TELEVISION: Am I the only one who thinks now I have around 8,453 channels to watch on Sky, I don’t actually want to watch any of them...
It seems the more channels get thrown at us, the less quality actually gets broadcast. It’s mostly rubbish.
Saturday nights are a nightmare. If you don’t want to watch failed soapstars dancing round with Brucie, or failed singers desperate for a career, you’re pretty much left watching Dave.
BBC2’s too serious on a Saturday night, Channel 4’s weird normally.
What about something that’s just funny. Some comedy? Decent film?
Hell I’d even settle for Ant and Dec.
BEACHBALL GATE: Okay, so Darren Bent scored a goal deflected off a beachball.
A beachball thrown onto the pitch by a Liverpool fan.
Maybe the whole story is proof that God does exist, and he’s a football fan with a real sense of humour and irony.
Point one. As far as I’m aware throwing something onto the field of play during the game is an offence. Whether that’s a coin or a beachball, should the rules be any different.
After all, a coin that misses someone is just a salary bonus for the groundsman, this beachball could cost Rafa his job. Perhaps that was the plan.
Point two. What bothers me most about beachball gate is the fact that no-one seemed to know the official rules of football.
Is it too much to expect that between the referee, linesmen and fourth official they actually know all the rules of football?
I can accept someone refeering on the local park not knowing every clause and every paragraph of the rule book, but surely referees in the Premiership should know the book inside out.
After all,is the rule really that obscure. Surely it’s something that can happen - as proved in Sunderland...
I think credit should be given to Liverpool on this one. It would have been easy for them to blame defeat on the beachball when if the truth be known they’d have lost anyway.
YOU’LL DO: So the phone rings the other day. Normally if it’s a number I don’t recognise I ignore it, but against my better judgement I answered it.
“Can I speak to Mr Richards please?”
“No,” I replied. “I think you have the wrong number.”
That, you would think, would have been that. After all, I was not Mr Richards, probably never will be Mr Richards (barring some strange deed pool decision I may take after too much whisky) and not only that I don’t even know a Mr Richards.
If pushed, the only Mr Richards that comes to mind is Viv. I digress.
“Who am I speaking to please?” was the next question. “Mark,” I replied.
“Mark who?” What was this, the Spanish inquisition? It was a wrong number after all... “Lingard.”
“Mr Lingard, thanks, you’ll do. My name’s Steve and I’m calling from..”
“You’ll do....” you’ve dragged me away from making coffee, or whatever important task I was undertaking, you’ve rung the wrong number, and you haven’t the decency to accept it and put the phone down. ‘You’ll do...
I can’t even remember where Steve was calling from. Lesson number one in a call centre should be if you’re cold calling never just tell the person ‘you’ll do’. It doesn’t make them warm to you. It doesn’t make you feel wanted, or want to send business your way.
In fact it makes them quite irritated... I’ll just revert to not answering it I think.