is deeply attached to. O'Neill also has not won at the highest level in a big league. He only figures so prominently because he is British, but he's not English and it would be the same as hiring a foreign manager; being from Northern Ireland he is technically overseas, anyway. As for Jurgen Klinnsman, aside from the furore from the lower regions of the press that would accompany placing a German in charge of the English national side, his pedrigree derives solely from taking Germany to 3rd place at a home World Cup. How he would fare with a different team playing in different countries is another matter. Moreover, as international manager, Klinnsman only played seven competitive matches, since hosts qualify automatically. The German press also discoursed unhappily about his travels back to California, rather than watching German league games in person, when there were no international matches to be played. If things went awry with England, that would be immediately highlighted.
No, from almost the first instant I have been backing Capello, even secretly hoping that Mourinho would drop out, because I felt Capello's circumstances were aligned exquisitely (though Mourinho was my second choice). I'm really hoping the FA come to the right conclusion.

Three topics

It seems John Darwin has been just a bit too clever for his own good. The man charged by Cleveland Police for fraud and obtaining a false passport was brought down after claiming the life insurance on his 'death'. He must have realised that he was in trouble when he walked into a London Police station feigning amnesia. Ah well, he's had an interesting time in Central America with his wife, though I thought dodgy ships were registered in Panama, not dodgy husbands. Never mind, being a former prison officer, he's got bags of experience of what it's like being 'inside'. I think it's touching that his wife Ann claims to still love him, despite herself being charged with deception. One can see how such a story might have been covered in the USA had it been American citizens in the frame - "the name of Darwin has been darkened forever!" But really, John Darwin ought to go to prison for that crazy beard he grew as he went under the name of John Jones.

Talking of names, I spotted a name I knew quite well recently. The Kent Alumni magazine came to my house and as I flicked through, there were several interviews, one of which featured featured Professor Tim Luckhurst, a former editor of the Herald and currently the head of journalism at the University of Kent at Medway. I was thinking, "I know him. I clean out his office in the mornings!" Not many Kent alumni could claim that. Interestingly, he was in Romania Christmas 1989 for the overthrow of the communist tyranny and he was back in the Balkans a decade later for the NATO bombing campaign for Kosovo, whose result (achieved more by adroit Russian diplomacy) provided the impetus for the downfall of another communist tyrant.

The magazine Country Life can seem cheerfully old-fashioned, but in it's Novemer 22nd editorial, it expressed something I've thought for a long time - there "is a growing contempt for precedent on the part of the ruling political caste. Arguably, the process began under Mrs. Thatcher; it got worse under Mr. Blair; it is continuing under Mr. Brown." This is what Lord Hailsham meant in the 1970s, when he commented as part of his "Electoral Dictatorship" essay that Britain needed a written constitution to guarantee its checks and balances, in the event that someone came to power with few scruples at overturning centuries of accumulated tradition. I like the idea that we have an 'unwritten' constitution, but the last few decades have shown that it is open to abuse, to the personal glory of the prime minister of the day, but the general detriment of the country at large.

Series end

What a great finale to Heroes. BBC2 was right to screen the final two episodes back-to-back as it made such coherent narrative sense. Relationships were resolved, all the bad guys got their comeuppance and New York and the world were saved. It wrapped up things pleasingly, of things that you had been hoping for from earlier in the series. There was a bit of a glaring hole towards the end - if Peter Petrelli can regenerate like Claire, why all the fuss about temporarily taking him out with a bullet to stop him from exploding? Our belief has been suspended to allow genetic make-up to somehow affect the laws of physics, so therefore the writers and producers have to be consistent and follow through on the application of these powers. Another smaller niggle is that Peter may have exploded like a nuclear bomb high in the sky away from New York, but surely that would still dust NYC in radioactivity? I seem to remember that the city has an Atlantic coastline, where the impact would be much more minimised from a sky bang. Moreover, I wonder what NORAD, the USA's premier defence base would make of a nuclear explosion in American airspace. But these are small things, for it was highly satisfying end to a great series that knew what it wanted to do from the start and carried that through to the end.

Teddy who?

Gillian Gibbons, the teacher who was arrested and imprisoned in Sudan for letting her children name a teddy bear Muhammad, touched back down in the UK today. This means we won't have to bomb a paracetamol factory down there though I'm sure Gordon Brown welcomed her return with gritted teeth. After all, in 1998, when Bill Clinton was finding it tough over the Lewinsky scandal, he lobbed a few cruise missiles at Iraq and Sudan, the latter destroying what was called a chemical lab. Well, it was of sorts, to make headache relief! It was suspicious that the attack took place at night so no-one would be present (and thus no-one hurt), when if you wanted to take out a dodgy chemical lab surely you would want to take out the scientists associated with it too, to set back the nefarious research. Brown is having problems aplenty so he must have dearly wished to explode aspirin in Sudan, thereby diverting attention and now that excuse has been taken away from him. As to the silliness of the charges with the seriousness of the consequences, I wonder what Teddy Roosevelt would have made of it all.

25 up for Bex

Last weekend, I went to Canterbury and I do have a tale to tell. It was Miss Walzcak's 25th. I got her a John Barrowman CD, which was essentially a collection of covers. It went down well, apparently, as I hoped it would. Saw Chris Brown as well and as it was his birthday earlier in the week, I'd brought a prezzie too for him. And one for Tom in absentia to be taken by his fiancee, Lynny. My token Christmas dressage (as Becky wanted it) was a 99 pence two metre long, sparkly red tinsel from Wilkinson's that I draped around my neck.

After meeting up at Joel's flat, we went to a pub, then onto the Shed Cantina restaurant. I sat next to Lynny who once again became Lynny Last since we both ordered duck breast, but there was only one left so she insisted I have it; on changing her oder to fish, she only got it fifteen minutes after the rest of us got all ours. Still, she nejoyed her meal. I had the set Christmas three-course meal, king prawns for appetiser, aforementioned duck breast, mash and red cabbage as main and I was quite taken with the marshmallow ice-cream for dessert. Me and Lynny shared a bottle of rose as a compromise between the meats of our meals. Then we popped off to a bar with a bedsheet for a ceiling and then onto a more nightclub-oriented bar. I went home with some of the others at 1am.

The next day, being only five minutes walk from the cathedral having spent the night at Joel's, sleeping sumptuously on the sofa, I ventured out into torrential rain - another benefit of only five minutes walk. It was Advent Sunday, the start of the Christian calendar and the cathedral was pleasurably suffused with incense smoke. After the service I went to breakfast with the girls and then we all met up with the others in a cafe, before ending up in a pub and finally departing. Canterbury raised my spirits again.