Displaying items by tag: England

The Vinyl Junkie
Now, I love an expert as much as the next person. I revel in others’ depth of knowledge

‘Come in from school / My head buzzing with rules’
Jook, ‘Crazy Kids’, 1974.

I'd just finished watching Jeff Stelling and his clan mutter over a vidiprinter, it was a decent day. One of them days where you can actually take your jacket off and not feel like you've made a bad decision, which is pretty rare for Bradford.

The archetypal encounter between Holmes and the curse of the Baskervilles is perhaps the best known of the consulting detective's adventure and most adapted for film, television, novel and radio. In brief, the story centres around Holmes and his ever trusty assistant, Watson, who together investigate the curse of Baskerville, a hound from hell seeking revenge on any member of the Baskerville family, and their task is to protect the newly adopted country squire Sir Henry Baskerville (just arrived from the USA). All set in the beautiful backdrop of Dartmoor, it is a classic story of murder, deception, red herrings, folklore and suspense, scattered with a host of suspects resulting in a climatic ending where the villain is unmasked and Baker Street's finest faces the evil hound.

It was with a great sense of sadness that I learned of Sir Norman Wisdom's demise the other day. After a six month illness, at the grand old age of 95, our Norm, Norman Pitkin, the loveable Gump, quietly passed away at an Isle Of Man nursing home. A true working class hero, Norman certainly was a chap of many, many talents… his greatest being the ability to make us laugh, something he always tried very hard, sometimes too hard, to achieve…

Walter Smith’s 1995 summer capture of England’s star of Italia 90 was seen as an absolute coup de maitre.  His arrival at Ibrox captured the imagination of the obsessive Gers fan base and stoked up expectations to white hot level.  And despite Gazza’s appalling injury record and a much maligned battle with his erratic weight gain, the ‘Geordie Galactico’ proved to be as successful as the manager who signed him by amassing the biggest trophy haul of his career; two League Championships, one Scottish Cup and one League Cup.  Furthermore, he secured a place in the greatest ever Glasgow Rangers team and was also rightfully inducted into the Rangers Hall of Fame.

“On the field, first at Newcastle, later with England, Spurs, Lazio and Rangers, he was a surging, exhilarating phenomenon. At his best he slalomed past defenders, sprayed precision passes and shot explosively from unexpected angles and distances. And he did it all with infectious glee.For a whole generation of fans he was simply the most appealing and captivating English football player they had seen. He could be crass but he could also be anarchically funny,