Nick Pearce writes in the Telegraph about the unveiling of the Great Britain football teams' fixture list for next year's Olympics -
"As neither team will play group matches at Glasgow's Hampden Park Scotland supporters may miss out on the unique experience of seeing Team GB perform on Scottish soil."
Does anyone want to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume this is a brilliant piece of ironic wit? No, didn't think so. This is the Telegraph we're talking about, after all.
The choice of Manchester and Cardiff is a bit startling, though - I had always assumed the English FA would want to keep their Greater England teams firmly confined to the Imperial Capital and Acknowledged Centre Of The Known Universe. Presumably they've calculated that Welsh supporters will at least be ambivalent about the whole enterprise - I don't think it's too outlandish to suggest that every GB kick of the ball at Hampden might have been greeted by a chorus of boos. It would have brought a whole new dimension to the term "home game".
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Someone once damningly said of Geoff Hoon - "I bet he thinks he's a great communicator". I think we can safely say the same is also true of James Murdoch.
Q. Do you exist, Mr Murdoch?
A. Mr Watson, it's important to, uh, acknowledge that, to the extent, uh, that discussions about whether I, uh, exist may or may not have, uh, taken place, I was not party to them. I was never told, uh, at any time that I exist - it's conceivable I may, uh, have been given a heads-up about rumours that, uh, someone had seen me around, but as I clearly testified to the, uh, committee earlier, that's not something I recall. The question of whether I, uh, exist or not is a matter for others, and it would not be, uh, appropriate for me to speculate, uh, at this time.
Craig Brown in Private Eye does a good James Murdoch.
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