The Fenerbahce Sequence

Turkey's top club have been kicked out of European competition after a suspicious series of results that went 0-1, 1-2, 3-5. Apparently it was spotted by a mathematician who recognised it as The Fenerbahce Sequence.
----------------------------------------------------------
Journalists have an irresistible temptation to add a catch-all suffix to words to explain a situation, most notably gate. You know the score. There's a hacking scandal so it becomes hackgate. Shagging footballer who gets caught more than once? Rooneygate. I suppose if there was a scandal involving a little known Cornish village it would be Watergategate.
And now there is zilla. Dominating women going down the aisle are known as bridezillas. A giant stinging insect has been discovered in the jungle and it has been nicknamed Waspzilla by the Daily Mail. Watch out for this one, it will run and run. Soon we'll have codzilla for some great big fish and dogzilla (oversized Fido) and so it will go on.
It used to be athon. Anything that went on a bit became an athon. First it was a telethon. A politician banging on for too long was a boreathon and a karaoke competition was a singathon. Of course this died out when they renamed it Snickers.
I have even started to notice a return to orama. An apporama is multiple apps on a phone for instance. Nigerians are responsible for a scamorama when they practice multiple con tricks and a surfeit of US Presidents is a barackorama.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kudos to Sky News reporter Alex Crawford, the milf in a flak jacket, who led the journalistic charge into Tripoli while the BBC and the others were stuck in their hotel rooms rewriting Al Jazeera for broadcasts home. But I think we've really had enough hacks in flaks. The papers have been full of reporters in their heavy armour playing in Gaddafi's palace. Virginia Wheeler for The Sun and Martin Fricker for the Mirror - though most of the others stayed out of camera and focussed on rebels relaxing on the colonel's chez long.
There are, by the way, 112 different spellings of Gaddafi in the papers over the past two years. I like his first name, Manamama I think it is. I can't hear it without singing doo doo do do do like that sketch from The Muppets.
Strange but true: back at The Sun after the death of Robert Maxwell, we somehow got a copy of Bob's contacts book. It got copied over and over again until every reporter had a copy. It had home and 'car' phone numbers (mobiles were still new) for all kinds of political leaders.
And one that was simply titled 'Gaddafi's Tent'. It really was a phone number for the Libyan leader's tent in his compound. For a laugh, I rang it once while other reporters gathered round, late one evening on a night shift in Wapping.
Some bloke answered and started shouting at me in Arabic. I tried to claim I'd got an exclusive interview with the frizzy haired despot but it never made.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I've just come back from Tottenham which was a waste of an evening. It was my first visit since the riots. There was broken glass and burnt out cars and gangs of hoodies with suspiciously new trainers. Pretty much the same as the start of every season then.
As for the match, apart from the living legend that is Dave Mackay coming on the pitch at half time, the rest I've already forgotten.
Sometimes it's not such a funny old game....Solly