Tag Archives: BBC

The LUFC Prophet on “Why Moyes Never Stood a Chance at Man U” – by Rob Atkinson

Posted on 24/04/2014 | 26 comments
Ta Ta, Taggart

Ta Ta, Taggart

As a Leeds United fan, I don’t get many chances to say “I told you so”.  I’ve made two football bets recently, and I’ve paid out twice – a fiver to a Newcastle fan who told me to my disbelief they’d lose at home to some Premier League no-hopers (and they did), and a bar of Dairy Milk chocolate to my Barnsley-supporting postman who bet me we’d beat them at Oakwell. I didn’t mind paying out on that one.  My only chance of coming out ahead now rests on a tenner I have with a mate which says Arsenal will win the Cup.  Fingers crossed…

But in matters Man U, I was a prophet of peerless foresight as long ago as July last year – when I forecast that David Moyes was doomed to failure at the Theatre of Hollow Myths.  I reasoned that the brooding presence of eminence grise (avec le nez pourpre) Alex Ferguson would do Moyes no good as he sought to make his own influence the guiding light at the Pride of Devon.  I figured that he would be hampered by the proximity of the ex-boss – just as happened before, 40-odd years ago, when Busby stepped down but refused to go away.

Well, I did tell you so – and lo, it has come to pass.  Whatever now happens to the fallen champions-turned-also-rans, it should be noted that some of us out here saw months ago that there’d be tears before bedtime round Salford way. I might be accused (accurately) of wishful thinking – but the logic behind my prediction has, I feel, been shown to be impeccable.  Below is what I wrote on July 7th, 2013 as Moyes was setting out his stall as Man U manager.  I will not gloat over his downfall – but the fact that he has brought the club I detest down with him is extremely amusing and satisfactory.

-o0o-

There are worrying signs already for the inheritor of the poisoned chalice that is the Old Trafford hot-seat.  David Moyes has been gathering his own people about him as he sets forth to put his own stamp on the Man U machine – but Moyes will be grimly aware that The Ghost of Alex Ferguson Past is the least of his worries.  The man himself will be there all too often, all too real and large as life, in the flesh and walking the corridors of power down Trafford way.  It’s the presence of the former boss that is likely to make an already difficult task that bit less easy for the 50 year old heir to the throne.  If you know your history, you’ll be aware that Wilf McGuinness, the successor to Matt Busby, had to go about his work with the Busby factor still about the place, the old man still visible backstage, the players saying “Morning, Wilf” to McGuinness – but “Morning, Boss” to Busby.  He didn’t last long before the sainted Matt was back to try and steady a sinking ship. His successor, Frank O’Farrell, didn’t do much better.

You might hope, for Moyes’ sake, that Ferguson will have the forbearance to stay away from the training ground and the stadium when the day-to-day business of running the club and the team is going on.  Perhaps he will, but media pressure is already a clear and present danger for Fergie’s successor. The press don’t want to let Fergie go; he’s been a rich source of copy for them for so many years that many hacks who have covered all matters Man U can hardly remember a time when he wasn’t there – and they want to stay snug in their Fergie comfort zone, with their cosy old stand-bys of the hair-dryer and the stop-watch.

The signs were there even at Wimbledon this past week.  Fergie took his place in the Centre Court dignitaries’ enclosure to support his compatriot Murray, and the commentary box fizzed in a fever of ecstasy as that familiar purple face gazed o’er the scene.  The cameras lingered lovingly on those craggy, ravaged features and many were the cutaway shots of Fergie’s reactions as Murray laboured to his victory.  Afterwards, the desperation to lever S’ralex into the post-match interview was as cringingly embarrassing for the viewer as it was perplexing for Murray, who perhaps naively expected tennis questions.

The message was resoundingly clear: Fergie is still The Man as far as the press are concerned.  Reports of Moyes’ early press conference at Old Trafford leaned heavily upon comments such as “Fergie would have approved of Moyes’ flash of temper”, “Moyes displayed a Fergie-like tenacity” and so on and so forth.  There are clear indications that every word Moyes utters, every decision he takes, will be viewed in the light of “what S’ralex would have said/done” – and clearly, this is bad news for anyone wanting to to make the job his own and do it his own way.

It might even be interesting to speculate on whether Moyes would perhaps quite like to be portrayed in a different light to that which has shone on the Man U manager this past 27 years.  Moyes seems a sensible and modest chap after all, any similarity to his predecessor appearing limited to the accent and the obsession with the game.  A departure from the arrogance and overbearing nature that has characterised the club during Fergie’s reign might be welcome to such a relatively pleasant bloke, but it appears unlikely to be allowed judging by the tone of some of the press quotes from this preparatory phase of the season.

We are given to understand, for instance, that late last season Moyes was honoured with a personal visit to his home from The Fergie Himself.  “I thought he’d come to tell me he was taking one of my players”, said the ex-Goodison boss, to an unheard and incredulous chorus of “What the hell…?” from Evertonians everywhere.  So this is how the Old Trafford club have been used to operating in the transfer market?  Hmmmm.  But instead of airily notifying a “lesser club” of an impending transfer swoop, Fergie was there to tell Moyes he was the next Man U boss.  Not ask, tell.  Moyes’ eager compliance was taken as read.  The Man U brand of arrogance, it seems, will take more than a change of manager to eradicate.

I’m not particularly worried about the prospect of Man U being less successful in the next few years, and of some of their legions of fans being seduced to supporting clubs closer to home, such as Torquay or Spurs or Nagoya Grampus Eight.  I’d be quite happy with that; I have no love of the Trafford-based franchise or the way it operates.  But I am slightly concerned for Moyes himself, who seems a decent cove, and who I can see going the same way as McGuinness went; a proper football man crushed by the weight of recent history and cowed by the long shadow of his immediate predecessor.  For Moyes’ sake, I hope that doesn’t come about, but all the signs are already there that it might.  Only Fergie himself can decide to remain in the background, the media are far too much in love with the myth they have created to let him go easily.

Perhaps, though, Fergie will actually do the decent thing?  I somehow doubt it.

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Leeds Remain “The Damned United” for Jimmy Greaves and the BBC – by Rob Atkinson

Posted on 07/12/2013 | 31 comments
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Super Leeds – simply the best

A couple of weeks ago, I came not to bury Greavsie but to praise him.  The article I wrote was a thrilled response to the fact that Jimmy “Jimbo” Greaves – a known Leeds-hater from way back – seemed to have seen the light, acknowledging United legend John Charles as the greatest British footballer of all time, ahead of George Best, Bobby Moore and – well, everyone else on a list of fifty.  It was such a surprise, such a welcome oddity coming from Greaves’ usually poisoned pen where the Whites are concerned, that I failed to look beyond the headline. Silly me.

When I finally did read the rest, I was less surprised – but I was utterly disgusted and amazed that somebody who had the honour to share a pitch with (and be heavily defeated by) Don Revie‘s Super Leeds could be so bitter, such a small-minded little man. For genial Greavsie, that impish cockney bundle of fun, had included in his Top 50 British Greats not one member of that fabulous Super Leeds side which dominated football for a decade and which regularly finished above the teams for which so many of Greaves’ Chosen Ones had played.  And there I was, just a few short weeks ago, saying nice things about the little bugger.  Well, I take it all back. Today I come, not to praise Greavsie, but to bury the sod.

It simply makes the mind boggle.  Not one Leeds player from that Glory era of Bremner, Giles, Gray, Clarke, Lorimer et al.  Not a single, solitary one. John Charles, of course, the Jimmy Greaves choice for number one, played at Elland Road in his first spell with Leeds before the Revie years, making a brief but only moderately successful comeback in the early part of the Don’s reign, before heading back off to la dolce vita.   King John’s honours were won on foreign fields; he was not part of the Leeds success story.  Did this exempt him in Greaves’ tiny and still semi-pickled mind from the hatred and disrespect with which he has always referred to the great Leeds side?  Was there some envy there?

Greaves, let us not forget, for all the praise heaped on him as a natural finisher, didn’t win all that much in his career.  You could fairly say he bottled it.  No League Titles, just a cup or two.  He missed out on the World Cup Final in 1966 due to injury, making way for one Geoff Hurst, who fortunately had a fair old game that day. You have to admit that Leeds, for all their talent, were underachievers (largely due to some corrupt refereeing) – but Greavsie out-shone them in that. Perhaps this explains some of that elderly bile and bitterness?

It’s not an unknown phenomenon, this steely determination to ignore Leeds United when the plaudits are being handed out.  It’s sadly quite common and, despite the fact that it reflects ill on those who perpetrate the omissions, exposing them for the petty, shallow revisionists that they are, still they queue up to overlook that great side, and to be seen doing so.  It’s as if there are brownie points to be collected somewhere for the person or persons who can show that they possess the biggest pair of anti-Leeds blinkers in the whole media.  What a sad indictment of supposedly impartial coverage – and the ostensibly most impartial of them all, the good old BBC, are among the worst offenders.

A little while ago, I wrote – well, ranted – about the BBC’s determined stance on ignoring Don Revie when they put together a montage of legendary managers.  It was laughable.  There were managers in there who’d hardly won a bean – good sound men, but not in the same class as the Don, a man who built a European superpower from a provincial nonentity of a football club, scorned by many in a city devoted to Rugby League.  The worldwide fanatical following that United have, even today, have their roots in the miracle wrought by Revie, the greatest manager of all time.  So, I complained to Auntie Beeb, and got the standard fob-off response, naturally. The complacent pillars of the media don’t like being challenged in their cosy little ivory tower funk-holes, they would rather you just concentrate on what they’re saying and not try thinking for yourself too much.

There’s no need for me to start in on correcting Greaves’ list, or indeed the BBC’s laboriously-constructed montage of managers – either would be an exercise in the bleedin’ obvious.  I’m simply happy to get this off my chest, to point out what smug, self-satisfied hypocrites and charlatans these people are, who feel that they really can reinvent history and expunge a whole, massively-significant part of it from the public consciousness.  It’ll never happen, too many of us out here remember all too well who the top dogs were back in the day – and more and more of us are stomping our way into print, the better to emphasise exactly what was what.  So you may take your heavily-edited version of history, Messrs Greaves, Lineker, Hansen and Shearer, and you may stick it where the monkey stuck its nuts.

The truth after all is out there, the evidence is easy to find, and even though some of the men so cruelly overlooked – Bremner and Revie for very obvious examples – are no longer around to defend themselves, there are plenty out here only too eager to do it for them.  Say what you like, Greavsie, but we were there too, we remember and we know better.

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Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who’s the Most Hypocritical “Leeds Fan” of Them All? – by Rob Atkinson

Posted on 05/11/2013 | 9 comments
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Mark “Ker-CHING” Byford: one-time Leeds fan, perennial grasping hypocrite.

Whichever club you follow, you like to think that your fellow fans are, on the whole, jolly fine fellows – lads and lasses all. Equally, you hold dear the notion that the fans of “that other lot from ovver t’hill” (Man U, for any Leeds fan worth his salt) are a ridiculous bunch, amusing and repellent all in one, fodder for those of us who revel in laughing at the Pride of Devon.  This mind-set prompted me to write about Man U’s Top Ten Embarrassing Celebrity Fans, an article which was, I’m pleased to say, widely read and well-received. I’ve a Spurs version in the pipeline; I do like to pander occasionally to my own petty prejudices.

Every now and then, though, you come across such a repellent example of loathsome slitheriness among the ranks of your own beloved club’s supporters, that you just have to hold your hands up and say: “It’s a fair cop.  We’ve got a right one here.”  It’s happened to me, today.  I’m not talking about the vile Savile (indeed, I have a picture of him in a Liverpool FC shirt).  I’m talking about someone alive, kicking and doing very nicely for himself indeed, thank you.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mark Byford: former Deputy Director of the BBC, new author, Leeds United fan, expenses claimant extraordinaire and enthusiastic proponent of what can best be described as the “Byford Brand” with a view to the ongoing feathering of his own already plush nest.

Mark Byford featured on BBC Radio Five Live just this morning, eager and ready to be interviewed about his first book which was inspired, so we’re told more than once, by a shaft of sunlight shining on the name of a soldier, Larry Byford, on a war memorial in America.  The coincidence of names led Mark Byford to research and write a book about the American Byford, fallen in conflict in Vietnam, along with the wartime experiences of his own father Lawry Byford.  A neat idea and doubtless quite moving.

The wisdom of Byford in sticking his head above the parapet at this particular time, though, might be questioned by some who feel he still has a little embarrassment to live down.  Mark Byford, after all, is the man who walked away from the loss of his job at the BBC with twice his contractual severance entitlement, so that he trousered a cool £1 million on top of his extremely generous final salary pension entitlement.  Perhaps he felt that this sensitive issue would be overlooked in the eagerness of the interviewer to help him promote his book.  Big mistake.

Victoria Derbyshire is one of those interviewers whose sweet and demure exterior belies her underlying instinct to harry her prey; at times like these she is more polecat than tabby.  In the past she has upset the likes of Jamie Oliver with her remorseless style, and when she interviewed her own Five Live boss about why he wasn’t moving to MediaCityUK in Salford when the station moved in Autumn ’11, The Guardian said: “Derbyshire’s grilling of the station’s controller Adrian Van Klaveren made Jeremy Paxman’s infamous interview with (BBC Director General) Mark Thompson look like a vicar’s tea party.”  Now, she sank her teeth into Mark Byford’s pale and exposed hide – and she simply refused to let go.  The basis of her line of questioning was simple: “Do you think you deserved your £1m pay-off?”

Try as Byford might, he was unable to shake Derbyshire from this persistent snap, snap, snap onslaught which in the end left him bloodied and bewildered as she watched narrowly from a neutral corner, fangs still bared, ready to renew her attack at any time. His quandary was clear: he didn’t want to be seen to claim he deserved the money, but he didn’t want to admit that it was undeserved, unjustifiable and contextually grotesque. The word “context”, ironically, was one coping strategy he brandished again and again, though with an amateurish petulance that defeated any attempt at calm or cool.  He was simply out-thought and out-fought, run to ground, his desired cosy “book-plug” interview metamorphosed before his horrified eyes into a pitiless exposé of his self-seeking greed and arrogance.

It was with mixed feelings that I listened to this interview.  At first, I didn’t identify the author being invited to promote his book with the grasping executive walking off into Austerity Britain with his £1 million wad.  I wasn’t even sure why I was taking against him so – perhaps it was the unctuous tone with which he spoke of heroism and duty, whilst all the time emphasising the hooks and links a writer likes to employ to make his work more readable.  Only when Ms Derbyshire switched from plug facilitator into attack mode, did I make the connection – and then I just had to marvel at Byford’s willful resistance to the notion of “moral wrongdoing”, subtly advanced with all the finesse of a battering-ram by the merciless Victoria – as opposed to strict legal and contractual rights and wrongs.  And, blindly, blunderingly, he kept on using this word “context”.  Millions out there must have been wondering – if context is the thing, then in the context of austerity, painfully slow national recovery and widespread suffering, especially at the unregarded bottom of the pile – how on earth can such an obscene level of severance pay, on top of a sleekly fat pension, possibly be justified?

Which is what, time and again, from every direction, try as Byford might to avoid it, he was being asked – and refusing to answer.  Because there is no answer that amounts to justification.  And it turns out that there is much more for Byford to justify, if he possibly could.  A litter of extravagant expenses claims drifts in his wake, going back years – the man has a sleaze quotient an MP might envy.  His new book uses the loss of an American soldier in a long-ago conflict as its prime mover.  I wonder if the soldier’s family will benefit from its sales?  I do hope so.  The e-book edition – which is, after all, just a stream of bits and bytes flowing smoothly from the ether, production overheads negligible – is ambitiously priced at an eye-watering £17.72.  Clearly, somewhere along the line, Byford is still feeling the pinch – or maybe he feels that the Byford Brand commands a unit price of that order, for a first book too, simply because, well, it’s the Byford Brand.

When Lord Birt, outgoing Director General, favoured Byford as his successor, the Governors in their wisdom chose Greg Dyke instead.  Our hero put a brave face on it, and joked away the pain, claiming still to be friends with the man who pipped him.  “He supports Man U and I support Leeds United, and that’s the biggest problem we will have – he supports the worst team in British football and I support the best.”  All good knockabout stuff, and a laddish tone calculated to appeal to the LUFC fan in the street. But for once, I think the BBC got it absolutely right to prefer the Man U fan to the man who claimed as far back as Leeds University days to follow Leeds United – though acquaintances detected no passion for the club in him and suspected that it was a front for his research into criminality among football fans.  As with so much of his subsequent life and career, it would seem that – even back then – Mark Byford was mainly concerned with what was best for Mark Byford and his nascent Brand.

He’s frankly not the sort of bloke I care to have associated with my beloved Leeds United AFC – and nor is he the sort whose pockets I’d wish further to line by purchasing any book he writes.  I happen to think that the singularly undeserving and opportunistic Mark Byford has done quite well enough for himself already.

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Shameful: BBC Spit on Don Revie’s Grave

Posted on 20/05/2013 | 13 comments
Don Revie OBE: The Greatest

Don Revie OBE: The Greatest

History, they say, is written by the winners.  In last night’s “Match of the Day”, the BBC provided ample evidence to show that it is also rewritten by hypocritical sycophants who should know better.

The events of the afternoon had not panned out as the scriptwriters would have wished, though all looked well ten short minutes from the end of Man U’s match at West Brom, S’ralex’s last game as manager.  The Plastic Champions were 5-2 ahead, and John Motson had purred, gasped and chuckled his way through 80 minutes of exhibition football, punctuated by comical home defending, and it looked very much as though another team was going to roll over meekly for the men from Salford.

Then S’ralex brought on Paul Scholes for the Ginger Minger’s own last appearance before his latest retirement.  The cameras prepared to adjust to soft focus, Motson drew in another breath preparatory to more shudderingly orgasmic tributes as he was consumed by an ecstasy of highly marketable sentimentality.  The stage was set for the Govan Guv’nor to stump off into the sunset, his purple-blotched features lacerated by a parody of a smile.

Then it all went wrong.  West Brom struck three times in the last ten minutes, Ferguson’s smile dropped to the floor quicker than a Gareth Bale dive and the mighty Man U were holding on at the end to avoid saying goodbye in the face of a last blast from a defeated Hairdryer.  5-5 it finished, and the BBC were denied their expected valedictory stroll in the sun; the Baggies had pooped the Corporation’s party.

Maybe it was this that prompted the spite and small-minded pettiness of the montage which prefaced the Match of the Day highlights late last night.  More likely though that it was always going to be yet another calculated slap in the face to the memory of a great man, a man whose boots the assembled hacks and ex-pros on the MOTD couch are not fit to lick, a true great of the game that the Establishment seem determined to pretend was never there.  Ferguson was painted in admiring and rose-hued tones, to a background of his many achievements as compared to the other “managerial greats.”  Bob Paisley, Brian Clough, Jock Stein, Bobby Robson, Ron Greenwood, Bill Shankly, Matt Busby, Bill Nicholson; all these legends were held up as examples of managerial excellence to be rightly lauded for their achievements and the mark they left on the game.

But no mention of the greatest of them all: Donald George Revie OBE.

This was no mere oversight.  It’s been going on for years, and it’s a premeditated and vicious attempt at the excision from public memory of football’s greatest manager, a cowardly and shameful act of malice aforethought.  It reflects ill on the researchers who put these things together; aren’t they aware of their history, we in the know might wonder.  Don’t they have access to Google?  But they know all about the Don, they know he transformed a tired old joke of a football club into the most feared and respected force in Europe; they know he did it without massive financial backing and without paying obscene wages; they know how he did it all to the dubious background of an initially apathetic support, fans who had only ever known mediocrity at best, and expected nothing else.  Out of all this, Don Revie wrought a miracle – a team that respected judges of the game have described as the finest club side in English football history.

The accidental omission of Revie’s name for any TV item concerning itself with managerial greatness would be unforgivably slipshod; the act of a clueless nincompoop.  But this was much, much worse than that.  It was an exposition of hypocrisy underpinned by malice and the bile of fifty years’ accumulated resentment.  It was a crass attempt at revisionism, a blunderingly clumsy try at pretending Don Revie never existed.  It was wishful thinking in its bitterest and most destructive form, a playground insult to a giant of the game.  The BBC cowards and toadies have exposed themselves as classless fools, deserving only of contempt and ridicule.

“And Leeds will go mad.  And they’ve every right to go mad!” – as Barry Davies memorably put it back in the day, in more realistic times before the game turned plastic, when everybody knew who the heroes were and we weren’t fed a diet of pap and lies.  And Leeds should go mad again.  The city, the club, the fans – none of them should continue to lie down and accept this disgraceful treatment, this attempted erasure of an iconic figure whom we all worship as “Simply The Best.”  There should be a loud outcry, a vehement protest.  This is my small contribution, but the fans as a body have form for hitting back at media and establishment when they feel one of their own wronged.

In 1994, the FA handed down a mandate that all clubs should observe a minute’s silence in respect for the late Matt Busby.  They did this because it’s what you do when a respected figure dies – except of course they’re not consistent.  They failed to mark the death of Don Revie, a tragic and cruel end from Motor Neurone Disease.  They failed even to send a representative to his funeral, although – to his eternal credit – Alex Ferguson was there, and Denis Law, as well as most of the Leeds United greats and other proper football men.  But none of the hypocrites in suits from the game’s ruling authorities saw fit to get off their backsides and pay tribute.  Revie was dead; let them get on with pretending he never existed.  So in 1994, when they were supposed to lapse into a respectful silence, the Leeds fans at Blackburn Rovers’ ground exploded in a raucous and repeated cry of “One Don Revie!  There’s only one Don Revie!!”  The great and the good of the sport were scandalised.  People pursed their lips and shook their heads sadly.  How dare these yobboes ruin our tribute to our Chosen One?  But I’m so, so glad that it happened.  We should not knuckle under to the official view; we should never bow down before such blatant hypocrisy.

They’re getting wise to rebellion now.  There tends to be a minute’s applause these days, lest any disrespectful mob should see fit to assert their unwanted point of view the next time some officially-beloved figure keels over.  But the fans will be heard, believe me.  And if the media – typified by these contemptible fools in charge of the increasingly poodle-like Match of the Day – continue so determinedly to ignore and try to obliterate the legacy of The Don, then I hope that defiant cry will be heard again, loud and proud.  While ever Leeds United fans are prepared to stand up and be counted, happy to raise their arms and voices and be heard – then Don Revie will never be forgotten, whatever the wishes of the pompous suits and deluded TV types.

Don Revie, “The Don” (1927 – 1989)  A true legend and a great of the game.  Whatever you might think of him – and God knows, I’m no fan – just ask S’ralex.

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Guest blogspot: Bring on Those Funny Money Woes! by Kate Atkinson

Posted on 02/04/2013 | Leave a comment

I’m not normally one to voice my political opinion – this being a matter very close to my heart, I tend to get angry and upset very easily when met with the same meaningless, patronising, verbatim Daily-Mail-headline retorts I’ve been hearing for years. However, it occasionally gets too heated and (usually after bursting into furious tears) I want to add my two pennies’ worth.

Edwina Currie

This morning, I was listening to the debate on Five Live about Iain Duncan-Smith’s recent claim that he could (and would) live on £54 per week. I listened as Edwina Currie declared this a reasonable amount with which to get by; I listened as Stephen Nolan ‘challenged’ her to put her money where her outspoken mouth is; I listened as they suggested going for it together. What a lot of people heard was a very hesitant deal being made, and then backtracked upon as Tories do so very well. People saying, ‘there’s no way she’ll do that, there’s no way – it’d be too hard…’ I heard, however, a highly condescending offer being made to the poor, dumb masses, by these two very generous and philanthropic rich people.

Here, you little insects! Guess what we’re going to do? We’re going to have a go at living your peculiar little impoverished lifestyles for seven whole days! I mean, we’ll probably still be living in our mansions with our central heating and our cleaners and our freezers full of food, not to mention that we’ll still be perfectly mentally healthy due to our previously untroubled lives… and it is, of course, quite beside the point that we personally would no doubt be able to live on just what we have now, and absolutely nothing extra for a number of years if we were to be so daring, but a week should be fun enough, don’t you think? What larks!

Besides this, though, there’s the fact that these two will return to their respective lifestyles feeling that they’ve had a ‘fun experience’, as Currie referred to it live on the radio, and that they’ve actually made a point or done some good. And still there will be people living on even less than that. People that have no choice, no get-out clause – and yet Currie still stands by her principle that we can only pay ‘what we can afford’ to poor people. Oh, really Edwina? So it’s okay to cut their resources even further – to tighten the noose and see just how much more it’s possible to bleed out of them? Two words: bankers’ bonuses. We can afford those, apparently. And there are the other discrepancies: Currie suggesting that her having to live on less than £54 per week in the 60s being comparable to living on the same now. Nolan not actually giving a damn about the state of living people have to put up with, as long as his show is listened to and his wage delivered at the end of each month. I could bring up everything, and would, if I didn’t know it would get shot down with whines of ‘but Edwina says’, and ‘let’s agree to disagree’.

Just wanted to have a small attempt at fighting against this supercilious effort to pour oil on troubled waters – we’re not falling for it and we will never be on your side.

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Sir David Attenborough – How To Make The Very Most of a Life on Earth

Posted on 04/02/2013 | 2 comments

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 If there were only a course or qualification entitled “How to Get The Most out Of Life” – and, by golly, shouldn’t there be? – then who better, I earnestly enquire, to act as mentor or role-model than Sir David Frederick Attenborough, OM, CH, CVO, CBE, FRS?

Not content with his outstanding work fronting the BBC’s recent series “Africa”, I heard on the radio today that Sir David had just returned from China, where he’s been looking at fossils (they’ve got some great fossils in China, feathered dinosaurs, wonderful stuff). Still globe-trotting at the age of 86, it’s fair to say with only a slight risk of being accused of generalising, that he’s been everywhere, and done everything, most of it more than once. He’s our “Man For All Seasons”; certainly he’s produced stunning wildlife documentaries in every conceivable climate and environment, and he does it all with that gentle, “favourite uncle” air of calm and informative authority.

Attenborough was born in London, but grew up in the Midlands, younger brother of Richard, the world famous actor. He was fascinated by fossils from an early age, and became a passionate collector. An adoptive sister gave him a piece of amber, and half a century later, it formed the basis of his documentary “The Amber Time Machine“, focusing on the prehistoric life preserved within the fossilised tree resin. In the interim period, he gained a degree in natural sciences at Cambridge, and served in the Royal Navy as a national serviceman.

Although he’s renowned for being highly active in the area of wildlife documentary, Sir David also served a stint as Controller of BBC2, during which time he commissioned a wide variety of programming in an effort to make the then fledgling channel’s output more diverse. He took advantage of BBC2’s pioneering of colour transmission to introduce coverage of Snooker and also had a hand in the airing of such widely-ranging offerings as Monty Python’s Flying Circus, The Old Grey Whistle Test, and The Money Programme.

But it is as a wildlife presenter that he is best known, and his gentle, perhaps quirky personality seems to lend itself to this field in a uniquely watchable, entertaining and informative way. His distinctive voice, too, resonates with the empathy he feels towards the subjects of his many and varied documentaries. You listen to him, and you can feel how much he cares for the well-being of all the species he has encountered, how acutely aware he is of being a member of that species – Man – most inimical to the interests of our fellow travellers on Spaceship Earth, and how passionate he is about conservation and the need to keep ecosystems ticking over. Not in the least squeamish, he acknowledges and defends the role of the predator in the food chain, and manages to present the plight of hunter and hunted with equal sympathy.

Quite apart from all of his achievements though – and they are many – what a life this man has led, and continues to lead. A computation of all the miles he has travelled, covering the globe, ascending peaks and diving depths, would produce a very big number indeed. He’s witnessed most facets of life, from the intricate behaviour of micro-organisms, to the mighty progress of the blue whale, and just about everything in between. To see him completely accepted by apes in their natural habitat, having painstakingly gained their trust over a long period – just that we might see them go about their daily routines through the camera’s eye – is to see a consummate professional at work. And he’d certainly be the first to acknowledge that he is in fact a pro among pros; the worth of the team behind the cameras is acknowledged at the end of each programme in the “Africa” series. But there’s no doubt who the star is (apart from the animals themselves, of course) – and thankfully, there’s not the remotest sign that his powers are as yet on the wane.

Presenters come, and presenters go, and the general trend is for the quality of wildlife programming output to improve in leaps and bounds as the cameras and TV’s become more sophisticated. But you need an exceptional human being behind all that technology (and in front of it, too) – and as has been proved time and again over a career exceeding sixty years, Sir David Attenborough is simply the best.

NB – anybody who wants to check out Sir David’s online BBC Nature Archive, click here.

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Reporting A Crime? That’ll Be £1.50 A Minute – Thanks.

Posted on 03/01/2013 | 1 comment

Someone’s suggested making 999 calls premium rate, to cut down on prank calls. I sometimes think no example of dribbling stupidity can shock me any more, but I must confess this rather takes the breath away.

Firstly – it’s another example of trying to regulate public behaviour by financial sanctions. All this does is make abuse of the service concerned the preserve of the rich, and it’s those chinless wonders who are more likely to act like brainless kids anyway.

Secondly – make people think twice before summoning the emergency services, because of the cost? Really?? Are the poor to be marginalised out of the right to be rescued by police, firefighters or ambulances??

This idea is so utterly nonsensical and thoughtlessly dumb, I can only assume it’s the product of a right-wing, Manchester United-supporting redneck American. That the BBC have decided to give it air time is, sadly, typical of that Corporation’s current tabloid mentality.

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