"I like that Katy Perry"

Boycott: I'm a good fan of pop music. I like that Katy Perry. She's a good singer, singing 'Firework' - that was a good record that. Yeah, I like the pop music.

Blowers: Well I have to bow to your superiority in this field I'm afraid. I'm not as fully conversant with those things as I really should be.

Boycott: Ah she's nice eh?

Blowers: You're probably going on her looks rather than her music.

Boycott: No, no I like her singing as well - she's good!

Blowers: Hahaha and who are your favourites in the pop world at the moment?

Boycott: Ah Katy Perry, definitely. Mmm yeah. She's tops for me. She's just there's something about her voice. Her voice is good, it's clear, it's strong.

Blowers: Well that's... wonderful. I'm sure she'll be very pleased...

Boycott: Haha I don't think I'll ever meet her Henry. Haha she's American.

Blowers: Well you might, you never know. After all Fred Truman's daughter married Raquel Welch's son. So anything is possible isn't it?

50 Worst footballers (to grace the top division)

The 50 worst footballers to have graced the top division

Originally published in the Times

50 Claus Lundekvam (Southampton)
Saints boss Gordon Strachan paid this glowing tribute to the one-paced Scandinavian in 2003: “He was carried off at Leicester and someone asked me if he was unconscious. I didn’t have a clue. That’s what he’s always like.”

49 Massimo Taibi (Manchester United)
United’s worst keeper ever – in a competitive field featuring Mark Bosnich. The Italian takes the prize for that dive over a shot from Matt Le Tissier, an all-time You Tube favourite. Watch that ludicrous blunder here.
 
48 Stephane Guiv’arch (Newcastle)
Milburn, Macdonald, Shearer and ... Guiv’arch! The World Cup winner never came close to that pantheon. Come to that, he’s lagging in Tyneside’s Hall of Centre-Forward Fame (they could call it Striker Grove) behind Cunningham, Mirandinha and Ameobi.

47 Jody Morris (Chelsea, Leeds)
Grew up at Chelsea with Dennis Wise as his mentor, and turned into the snidey kid brother everyone hates. Had all of Wise’s sly tendencies and penchant for a scrape, but none of the skill. Perfect acquisition for Leeds in 2003, then.


46 Nigel Quashie (QPR, Forest, Southampton, WBA and more)
Relegated four times with four clubs – and only narrowly avoided No 5 with West Ham last year.


45 Roque Junior (Leeds)
The execrable Brazilian arrived on loan for a few months from AC Milan in 2003, and did as much as anybody to shove Leeds towards destruction.


44 Sergei Rebrov (Tottenham)
Looked good enough playing alongside Andriy Shevchenko for Dynamo Kiev. Sadly, Glenn Hoddle’s £11m signing never looked the same force with Steffen Iversen.


43 David May (Blackburn, Man United)
The guy picked up Premiership winner’s medals with two clubs. But so did Larry Lloyd.


42 Larry Lloyd (Liverpool, Nottingham Forest)
See David May (No 43)


41 Bosko Balaban (Aston Villa)  
They said Deadly Doug was tight, but you can hardly blame him after Ellis fished £6m out of his humbug tin for John Gregory to spend, and the manager came back with the elusive Croatian. He never started a Premiership game and scored no goals.


40 Carlton Palmer (Southampton)
“He covers every blade of grass out there,” said Saints manager, Dave Jones. “But that’s only because his first touch is so crap.”

39 Claudio Marangoni (Sunderland)
The striker swapped the rolling pampas of Argentina for Wearside when he signed for a club-record £320,000 at Christmas 1979. One year and three goals later he went back home. Only Geordies were sorry to see him go.

38 Glenn Keeley (Everton)
Arrived on loan from Blackburn keen to show his mettle at the highest level. On debut in 1982, against Liverpool no less, he was sent off in the first-half, The Reds won 5-0 and he never played for Everton again.

37 Marco Materazzi (Everton)
Yes, he won the World Cup with Italy. But the lean centre-half couldn’t tackle a Sayers’ steak and kidney pie during his pointless spell at Goodison.

36 John Jensen (Arsenal)
Empires rose and fell in the time it took the bubble-permed Dane to score his first Arsenal goal. Searing pace, an eye for goal and a fierce shot were just three qualities he didn’t have.

35 Dean Austin (Tottenham)
The wafer-thin defender earned the wrath of the notoriously fickle Spurs support early doors, and never won them round. Even now, he featured strongly in a straw poll of Tottenhamites’ least favourite player ever to wear the white.

34 Ramon Vega (Tottenham)
The big Swiss was Dean Austin, with (cow) bells on.

33 Alberto Tarantini (Birmingham City)
Jim Smith went down the Spurs road and hired himself an Argentinian World Cup winner in the afterglow of 1978, but the Bald Eagle chose this dud left-back. Blues were relegated.

32 Gary Sprake (Leeds)
The Kop serenaded the hapless Welshman with “Careless Hands” when he threw another one into the back of his own net, hardly a unique moment for the accident-prone Inspector Clouseau of international goalkeeping.

31 Charlie Nicholas (Arsenal)
The much-hyped Champagne Charlie didn’t even amount to Pomagne Charlie at Highbury.

30 Darren Ferguson (Manchester United)
Tried to make a name for himself at Old Trafford in the early 90s, but it was already taken.

29 Winston Bogarde (Chelsea)
For all the good this expensive, non-playing flop ever did Chelsea, they might as well have signed foppish character actor, Dirk Bogarde. Or maybe they did and tried to cover it up.

28 Iain Dowie (West Ham)
Headlines that were never written: “It’s Iain Wow-ie!”, and maybe “Dow ya think I’m sexy.” Watch 
Dowie's "finest" moment with a classic own goal against Stockport County here.

27 Eric Djemba-Djemba (Man United, Aston Villa)
One Djemba would have been bad enough, but two of them was more than plenty.

26 Frank Sinclair (Leicester City)
Whatever the opposite of a purple patch is, Frank ‘Spencer’ Sinclair had one in August 1999. In two matches in August he scored two risible own goals, single-handedly costing his team three points. That month of mishaps alone earns him a place in the annals of infamy.

25 Steve Marlet (Fulham)
Mr Fayed didn’t rise to the top in business by not knowing the value of a pound. So mystery remains why he was persuaded to give Lyons eleven and a half mill for the misfit striker. Marlet’s ghost will haunt him to the end of his days.

24 Mark Dennis (Birmingham City)
There were rumours in the game that Dennis could actually play, and possessed a decent enough left foot. But the Blues’ anti-footballer was content to amass the game’s blackest rap sheet.

23 Torben Piechnik (Liverpool)
Graeme Souness faces the bad transfer tribunal again for the inexplicable purchase of the dithering Dane. English football was no picnic for Piechnik and he slunk back to Denmark in short order.

22 John Fashanu (Wimbledon)
Fash elbows his way into the list for a legion of crimes and misdemeanours inflicted on association football in the dubious cause of Wimbledon FC, topped by the assault which shattered Saint Gary Mabbutt’s eye socket.

21 Nikola Jovanovic (Manchester United)
Third-worst United centre-half of all time (see nos 5 and 6).

20 Jason Lee (Nottingham Forest)
“He’s got a pineapple on his head,” crooned fans all over the land in homage to the dreadlocked striker, who couldn’t hit a ruminant’s posterior with a stringed musical instrument. Watch a clip of Jason on Baddiel and Skinner's Fantasy Football League here.

19 Marco Boogers (West Ham)
He made his mark on English football, but only on Gary Neville’s midriff as a murderous tackle almost wiped out the United right-back. It was all downhill from there, as Mad Marco fled East London for a caravan park somewhere in the Low Countries.

18 Martin Jol (West Brom)
The Dutchman was away from school the day they taught the sophisticated tenets of Total Football, and the no-nonsense midfielder went on to spread mayhem across the midfields of England.

17 Nicky Summerbee (Manchester City)
The mid-90s City ‘winger’ earns his place on account of his singular running style. Arse stuck out in the fashion of a cartoon Mick Jagger, in Manchester derbies he made the ungainly Phil Neville look like Nijinsky.

16 Chris Kamara (Leeds)
For more than two decades Kammy has sported the perma-frizzed coiff of a 60s soul legend, but it failed to distract from a playing style long on effort, short on elegance.

15 Ade Akinbiyi (Leicester City)
Big Ade’s combined career transfer value would dwarf the national debt of an especially feckless banana republic, but he couldn’t buy a goal at Filbert Street after signing in 2000.

14 Micky Droy (Chelsea)
Nouveau Chelsea fans should know that their swanky club’s DNA contains the traces of lumbering 1970s dinosaurs such as Big Micky.

13 Steve Daley (Manchester City)
The poor bloke suffered from one of Man City’s periodic bouts of madness when they insisted on paying Wolves a record £1.45m for him in 1979, back in the days when £1.45m was £1.45m. He never looked close to matching the valuation.

12 Terry Hurlock (Millwall)
Graced Cold Blow Lane during The Lions’ unlikely late 80s spell in the top flight, and unleashed a short-lived reign of midfield terror. Hurlock, a one-man disciplinary crime wave, remains, unsurprisingly, a cult hero in Millwall-supporting enclaves of south London.

11 Billy Woof (Middlesbrough)
Even three decades down the road Boro fans are still convinced Billy only ever got a game because he was the son-in-law of John Neal, the manager.

10 Vinnie Jones (Wimbledon and more)
Told Kenny Dalglish he intended to bite off his ear and spit in the whole. And they said there were no characters left in the game.

9 Ian Ormondroyd (Aston Villa)
Nature’s prototype for Peter Crouch lived at the same lofty altitudes as his Villa Park successor, but perhaps lacked his touch and speed – so why did he play on the wing?

8 Andrea Silenzi (Nottingham Forest)
The Italian who looked much like a horse turned out to be a load of pony at the City Ground after his multi-billion lira move from Torino in 1995, and pips Justin Fashanu as Forest’s greatest transfer rick ever.

7 Li Wei-Feng (Everton)
Arrived as part of a buy-one-get-one-free deal that brought the not-too-bad Li Tie to Goodison in 2002. The Toffees should have left him on the shelf...

6 William Prunier (Man United)
The baldy Bordeaux triallist starred in a calamitous 4-1 defeat at Spurs on New Year’s Day 1996, and he was bundled back onto a plane to France the next day.

5 Arnold Sidebottom (Man United)
Ryan’s dad also bowled quickly for England, but the centre-half injected no discernible pace to the worst United team since records began.

4 Istvan Kozma (Liverpool)
Yet another Souness master signing – the abject Magyar cost £300,000 from Dunfermline in 1992 and played just three games for the Reds before Souey realised he’d made one more transfer goulash.

3 Gus Caesar (Arsenal)
“... painfully, obviously, out of his depth ... he looked like a rabbit frozen to the spot ... and then he starts to thrash about, horribly and pitifully...” not our words – those of ultra-loyal Arsenalist, Nick Hornby.

2 Tomas Brolin (Leeds, Crystal Palace)
Hard to imagine that Leeds United, normally a model of fiscal probity, paid £4.5m for the Swedish meatball in 1995. A good footballer treats his body like a temple. Brolin’s was a bouncy castle.

1 Ali Dia (Southampton)
Was he George Weah’s cousin? Was he hell! Neither had the impostor won 12 caps for Senegal, nor had he played for Paris St Germain. But it took Saints boss Graeme Souness a whole 52 minutes to suss he’d been had in 1996.

Something to make you happy #2

Seagull arrested

Conclusive CCTV footage of a seagull looting a Hackney branch of Greggs has lead to the first conviction from the ongoing riots. Barry Seagull (9) gave a guilty squark as he was taken down. Mr Seagull will serve 30 mins in a small room being chased around by an angry toddler.

Footage from Reuters (Bridport)

"Is this fun?"

As London descends further into chaos Sky News' Mark Stone crosses the line in The Day Today type journalese by asking rioters, "is this fun?"

Thanks to P Lewis of Bolton on sorting the wheat from the chaff on this one.

Oration station: GREAT political speeches (final) - Part 3

Geoffrey Howe, 1990

Sir Geoffrey Howe, resignation speech, House of Commons, November 1990. 

Sir Geoffrey Howe, deputy prime minister to Margaret Thatcher, resigned on 1 November 1990. His resignation speech on 13 November, a stinging rebuke of Thatcher's European policy, is thought to have been a catalyst to the prime minister's departure nine days later.

Howe drove the knife deep into divisions in the Conservative leadership, portraying Thatcher's attitudes to the European Monetary System as damaging for both country and party.

He is not generally regarded as a great orator -- indeed, Denis Healey once likened Howe's debating style to "being savaged by a dead sheep". Nonetheless, this statement to the Commons has entered the annals of momentous political speeches. It is seen as central to Michael Heseltine's race for leadership, and the vital first step towards reconciling that "tragic conflict of loyalties" which had driven Howe from the cabinet.

"The tragedy is -- and it is for me personally, for my party, for our whole people, and for my Right Honourable Friend herself, a very real tragedy -- that the Prime Minister's perceived attitude towards Europe is running increasingly serious risks for the future of our nation. It risks minimising our influence and maximising our chances of being once again shut out.

I believe that both the Chancellor and the governor are cricketing enthusiasts, so I hope that there is no monopoly of cricketing metaphors. It is rather like sending your opening batsmen to the crease only for them to find, the moment the first balls are bowled, that their bats have been broken before the game by the team captain."

The Labour councillor and blogger Bob Piper says: "This speech, though lacking the oratory of Obama, King or Kennedy, was superbly crafted and hit its target right between the eyes. Two weeks later, she was gone. A joy to behold."

And the blogger Cath Elliott says: "Maybe it's not a great speech as far as speeches go, but it was certainly historic -- an event that a lot of people remember with great fondness."

Robin Cook, 2003

Robin Cook, resignation speech, House of Commons, March 2003.  

In March 2003, Robin Cook resigned from the cabinet, saying: "I can't accept collective responsibility for the decision to commit Britain now to military action in Iraq without international agreement or domestic support."

He received an unprecedented standing ovation from fellow MPs on all sides of the House, for what Andrew Marr described as being "without doubt one of the most effective, brilliant resignation speeches in modern British politics". In it, he offered a prescient critique of the case for war, in particular the likely casualties and the assessment of Iraq's military threat.

Cook died of a heart attack two years later. The epitaph on his gravestone reads: "I may not have succeeded in halting the war but I did secure the right of parliament to decide on war."

"Why is it now so urgent that we should take military action to disarm a military capacity that has been there for 20 years, and which we helped to create?
From the start of the present crisis, I have insisted, as Leader of the House, on the right of this place to vote on whether Britain should go to war. It has been a favourite theme of commentators that this House no longer occupies the central role in British politics. Nothing could better demonstrate that they are wrong than for this House to stop the commitment of troops in a war that has neither international agreement nor domestic support."

The blogger Sarah Ruth Webster says: "I remember feeling a mixture of exultation -- that a prominent MP was finally saying what seemed so painfully obvious about the push to war -- and massive despair that these things could only be said on the way out from the cabinet."

The blogger Tom Miller says: "A man had been pushed from the centre of government to its margins, and had to leave a government he had believed in. His speech comprehensively destroyed the arguments for war, for unilateralism, and for violation of international law. The Telegraph called those against the war 'useful idiots'. Now the majority accept that Cook was right."

Oration station: GREAT political speeches (final) - Part 2

Hugh Gaitskell, 1960

Hugh Gaitskell, speech on nuclear disarmament, Labour party conference, October 1960. 

 

Hugh Gaitskell gave this speech at the 1960 Labour party conference as leader of the opposition. In it, he attempted to prevent the party from calling for unilateral nuclear disarmament, and see off critics within Labour who sought to get rid of him for being too right-wing.

The party was deeply divided over the issue, and in this case, Gaitskell lost the vote against the neutralist, pacifist wing of the party. Although he accepted that the battle was lost, Gaitskell put all his energy into this tour de force, in which he roused his supporters to "fight, and fight, and fight again, to save the party we love". The visible exertion he put into speaking left him sweating profusely.

The speech was met with a mixture of boos and cheers from the crowd. Although he lost the vote this time, the decision was reversed the following year.

Andrew Neil identifies the speech as "one of the great moments of modern British politics". Gaitskell -- a figure who commanded huge respect within the party as well as outside it -- died three years later, leaving the leadership open for Harold Wilson.

"We may lose the vote today, and the result may deal this party a grave blow. It may not be possible to prevent this, but there are some of us, I think many of us, who will not accept that this blow need be mortal: who will not believe that such an end is inevitable. There are some of us, Mr Chairman, who will fight, and fight, and fight again, to save the party we love. We will fight, and fight, and fight again, to bring back sanity and honesty and dignity, so that our party -- with its great past -- may retain its glory and its greatness."

Vernon Bogdanor chose this as his favourite speech: "Gaitskell lost the vote but won the argument, impressing himself on the country as a leader of courage and honesty. He would have become prime minister in 1964, probably with a majority larger than Harold Wilson's, but for his untimely death in January 1963.
"Gaitskell was a revisionist and a precursor of New Labour. He sought a party in thrall neither to ancient doctrines of public ownership nor to modern doctrines of unregulated markets."

Margaret Thatcher, 1984

Margaret Thatcher, Brighton bomb speech, Conservative party conference, October 1984. 

 

Margaret Thatcher was actually awake, working on her speech to conference the following day, when an IRA bomb went off at the Grand Hotel in Brighton at 2.54am on 12 October 1984. The intention was to assassinate the prime minister and her government as they gathered for their party conference. Five people died, included the Conservative MP Sir Anthony Berry; 34 others were injured.

Thatcher and her husband, Denis, escaped unhurt. Living up to her "Iron Lady" reputation, she gave an impromptu interview to the BBC at around 4am, as she was escorted from the building, in which she insisted that the conference would go ahead as usual. Marks & Spencer was persuaded to open early to allow those who had lost their clothes in the blast to get new ones, and the conference went ahead at 9.30am as scheduled.

She rewrote her speech and delivered an impassioned and heavily revised version on 12 October, the day before her 59th birthday. Her defiant delivery received a rapturous reception in the conference hall, and a poll that month found her personal approval rating up from 40 per cent to 50 per cent. The Tory lead over Labour grew from 1 per cent to 12 per cent.

Her defiant message was thus:

"The fact that we are gathered here, now -- shocked but composed and determined -- is a sign not only that this attack has failed but that all attempts to destroy democracy will fail."

Neil Kinnock, 1985

Neil Kinnock, Militant speech, Labour party conference, October 1985. 

 

In the early 1980s, the Militant movement's influence on the Labour Party was at its peak. Believing its influence to be growing and thus damaging Labour's attempts to oust Margaret Thatcher, Neil Kinnock launched a stinging attack on fellow party members at this conference.

Without actually referring to the Militant movement by name, Kinnock attacked the far left, and principally Liverpool City Council, for causing "grotesque chaos". He went on to emphasise that this was "a Labour council -- a Labour council".

His successor John Smith called it "one of the most superb political performances I've ever seen". Kinnock had already made a reputation as an orator before becoming Labour leader with his "I warn you" speech on the eve of the 1983 election.

"I'll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far-fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code, and you go through the years sticking to that, outdated, misplaced, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council -- a Labour council -- hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers . . .
I am telling you, no matter how entertaining, how fulfilling to short-term egos -- you can't play politics with people's jobs and with people's services or with their homes."

Anthony Howard says of the speech: "He was presenting himself as a figure willing to sacrifice his popularity among his party's left wing in favour of the national interest. Although Labour lost the next election, Kinnock's speech altered the lay of the land in British politics; David Owen later told me that he knew the SDP was done for after watching this speech."

Peter Jay says: "The speech profoundly influenced perceptions of Kinnock by those outside the political bubble, making a much wider audience aware that he had the courage and determination to stand up to the loony left, whereas so many Labour leaders had been beholden to it."