What The World Is Waiting For

...This IS the one we're waiting for.

Although I've been saying for 15-odd years that I never want The Stone Roses to reform (and posted about it here almost five years ago), I now have tickets to see them in Manchester next June. I haven't stopped shaking with excitement since 9.35am.

Please. Pleeeeeaaaaaaaase - let it be good.

Database

At yesterday's Montrose match, I found myself sitting beside former Brechin City manger Ian Fleming, who led the club to a title way back in 1982.

Afterwards, I was rummaging around the internet trying to find out how long he was at Glebe Park, when I stumbled upon this site - a database listing every UK post war football transfer, as well as the statistics for each player at each club.

The wealth of information here is astounding - just an idle flick through its pages and pages of data makes it look like the work of several lifetimes.

And a quick dip into the Rangers page makes for interesting reading. Erik Bo Andersen hit 15 goals in 23 appearances; Shota Arveladze 44 in 95; Gordon Durie 44 in 125; Gazza 30 in 74; and Mark Hateley 85 in 165 in his first spell at Ibrox.

I had presumed that Durie scored far more than that, and that Gascoigne had played more games. I was also sure that Hateley had scored more than 100 goals for Rangers, although perhaps the total given is for league goals only.

And Terry Hurlock only played 29 games for the club. He was my first Rangers cult hero - stepping out onto the pitch to inflict GBH on whoever came near him. His description as a "Millwall hardman" should have said it all.

Are You All Sitting Comfortbold Two Square On Your Botties?

Then I'll begin....

So starts the second half of Ogden's Nut Gone Flake, one of the greatest albums ever made.

As well as having the Small Faces at their peak, mixing mod, musichall and rock stompers together, the second half of the album is a concept piece narrated by one of my stranger heroes, Stanley Unwin.

Unwin famously jabbered in his own language, Unwinese, and his utterances on the second half of Ogden's are wonderful.

I can't accurately annotate his contributions, but this comes from Wikipedia:

Unwinese, also known as "Basic Engly Twentyfido" - probably a reference to Charles Kay Ogden's 1930 work "Basic English", which strips the language down to 8509 words, was a special, ornamented and mangled form of English in which many of the words were corrupted in a playful and humorous way. Unwin’s performances could be hilarious yet disorienting although the meaning and context were always conveyed in a disguised and picturesque style.

Unwinese was very poetic in the way it alluded to its subject – e.g. Elvis Presley and his contemporaries are described as having ‘wasp-waist and swivel-hippy’ – and it was often punctuated with moments of clarity and directness to accentuate the ‘nonsense’ – e.g. ‘Deep joy!’ ‘Oh yes’.

Unwin claimed his gift came from his mother, who once told him that on the way home she had "falolloped over and grazed her kneeclabbers". This phrase eventually turned up in one of Unwin's monologues, Goldiloppers and the Three Bearloders.

I've just purchased Unwin's first album, Rotatey Diskers With Unwin, and it's fabulous. And available from Amazon for less than £3. At that price, it's a steal.

Unwin's website can be seen here.

And my favourite piece of Unwin trivia: He is buried in the churchyard at Long Buckby, with wife Frances, who pre-deceased him. Their gravestone has the epitaph, "Reunitey in the heavenly-bode – Deep Joy".

El Diego

The next Argentina coach? Maybe.

The best player ever? Definitely.

The Warrior

Sometimes it's better just to stay retired....

Highly Charged

Ladies and Gentleman, and those of you who are neither, it seems that an English grandmother is staking a claim to be the first real-life member of the Heroes team to turn up here in Little Britain.

Sixty-year-old Mavis Price of Telford, Shropshire, claims she only has to touch an electrical appliance to break it.

Apparently, Mavis' explosive problem is caused by her body generating too much static electricity.

Understandably, she's a bit perturbed at this affliction, but I can't help feeling that she's missing an incredible employment opportunity.

Maybe the possibility of being a circus "freak" doesn't appeal too much to Granny Mavis, and that's to be accepted.

But just think how much her powers would be worth in a military capacity, to housebreakers or terrorists - she could take out vehicles, CCTV cameras, computers, tracking systems and the like just by touching them. Burglar alarms could be rendered useless just by having Mavis wave her electrohands in their general vicinity.

Admittedly, a robust lady in her 60s isn't the easiest addition to the master criminal's toolbag, but the advantages are bound to outweigh the difficulties.

Let's get her an ancient samurai sword, a natty costume and film her in action - sounds like a great show to me.

One Paul Gascoigne

Alastair has posted on the sorry tale of Paul Gascoigne, who was sectioned under the mental health act yesterday, and my post here is a re-hash and embellishment on a comment I made on that post.

Aside from Brian Laudrup, Paul Gascoigne is the most talented player I’ve ever had the pleasure to see in a Rangers shirt. On his day and at the top of his game, he was simply unplayable, and I was fortunate enough to have a pitch-side seat the day he single-handedly destroyed Aberdeen at Ibrox to win the Premier League in 1996.

Unfortunately, he is also one of the most unstable, misguided, naive and easily-led individuals ever to have been sucked into the world of professional football. Hangers-on like Mel Stein, Jimmy Gardner and even fellow celebrities like Chris Evans and Danny Baker were happy to ride Gascoigne’s coat-tails whilst the gravy train was rattling on at a fair pace, but I doubt many will be there to pick up the pieces now.

Mad? Frequently. Bad? Occasionally. Sad? As his life has spiralled downwards in tandem with his prodigious abilities, most definitely.

Had his career blossomed ten years later than it did, Gascoigne would probably have been the world's first £100,000-a-week player, and a superstar on a par with David Beckham. Beckham, talented though he is, doesn't bear comparison with Gascoigne. But Beckham is more able to handle the fame and its associated pressures, and has made far more of his less bountiful gifts.

Gascoigne may have enjoyed his greatest successes and most stable years of his career whilst at Rangers, but the nine-in-a-row dressing room was not the ideal place for an alocholic to spend the peak years of his profession. Alongside fellow party lovers Ally McCoist, Ian Durrant and Andy Goram, Gascoigne was famously part of the "dressing room from hell", not renowned for its sobriety and quiet living. Infamously, all of those players sat out the 1998 World Cup, despite all easily being amongst the most talented players in their respective countries.

Whilst Gascoigne may have been a forerunner of today’s Beckham and Rooney hysteria, unlike Beckham he seemed patently unsuited to life under that kind of media microscope, and unfortunately has been paying the price of that fame since he was only a boy. I, for one, hope he has a speedy and full recovery.

The Naked Footballer

You know that feeling you get when you see something you wished you hadn't, and long for the ability to unsee it or claw your own eyes out?

I've got a similar feeling at the moment - except, because I've been forced to think of something, I wish I could yank my own brain out through my nose or ear, so that I never have to think of it again.

Yesterday afternoon, someone arrived at this far-flung outpost of the worldwide interweb having searched on Google for "naked pictures of Ian Durrant Rangers".

Aaaaaaaaaggggggghhhhhhh! The pain - make it stop.

Sumptuous Cinema

This weekend, Mrs Wife and I, having nothing better to do, went to the cinema twice.

In back-to-back showings, we saw Transformers and The Simpsons Movie, finishing a fairly lengthy run of kids' movies that we've seen lately. So, how did the summer's big blockbusters fare?

Transformers was, quite simply, awesome. I may be exaggerating ever so slightly, but not much. You see, for someone who was a five-year-old boy in 1985, it doesn't get much more exciting than seeing Optimus Prime and Bumblebee appear on the big screen and transform before your very eyes. The effects were incredible, and the violence was pretty good for a kids' film. My only disappointment was that Hot Rod wasn't in the movie - but maybe he'll make it into the sequels.

The Simpsons Movie was a bit of a disappointment. Which shouldn't really come as much of a surprise, as the show itself has been treading water for a long time. The general impression I got was that if you'd seen the trailers, you'd already seen most of the funniest jokes. It wasn't a complete turkey, because The Simpsons is still funnier than most other programmes kicking around at the moment. But when the asides and throw-away jokes are funnier than the main plot of the movie, something isn't right.

So this evening, when I have three hours to kill between work and a football match, I'm going to the cinema again. Unless Die Hard 4.0 or Goldfinger is on, I'll be going to see either Transformers or The Simpsons Movie again. Optimus Prime or Homer Simpson? More than 20 years later, there is no competition.

John Smeaton: A Tribute

Courtesy of Sho, I thought it was only right to share this reworking of "Flower of Scotland", penned in tribute to John Smeaton:

O John of Smeaton
When will we see your like again
That fought and panned in
Two Al Qaeda men
And set about them
Osama's army
And sent him homeward
Tae think again

The airport's bare now
And cherokees lie burnt and still
O'er land that is saved now
Which brave Sir Smeato held
And set about them
Osama's army
And sent him homeward
Tae think again

Those days are passed now
And in the past they must remain
But we can still rise now
And be a nation again
That set about them
Osama's army
And sent him homeward
Tae think again

Modern Day Hero

Scotland has a long and proud history of folk heroes. Great military leaders and kings like William Wallace, Rob Roy MacGregor and Robert The Bruce are immortalised in our nation's history.

In the modern age, our heroes have tended to come from the realms of science, politics and football. Amongst the inventions created by Scotsmen are the television, telephone, penicillin, radar and the pneumatic tyre.

But since Saturday, when Islamic fundamentalists brought their war of wonky ideologies to Scottish soil for the first time, Scotland has a new hero.

John Smeaton, a baggage handler at Glasgow Airport, is fast becoming a legendary figure not only here in Scotland, but around the world.

Spotting one of the would-be terrorists running towards police officers whilst on fire, John reportedly sprinted towards the man and felled him with a kick.

Interviewed afterwards by an American news crew, John said: “Me and other folk were just tryin’ tae get the boot in and some other guy banjoed him.”

John's bravery can only be commended. I am quite sure that if I saw a burning Pakistani running through an airport terminal, I would not be running towards him.

The people behind the John Smeaton tribute site have begun a campaign to reward the man himself with drink (as we do in Scotland). So far, they have received enough pledges to buy our own have a go hero more than 600 pints at the Holiday Inn at Glasgow Airport.

I urge you all to recognise the heroism of John Smeaton and to raise a glass in his honour.

(Thanks also to Silversprite and Big Rab for publicising John's heroics.)