Put down

Simon Hoggart had this lovely story on Saturday:

The death of Simon Gray lets me reprise a favourite story. He was a close friend of Harold Pinter, a great cricket lover. Once Pinter wrote a poem about his hero Len Hutton. It read, in its entirety "I saw Hutton in his prime / Another time, another time." He sent it to several of his friends.

Soon afterwards Pinter and Gray were at the same dinner party and Pinter asked what he thought of the poem. "I don't know, Harold," said Gray. "I'm afraid I haven't finished it yet."

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The Israel lobby again

I wondered how long it would be before someone managed to get a dig in at Israel over the Russian bombing of Georgia. So congratulations to James Poulos at - where else? - the Guardian for, as far as I am aware, being the first:

The anti-Russia lobby is giving the pro-Israel lobby a run for its money, hyping the settling of scores among two European, Orthodox Christian countries as more dangerous to the peace and security of the west than any clash of civilisations or jihad ever was.

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Is Man City going under?

I'm hearing some strong rumours about Manchester City. I can't vouch for their authenticity but one of the two sources is a very mild mannered and judicious man who knows about these things. To cut a long story short, there are two threads:

First, Vedran Corluka's apparently on-off-on-off transfer to Spurs was never as uncertain as Man City are today trying to paint it, and he and City signed binding transfer papers to Spurs last week. Mark Hughes was apparently never told about this and went berserk when he found out. But from what I am told, Spurs are clear that Corluka is now a Spurs player and will go to court to prove it. (And, I understand, Corluka is fully on board for the move.)

As a result of having his players sold from under him - Stephen Ireland has already gone - Mark Hughes will be resigning as...

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Olympic gold

So I guess I must now be an Olympics addict. The two mainstream sports which bore me most are cycling and swimming (yes, even more than tennis). And yet I have been thrilled by the success of Nicole Cooke and Rebecca Adlington. I suppose I'll even watch Andy Murray when he starts his pursuit of Olympics gold.

Mind you, there's been one aspect of the Olympics - or rather of the BBC's coverage of it - which has enraged me. So far I've heard three commentators say a variation on the theme of: 'That'll keep the critics of the London games quiet'.

No it won't. Those of us who are appalled that London won, and that we are going to have to fork out billions of pounds to stage the games, are not anti-sport, let alone anti-Olympics. We just want someone else to have the dubious honour of paying for it.

(I'm being flippant. There's a serious argument to be had about the cost of the games and how and by whom it should be funded).

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The BBC shoots itself in the foot

Mrs P and I were at the cinema on Saturday night, enjoying our popcorn. And then this popped up on screen:
I wonder if this is the ticking-bomb which will finally destroy the BBC. Perhaps idiotically, I've never really thought about Radio One when making my case for the end of the licence fee. And yet it is, obviously, the single biggest stick in our armoury.

It's possible to make a case for the forced funding of Radios 3 and 4, on the (spurious, I would argue) basis that the market wouldn't fund similar channels. But Radio One?

The radio is full of almost nothing but Radio One clone stations The channel's existence is a standing affront to every licence payer. And as if its very presence on the BBC platform isn't bad enough, along comes this advert. Only a bloated coroporation would even think about making...

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