Wake Up and Smell the Deep Heat: It’s the London Marathon

I’ve put down some words of advice for nervous London Marathon runners. It’s so indispensable it will probably be read out over a loudspeaker on the start line on Sunday. Regular readers will...

Ian Wheelie

It’s tragic that misadventurous Segway tycoon Jimi Heselden careered off a cliff to his death. For many reasons, not least that he was unable to witness perhaps the crowning achievement of his...

One Barmy Soldier

Normally the Barmy Army trumpet rings out it works as a call to arms, the signal for a thousand stupefied contract workers to form a disorderly conga and sing ribald songs about Mitchell Johnson....

Worst Blog Set To Coldplay

I am descending into a dangerous obsession with the way in which people stagger onto this site. Of course the more I discuss the squalid succession of search engine terms that have been typed in to...

A Pointless Nerd Analogy

This blog is rapidly degenerating into a conduit for my contributions to the Huffington Post. I have to point these articles out to you otherwise you wouldn’t know they were there. Think of the...

There Are No Tits Here. Hazel Irvine’s Or Otherwise.

A few weeks ago I reported that this blog had been laid siege to by a deviant of the worst order. Some diabolical pest has typed in “Hazel Irvine tits” into a search engine, one would have to...

Down With The Trumpets

I’m blowing my own trumpet again. If you are fortunate to have your own trumpet, what else are you going to do but blow it? It would be a waste of a good trumpet otherwise. That said, I do possess...

Huffing and Puffing

I’ve had my head turned again. This time by the Huffington Post, the American based newsite and blog-aggregator, which features the some of the sharpest minds polemicizing about the urgent issues...

South Africa 1 Australia 1

It’s never quite as intense when you can’t smell the red and white face paint around your nostrils, but watching South Africa take on Australia at cricket is nearly always absorbing, even as a...

Musical Montage

I’ve just been watching a compilation of highlights from the 1997-98 Premier League season set to “A Whole New World“, a cloying piece of music composed for the Disney film Aladdin. There are tears...

A Lament For A Question Of Sport

Traipsing through Youtube revisiting the television staples of your childhood, you’ll often discover that they don’t inspire the same affection as they once did. But they haven’t changed. You have....

You Vs. McIlroy

I don’t like adverts much. In fact I’m known for it. Nick ‘the Ad-Hater’ Harrison they call me. I’ve developed a faculty for being able to turn over to another channel while the commercial break is...

RainMario

I saw this documentary once about an extraordinary young man called Derek. Derek is a savant. He is a piano prodigy who gave a concert at the Barbican Hall at the age of 9. He also appeared on...

Exclusive: Wayne Rooney’s Letter of Apology to UEFA

I’ll Always Remember Where I Was When…

Surrey‘s dash to the land of milk and honey and shiny Duke cherries that is the Liverpool Victoria County Championship Division One was momentarily checked on Tuesday afternoon by an intense burst...

If County Cricket Ends, Does Anyone Notice?

This morning, just after 10 o’clock, Cricinfo reported that the start of the LVCC Division 2 match between Surrey and Derbyshire had been delayed due to crowd congestion. I rubbed my knuckles into...

A-Staire

“Obviously my mission is incomplete – my goal is not realised.” Thus spoke Audley ‘A-Force’ Harrison after a dispiriting defeat to David Haye during which he was hardly able to raise a hand to...

Goodbye Ortis Deley

I wrote a piece on Monday which contained some denigrating comments about Ortis Deley, the anchorman for Channel 4′s coverage of the World Athletics Championships. Yesterday there was no Ortis,...

Afletix

International athletics began to pall some time in the middle 90s. Some commentators blame the pandemic steroid abuse. The drug testers unmasked more junkies in the sport than in a heroin high-rise...

Allen Attack

The jubilant curtain is to be drawn down upon an exceptional summer of English cricket in the only manner that befits it. Which is obviously two inane Twenty20 internationals against a reduced West...

Finishing Scho

I’m not massively comfortable with the use of superlatives. They’re a bit flash and unnecessary, like diamond dental crowns. It does tend to dilute the vocabulary when describing England this...

Oh Danny Boyle

I have been invited to audition for a performing role in the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2012 Olympic Games. I am delighted to be considered, if vaguely confused. I haven’t technically...