Once Upon A Time

It was inevitable, wasn't it? After such a disappointing start, and the current seeming inability to bulge the onion bag, we were always going out. Just a shame that there wasn't even a goal to celebrate against the youth of Dortmund, but truth be told we were probably lucky to get the penalty against the Toffees on Saturday, and the ignominy of the worst ever European campaign by an English side is ours to carry like a cross to Calvary. It is now with trepidation that we look to the big one on Sunday. Let's just hope that the Rags' largesse in front of goal continues so that we can at least bang one or two in, and have a happy Hanukkah. Enough of that. Time for a festive story to warm the hearts of my many readers.

Once upon a time, there was a wicked queen who lived in an ice castle in SW1. All in her land bowed down at her feet and did her bidding, in great fear of the spells she was capable of casting, when her eyes bulged and bore through the thick lenses of her glasses into the very souls of those over whom she ruled. An army of workers toiled for her throughout the year, from humble drones to cunning viziers, each one dropping everything to carry out her slightest whim, trembling at the prospect of the dreaded One to One Meeting.

Her trusted lieutenants whipped her dwarf slaves to hard labour in the dusty mines of the Ice Queen's caves which were spread thoughout the land, even unto the far reaches of SE10. The poor dwarves' fingers were nipped with frost and their backs were bent with the heavy weight of the sacks they carried hither and thither. In a clear sign of the wicked queen's cruelty, the dwarves were forced to listen to Heart FM (only the merry jester at the cave in SE1 dared to play a classic rock station, and somehow he escaped the Queen's wrath, using his Tottenham Hotspur laughing stick to distract her from her spells) all day as they laboured for the paltry rewards she threw down to them, as rancid scraps to whipped curs from the heaving feast table.

The only thing which gave the little men and women heart was the prospect of the one day of freedom in their long and wearying struggle which Christmas gave them. A day when they could cast off their cares, rest their aching bones and feel warmth and love in the bosom of their local pub. Now the queen hated Christmas, and wished in her cold and black heart that it did not exist. Yet even her great power was not equal to this sorcery, which only the mighty lords Tesco and Sainsbury were able to perform, so she seethed with anger and jealousy in her frosty tower and devised her plans. At last it came to her! Christmas would remain - for now - but Christmas Eve, which had by tradition been a short day, would become just another working day, with the dwarves held to their labour till darkness fell.

So it came that this year she summoned her lieutenant in charge of the dwarves to the feared One to One Meeting, and sat with her faithful raven, Stanton, perched upon her shoulder. Magnifying her eyes into the trembling lieutenant's lowered countenance, she spoke:

"What treachery are those loathsome dwarf swine plotting against me now, imbecile?" she snapped. Stanton blinked his black eyelid over his black eye and plucked the entrails from a small rodent, held down with one of his black claws. Stuttering, the poor lieutenant tried to answer:

"Ah yes, your majesty - ha ha... They are but lazy, conniving..."

"Enough!" shouted the queen in anger, causing Stanton to flutter up from her shoulder, trailing the mouse entrails across the breast of the queen's gown and leaving a red smear as he did so. Lightning flashed through the tower's arrow slits and thunder rumbled in the Mountains of Victoria in the distance. The lieutenant cowered and clasped his hands across his chest, waiting for the pronouncement.

"You will tell those... pathetic beasts... that Christmas Eve is cancelled!"

The queen smiled, Stanton squawked and swallowed his bloody entrails, and the lieutenant gasped in amazement.

"But... Your majesty... This is... Too much...!"

"Too much?" screamed the queen. "Too MUCH??!! When half the world is grateful for any work, when children are begging for food, when the dying are forced from their beds to seek labour, and when the great Lord Osborne takes away more of my feeble hoard for his steaming money forges each year? Do not tell me 'Too Much'! Go and set those feckless fools to work!" Suddenly she became still, stroking Stanton's midnight feathers and smiling as she rose to her feet. "Unless you wish to join... Them!" The sleeve of her gown billowed as she pointed through the arrow slits to the shambling, shuffling souls outside. Huddled against the cold, their scrawny arms outstretched, they waited for the leavings of the fortunate ones, their eyes hollow with hunger and the death of hope. The queen turned away, and the lieutenant dropped his head into his hands and wept.

And they all lived happily ever after. The End.

Fat Man

I apologise if anyone took my tip and opted for a 2-1 final score at Stamford Bridge on Sunday. This was a truly drab game, and although I thought City played well enough in patches, they just lacked the killer punch. A bit (stealing from my cousin Steve here) like the sad Ricky Hatton in the ring the night before, although both teams were slugged and pummelled into a weary submission here. Neither side showed a huge amount of commitment or quality in front of goal, and frustrating was the only word for it. I have to say that if there had been a less lenient referee, the match might have flared into something more closely resembling a contest. He let the game flow and could easily have got up to a couple of reds if he had come down harder early on - though for once I feel Mario was hard done by for his yellow. Not that I wish for a dirty match, just that we might have seen a bit more gusto if it had happened. I think also the anger of the detestable Chelsea fans towards their new manager must surely have had an effect on the home side. Anyway, the less said about this poor excuse for a game of football the better, and let's hope we see something different at the home of Rugby League on Wednesday night. I fear we may struggle again, but this time I think that a 2-1 to City scoreline might be the result this time.

Now, on to the next thing. I've mentioned it once already, and it becomes increasingly hard to ignore as time goes by. Yes, Christmas is just around the corner.

This year, operating the way I do in my personal life, is particularly tricky as the Big Day falls on a Tuesday. My place of employment is being typically anal and seeking to control everyone minutely, so it feels as if there is hardly any room to breathe. For a festival which lasts one - maybe two - days, Christmas causes an awful lot of heartache. Retailers are sweating their arses off hoping that folks will shell out ever-increasing amounts on the latest tat; families are frantic with worry about the presents, the cooking, the inevitable interaction with people they hardly ever see; sad milestones are marked with depression; even the telly isn't what it used to be, what with all the guff you can get on the internet and elsewhere all year round.

I have one simple proposal (and it has probably already been suggested by loads of people) which - though not a cure-all for the Yuletide disease - might do a little something to help. Why not follow the Easter pattern and make Christmas day the Friday after the last full moon in whenever (I'm sure the theological doctors could come up with something which meant it was always the second-to-last Friday of December) on some ridiculous religious calendar somewhere? Boxing Day could then fall on the Monday after it and we would get a four day weekend. You'd have to make sure that New Year's Eve was untouched of course, because I feel that people won't put up with moving that around, but surely it makes sense from all angles to have the Christmas event better managed? I mean, there is no real evidence to suggest that Jesus ever lived at all (old scraps of papyrus don't count for me) so why get hung up on the 'fact' that he was born on the 25th of December? In any case, the whole thing was hijacked from the pagan agricultural/astronomical festival, which was devised at a time when most people didn't have to get the tube into work five days a week. Just a thought.

Tired

I'm afraid this is a theme I have often returned to, and I will hopefully balance the gloom with a nice piece about us getting through to the knockout stages of the Champions League on Wednesday. But you have to agree that - outside of the Etihad Stadium - things are pretty bloody dismal at the moment!

Christmas is a time for meeting old friends, for taking stock of the year just gone. A time for sentiment and happiness, celebration and indulgence. Is this the gloomiest Christmas there has ever been? Is it darker than the early 40s, when my ancestors huddled around radios, eking out the butter ration and piling coats on the bed as the bombs fell all around? Darker than December 1914, when the Tommies and Fritzes played football in no man's land?

Day after day, ever more dire financial news is poured down on our heads, unrelenting in its intensity. Politicians in Italy are crying as they announce their austerity budgets; the streets are still burning in Greece; the youth of Spain stare at empty, crumbling development sites; and the disabled in this country are (sometimes literally) having their wheelchairs pulled from beneath them as the homes in which we place our old folk are facing financial ruin.

Businesses - many of them well established, sometimes bastions of the world of retail - are going under at alarming rates. Millions strike to defend what little future security they have; and thousands of others, with no labour to withdraw in the first place, turn with blank eyes to the windows of sports and electronics shops - smashing and grabbing for a slice of the pie. There is no money left, and that is what we are told. If Rolls Royce et al can't sell their cars, then every other lamprey - in a sort of sad homage to natural selection - which sucks on the scaly sides of the Silver Ghosts will also go hungry. And very quickly extinct, preserved only in the fossil record of Companies House.

Let us be under no illusion that Miliband, or anyone, will provide a way out of this. As we have seen in Greece and Italy, the markets will have their way, regardless of the 'will of the people', and we can expect no white knight to be allowed to rein in the money men. Hopes pinned on a Chinese Marshall Plan seem futile indeed, and the only glimmer of stimulus comes from sabre rattling at the old Iranian foe. May the Ayatollahs quake at the avenging angel - William Hague - and his cavalry of Euro Fighters!

Baltic

One of the greats - no doubt about it. From The Magnificent 7 to Once Upon A Time In The West, to - of course - The Dirty Dozen. A mean, brooding presence you wouldn't dare cross in a hurry. I was never a huge fan of the Death Wish movies, but naturally Charlie Buchinsky played the part perfectly. If ever you needed a vicious psycho who is nonetheless basically good, you could always count on Charlie.

Typically for America, despite serving as a B29 crewman in the Pacific War and receiving a Purple Heart for his (literal) pains, Buchinsky changed his name to Bronson during the McCarthy era because anyone with a 'Slavic' name (he was, in fact, Lithuanian, but such details were - and are still in some cases - irrelevant) came under immediate suspicion of harbouring Communist sympathies. The fact that he couldn't speak English until he was in his teens doubtless gave his voice that unique timbre, which seemed to epitomise the tough guy archetype.

In The Dirty Dozen, he is plucked from Death Row, where he has been since being convicted of murder, to join the crew on their mission behind enemy lines.

He married his second wife, Jill Ireland, who was previously married to David McCallum, after reportedly telling McCallum on the set of The Magnificent 7:

"I'm going to marry your wife"

And that is about as direct as you can get.



Happy New Year to all. See you in 2011.

The Long Walk

Feeling as though I've been stumbling through the Cursed Earth over the past few days, plagued by a terrible cough which just won't go away, I think I am about ready to hand in my Judge badge and turn away from the Law once and for all. Still the wretched cough hacks at me, over one week after I came down with it, and the wind blows impotently against the blackened piles of snow lining the roads while that fucking Mariah Carey song comes on again in some shop or other. The chances are that I'll pick up the paper in the morning and read that some great actor has passed away.

But then - it's just Xmas after all. Building up and building up like some poisonous boil beneath the skin, only to be lanced in a moment, sometime after 3 o'clock. It has been a filmic few days (selected highlights: Avatar [8/10]; Where The Wild Things Are [5/10]; Megamind [7/10]) if truth be told, with my out-and-about-ness severely curtailed by family visits, this cough and the persistently awful weather. I have rated above a selection of the movies I've watched recently, and was most surprised by Avatar, which I've resisted since it came out. It was a highly watchable romp with a good message and some interesting pseudo-science. Where The Wild Things Are was an intriguing experiment from some very thin source material, but it wasn't really ho-ho-ho fare.  At the cinema, Megamind was good for a laugh and had a little bit of depth in exploring the concept of good and evil in a more mature fashion than many 'adult' films.

That's 399 posts completed since I started this thing, and only one more to go for 2010.

Crocker Shit

You may have noticed the presence of a ghost on here recently. Aptly enough, this ghost is a Toffee, so congratulations to his ectoplasmic form also on a barely deserved victory at Eastlands the other evening, which I had the misfortune of watching with him. Even if I had tried to punch him, my fist would have passed right through, but I didn't even get angry. Just goes to show that we do indeed bottle it at crucial moments. Or something like that. With 27 or so shots on goal (alas, only 4 on target, which - though decent - probably explains a lot) and 11 corners to their none, you would have expected a little more than the one solitary goal and no points to show for our pains. But, them's the breaks. We need better finishers (I'm looking at you, second only to Messi, Mario Balotelli...) I suppose you could say, though Kolarov came mighty close a couple of times; Tevez had one good shot well saved; Howard enjoyed one of his better games and Phil Neville got away with playing the bloody octopus all night long. My only criticism was that there was too much hopeful belting of the ball from the edge of the area when a bit more thought and craft might have delivered a more telling blow. Oh, and Tim Cahill really is an annoying little Aussie twat.

Moving on, we're well on to the meat of the Dirty Dozen now, and with the meat, time to bring Maggot into play. Who loves ya baby? Hero of many a boy from my generation as Kojak, Telly Savalas was a top star of the silver screen. During the mid 70s, every playground in England must have echoed with the word 'Crocker'; a million lollipops were surely brandished in the faces of fat kids with curly hair, and we even had our own 'Stav' who didn't seem to mind the sobriquet too much. He was a tough guy in Kojak - though of course with a heart of gold - and his character in the Dirty Dozen surprises somewhat if, like me, you saw the two things in the wrong chronological order. A nasty, racist rapist is Maggot, well suited to the horrors of war. Which I think sets the tone nicely for the climax of the festive season.

Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas!

Do Look Now

In a varied and interesting life during which he found time to not only father Kiefer but also Kate Bush as well, it is a challenge to historians to work out exactly what Mr Sutherland was up to in WW2.

As a vital cog in the well-oiled Nazi plan to assassinate Churchill, he thrilled his Irish compatriots with his eerie ability to control dogs and amuse grave-diggers. Yet our hero also found time to impersonate high-ranking officers as a vital member of the Dirty Dozen. And then serve in Korea.

Some clue as to what drives such a man might be found in the mob riots that Mr Sutherland was caught up in during the Great Depression. His part in the horrible murder of a hugely annoying child and subsequent brush with the law may well have led to a strong desire to stare down danger in the European Theatre. We might also see the heavy cloak of guilt in consequent experiments with orgone and the presentation to Albert Einstein of a Sex-box of his own invention.

In middle-age, Donald Sutherland would taste the fruits of all his deals with the Devil, as family tragedy resulted in a series of supernatural horrors leading to his own demise at the hands of a dwarf.

The fact that he continued in movies after this is surely a testament to his professionalism.

Cleveland Brown

After a night of yet more shameful Euro racism at City's draw with the Old Lady, I thought it would be worthwhile jotting down a few words in celebration of a great black man. Where the fuck do the Italians (and Spanish for that matter) get off with the fucking monkey noises? I mean, Russia, Serbia, Croatia... Though you can't condone it in these places, you can perhaps see why the vicious meatheads have some traction, what with the history of war and totalitarian regimes, as well as the lack of exposure to any kind of multi-culturalism. But Italy? All that stuff with Paolo Di Canio. It makes the blood run cold.

So, on to our celebration.

A football player for the Cleveland Browns, Jim Brown (b. 1936 - just a year after my own father's birth) went into acting after his sporting career had ended. He was a supreme athlete, excelling at (American) football, basketball, lacrosse and running. He is often described as the greatest player in NFL history, and that's going some. He was good at rushing or something - I've not really been a fan of NFL since I was a teenager, but I can of course appreciate how talented the guy must have been to receive such an accolade.

His character in The Dirty Dozen - Robert T Jefferson - was convicted of killing a white officer in self defence, and of course is deeply disliked by Telly Savalas' racist and psychotic Maggot (I don't mean that Telly had a racist psychotic maggot for a pet. He may have done, but I don't think so).

Jim has had quite an illustrious film career, going on to appear in such movies as Ice Station Zebra, The Running Man, I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, Mars Attacks!, and Any Given Sunday, among many others. He was also a regular in stuff like The A Team, TJ Hooker, Highway to Heaven, CHiPs and Knight Rider and would have spent a great deal of time gracing British TV screens on Saturdays and Sundays during the 80s. In the film 100 Rifles, he was lucky enough to play in supposedly the first interracial love scene with Raquel Welch. Lucky bastard. Still going strong as some sort of adviser to the Cleveland Browns, he seems also to be still making movies, with - according to IMDb - The Sandy Creek Girls currently in production. I mean, what's not to love about a guy like that?

I'm glad Jo got the equaliser to stick it to those fascist cunts.

Samson Posey

Here we go again with Samson Posey, a 'meek' criminal who is 'sentenced to death by hanging for the accidental killing of a G.I. in a bar room brawl' (I love that. What an excellent crime). Clint was best known for his role in Cheyenne during the 1950s, one of those strange phenomena, the cowboy weekly series - like Bonanza and High Chapparal - which were all the rage once upon a time.

Today was just running around and running around. Contradictions and challenges, not a moment to myself. You know the kind of thing: struggling through the fuckers at Victoria; receiving a phone call when you finally get there telling you that the meeting's delayed by twenty minutes; sitting in a meeting, tense as a piece of cheese wire, which goes on and on and on; getting back to the office and eating a cardboard egg sandwich; traipsing back through the fuckers at Victoria; sitting in a meeting where people point their faces at you; and back through the fuckers; and then again to play pool and darts in false bonhomie. Victoria Line delayed and the phone rings when you're getting your keys out. And Payroll fucks up and doesn't release your HR fucking record so you don't get your (first) pay cheque with a week till fucking Xhristmas.

Merry Clint-mas fuckers.

Lopez Tevez

I did say that Clint Walker would be up next, but events have conspired to make me consider a change. I hope all will become clear as the post unfolds and I introduce you to Trini Lopez.



Rooney set the tone, and now it seems that there will be no way back for the precious few who can command the total control of their employers with their celebrity status. When SAF rolled over and showed his soft Glaswegian belly to the blood sucking scumbags who 'run' professional players, it was the end of the beginning. If even this famous boot throwing disciplinarian would cave in to the rapacious demands of his Scouse prima donna's handler (use of the word 'agent' in these matters should of course be studiously avoided) Paul Stretford, then everyone else is sure to follow suit.

'Oh, I miss my kids so much. It's really nothing to do with money...' Bullshit. Pure and simple.

It's always about money in the end, and everyone knows it. If Carlos was really pining for his little darlings so much, why did he piss off to Tenerife during his recent ban instead of back to BA for a paternal cuddle and distribution of expensive plushes? The highest paid player in an extremely highly paid squad, in the middle of a 5 year contract, and agitating - or at least the odious Joorabchian, with his well-known links to Cook, the Sheikh, et al, is doing so - for more at the point of a virtual gun. It stinks like Rooney's cock after a night out in Kirkby. And if anyone can make any sense of this in the middle of a global recession, I'd like to hear it. I know that loyalty counts for little these days. The mercenary element of modern football is well and truly established, and there's little that can be done to change that, but I feel sick just watching it. The average City or even Rag (yes, you heard me!) fan may as well be spat on from a great height by these fuckers as they fork out their hard-earned cash for overpriced tickets.

I said it (or at least reported someone else saying it) when the Rooney saga was in full swing, and I'll say it again about Captain Carlos:

'Get rid!'

Now, Trini Lopez. An international chart topping recording artist (If I Had A Hammer) Trini was not so successful in film. He left The Dirty Dozen early, and the script was hastily re-written to accommodate his departure. For that reason, I thought it appropriate that this post should be about him and not Clint Walker. Dirty.

Busby babe

Buoyed by not one, but two compliments on Twitter about this thing yesterday, and (by the sound of it) a real stonker from Yaya against the Hammers, I'm still carrying a warm glow and feeling ten feet tall. But the fact remains that the pressure of compiling 12 posts in a busy month is beginning to tell.

Nearly through the Back Six now, with number 5 - Tom Busby. Tom (1936-2003) was a Canadian actor who played Milo Vladek in The Dirty Dozen. Looking at some of the comments on his iMDB page, it seems that Tom was something of a character, described as 'not a saint' but nonetheless a real human being. He spent the final years of his life in the West End of Glasgow, where he shuffled off this mortal coil. His career doesn't appear to have been particularly illustrious, but I think I would have liked to have had a bevvy or two with him and listened to some of his stories.

Just like Ben Carruthers' character, Milos was sentenced to 30 years' hard labour before being picked for the suicide (well, for almost all of them anyway) mission on the bridge.

Next up, Clint Walker.

Not With A Bang

I've more or less given up now. Ben Carruthers - number 4 in the Back Six - played Glenn Gilpin, who was sentenced to 30 years' hard labour. He died of liver failure at the age of 47, and his son played drums briefly with Megadeth. That is all.

I spent much of my formative years (defined for me as between 16-35ish. Challenge this if you like) angrily railing against the current set-up of the Capitalist military-industrial complex and yearning for some kind of anarchist state.  (Apart from an early, brief, and – as I look back on it now – rather bizarre fixation with Nazism. Please don’t judge me. I was young and foolish, had grown up in a very provincial town where even now the BNP poll double the votes [3.2% against 1.6%] of the Green Party, and knew less than nothing about the world. I discovered socialism at about the same time as I discovered pot and patchouli. In any case, if you read this regularly, you’ll know that I’m as left leaning as they come, so I really don’t need to explain away my spotty 15 year-old self) This I suppose was never explored in any great detail, but rather grew out of the sense of anger and sadness at the inequalities in our world. Things just weren’t (and aren’t – let’s face it) right, and something had to be done. However, what that something was did not take shape, and did not seem in any way imminent. Now, after watching the hundreds of police queue for their free breakfast in the staff canteen this morning, as I listen to yet more helicopters hovering above, and as I keep an eye on the Guardian website for updates on the latest student protest, it all seems just that little bit more tangible.

The other night, while I was uploading a YouTube video, Twitter was keeping me up to date with the anonymous DDoS attacks on VISA, and for a moment I was very conflicted. Here was the potential for real progress at last – a sophisticated attack on one of the very pillars of the establishment in response to government efforts to stem the tide of transparency oozing out through the Wikileaks gash. The power of anonymous seemed quite stunning. Out of the blue, a major financial institution was temporarily brought to a standstill by a group of internet users. And this was a good thing. Something which I could applaud as a demonstration of activism and the ability of ordinary people (who know a fair bit about computers) to strike back.

But then a nagging doubt began to claw at the back of my mind. My cash card carries the VISA marque. I remembered the original financial meltdown as Alastair Darling announced the cash injections to save the banking system, and the genuine fear I felt at the time that it really could go tits up. I was on the verge of withdrawing the paltry sum which resided in my bank account at that time, because it all seemed terrifyingly close. Those DDoSs reminded me of that time. I began to think of those things involving VISA on which I – and those close to me – depend, and it all seemed so terribly inconvenient, so bloody scary if you like. This is obviously related to my advancing years and the fact that I have realised just how vulnerable I am, just how potentially close to a life on the street. All my youthful exuberance evaporated.

Roscoe Lever

Well, I always intended to add something extra into these Dirty Dozen posts, so that they were not simply mini bios of the actors in the film (though some of the more famous ones would surely make interesting reading) but having reached number 3 in the Back Six now with Stuart (sometimes known as Stuart W) Cooper, who played Roscoe Lever (sentenced to 20 years in prison - note the absence of the 'hard labour' element) without an idea as to how I can avoid shoehorning (or even Shoestringing) the usual bilious guff about Man City or politics or commuting into a piece about an ageing American thespian from Hoboken, New Jersey (that is one cool place name) I'm no longer so sure.

The previous post on Alan Mancini was something of a shoo-in (or a Shoestring-in) given the perhaps too obvious connections with the great Italian saviour of a city's pride, as well as the eponymous opportunities, but Stuart is proving to be a little more problematic. What's more galling is that I have placed myself behind a fence of my own creation, with this silly idea of completing 100 posts a year - 88 to be done by December - just to continue a tradition I started a couple of years ago by posting tenuously on the twelve days of Christmas theme.

I've already made a decision to revamp this thing in the new year, but am forcing myself to finish off the current crop in the style to which my loyal followers have grown accustomed (which is, with a lot of meaningless waffle) and so am gradually painting myself into a corner. Therefore, I'll try something outside the box.

This week, I laughed with my friend Charlie about Scott Parker's obvious association with the Thunderbirds. I read a particularly amusing atack on West Ham's throbbing gristly heart in the previous week's NOTW, in which the hack ripped 'skipper' apart for being a prima donna, and I have no great love for the player in any case. So Charlie and I were imagining Scotty receiving a hand job from Lady Penelope, where the usual Thunderbird trick of using a human hand for close-ups is employed. Charlie (and he is an authority on such trivia) told me that the hand used was Sylvia Anderson's, and so we extended our fantasy by having this hand the current one on the end of Sylvia's arm, all twisted and liver spotted with age as it feverishly pumps away at Scott's knob. Charlie took things a little too far I thought by introducing Avram Grant as an interloper who proceeds to stick it in Scotty's poo while Sylvia continues her work. I pointed out (perhaps a little ungraciously) that Avram's penis would undoubtedly require string to hold it up if he did indeed plan on sodomising his midfield general.

Stuart Cooper has a long history in film and theatre, which - as far as I can tell - is still a history in the making. He appears to be directing a film called Magic Man, starring Billy Zane, although it itsn't clear if there is a release date yet. Apart from the Dirty Dozen, Stuart appeared mostly in various TV series before moving into directing (again, mostly for TV movies) and producing. He also has a few writing credits, largely within the documentary field. Unlike Al Mancini, he didn't feature hugely on the British scene.

Alan Mancini

On to the second of the Back Six, and there really couldn't be a more suitable choice at the moment, combining as he does two of the great football references of the moment for any City fan - Al Mancini.

Let it roll around your palate for a while. Say it a few times. Al Mancini. The great Al Mancini. OK, he may not actually have been called Alan, but that's a minor detail. Born 1932 in Ohio, Al was a real trooper, rather more prolific than Colin Maitland, and definitely more recognisable, even to the hopeless Bing (actually, I don't wish to labour a point, but compare the two results for Al Mancini at the links [Google] here [Bing]. One brings up a good selection of images for the actor, while the other throws up a load of cats and the Manchester City manager. I will say no more...) than the Shoestring man. His character - Tassos Bravos - was, like Colin, sentenced to 20 years hard labour before being drafted into the Dirty Dozen. Needless to say, he dies defending the bridge at the end of the movie.

Al appeared in TW3 in the early 60s and had a hugely varied career, appearing in many of the staple TV programmes of my youth, such as Special Branch, UFO, Rhoda and The Protectors - to name but a few. He even did a few Jackanory slots, and towards the end of his life appeared in some big box office films like Miller's Crossing and Falling Down. He died of Alzheimer's disease shortly before his 75th birthday in London Ohio, not far from where he was born.

In short, Al was one of the greats. Even without the fabulous Alan de Carvalho stuff after the Salzburg match, I would pay homage to such a great actor. With it, there is just so much added weight to my love.

Colin

Fresh from the hilarity of the City fans chanting of my name at the Salzburg match the other night, it's time for my annual festive 12 parter to start. This year, I am writing about a great war film. Hope you enjoy it.

I used to watch Shoestring regularly. I think it was about a sleuthing DJ in Bristol. Some light research proves me correct, and adds the forgotten detail that he was a traumatised computer expert before becoming Radio West’s ‘private ear’, and the programme was possibly shown on a Sunday night, around 9 o’clock. I actually really enjoyed it at the time, but (and Dave Gorman recently mentioned this in relation to a strange episode in his life where he watched the pilot of The Six Million Dollar Man at the Cannes Film Festival. The programme, he said, just looked so terribly dated, and ended up causing much hilarity among the audience) I’m sure the same would not apply now. A regular contributor to Shoestring was The Sound Engineer, played by Colin Maitland. I had a great deal of difficulty turning up a picture of Mr Maitland via Bing image search (it’s extremely irritating to be directed towards people who are either a) Colin Maitland, but not the Colin Maitland; b) people called Maitland but not Colin; or worst of all, c) people called Colin but not Maitland!) and, although his images appear to be in short supply (fame is fickle, isn’t it?) Google demonstrated its superiority by displaying two pictures of the main man immediately. Followed by loads of people who aren’t him.

Colin was born in 1942 in Birmingham. He played perhaps the least famous member (one could perhaps say even, the least famous of the 'Back Six') of the Dirty Dozen – Seth Sawyer. All I can seem to discover about the character is that he was sentenced to 20 years hard labo(u)r. And that he dies (by means of a very specific weapon) after being shot down from a roof. It looks as if Colin’s personal life after the Dirty Dozen may have been just as much of a slog. Well, not really, but you get my drift.

Prior to his big break, he appeared as Charlie Sedgewick in Lolita (1962) and as Seaman Jones in The Bedford Incident (1965) which is a ‘highly rated Cold War submarine thriller’. I saw Lolita, didn’t particularly enjoy it, but can’t recall watching The Bedford Incident, though reading about it, I think I would like to. In neither film can I remember Colin Maitland.

It just goes to show how hard it must be to break into the big time. The Dirty Dozen was the number 1 box office film of 1967, and made a net profit of over $18,000,000 – a pretty tidy sum over 40 years ago I would imagine. How much of this money got through to someone like Colin is anyone’s guess. Probably not a huge proportion of it, but one would have thought that the part would at least look pretty good on the guy’s CV and provide him with a springboard for greater things. But it was not to be.

Damned good? Or Saint Thaddeus

Only two Apostles left, and only two posts before the end of 2009. My final post will be so good that it will need to be named twice, and will include the obligatory round-up of the year. Best wishes to Mancini. I love his music.

Podcast Episode 4 is now up. I thank yew.



St. Thaddeus is not the most tedious of all the Apostles, although very little seems to be known about him, and even his name is shrouded in the usual confusion. In common with many Jews (it seems) around the turn of the BC/AD thing, he may have been called Jude. Most interestingly, he is the patron saint of lost causes, and as such has no doubt been called on by many a football fan in moments of extremis. He is also the patron saint of Flamengo in Brazil.

One footballing icon who definitely would not have invoked this (or any other, given that the only thing he believed in was himself) saint, as I am currently finding out, is Brian Howard Clough. I was fortunate enough to receive both the book and the DVD of The Damned Utd over the festive season, and am rattling through the book at a fair lick right now. The blurb makes claims that the book is among the best ever written about sport.

I haven't finished it yet, but would struggle to contest this claim, marvellously enjoyable as I am finding it to read. It is a riveting subject, and pretty well written, though repetition is perhaps, er, over-used as a literary device. Additionally, repetition is perhaps, er, over-used as a literary device. However, there are few others I can think of which would compete, especially in the realm of fiction. I have enjoyed various biographies and autobiographies (Maradonna's stands out particularly) and many good books ON football, but this is right up there with fictional/historical sports writing. I can only hope that the movie matches it and is an improvement on Goal! although that would not be difficult. Middlesbrough??!! I ask you. That there is a Goal! 2 is something of a surprise.

Best wishes to all for the New Year, though I will return before the end of 09.

Jesusland or St Andrew

St. Andrew (BTW, some of the ads in that link are pretty egregious. Two paragraphs of text and then it's straight into the 'St. Andrew charms and bracelets for sale' schtick. Jeez Louise!) lived in Jesus Land.



The shape of the famous Scottish saltire is said to be derived from the fact that Andrew elected to be crucified on a cross designed in the shape of an 'X' as opposed to the traditional Jesus hook. This was done because - it is said - Andrew did not feel worthy to die on the same type cross as the saviour. Which is of course very admirable, and no doubt illustrates clearly his character as a highly principled and devoted follower of the Lord. That the jockos should have chosen him as their patron saint is I suppose slightly ironic - and I'm being no more racist than Frankie Boyle when I say that, thank you very much.

Thanks to my Jocko friend - Toppski - for the image!

Well, by the time this post goes live, we will be in the white heat of the Christmas cauldron. What could be termed the climax of the day, with the Queen's Speech and all that jazz. It hasn't been a bad one so far for me, with one bottle of port sunk already and another warming up. Only two mince pies have been consumed (up to now) and one cracker has been pulled. I will have my mother for additional company, and that should be good, and will be scratching my head trying to work out how to set up the new XBox.

I actually prefer the period between Christmas and New Year, because the footy is on (and we have a pretty crazy fixture calendar this year, thank fuck) and there's a feeling of the country waking up from some torpor, shaking itself a bit and getting back to business again. How much business, in these times of financial crisis, remains to be seen. But we must always be optimistic, for life goes on, and those of with children have an innate duty to say that the future's bright, the future's not shite. So on with the show.

Bring on 2010 and the World Cup.

Drummers drumming

Brother, here we go again.

I am launching a moderately ambitious writing and numeric project for the festive season.

There are 12 posts to go before I reach 200 (100 for last year and 100 for this - neat, eh?) and a famous festive tune which fits quite nicely with the remainder of posts for the year. I am also aiming (without much anticipation of success) to achieve 2,000 songs in my iTunes library, 1,000 pics on my Flickr account and 1,000 Twitter tweets by the end of 2008. Wish me luck!

Here's a starter for 12 - drummers. Bernard Matthews has been unnecessarily twizzling around my head, especially after watching Dubya on the White House lawn, but my thoughts turn instead to the fine art of banging the skins.

Drummers have been close to my heart for many years, blessed as I am with no musical ability whatsoever. I was bitten by the Phil Collins bug early on, and kept a cushion 'drum kit' in my room as a young teen, thrapping away to Supper's Ready on the Dansette. The sticks were two inexplicable short and thick bamboo rods (one would often see long and thin ones, let's face it) which somehow found their way into the house. They would routinely be launched into the imaginary audiences who sat and watched my scintillating solos come to a crashing crescendo.

I once took the stool in a garage performance - with Thee Cybermen - of Sub-Mission and though unwatched it was among the greatest experiences of my life.

So, here's a festive shout to all of those mad people who keep us in the groove:

Ginger Baker, John Bonham, Sheila E, Mitch Mitchell, Mongo Santamaria and all the others. Bang on!

Scouse, champ or bubble?

Nearly through it now. Quite a slog, with too many toys, far too much Eastenders and Corrie and nowhere near enough alcohol.

TV highlight of the year: The Likely Lads movie, which seemed to strike the right festive (i.e., bleak) note. These days, there are so many movies available all the time that we have lost that magical sense we used to have of real event TV (I know it's a hackneyed concept, but it really strikes me more and more each year) which would send a shiver of anticipation up your spine. Casino Royale, for example, has been on Sky Movies Premiere (pshaw) several times a day for the last week - with the old David Niven version on today. I have seen it all (I mean the new one) but never in one sitting. Yesterday was a Star Trek marathon on Sky Movies Sci-Fi, and I caught some of the first one for nostalgia's sake, a bit of the third one for Christopher Lloyd, but missed The Voyage Home, which was the one I really wanted to see. Ah well.

The major saving grace of all this festive stress is of course the inordinate amount of football available. It's even more wall-to-wall - thanks to our old friend Rupe - and a few years ago it would have been an impossibility to have City v Liverpool on a Sunday afternoon. My prediction: Liverpool win 2-0, sad to say.

Bloated

Is it me, or is there a real sense of impending doom in the air? I feel almost as if the world is holding its breath for the new year.

Credit crunch, early desperation sales, political nothingness, all stuffed into one gigantic rubbish bag at the end of the Christmas period, taken away for landfill and slowly turned into methane gas - poisoning the environment still further.

Whatever the case, watching the news yesterday, I was particularly struck by the idea that people travelled to Sandringham to watch the Royal Family going to church! With the usual 'balance' for which it is renowned, the BBC spent an inordinate amount of time reporting this, without the faintest tinge of irony in tone. I mean, what kind of people are these? It's Christmas Day at the Williams house (say) in Melton Mowbray (say).

"Mummy! Daddy! Merry Christmas. Can we open our presents now?"
"I'm afraid not William and Harry, we have to get started so that we can be in Sandringham in time to get a good spot. Don't want to miss out on seeing Her Majesty, do we?"
"Not again, please! We never have Christmas at home, and I hate having to eat turkey sandwiches in a motorway layby."
"Yeah, it's not fair. Finding Nemo's on later and we're going to miss it."
"I thought you liked my home made Christmas special sandwiches, and we have the VCR..."
"Yes, but you're recording the Queen's speech again!"

The ludicrous nature of all this was highlighted by a little puff on what the Royal Family do at Christmas. Ordinary English folk open their presents on Xmas Day, but not so for the Saxe-Coburgs. Oh no. In the German tradition, they open theirs on Xmas Eve. Says it all really.