Well done to Alastair Campbell for winnng the Football Focus predictions cup. Obviously better at predicting what's going to happen over 90 minutes than within 45 minutes. Burnley 1 WMD 0.
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Attended my first ever boxing match over the weekend. An amateur event involving several short bouts with lots of padding so not much blood. Being a namby pamby liberal, I'm not a natural fan of boxing.
But three things in particular struck me. Because the judges score points for accuracy rather than the ability to brawl, there is a very, very, high level of skill that is obvious, even to the untrained eye.
Second, the boys themselves (none of those boxing seemed older than about 19) are incredibly polite and courteous outside the ring. I believe it's something to do with the discipline. I chatted to a trainer and, although there are a couple of exceptions, he said that over the years hardly any of the young boys from his club who boxed got into trouble in their everyday lives, not even fights at school.
A lot of the lads turned up with family, some from miles away. The parents didn't look so well disciplined frankly. The third thing I noticed (and you couldn't help but notice) is how many people connected with boxers seem to have tattooed necks.
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The Guardian this week had an article online about 'the new boring'. It was a condescending attack on the comfy middle classes who spend all their time talking about Downton Abbey, who watch Kirstie Allsopp, prefer Strictly to X Factor and are into knitting and home baking.
They may have well just called it We Hate the Daily Mail and be done with it.
I've never watched Downton, hate the Allsopp woman and neither knit nor bake but The Guardian is a fine one to talk.
Every episode of Mad Men is treated like the second coming in the paper, analysed to death and blogged to within an inch of its finely attired life. Same for The Wire and The Killing and any number of trendy non-British shows. Most of which I love, incidentally.
The Guardian, remember, bored the world to death with the whole Wikileaks saga and for the past year has been putting everyone into a coma with its self-righteous analysis of the hacking 'scandal.'
It has failed to realise that 90 per cent of the country are bored stiff of the whole hacking debate. I work in journalism and know well some of the guys who have been sacked or arrested and even I'm bored. Heaven knows how much everyone else is tired of endless debates on the BBC and mind-numbing government committees featuring some tubby attention seeker who thinks he's funny.
I'm bored by James Murdoch's robotic voice too, and by Whoring Hugh Grant becoming the paragon of virtue for the whole sorry tale. I'm sick of hearing that another 15 D-List celebrities may have been on the list and are so offended they'll settle for a £10,000 back door payment.
I'm also sick of meeting strangers, telling them I'm a journalist when they ask, and then laughing lamely when they say 'oops, you going to hack my phone now, hee hee.'
Then you have interminable, expensive, public enquiries led by a group of posh people with no knowledge of the tabloid press and even less awareness of the type of people who read them.
It's rare to agree with both Kelvin McKenzie and Paul Dacre but they were spot on in the Leveson Enquiry.
And it's all over a little trick that was discovered by journalists involving mobile phones belonging to people who didn't realise you needed to change the factory setting code in order not to have your voicemails read.
It's not hacking, it's a scam. Showbiz reporters used to do it to each other to see what stories they were working on. It was a running joke at the Princess Margaret awards held by entertainment hacks. All those names in Glenn Mulcaire's notebook? I'll bet that most of the them are journalists who have had their voicemails entered by other journalists.
The journalists responsible for deleting Millie Dowler's messages should have been sacked but to close the paper down was ridiculous. But, frankly, no one gives a flying one that Sienna Miller didn't delete her voicemail messages or change the code on her mobile before someone listened to them.
I know this isn't the popular view, but I simply think to much fuss is being made and I'm bored, bored, bored. As journalists, most of us have occasionally done things that are a little suspect in order to get a story. I've got this nagging feeling that even I may have done at some point in the past.
Before digital communications, we had readers tuning in to police and other emergency broadcasts via shortwave radio then ringing the newsdesk when something happened to try and make a quick buck.
This is quite clearly just as much of a theft as voicemail interception but no one bothered, not even the police who, in effect, were the 'victims' of the theft. And it was through this that, when I was on The Sun, enabled us at 2am to discover a disaster of epic proportions unfolding on the Piper Alpha oilrig, despite the official comments from the rig's owners and the authorities at the time that it wasn't that serious.
And reporters have been slipping a bit of dosh to coppers for almost 100 years. Suddenly it's a hanging offence? Do me a favour.
Want to the know the 'new boring'? Just read The Guardian's media page on most days.
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I noticed that in their joint column in the Daily Express, Richard and Judy described the new drama series Pan Am as about as boring as an in-flight mag. Now I've read the excellent and very professional in flight mags for airlines like BA and I've read Richard and Judy's excuse of a column in the Express and I know which one I'd prefer.
Sit back and belt up....Solly
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