It just doesn’t get any more exciting than this! England playing… errrrr… I think Switzerland at Wembley… tonight? Possibly tomorrow morning, maybe not. We’ve already qualified for the World Cup finals so one has to ask: who gives a fuck? Certainly not me. I’m not saying the World Cup is not without its thrills. Gareth Bale playing on Thursday night was incredible. Mainly because he was playing football rather than golf, but also because he reminded the world in general and those cynical, revolting, hurtful Madridistas specifically, just how fucking brilliant he is. And then there was Italy. Losing out on qualifying for the finals for the second consecutive World Cup! Incredible. They win the Euros and then lose to North Macedonia in their playoff match. If you can place Macedonia on an unmarked map of the world, I’ll give you 10 pounds. “In the area where Yugoslavia used to be-ish” doesn’t count. And this was just half of that country. The North.

So instead of football, you have to be more creative in your tv viewing. And I’ve found solid gold. Two bars of 24 carat. The first called The Troubadours. About the eponymous club in LA in the 60s which found an almost endless list of unknowns destined to become megastars. Gave them a platform. And at the time of the Beatles, the Stones and not much else other than thousands of wannabe ‘groups’, the Troubadour focussed on singer-songwriters. James Taylor’s first gig was there. Carol King. David Crosby. Elton fucking John. Joni Mitchell. All you needed was masses of talent and a six-string and you were headed for superstardom.

The second thing I found was about movie history, specifically, in the 60s. The time when everybody had just acquired their first tv and no longer needed the cinemas for entertainment. So the movies had to ‘up their game’ to produce something way outside of what tv could offer. And they started with West Side Story. The old one, obvs, the ‘proper one’. And then came Lawrence of Arabia, Spartacus and the Graduate. The latter of which is possibly the best movie of all time!!! Unanimously voted by me. But in Spartacus Kirk Douglas was the executive director as well as the star. The script was written by Dalton Trumbo. Who?? Yes, him. A brilliant scriptwriter who, in 1960, was among so many Hollywood writers who were blacklisted. Banned from working because at some point in their history they had joined the Communist Party, or had tea with someone who had been a member, and that was enough for ‘the McCarthy witch hunters’ to stop you working ‘in this town’. They carried on working but using other people to present their work as their own. They called them ‘Fronts’. You write a script and then someone not banned took the credit. But in Spartacus Kirk Douglas put Trumbo on the billing. Which was brave, honest and, I reckon, really cool.

So you see, there’s more to life than football. Certainly than international football.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx