Have a good weekend

If you haven't already been, go see American Gangster this weekend.

Although the 70's cop scenes aren't as good as this, obviously.

Interesting question

Teachers today have to keep up to speed with their job. Quite what makes them special in that regard to, say, someone who works in IT or the medical profession for example, heaven only knows, but they think they are, so that's OK then.

To keep up with their knowledge, they have to go on training days. They MUST do this during term time, and DEFINITELY NOT on a day in any one of the 13 (THIRTEEN) weeks holiday they get every year.

Now, there are five working days in a school week, but my six year old asked me the following question regarding these In Service Training (INSET) days.

Why do they always happen on a Friday ?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm

And, funnily enough, and I'm sure in no way co-incidental at all, why has today's INSET day occured on a Friday, just after pay-day, just in time for some Christmas shopping.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I must be in the wrong job

Burning Hearts

Can you name any Finnish bands ?

Nope ?

Well you can now.

Lucky Col Gold

The one thing you can guarantee about satellite channels showing re-runs of 'Have I Got News For You', 'Top Gear' or 'Buzzcocks' is, if you wait long enough , you get the same program coming round over & over again.

In the same way, I would like to remind you of my views of the X-Factor winner and the coveted number 1 spot in the Christmas charts, as previously written in December 2005, and again in December 2006.

I'd like to, but I can't.

This year has been a strange one for me personally, full of ups & downs. But by far the biggest up is the fact that I no longer have to watch the human garbage that is the X-Factor. I can honestly say I haven't had to endure a solitary minute of the brainless, manufactured, in-no-way-at-all fixed rubbish produced for your mind-less, throw-their-voting-money-down-a-drain thickoes pumped out by ITV from early April, culminating in the grand final a couple of weeks before Christmas.

Not one second.

I haven't had to put up with pretending that the judges see every single act going through. There are people still so stupid as to believe they do. Do the maths, you dullards.

I haven't had to put up with acts 'bigged up' by the production staff, who clearly haven't got an earthly of rubbing two brain cells together, let alone finding a tune in their smoke filled lungs, who are then 'unexpectedly' rubbished by the judges, humiliating them in front of ten million equally thick viewers.

I haven't even had to put up with the judges spontaneously, and in no way scripted (oh no!!!), throwing water all over each other.

So I don't know who's going to win this year, let alone give a shit.

But I bet I can guess the sort of gullible morons still in with a chance:

• I bet there's a crap boy / girl-band still left in, one member of which is clearly carrying the rest, and it'll be them that'll drop the rest of them like a hot rock as soon as Simon Cowell decides it's time for them to go, sorry, they're voted off by the general public. Ooops.



• I bet there's an older singer, quite good as it happens, who's had a bit of life struggle, maybe an illness, maybe a disabled child to look after, and this is their last chance to escape the pubs & clubs circuit. They won't, even if Simon Cowell decides to let them win. Sorry, sorry, even if the general public vote for them to win. Must stop making that simple mistake.



• There'll still be a quirky act left in, classical singer or the like, just to keep the grannies watching & voting their pensions down the swanny.



• And there'll still be an annoying Scottish act in, more than likely a smart-mouthed, early twenties clone of every other smart-mouthed, early twenties boy-next-door, to keep all the 15 year old girls interested, sorry, voting.

Am I right ?

I don't care.

I'm more bothered about who wins 'Strictly Come Dancing'.

So long as it's not Kelly or Miss Piggy, I'm easy.

Picture of the England team .....

..... on their way home from the Crotia match last Wednesday.

Ear worm #5

Random gubbins #7

This has been flying round the internet for a while, I've had it twice on Facebook, but if you've not heard it, it's well worth a listen.

Scott Mills (Radio 1) winds up a Pizza delivery man.

Random gubbins #6

Ever wanted to know where The Killers got their name from. Worry no more.

(New Order - Crystal)

Ear worm #4

The Verve - Bittersweet symphony .....



..... which was the inspiration for this .....



..... which definitely won't be getting sung round Austria or Switzerland next summer.

Not that I'm still bitter about Steve McClown, the useless, inept, tactically clueless half-wit.

And more .....

..... why it's a GOOD thing we haven't qualified for EURO 2008.

From LeftLion.

(Hat tip: An e-mail from Never Trust a Hippy)

Urgent Press Announcement

Important:

I would like to make it clear that I am ruling myself out of the race to become the next England manager as I would like to continue honouring my contract with the NHS.

Not that I thought for one minute I was in with a chance, but then it didn't stop this self-obsessed no-mark.

From the BBC (with who I thought Sam Allardyce was refusing to talk, ho hum):

Newcastle boss Sam Allardyce has ruled himself out of the running to become the next England manager.

Allardyce was Bolton manager when he was touted for the England job which McClaren got 18 months ago.

He has since become Newcastle manager and has recently signed a new contract and said he wanted to honour it.

Summer off

I can't remember seeing so many swear words in such a short space of time as between 8 and 10pm last night. If I were to repeat the messages here, it would give my blog more asterisks than a French children's library.

The cause of mine, and the nation's, vitriol, step forward (or backwards, please) Steve McClown.

No knee jerk reactions from me, oh no, I've not liked Steve McClown since, ooh, about two minutes after he'd got the job.

• October 2006, "Managing England should be one of the easiest jobs in football, yet people seem to go out of their way to make it more difficult than necessary."



• November 2006, get the retaliation in first, "McClaren must go"



• August 2007, my prediction after the Germany friendly, "England WON'T be involved in Euro 2008". To be fair, hardly mystic Meg stuff.



• September 2007, after a couple of good results, "Will Steve McLaren pick the same starting eleven against Estonia ? I doubt it, although I think he should. If he doesn't, will he regret it ? Possibly. If he doesn't get England through to EURO 2008 from this strong position, should he be asked to do one ? Definitely." He didn't, he probably does now and he has been.

This time last week he'd managed to mess up the EURO 2008 qualifying to such an extent that we had to rely on Israel doing us a favour at home to Russia. Thanks to a last minute Israel goal, qualification was back in our hands, we only needed a draw.

At home.

Surely even Steve McClown couldn't f**k it up from there.

But f**k it up he did.

Big time.

One centre forward, the criminally useless Peter Crouch, flicking long-balls on to, hang on, nobody, because as McClown's tactics dictated, he was on his own up front. D'oh.

He had a choice to make in goal, Paul Robinson's made some mistakes this season for Spurs, and in an England shirt, notably away at Croatia, so a safe pair of hands was needed. D'oh. One thing in Paul Robinson's favour is he's scored more Premiership goals this season than the forever poor Peter Crouch.

Playing Lampard & Gerrard together, even though they've proved to even the most sceptical viewer they're incapable of playing in the same team.

Making substitutions while defending a corner, basic stuff.

Having the best crosser of a ball on the bench while playing the clueless Peter Crouch.

Seeing that it was all going pear shaped after 15 minutes, but still waiting until half time to do something about it.

Carrying an umbrella, the great nancy boy.

And by common consensus, the England man of the match was the criminally useless, forever poor, clueless Peter Crouch. How poor were the rest of them ?

So, Steve McClown has gone, probably to pitch up at Middlesbrough when Gareth Southgate gets the sack, or Derby when they realise that Billy Davies isn't, in fact, one of the best managers in the country.

Who next ?

The review of the mistakes made the last time the FA recruited a coach is to be headed by Brian Barwick and reported back to the Chair of the FA. This is the same Brian Barwick who went out (in secret, but in reality, with half the nation's press) to offer the job to Filipe Scholari, who refused on the grounds of press intrusion, before offering it to Steve McClown who was always his "first choice" anyway.

And he's the one looking into what went wrong !!!

I'll save him the time. Three words on a sheet of signed FA headed note-paper:

IT WAS ME

Ear worm #3

Doing the right thing

From the BBC:

Confidential details of 15 million child benefit recipients are on computer discs lost by HM Revenue and Customs, the BBC understands.
The chairman of the organisation, Paul Gray, has resigned.

And quite right too. There's the very real possibility that this information could find its way into the wrong hands and have a negative impact on a whole lot of people, some of the most vulnerable people in the country.

You might question whether Mr Gray needed to resign, presumably we'll be hearing from Ken Livingstone soon on how he was doing a difficult job in difficult circumstances, making split second (or 26 minute long) snap decisions.

But resignation's a bit extreme, isn't it ? It's hardy as if members of his team climbed aboard public transport and shot dead an Innocent man, the current bench-mark in the "should I resign or should I stick two fingers up to the law I'm supposed to be upholding & cling on to my huge pension" decision.

Following the recent spell of bad weather, there now follows a public information film

Get out of jail free

This man is officially the luckiest man on the planet.

Even he can't f**k it up from here, surely.

Not only does he get the sort of reprieve usually reserved for men thirsty enough to stop off at the Nags Head, he then later admits he wasn't even watching the Israel game at the time of their winning goal, he was in the bathroom.

Presumably raking through the medicine cabinet.

His job would have been hanging from a thread if, had results gone the wrong way, the Scots had qualified on Saturday and Russia had won through.

How unimaginably smug & bitter & twisted & full of gloat filled loathing would the Jocks have been then ?

But, and there was a time when I would have been disappointed in this, who cares that Scotland didn't get through ?

Poor refereeing decisions for both sides don't make you unlucky, being s**t means you don't qualify. Had the decisions gone correctly, Scotland would have had a last minute free-kick, on their own goal line, facing a two goal deficit, rather than stumbling towards a completely undeserved draw.

They were s**t in qualifying for EURO 2000, s**t in qualifying for the World Cup in 2002, s**t in qualifying for EURO 2004, s**t in qualifying for the World Cup in 2006 and they were s**t in qualifying this time round.

Georgia FFS. Get over it, Alex.

One for the road

If the idea of making Phil Collins look like a gorilla isn't funny enough, a play on the current Cadbury's chocolate advert.

Ear worm #2

If you're in Nottingham on Fri Nov 23

Take a listen

Nottingham band The No Tomorrows.

Click here to hear them .....

North / South - More Guardian sniping

Hat tip, McGaribaldi.

A largely humorous article on first reading, how to tell whether your city's location in the North / South divide by how you like your beer, basically with a head, North; flat & no head, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.

But, look at it a second time and you notice that, again, there is just another ill-informed dig at Nottingham, using a made-up study to have a go at Nottingham's gun crime "problem".

The unfortunate Danielle Beccan was not killed in the cross-fire between two gangs, instilling to the reader an image of Wild West type shoot-outs happening on every Nottingham street corner. The sad reality was two idiots from a different area of town driving into their rival area and shooting at a random group of people. The two have been tried, convicted and will spend a considerable length of time rightly behind bars.

The reality is (from the BBC):

Just over half of all firearms offences occurred in just three major forces - the Metropolitan Police in London, Greater Manchester and West Midlands.

Drilling down into the national figures up to the end of April 2006 shows that West Midlands, Merseyside and Greater Manchester Police have all experienced drops in firearms offences whereas London has seen an increase.

You don't need me to tell you where London sits in the North / South argument ? (Clue, you can't get a decent pint there)

The Metropolitan Police says that in the 12 months to July 2007 it saw a 3.5% rise in firearms offences - up from 3,485 to 3,607 incidents.

Nottingham is another city that has struggled with a guns label after a number of killings in 2004, including schoolgirl Danielle Beccan - but its police chiefs say public perception is at odds with reality because the city witnesses far fewer incidents per resident than other so-called gun hotspots. Figures show Nottinghamshire Police recorded one firearms-related death in 2006 and none as of August 2007.

Maybe in Elizabeth Day, the odious Simon Jenkins has finally found himself a female to share his clammy little embrace, negating the need for him to travel up to Nottingham in search of his share of the six women to every man, or write any more b******s articles. He may not have written this, but it's got his stench all over it.

It's clear that the pair of them are journalists of the worse kind, lazy, unscrupulous & just plain s***e.

Man 'marries' dog to beat curse

From the BBC:

An Indian man has "married" a female dog, hoping the move will help atone for stoning two other dogs to death.

P Selvakumar, 33, said he had been cursed since the killings, suffering paralysis and a loss of hearing.

The wedding took place at a Hindu temple in Tamil Nadu state. The "bride" wore an orange sari with a flower garland and was fed a bun to celebrate.

Superstitious people in rural India sometimes organise weddings to animals in the hope of warding off curses.

Crowds cheered the newly-weds at the end of the ceremony in Sivaganga district, about 50km (30 miles) east of the city of Madurai.

The "bride", who is called Selvi, was led to the temple in Manamudurai wearing a sari before vows were exchanged in a traditional Hindu ceremony.

A relative of the groom who attended the wedding said he hoped Mr Selvakumar would now be cured.

"Fifteen years back Selvakumar was physically fit. But, once he attacked a pair of dogs and thereafter Kumar could not move his limbs freely," the relative, Ramu, told the BBC.

"He tried every cure for his ailment but could not be rid of his disability.

"On the advice of an astrologer and others, he decided to marry a bitch to get cured. Then we arranged Selvakumar's marriage with a bitch."

This is all well and good, but two questions spring instantly to mind:

Firstly, fifteen years ago, I was physically fit, but then I went on an all day session attacking several pints of Dublin's finest and thereafter could not move any of my limbs freely. Does this mean I can marry a keg of Guinness ?

And secondly, if Mr Selvakumar thinks that karma is to blame for his disability, then what on earth did the person do in a previous life that got reincarnated as the poor dog ?

Man hurt using gun to change tyre

Remember kids, it's not guns that kill people, it's Americans with guns that kill people.

From the BBC:

A US man has injured himself in both legs after attempting to loosen a stiff wheel-nut by blasting it with his gun.
The 66-year-old man from Washington state was repairing his car outside his home when the accident took place.

Shooting at the wheel from arm's length with his 12-gauge shotgun, he was peppered with buckshot and debris.

The man - who police say was on his own and not intoxicated - was taken to hospital with severe, but not life-threatening, injuries.

The man, from South Kitsap, 10 miles (16km) southwest of Seattle, had been repairing his Lincoln Continental for two weeks, according to the police, and had removed all but one of the nuts on the right rear wheel.

Frustrated by the one remaining nut which refused to budge, he resorted to fire power in an effort to shift it.

"He's bound and determined to get that lug nut off," said Deputy Scott Wilson, a spokesman from the sheriff's office.

He sustained injuries from his feet to the middle of his abdomen, with some pellets reaching as high as his chin, police said.

Bad hair day

Lincoln 1:1 Forest

A proper Saturday away game done in the proper way.

In the old days, an away game wouldn't have been the same without getting up early on the Saturday morning with raging hang-over. Old age might have stopped the 3am clubbing experience (ok, maybe not stopped, but it's not EVERY weekend any more) so a more gentile night was spent in the company of a very old friend, The Beechdale.

It's been a few years since I've been in, and it's changed a touch since then, but it's still the same place. 21 years since I first started working there, the memories are still fresh, the Smoking Room, the old dart board, pints of mix, a beef salad cob at lunch-time, towels in the pool table pockets, cheap chips on the way home, good old days.

As an aside, since the smoking ban has come into force in England, my hang-overs have all been considerably reduced. Were my old hang-overs the result of passive nicotine withdrawal ? Mmmmmmmm ..........

So, up on Saturday morning with a touch of a hang-over, easily cured with a sausage, egg & cheese cob at home, and a couple of cans of gassy lager on the train to Lincoln. Sorted.

Lincoln may only be 50 miles away, but judging by the number of police waiting for what was a scheduled train, you'd have thought we'd gone back in time to the bad old days of trouble in the 80's. One officer was clearly on holiday, capturing the moment on his camcorder, while another was dressed for cross-country skiing.

Because we knew that local meatheads would want to shake hands with equally gifted intellectuals from Newark, we decided to get a taxi up the hill and start the days drinking in a quieter part of town. (Thanks to the Lincoln CAMRA web site for the information)

The Victoria is a cracking little pub, real ale and real floor-boards, all housed in an old red-brick coach house near the castle.

Just round the corner to The Strugglers, an award winning place with a real (ok, gas) fire and a good choice of beer.

Along a bit to the Tower Hotel, a more modern place, laminate flooring instead of the old floorboards, but very comfy leather sofas.

From then on the pubs (literally) went a little bit downhill. The Lion & Snake was a little bit too Weatherspoons-ish for my liking,

while the Magna Carta was nice looking outside, but too false inside.

A bit of walk down through the shopping area to the Treaty of Commerce for a quick one before a walk to the ground.

I've been to Sincil Bank several times, but never for a competitive game (it has been 50 years after all !!!). Having bummed my way round a few Scottish Third division grounds, it's of a similar vein, one decent stand, one small stand for your directors and a couple of cheap concrete ends.

The game itself was mostly one way, Forest having ALL the possession for the first 10 - 15 minutes in front of 2,500 very vocal travelling supporters. When McGugan put Forest in front from close range, it was no more than we deserved.

The stats will say that Lincoln didn't manage a single shot on target all game, and in this instance the stats don't lie. Yet the most important stat of the day will dictate that Forest & Lincoln will have to replay a fortnight on Tuesday because Kelvin Wilson is too clumsy to either get his leg out of the way facing the wrong way in his own box or incapable of kicking a ball upwards.

Junior Agogo missed the target when clean through and Kris Commons could have won it with a shot from 40 yards out that cannoned off the bar. Anyone else would have made the effort to get nearer to goal, but the smell of pies from the small directors stand pulled him back.

The game ground to an inevitable draw as Forest, as they are prone to do, failed to break down a ten man defence of a poorer side.

Outside the ground to be greeted by even more of her majesty's finest, firstly blocking the road to the station before letting only a certain number of people through, and then excelling themselves with their desire to stop people sitting where they liked on trains.

A quick one in Foreman's before going home & putting our feet up to watch the best comedy currently on the BBC, Match of the Day.

Spey Bay

You can't beat ....

.... a nice walk round the lake at Wollaton Park on a crisp autumn afternoon.

Ear worms

Be careful out there

From the BBC:

Toads are 'open-minded' about sex

Some female toads are rather open-minded when it comes to choosing a mate, a study reveals.

US researcher Karen Pfenning found female spadefoot toads will flout the general evolutionary rule of not breeding with other species.

So, if you see what looks like a 30ft elephant at the end of your street suddenly starting to hop in your direction, destroying everything in its path, you know where it's come from.

Got a bird related crime needing investigation ? Then call .....

Until recently, there were only two decent things to come out of Leeds, The Wedding Present and the M1.

Leeds itself is a s**t hole of a place, full of pound shops & drug addled, shell-suit wearing wastes of space. It may only be 70 miles up the motorway, but it's about 30 years back in time.

Their football team epitomises the place, trying to be hard & important, desperate for any kind of attention, but ultimately unloved, unwanted and pre-historic.

But now there's three things.

I didn't know what to expect from The Pigeon Detectives on Tuesday night. I knew that there would be a larger proportion of kids there than for either Editors or the afore mentioned Wedding Present and I knew that, without too much of a back catalogue to support them, they wouldn't be playing for the usual 90 minutes you would expect, but what surprised me was how tight they all were, how every note came through the cacophony of crowd accompaniment and how good the lead singer was at catching his microphone from being thrown in the air.

So good was the lead at catching, he plucked a thrown can of lager out of the air, took a swig & threw it back all in one movement, an action not seen in Nottingham since Derek Randall retired.

Hopefully, they'll come back with a decent 'difficult' second album, a couple of new songs hinted at a darker edge than their poppy "she's dumped me / I've dumped you" teenage fair on "Wait For Me", but if they don't, they could always take a walk to Headingly and apply for the Yorkshire cricket team.

How much did you pay ?

A new Radiohead album. But this one's good, we're told, it's not like the experimental releases of recent times, Kid A for example, but back to their best.

Blah blah blah, heard it all before.

I mourn Radiohead, really mourn them, proper feelings of loss.

Pablo Honey & The Bends are two of the best albums ever made. A band that can make those two albums should, by rights, be bigger than Christianity.

But then they stopped. The only decent track on OK Computer is 'Lucky', and that was recorded during The Bends recordings, so doesn't count. Everything from then on is just rubbish.

But I bought them, I bought them all. Every time on the promise that the next album was a return to their former glories.

So how much did I pay for 'In Rainbows' ?

Diddly squat. On the basis that having paid good money for three studio albums and a live CD, none of which I've been able to listen to more than once each since purchase, I figure I've already paid enough.

* Before anyone complains, I buy countless CD's a year, more than covering costs for up-coming & established acts, as well as the lesser talented record company executives.

** In Rainbows actually isn't that bad, so I will more than likely buy it when it's released 'properly' on CD. Like a sucker.

*** Although I'll probably wait until it's a fiver in Fopp.

Old fashioned away game weekend

Back in the day, Forest used to play a pre-season game in Lincoln every summer. Plenty would travel for the day for a few pints in the sun by the canal, before watching whichever cheap foreign trialist was having a play at being a top flight footballer. One year, the powers that be decided to move the kick-off from 3pm on a Saturday to a Wednesday night. Not to be done out of an easy away game, instead of turning up at 12 noon for a 3pm kick off on a Saturday, we changed to turning up at 12 noon on the Wednesday for a 7:30 kick off. Nice.

So, memories came flooding back when the FA Cup draw was made. Tickets have now sold out so plenty of Forest fans will be travelling, cheap train tickets will get us into Lincoln with plenty of time for a few shandies.

Come on !!!!!

Above the law ?

Sir Ian Blair is having a hard time at the moment, having the organisation for which he is ultimately responsible found guilty of breaching health & safety.

Health & safety ? Loose wires in a plug guilty ? Or slippery floor guilty ?

No, shooting dead a completely innocent man guilty.

Health & safety ?

News of the incident immediately following the shooting revolved around sightings of a man acting suspiciously, getting off buses before immediately getting back on like some kind of cold-war spy novel, of a crazed terrorist running & vaulting the ticket barriers at Stockwell tube station to conclude his deadly journey.

Sure, there is a war against terror going on while we speak, and, if the police are to be believed, there are always ongoing covert operations keeping the nation safe.

And yes, while those sort of operations continue, and while highly trained individuals have to make snap life or death decisions, mistakes will inevitably happen.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has written to her Tory shadow, David Davis, criticising his call for Sir Ian's resignation.

Ms Smith told reporters that politicians like herself and Mr Davis should rally round the police.

She said she retained "full confidence" in Sir Ian and the Met.

Later in the Commons, she told MPs: "Opposition politicians in this house and the [London Assembly] who have called for the sacking of the commissioner will never have to face the split-second decisions in life and death policing operations that they do.

But looking at the time line (from the BBC), this wasn't a split-second decision, was it ? This was mistake after mis-identification on an ultimately fatal level. Not split second, but 26 minutes between first spotting the victim (note, Jean Charles de Menezes is the victim, not the Police officer who shot him) and later shooting him dead. 26 minutes is quite considerably more than a spilt-second. 1,560 seconds or 3,120 spilt-seconds to be precise. And the only identification had the victim as having "Mongolian" eyes. Are any of the terror suspects Mongolian ?

It isn't so much the seemingly flippant attitude of inevitable collateral damage in a war against terror, more the procedural mistakes, the inability to arrest someone within a 26 minute period despite having at least one officer on the bus with the victim and the mis-information (or, let's face it, downright lies) following the incident. Even now, there's still confusion about the exact journey taken by the armed Police. One word springs to mind; bollocks.

London mayor Ken Livingstone, who has given Sir Ian his backing, said that a "cynical campaign" was being waged against the commissioner.

He said: "Today's vote by the London Assembly on the Met Commissioner shows why the government was right to give the London Assembly no powers whatever in policing."

"Al-Qaeda must be laughing at us while we busy ourselves pillorying the police who keep us safe."

No, Al-Qaeda must be laughing at us because they don't have to worry about killing innocent members of the public when our Police force seem free to do it themselves with complete impunity.

Stupid laws

More television executives with too much time on their hands. (From the BBC)

Apparently, it is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament. What happens if you do is unclear, although it's more than likely you'll be let off with a warning the first time, and only get a custodial sentence if you're a really unlucky Buddhist who happens to die in the Houses of Parliament several times.

And even then you'll probably just get an ASBO.

Another laws states:

It is illegal for a woman to be topless in Liverpool except as a clerk in a tropical fish store

Which means there are currently several sets of journalists, probably from the Sun / Daily Star / Sport / Mail on Sunday travelling in convoy up to Liverpool looking for posh fish shops to photograph their accompanying page three models.

Eating mince pies on Christmas Day is illegal

bought in under Cromwell. If he hadn't been wasting his time bringing in stupid laws like that, we could now well be sitting in the promised land of a republican utopia.

It is illegal to be blindfolded while driving a vehicle in Alabama

Which, logically, means in the other 49 states, it's completely acceptable.

In Indonesia, the penalty for masturbation is decapitation

Whereas here, it just makes you go blind

But most worrying, and something I didn't know when I was living north of the border

If someone knocks on your door in Scotland and requires the use of your toilet, you are required to let them enter

Try that in the Gorbals on a Saturday night, let me know how you get on.

Guinness

This is the best advert ever made, apparently;



But I always preferred this one

Looking forward to Tuesday night .....

In Nottingham 28 November ?

From the BBC:

Wednesday 28th November is going to be BBC Radio Nottingham's 1 Big Night Out in the city centre.

It's the brainchild of Breakfast Show presenter Andy Whittaker, who wanted to tackle the image some people have that the city centre after dark is only for younger people who want to drink.

As many people as possible, of all ages, are being encouraged to come into the city that night to sample what the city centre has to offer from eating out to cinema, theatre and ice skating.

A number of venues and restaurants are offering discounts and special offers that night, for a full list click here.

Andy Whittaker's Breakfast Show on BBC Radio Nottingham, will be focusing on the variety of activities available at night in the city in the weeks leading up to 1 Big Night Out.

For a half-price travel voucher for the buses & trams on the day itself, click here.