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Personal attendance versus watching on TV: the debate continues …

Having spent my normal weekend sports-watching on TV I am going to add two critical logs to this fiery debate, namely adverts and pundits. Like many, I suspect the ad break in sports coverage is an opportunity to visit the loo, fetch a beer or a cuppa and do chores. Yet if you stay by the TV you [...]

April 1, 2025 // 0 Comments

The Tanner Report : Fulham 2 Spurs 0

The back stories to a dull game – the type you tend to get on an early Sunday kick off at 1-30 – were more interesting than the game itself. Fulham and Spurs’ best option for European competition is the Cup. Fulham might qualify if there are 8 European places in the Premiership but [...]

March 18, 2025 // 0 Comments

Towards Zero and White Lotus

These TV dramatisations on BBC and Sky Atlantic reflect the great divide between the two broadcasters. Time was when the BBC drama department produced such cutting edge plays as Cathy Come Home and TV playwrights like Dennis Potter, but Towards Zero was sterile. Having read every Agatha Christie [...]

March 12, 2025 // 0 Comments

Eubank v McKenna

Last night was something of a rarity: live boxing on free-to -air television. The Noble Art has suffered from satellite coverage and pay-to-view and I cannot be the only disillusioned fan. There was not much sport to watch so I switched on at 9.00pm for the undercard of Belfast Boy Michael Conlon v [...]

March 8, 2025 // 0 Comments

You could not make this up!

We should have a new topic category on THE RUST called “YOU COULD NOT MAKE THIS UP“. I spoke to a colleague who mistakenly believed that organising the redirection of mail from his partner’s old address to her new one might be a simple matter. It was so badly mishandled by Royal Mail [...]

March 7, 2025 // 0 Comments

The Boys Book of Soccer (1957)

At a garden fête last year I bought the above slightly fixed volume and interesting reading it made too. Of most interest were the league tables for 1955/56. In those days you  had a Third Division – north and south – from which only one team was promoted. Brighton, Ipswich Town, [...]

February 21, 2025 // 0 Comments

Ala Colthard/Signor Sassi & Jones Family Kitchen

Signor Sassi is one of those once fashionable Knightsbridge restaurants – you know, the sort where they have pictures of film stars and footballers on the wall? Situated in an alleyway off Knightsbridge it’s not the most accessible location but its signature dish of spaghetti all’ [...]

February 13, 2025 // 0 Comments

Super Bowl 2025

The Super Bowl poses many challenges. To the viewer, he/she must – if he/she wants to see it live – stay awake between the hours of 11.30pm and 3-30am. As it’s mainly an event, rather than a sporting spectacle of competitiveness, the commentary must cater for the casual as well as the [...]

February 11, 2025 // 0 Comments

Foreign detective writing

We tend to assume that only English-speaking writers can write detective novels. In Britain the genre is dominated by women – Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Marjoriec Allingham and recently Val McDiamid. In fact some interesting detective novels have been written by French writers and [...]

January 9, 2025 // 0 Comments

Surprising actors in a 1980 TV series

On Monday I watched Bergerac, now shown at 3.00pm on the UK Drama channel. It featured – as Belle Young, an eccentric boatowner and smuggler – the 1970s actress Judy Cornwall. Yesterday’s episode about a computer convention in Jersey also featured a computer nerd and mogul Jordan [...]

January 8, 2025 // 0 Comments

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