Sweet Nothings

Everyone and his blog has something to say about The Wire, but I have to add my tuppence worth. Very seldom comes the time you can genuinely say something is The Best Thing... Ever in its field, but to say this about The Wire is almost selling it short. In a nutshell, here are the main reasons why we all agree it's so good: (1) It plays like a novel - the story builds up organically with no mandatory big action sequences or cliffhangers to end episodes. (2) It's brutally honest. Nobody is perfect, pretty much every character is morally compromised at some point, and institutions never operate the way they should do. Power always corrupts. (3) Completely believable characters, and terrific performances. A lot of the supporting cast are actual Baltimore natives, many of whom have been involved in escapades on which the characters are based. (4) It's one of those works where us fans end up jealous of newbies watching for the first time - they have all this magical stuff ahead

I went to use a cash machine at the local HSBC this lunchtime to find that the gentleman before me had left without taking his £10 in cash. He was already long gone when the money came out and I was left waving it in the air rather pointlessly as a queue of amused and bemused expressions stood impatiently behind me. I completed my transaction and handed the £10 back to a member of staff, despite one or two peoples' urgings for me to do otherwise, and then I remembered an article I read the other day. Apparently GMTV were recently compiling what I doubt was a balanced and well-reasoned report examining whether Britons are becoming more selfish and less inclined to help their fellow citizens. Part of this report involved candid camera-style secret filming where an actress fell down, pretended to be injured and waited to see if anybody would help, and predictably in these celebrity-saturated times they tried this set-up on Russell Brand. He ended up helping the lady in question, altho

"Jade Goody has decided not to tell her children that she has cancer as she does not want to scare them", reports http://www.digitalspy.co.uk . Somehow, love, I think they might find out.

There is a fine line between good-natured, sporting patriotism and aggressive, mean-spirited nationalism and at the Andorra-England match in Barcelona on Saturday (my first England away fixture) that line was crossed a bit too often for my liking. It would be ludicrious to tar all England fans with the same brush, but there were enough boozy hard-man types in that crowd who seemed to be itching for a ruck to make me feel very intimidated at times. The crapness of the match didn't help matters either. The "plucky" Andorrans played an unbelievably cynical brand of anti-football and too many of the English players either weren't good enough or totally uninterested (I'm honestly not trying to be controversial when I implore Frank Lampard never to play for England again.) Plus, the standard of Olympic stadia has clearly increased dramatically since the early 90s. It was amusing to witness the outrage of some fans who were not only forking out 10 whole Euros for a larg

I saw two young lads in Newcastle United shirts outside Kings Cross last night. Given the the current situation at the club - merely the latest chapter in a seemingly endless comedy of errors - maybe they had come down to London to try and "sort out" their pikey lager-chugging chairman Mike Ashley and his miniature chum Dennis Wise. The thought of this may not be funny, and I don't normally advocate violence, but after an utterly rubbish day yesterday it cheered me up no end. King Kev for Chairman!