Marathon week – the marathon boom

Big City Marathons I remember seeing my first ever New York City marathon on TV in 1981. Although I had probably seen Olympic marathons, I don’t think a city marathon had ever been televised before. It was won in that year by Alberto Salazar, and it is the NYC marathon that led Chris Brasher to [...]

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R.I.P. Robin Gibb

I woke up this morning to hear the sad news that Robin Gibb has died. He had been battling colon cancer for several years. When I was growing up, the Bee Gees (Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb) were massive, mainly due to writing the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever. For a number of years, the [...]

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Collateral damage

Yesterday, it was announced that the former editor of The Sun and the News of The World, Rebekah Brooks, is to face charges of “perverting the course of justice” over the phone-hacking scandal. For those of you unfamiliar with this story, it has emerged in the last year or so that the News of the [...]

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The Queen’s Speech

There’s been a bit of news recently regarding same sex marriages, both here in the Disunited Kingdom, and in the United States. On Wednesday, Elizabeth the 2nd, the Queen of England (and other places), gave her annual “Queen’s Speech” in which she outlines the main legislation “her Government” will attempt to bring into law in [...]

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Red or Blue?

There is a joke that the unofficial greeting in the US state of New Mexico is “red or green?”, implying that each conversation opens with asking whether someone would prefer red or green chilli peppers. Is the unofficial greeting in the northwest England city of Manchester “red or blue?”, to determine the allegiance to one [...]

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Los Cretinos (The Cretins)

As my last post mentioned, I was recently on holiday in Cuba. The first public building I visited, on my 2nd day in Havana, was the “Museo de la Revolucion”, which is in the grand colonial splendour of the former residence of Fulgencio Batista, the Cuban dictator removed from office by the 1959 Communist revolution [...]

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A new “Golden Era”?

On Saturday (17th of March), Wales won the 2012 6 Nations Grand Slam, beating France 16-9 in a tense match in Cardiff. Although it was not billed as such, it was sweet revenge for France beating Wales 8-7 in the semi finals of the recent 2011 World Cup in October. This is the 3rd Grand [...]

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Wales win the 2012 Triple Crown at Twickenham

On Saturday (25th of February) Wales went up to the home of English rugby, Twickenham, to play England in their annual 6 Nations fixture. Wales were in the unusual position of being favourites for the game which, given that Wales have only won there once (in 2008) since 1988, was not something we Welsh are [...]

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Dumbing down TV

On Friday (20th of January) I was called by the BBC in Cardiff to ask me if I would talk about the success of the 2nd series of Stargazing Live (this is a link to the interview, I’m on about 25 minutes into it), and also to summarise the events going on in the Wales [...]

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Smokin’ Joe Frazier

This morning, I woke up to the news that Joe Frazier, “smoking’ Joe”, had died of liver cancer at the age of 67. Joe Frazier will forever be associated with the epic heavyweight fights of the early and mid 1970s, in particular his fights against Muhammad Ali. This was at a time when everyone seemed [...]

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