Vegas & The Aftermath - Diary

[tikay]

Hey Tikay, I didn't see your reply about the train until after I'd been on the trip so the only ones photos of the train I have are in these ones, there's no close-ups I'm afraid.





Greymouth Station - The population of the town is around 10,000



It really is an awesome journey, there's a nice little open-air viewing platform at the back which can fit about 7 or 8 people on and if my camera battery hadn't been dying I'd have probably just stayed there for the whole four hours. If Sky ever send you to Australia for the Aussie Millions, make sure you get a couple of days extra to fly to Christchurch and do the trip.

Wonderful photos Chris, thank you. That Station in the lower picture looks oh-so-quaint.

The train from Paris to Deauville-Trouville has that me little viewing platform at the back. We were sharing a (train) compartment with Lucky Jim, Thewy, Stu Fox, & Devilfish one year, & Devilfish was regaling us with his girlie-conquest stories & how wonderful he was at poker. We spent a good deal of time on the viewing platform.   

[tikay]

Page 9 of The Times today has an editorial and article on the subject of John Terry's position as England Captain, claiming he should resign as captain before it is taken away from him. Now, not only does it show how ridiculously overblown footballers are these days but the article underneath it is about the president of South Africa who has had an affair, that lead to the birth of a child with the daughter of a high ranking South African World Cup organiser.

It is his 20th child, many born to lovers and wives. He is described as one of the most famous polygamist's and was acquitted of rape in 2006 but admitted having unprotected intercourse with the daughter of a close family friend that he knew had HIV.

There is no call for his resignation or claims that he is out of order yet this guy is President of a country. If he and Bill Clinton can continue doing their jobs after extra marital misdemeanours why is someone that in the grand scheme of things is a pretty insignificant sportsman compared to the power they hold being forced out of captaining England?

Have footballers and their affairs really become that important?

No - I'm wholly ambivelant on this whole John Terry thing, I could not care less one way or the other to be honest. He's not the first prominent England footballer to get caught, Shilton was, too, & they all sang about his car, a Cortina as I recall. The extension of the story, of course, is that every (female) Tom Dick & Harry will come forward in the next few weeks & claim to have slept with him. Just as they did in the Tiger tale. And the Media will swallow all that nonsense, & retail it.

But the story about the story absolutely fascinates me. These guys don't do crisis-management, or dispute resolution, they make such a mess of the aftermath! (As has Tiger, it must be said). So Terry plays on Monday at Hull, he gets booed every time he goes near the ball, then he does the "hush" thing to the crowd when he gets the chance. That'll solve it Terry, not much gets past you my Son.

Chelsea have been incredibly supportive, & told him he can have a break. After Feb 14th. (Too many important matches before then....).

But these boys have an army of parasatic advisers, & it just amazes me, they all get paid but do naff all.

Here's what they have each done in the "damage-limitation" area.

Terry has appointed a geezer called Phil Hall, who runs PHA Media's "Crisis & Reputation Management" Department. (WHAT??). He used to be Editor of "Hello", & before that - get the irony here - Editor of none other than the News of the World. Yes, THAT News of the World.....

Wayne has appointed Aaron Lincoln, of Icon Sports Management. You have to guess who's Agent he was until last August. Yup, spot on. John Terry.

Meanwhile, the delightfully innocent Vanessa has turned to someone guaranteed to keep everything hush-hush, the odious Max Clifford. Vanessa was conveniently pictured chatting confidentially with Max at a health farm on Monday. Asked afterwards, Max was shocked & outraged at the mere suggestion that he'd arranged for the photos - which were on sale to the Media at £2k a pop - to be taken. The very suggestion.......

The comparision you make with the South African President is interesting - in that Terry probably earns more than him.

The media are obsessed with these things. It's very hard to read "news" now, but frivolous & negative comment, which is so easy to compose - is everywhere.

Maenwhile, The Star today runs with a front page about Jordan. For the 38th consecutive day.

[bobby1]

There has been a recent episode to rank alongside Mr Terry, that of then manager Sven Erriksson who had a number of affairs when he was England manager. Amongst them staff at the FA, Swedish TV presenters etc etc. The FA's stance was that his private life was exactly that, now they have announced that Terry's future will be decided by the currrent manager, when they have already proven by their Sven stance it is ok to have as many girls as you want and still keep your job.

Interestingly enough Sky Sports are running an interview with Mark O Meara where they are asking him about Tiger Woods' personal life, what they falied to mention was that O Meara had a girlfriend that he left his wife for only last year. Seem s that affairs are ok if you are lower down the sporting ranks than the number one golfer.

[tikay]

There has been a recent episode to rank alongside Mr Terry, that of then manager Sven Erriksson who had a number of affairs when he was England manager. Amongst them staff at the FA, Swedish TV presenters etc etc. The FA's stance was that his private life was exactly that, now they have announced that Terry's future will be decided by the currrent manager, when they have already proven by their Sven stance it is ok to have as many girls as you want and still keep your job.

Terry runs so bad. If Sven was his Manager........

[titaniumbean]

There has been a recent episode to rank alongside Mr Terry, that of then manager Sven Erriksson who had a number of affairs when he was England manager. Amongst them staff at the FA, Swedish TV presenters etc etc. The FA's stance was that his private life was exactly that, now they have announced that Terry's future will be decided by the currrent manager, when they have already proven by their Sven stance it is ok to have as many girls as you want and still keep your job.

Terry runs so bad. If Sven was his Manager........

[Karabiner]

Max Clifford you say, I had heard on good authority that it was Max Moseley

[wormster]

it has now been reported that lingerie model Vanessa has been with at least 3 other chelsea players. maybe she was on a scouting mission for man utd!

 

[tikay]

it has now been reported that lingerie model Vanessa has been with at least 3 other chelsea players. maybe she was on a scouting mission for man utd!

 

Hi Steve.

Note the Media tag - "lingerie model Vanessa" (wink,wink). Invariably, the Media use the Mrs Merton-esque tag.

Hope all is well with you & yours.

[tikay]

A big day for blonde today, after months of gruesome & intractable mental torture.

Each day starts for me with fielding a batch of e-Mails from Tighty, almost always "you'd never guess what Aqua have done NOW". Compared to Tighty's mental anguish, mine is minor, & quite how Tighty has held the whole thing together I'll never know. And when he rings me, I dread it! Nobody else could have got us through.

Soon, the Aqua horror tale can be told. And what a tale it is......

But first, fingers crossed, we need to finalise something else, & after so much toing & froing, we have arrived. I think. A few 'phone calls today will sort it one way or another. I'll do the easy bit, the chatty person to person stuff, then it wil be left to the Titanic Tighty to tie up the nitty gritty detail.

I think - hope - we'll get over the line today, but whatever happens, I pay tribute to Tighty. We would not be here without him.

For me, I live in bright sunshine across at the other place, it just gets better & better for me over there. I've worked incredibly hard to earn my corn there, & I've achieved almost everything I wanted to, on-screen & off-screen. But I never found contentment, because the blonde cloud was always there, over my head, in the corner of my eye, behnd me, always threatening. You cannot begin to imagine the journey we've had.

I don't do revenge, what's happened has happened, life's too short. But if I ever found myself in Belize, my finger might just go straight in someone's eye. I'll never ever forgive them for the disgraceful & immoral tactics they used, & the dreadful spot they put us - Rich, Flushy & myself - in.

[tikay]

But it won't be Belize today, it'll be Cwmbran, in South Wales. The rain is drizzling down, the clouds are gloomy, so the M4 will be a treat, but I'll have Lisa Long & Rich Orford for company, so it's not so bad.

It's a "there & back" thing, as we need to be back here by 4pm.

I'm badly fatigued. My knee is incredibly painful, & I can't sleep properly because of it, & so I'm getting well grumpy.

Tomorrow will be an easy day, & Saturday will have the helter-skelter of two  Live Shows, back-to-back, the latter of which is a tough & technically complex one, & they both require a lot of pre-Show work, Forum Threads, research, all sorts.

After the Shows finish, just after 11pm, I have to do an hour of Forum work, then I'm driving home.

Sunday has worked out rather pleasingly. I've managed to wangle a trip to DTD to play the £150, which I've sort of half mixed with some SP business, as we need to do a bit of filming of some of our guys there for TP.  DTD, as always, have been most helpful, & given us somewhere to film, & 4 or 5 of us will play the Comp, & probz swap some %'s & L-L's, so I'm really looking forward to that. I went to Vegas with two of them last year - Ben & Dan - then there's an interesting charcter from Sheffield making his live Casino debut, plus Fatter, of Fat & Fatter fame. Will be a good day.

I was supposed to be in Hove this Sunday, as a sort of, err, Guest cum commentator at a National Pub League final, but I've had to cancel, which is really galling. I was booked to stay at Hickstead, & I so love it down there.

There really should be more days in the week.

[The Camel]

A big day for blonde today, after months of gruesome & intractable mental torture.

Each day starts for me with fielding a batch of e-Mails from Tighty, almost always "you'd never guess what Aqua have done NOW". Compared to Tighty's mental anguish, mine is minor, & quite how Tighty has held the whole thing together I'll never know. And when he rings me, I dread it! Nobody else could have got us through.

Soon, the Aqua horror tale can be told. And what a tale it is......

But first, fingers crossed, we need to finalise something else, & after so much toing & froing, we have arrived. I think. A few 'phone calls today will sort it one way or another. I'll do the easy bit, the chatty person to person stuff, then it wil be left to the Titanic Tighty to tie up the nitty gritty detail.

I think - hope - we'll get over the line today, but whatever happens, I pay tribute to Tighty. We would not be here without him.

For me, I live in bright sunshine across at the other place, it just gets better & better for me over there. I've worked incredibly hard to earn my corn there, & I've achieved almost everything I wanted to, on-screen & off-screen. But I never found contentment, because the blonde cloud was always there, over my head, in the corner of my eye, behnd me, always threatening. You cannot begin to imagine the journey we've had.

I don't do revenge, what's happened has happened, life's too short. But if I ever found myself in Belize, my finger might just go straight in someone's eye. I'll never ever forgive them for the disgraceful & immoral tactics they used, & the dreadful spot they put us - Rich, Flushy & myself - in.

If it wasn't for Blondepoker I doubt the other good stuff would have happened Tony.

[The Camel]

A big day for blonde today, after months of gruesome & intractable mental torture.

Each day starts for me with fielding a batch of e-Mails from Tighty, almost always "you'd never guess what Aqua have done NOW". Compared to Tighty's mental anguish, mine is minor, & quite how Tighty has held the whole thing together I'll never know. And when he rings me, I dread it! Nobody else could have got us through.

Soon, the Aqua horror tale can be told. And what a tale it is......

But first, fingers crossed, we need to finalise something else, & after so much toing & froing, we have arrived. I think. A few 'phone calls today will sort it one way or another. I'll do the easy bit, the chatty person to person stuff, then it wil be left to the Titanic Tighty to tie up the nitty gritty detail.

I think - hope - we'll get over the line today, but whatever happens, I pay tribute to Tighty. We would not be here without him.

For me, I live in bright sunshine across at the other place, it just gets better & better for me over there. I've worked incredibly hard to earn my corn there, & I've achieved almost everything I wanted to, on-screen & off-screen. But I never found contentment, because the blonde cloud was always there, over my head, in the corner of my eye, behnd me, always threatening. You cannot begin to imagine the journey we've had.

I don't do revenge, what's happened has happened, life's too short. But if I ever found myself in Belize, my finger might just go straight in someone's eye. I'll never ever forgive them for the disgraceful & immoral tactics they used, & the dreadful spot they put us - Rich, Flushy & myself - in.

If it wasn't for Blondepoker I doubt the other good stuff would have happened Tony.

That post wasn't meant as criticism, just hopefully to jog your memory this is pretty much where it all started and without it there might have not been all the cream, jam and scones.

[tikay]

I got my March "Show" shifts through yesterday, always a relief if you suffer from an apalling lack of self-confidence - "safe for another month" sorta thing.

We swap rotas every 3 months or so, & March 6th sees my 3 month Saturday stint end, so I'll have my weekends back for while, which I'll enjoy. Sort of.

The "shift swap" month sometimes costs a shift or two, depending on dates, but this one has worked out perfercto, with 7 Shows, including two of the Sky Sports simulcasts. Result! There's also a Live Day, at the Luton SPT, but I don't get "extra" for that, as it's covered by a 12 month Service Agreement, which assumes x days per month. The TV work & the other work are completely different Contracts, & it's handy to have several baskets to spread my eggs around.

And March is a lovely month - I love Springtime.

All good. I am way too happy today, something big & heavy is surely gonna hit me between the eyes, life is too good.

OK, Wales, & the dreaded M4 awaits. Still, we get to go over the magnificent Severn Bridge. I'll take some photos.

[tikay]

A big day for blonde today, after months of gruesome & intractable mental torture.

Each day starts for me with fielding a batch of e-Mails from Tighty, almost always "you'd never guess what Aqua have done NOW". Compared to Tighty's mental anguish, mine is minor, & quite how Tighty has held the whole thing together I'll never know. And when he rings me, I dread it! Nobody else could have got us through.

Soon, the Aqua horror tale can be told. And what a tale it is......

But first, fingers crossed, we need to finalise something else, & after so much toing & froing, we have arrived. I think. A few 'phone calls today will sort it one way or another. I'll do the easy bit, the chatty person to person stuff, then it wil be left to the Titanic Tighty to tie up the nitty gritty detail.

I think - hope - we'll get over the line today, but whatever happens, I pay tribute to Tighty. We would not be here without him.

For me, I live in bright sunshine across at the other place, it just gets better & better for me over there. I've worked incredibly hard to earn my corn there, & I've achieved almost everything I wanted to, on-screen & off-screen. But I never found contentment, because the blonde cloud was always there, over my head, in the corner of my eye, behnd me, always threatening. You cannot begin to imagine the journey we've had.

I don't do revenge, what's happened has happened, life's too short. But if I ever found myself in Belize, my finger might just go straight in someone's eye. I'll never ever forgive them for the disgraceful & immoral tactics they used, & the dreadful spot they put us - Rich, Flushy & myself - in.

If it wasn't for Blondepoker I doubt the other good stuff would have happened Tony.

That post wasn't meant as criticism, just hopefully to jog your memory this is pretty much where it all started and without it there might have not been all the cream, jam and scones.

Oh, don't worry Keith, I know that, & I know exactly what you meant. And you are completely right, blonde was the seed from which I, by most unexpected means, reaped quite a harvest. Bit there were a good few nettles & weeds to grasp, too.....

In truth, it all went wrong/right when Wendy left me, & I found myself retired, with nothing to do, with the only palative being work. Quite amazing how that turned out.

I could write this sort of waffle all day, I'm in a weird mood, but I gotta go.

[TightEnd]

to answer when you get back...what is in Cwmbran? You've been there before. Sky offices?