Dr Nowt

The last time I drank Stella was on an empty stomach at a work do, Christmas '96. Wasn't my intention. My bus got me there a fair bit early so I had a couple of pints on my own. Our food then took literally hours to arrive, so several more before eating anything. Fatal. I was working for Next as a Xmas temp. My boss at the time thought he was Bob Mortimer. Sat lording it at the head of the table, lapping up the tiny bit of power and interest it gave him from temp girls half his age, pretending he couldn't hear them and leaning in close as he could for every word. Openly dismissive of any younger lads though, oddly enough. At one point some water bombs came out from somewhere and he said that if anyone threw one at him they'd get punched in the face. I exploded one directly onto his glasses probably less than 3 seconds after he said that. He didn't punch me, but did inform me he'd be immediately relieving me of my duties. I threw chicken fajitas all over him at that point. I was 19 and definitely being an absolutely horrendous fucking tit, so I've never drunk Stella again. Ever. Better to burn out than to fade away though. Smug little herbert.

Specifically, the clues that he was an absolute fucking tit.

"The process starts simple. Serge gets a demo and then we build on it, and then he mutates it with rocket fuel and liquid nitrogen and it's crisp and it's crack and it's smack," says Meighan of the steps taken to make a Kasabian song. "It's a dangerous, dangerous, dangerous, dangerous drug we've created. I can't get my head around it." Sounds like the clues were there all along if people had looked closely enough.

I can only hope that caused her some genuine pain.

Any chance we might ever see Nico tried at right-back with Trent taking Mo's role, purely as an experiment in games where members of the front 3 are being rested? I can't see he'd be anymore shoe-horned in there than Ox/Minamino/Lallana, or Origi is on the left. I know Mo and Sadio cut inside and make space for the full-backs, so it's a different kettle of fish entirely to Trent's current role. But, when we've watched square pegs ineffectually forced into round holes this many times whenever the front 3 aren't playing, I just wonder how much worse a lad with the 2nd most assists in the league from another wide position could really look there. Might be a drop down from Mo playing his own specialist role, but we get that anyway and surely at least our shape would be a degree or two closer to it's usual self. You can't imagine defenders exactly relishing facing a colt sprinting at them with Trent's distribution. When it would provide the opportunity of minutes to a class young lad breaking through at right-back to boot, can it be much worse than watching a central midfielder play out there and blunt the whole team's attacking threat yet again?

Lloyds. Little shop inside a dingy Arndale centre in a shit town, selling Spliffy, Dready and The Blitso Kids clothing. Always smells of hash. Has the mission statement 'For the journey'.

Yellow Pages. A book of some sort printed on yellow paper. Possibly a directory.

Benn’s post-fight interview against Eubank is probably one of the chief reasons I’ve always held the guy in the highest of esteem, win lose or draw. Now that is someone being a man about it, at the very highest levels. As a side note, when you watch any of those old classics, what a fucking unironically tremendous boxing commentator Reg Gutteridge was. Never been replaced.

Dennis Skinner gold. Won’t let me embed it, but worth two minutes of anyone’s time. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=27_uWz069XM

Have you ever seen the Sky programme where they trained as Roman Gladiators and took each other on in various trials of endurance? Even that’s magnetic. I’d watch those two play ludo against each other.