Now that OBL is RIP, who's going to have his season ticket at Arsenal? Perhaps, as the US special forces approached, shouting 'come on you Gunners' may not have sent out the right message.
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Ah, these are the stories that take me back. A street in Exeter has been warned about a plague of toxic caterpillars and Richard Littlejohn wondered in the Mail today whether or not this was to do with the bins not being emptied for three weeks. It isn't, as I'm sure he'll know from his local newspaper days.
When I worked on the Ilford Recorder we had a ready made page lead about this time every year with a story on how a plague of the caterpillars of the brown-tailed moth was making its way down from the coast to strike fear into the hearts of Redbridge residents.
Basically we waited until the first complaint to the council about these creepy crawlies whose hairs could cause itchiness (or as I think we described it, severe illness to anyone with an allergic reaction). If there was no complaint to the council we would keep an eye out in our own gardens and if we saw one get Phil or Ron (the photographers) round to take a picture of it on a suitable road sign to prove they had reached Ilford.
We even had a ready made councillor to give us a rentaquote - Cllr Harry Moth who would play ball with us at the same time every year.
And we had weekly collections of the rubbish and no wheely bins either.
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Interesting BBC drama, Exile, about a journalist whose dad suffers from Alzheimer's. It reminds me of the time I sold my own grandfather. After a fashion. I sold a story about my grandad to the Daily Express.
My grandfather, Israel Alfred Solomons (known as Izzy to family and Alf to his mates) had Alzheimer's and it led to him going into a home after he disappeared once too often (it wasn't a big problem as we always found him in Stepney Way, near the London Hospital, because that's where he grew up).
The home was run by Tower Hamlets council including a very kind matron who was the natural mother of John and Justin Fashanu.
One day Tower Hamlets decided to take the residents of the home to France on a day trip. Which was fine. But they came back without my grandad. He'd walked off and they hadn't noticed until they did a headcount.
We actually thought we'd lost him for good. He didn't know his way round. He didn't know his own grandson (he used to call me Percy and asked if I was still a postman).
About two or three days later we had a call from a police station in Folkestone who asked if we could identify a man in their custody as my grandad.
Apparently the French police had picked him up wandering around Calais. They asked him who he was but all he would say was "I am British and I am Jewish."
He didn't even give them his name, rank and serial number. The police didn't know what do do so they put him on a ferry and told the British police. They got him to the station, gave him a cup of tea and something to eat and gradually worked out he was the old geezer who had been mislaid by Tower Hamlets council.
And I sold the story to the Daily Express. Although my uncle, to his credit, had also been ringing the papers to complain about what had happened too, which had got their interest up.
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The very good journalist blogger Fleet Street Fox writes today about how hard it is for a hack on a national newspaper to get anything in the paper when it is dominated by one big story like a royal wedding or Osama's death.
Tell me about it love. Imagine trying to do it when it's your living.
I can remember working at The Sun during a day when, as industrial reporter, I didn't have much to do. The editor, Kelvin Mackenzie, walked past and said 'anything going on?'. 'No boss' I replied, 'not much happening.' He sneered: 'Well make it f**king happen then," and walked off. So that's what I've had to do every since. Make it happen.
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Anyone who uses London Transport knows how bad the Jubilee Line is. Just like we all shrug off the announcement 'this weekend there will be planned engineering works on the Central, Piccadilly, Metropolitan, Victoria, Hammersmith and City, Jubilee, Bakerloo, Circle and District Lines. There will be a good service on all other lines.'
But it's the Jubilee Line which is the most appalling. I reckon it doesn't help having the on board train announcements in the voice of some kind of Wurzel-like West Country bloke who says 'All change please, this train terminates 'ere' like a middle aged Justin Lee Collins. All he need to is add 'moy lover' and it will be complete.
This is London so we should have a London voice. Or at least a Polish one for when the train terminates at Stratford. The same thing used to happen at Covent Garden station where the recorded message in the lift was by a bleedin' Aussie!
As the sign on the trains used to be altered to say, Obstruct the doors, be dangerous and cause delay. Mind the gap....Solly
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