Footballers On The Couch
Susanna Reid said on BBC Breakfast this morning, that they’ve never had a current footballer on the couch, whereas virtually all the British medallists from the Olympics, have joined them.
She has a point, but I don’t think it’s down to intelligence, but imagine if say a Chelsea player was on describing how he’d just scored an amazing hat trick against Manchester United, think of all the abuse they’d get. They used to have current footballers on A Question of Sport and they don’t now.
Or it could all be down to agents wanting something like image rights!
But i still think she has a point.
Sharon From East Enders Was On The Bus!
Well not Sharon, but the character is certainly based on observing women in the East of London.
Presenters Go Mad For Mo
This must surely be one of the best video clips from the BBC, as their presenters go mad cheering on Mo Farah in the 10,000 metres on Saturday night.
To me what makes it even funnier is that Michael Johnson is rather the calm American and he’s cheering on a Brit!
How Do You Get Away From The Golf?
My two favourite channels, BBC 1 and Radio 5 Live are both broadcasting continuous golf. Now I will watch it in moderation, but I’m not keen to have it rammed into both my eyes and ears.
Admittedly, I have the cricket on Sky and soon the cycling will start, but the sooner the Open golf goes to Sky, the better.
As someone famously said, golf is a good way to ruin a walk.
The Olympic Torch Relay is not even on the red button!
Has Libby Purves Got A Point Here?
In her article on immigration in The Times today, she virtually says, that we got a lot of immigrants from former Soviet republics, as they all spoke good English, because of listening to the BBC World Service for years. So just as Ang Sang Suu Kyi listened to Dave Lee Travis to stay connected, they listened to get educated and also realised, where they wanted to go.
So if we want to stop immigration, we should close the BBC World Service, except to countries like Canada and Australia?
But then the BBC World Service is one of the things that makes Britain what it is.
Hodgson Speaks Italian at a Press Conference
The BBC seems very surprised that he did this, but he did manage a top club in the country. If they read his Wikipedia entry, it says he speaks eight languages, five of which fluently.
I haven’t seen or heard what he said, but perhaps he threw the Italian into the press conference to make sure that the Italians knew he would understand what they shouted from the touchline. I suspect too, he reads the Italian papers’ comments on the match. That must be a great help, as newspapers are always trying to be better than the managers. And usually failing!
Aung San Suu Kyi and the DJ
Years ago, I can remember Dave Lee Travis on Radio 1 on Sunday mornings, whilst I was writing Artemis. I suspect as a young mother in Oxford, Ms Suu Kyi was listening to the same program.
Aung San Suu Kyi then went back to Burma to care for her dying mother and for twenty four years she couldn’t return to the UK, as she feared any return to her family would mean the Generals wouldn’t let go back to Burma. She couldn’t even return for the death of her husband, Michael Aris.
But during those years of isolation in Burma, she did at least have the BBC World Service, which kept her in touch and she listened to the shows of Dave Lee Travis, who briefly met her yesterday.
In some ways I can understand her isolation, although I’ve never suffered like she has. When I had my stroke in Hong Kong, there was only CNN, that I could understand on the television. But at least, I could get BBC Radio 5 at most times through the Internet. Never has a broadcasting channel been so important to my sanity.
Today, Aung San Suu Kyi is praised in the first leader of The Times. The last sentence is something we should all remember.
She not only represents a better future for Burma, but testifies to the resilience of the human spirit in extreme adversity.
I very much agree with that. She has also been an extreme example to me, as to how to cope with the worst that life can throw at you. But then I’m not alone and thousands of miles from my friends and family.
In
I’ve Found A Nice Cure For Adverts
I’ve got the ITV pictures on my television, but I’ve got the sound off and I’m listening to the commentary on BBC Radio 5 Live.
It doesn’t improve the football, but it does improve the broadcasting experience.
A lot of the adverts I’ve just watched now look totally ridiculous.
There’s one for Official Player Escorts, that could be insinuating things, we’d rather not know.
The Fake Sheikh Strikes Again
With the demise of the News of the World, the fake sheikh, Mazher Mahmood, seems to have struck again for its sister paper The Sunday Times. It’s reported here on the BBC.
The Sunday Times alleges, during a two-month investigation in which reporters posed as Middle Eastern ticket touts, it found corruption involving people representing 54 separate countries.
Note the Middle Eastern ticket touts!
Obviously, these tickets weren’t distributed correctly, but then that had nothing to do with the London organisers. Yet again, Olympic rules are framed to feather the nests of members of the Olympic family.
I haven’t received my Sunday Times yet, but it will be explosive reading. They do name some of the countries on their web site and the list contains the usual suspects. The BBC reports that the Greeks actually asked for more tickets, because they had siold so many. This is from the BBC report.
Accusations include an allegation a member of the Greek Olympics Committee said he had “persuaded” Lord Coe, chairman of the London organising committee, Locog, to give Greece more tickets on the pretext demand had outstripped supply.
So did the Germans fund all of these Greeks to come to London?
I hope LOCOG trace the tickets that went to these countries and withdraw them, so that suckers will pay thousands of pounds for a worthless piece of card. There’s a fat chance of that.
After all the BBC has already exposed someone from Ukraine in this report.
Pointless Celebrities
They have a program on BBC1 with this name at the moment.
It probably sums the program up too!
The Anonymous Widower 