Personality clash

ONE way or another, I’ve worked with Peter Spencer for seven years. I can confirm he’s very enthusiastic about sport. So enthusiastic, in fact, that he once texted me at 6.57am with some story ideas for the next day’s Manchester Evening News. Let’s just say that I didn’t respond straight away.

Another article about poppies

ACTUALLY, before I start on about the poppy fiasco and the unwanted side-effects of media campaigning: a confession. If there is to be an award for the least successful newspaper campaign of 2011, it should probably go to me.

(That’s enough. Ed.)

A TRULY great football match makes you want to go out straight afterwards and have a kickaround with your mates. It’s lucky, then, that Formula One does not inspire a similar reaction, otherwise Jenson Button’s brilliantly dramatic last-lap victory at this weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix would have hundreds of people out on Britain’s roads right now attempting potentially-lethal overtaking manoeuvres.

(Although if my experiences of driving on the M60 are anything to go by, the British public don’t need the excuse of a great Grand Prix to start driving like Michael Schumacher with a cob on.)

The important things in life

THE internet tells me it was 1995, which sounds about right. I was a sheltered teenager who had just started listening regularly to Radio One, which to my naïve ears seemed impossibly edgy compared to local commercial radio’s diet of phone pranks, DJ patter about dubious surveys culled from page 26 of the Daily Mirror, adverts for Charnock Richard Cycles and endless timechecks. (It’s 5.41.)

Gag reflex

A NATIONAL newspaper, which I won’t name, once ran a feature across two pages with a headline along the lines of: “Why all this fuss about Big Brother?”

I realise I’m leaving myself open to similar charges of moral hypocrisy for what I’m about to write, so I can only hope that you indulge me.

But I don’t much care if Premier League footballer X has had an affair with game show contestant Y or not. Cheating on your wife/husband/partner is an unpleasant thing to do, but it’s not illegal.

David Gower’s sporting googly

TIMING is everything. Just as the grumblings get louder over Stoke City’s potential ‘lose and you win’ route into the Europa League, a leaflet drops through my letterbox proclaiming the UK political voting system should be kept simple, like sport. Whuh?

Capitalism vs homosexuality

THIS, then, is how a capitalist society works: A useful wicketkeeper-batsman, who has played one-day cricket for England, publicly reveals he is gay, no doubt after a great deal of personal agonising. And within 48 hours, William Hill starts taking bets on when a Premier League footballer will come out.

Here’s who won’t win Sports Personality of the Year

NOT being an expert on women’s golf (or much else), I didn’t know anything about Catriona Matthew until last night. But that’s the magic of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award nominations list – possibly the only one put together with the help of both Zoo Magazine and the Yorkshire Post.

2008 slightly skewed: October to December

MY ad-hoc, hotch-potch look back at 2008 concludes, picking out my favourite bits and leaving the strawberry creams for someone else to digest.

2008 slightly skewed: July to September

MY random and heavily-biased review of 2008 reaches July, as I reach for a couple of segments of chocolate orange. Mmm, tasty.