Blogs

Ajax has the better of the chances, hit the outside of the post in the opening spell, they had more of the ball and a big Lasse scored their goal with twenty seconds to go. Yet Celtic won 2-1, a massive result in terms of keeping their interest in progressing in the tournament or even getting a Europa league parachute spot for third place. De Boar, the ex-Ranger’s player and Ajax manager was particularly scathing. ‘Eight out of ten times the...

Paul Chappell (FTSE100/Footsie), a long-standing member of ABC, very sadly took his own life this past July. UKA Press will be publishing a collection of his work in paperback next month, and they are hoping the publication will help raise awareness of mental health issues in the UK. Please take the time to read this review of the collection by David Gardiner of Gold Dust Magazine: This is a very unusual book in that it was written by a man who...

There was a wonderful moment in Out There when Stephen Fry accused one of the key proponents of ‘rebarbative therapy’ of being very ‘metrosexual’. But our metrosexual friend had the power of numbers as evidence that his theory worked. He explained that a third of his client base were homosexual –because of parenting issues, with Freudian overtones—and were too damaged to change their perspective. A third were treatable, by him or others like him...

I just came across a great article about unusable synonyms and the dark, damp and forgotten portions of the English language. Ever wonder why no one uses 'pulchritude,' 'niggardly,' 'incarnadine,' or 'puissant' anymore? This article has a go at explaining why. Thought it might bring a smile to the face of anyone who's ever grappled with a thesaurus (I can't be the only one of us) : http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2013/10/unusable-...

It’s all over and Eng-er-land are going to Brazil. I had a choice of watching Scotland playing a friendly against Croatia or England playing Poland. I was helped by the fact Scotland are on pay-TV and England are on ITV, or council telly. I think we should support our councils. This was a brilliant, open and attacking game, with goals from Rooney and Gerard at the end of the first and second half settling it. But if you want to know how tight it...

On Channel 4 there is Diary of a Teenage Virgin. Masters of Sex is also on Channel 4, but I think that’s a drama. They also have Dogs: Their Secret Lives. I don’t know what that’s about, but I can guess. I’m getting sick of sex and always thought of Stephen Fry as being particularly sexless, an animated manikin with a voice designed by Harrods. No programme about homosexuality (or celebrity drug or alcohol addiction) can be shown on British...

As usual I’ve come to this series late, just as Bernard Manning’s shouting last orders in the Wheeltappers and Shunter’s Club, the third out of four episodes, but it doesn’t really matter. I’ll tell you a secret—I was there. My younger self looks over my shoulder as I write and whispers ‘you plonker, it wasn’t like that, it was like this?’ So what if there was a monetary crisis and Britain had to obtain a $2 billion dollar bailout from the IMF,...

Ralph Dartford has been a member of ABC since the beginning. He's just put out a fantastic collection of poems, and I wanted to share this glowing review from Rachael Smart (a.k.a VeraClark) with you all: In his debut collection, Ralph Dartford presents narrative poems that are compassionate and heartfelt, gritty and bleak, brimming with insight, experience, truths and tragedy. For starters, ‘Cigarettes, Beer and Love’ is up there with some of...

I might as well throw in a couple of quotes to show my classical credential (of which I’ve none) and to show that I wasn’t just gawping at other peoples’ misery. Wordsworth claimed that sight was the most despotic of the senses. We all had these kinds of conversations when we were younger: What would you do if…? You were blind? We were always gagging to kill ourselves for having spots, ginger hair, ears that were too big or a nose that blotted...

The Ottomans: Europe’s Muslim Emperors BBC 2 11.20pm. Produced and directed by Gillian Bancroft and presented by Rageh Ommar this is, I suppose the equivalent of BBC saying we’ve done the Jews (Simon Schama The Story of the Jews) now I suppose we better do the Muslims. The latter had Simon Schama doing everything: writing, directing, appearing on camera, twiddling the funny bone, the former has Rageh Ommar and you know what, and this shouldn’t...