I’ve been playing a lot of Football Manager recently – yeah I know, hear me out – and in the year 2022 the title will be decided between Manchester City, Aston Villa, Arsenal and Basingstoke. Except for the latter, that could happen. Aston Villa are probably the biggest club in the world, with tons of cash and multiple Champions League wins under their belt, Owen Coyle has done one hell of a job.

It’s all a bit far-fetched but it makes you think that few clubs stay at the top of the league for years and that generally the clubs at the top go around in circles. Kind of makes the whole point of Football seem futile… I probably won’t find a shortage of people to agree with me.

Even with that said, I’ll still endlessly rant at the manager’s decisions and enjoy surprise moments from under-appreciated substitutes.

I was put in a very awkward situation tonight.

We went to see Stewart Lee at the Hall for Cornwall and as expected he was on top form. The warm-up act however, got a mixed reaction to say the least. The fantastically German, Henning Wehn provided a surprising support act. I’ve only known him from Fighting Talk and was expecting someone else to turn up so it was a pleasant surprise.

He naturally got onto the topic of football and was building towards a tongue-in-cheek joke surrounding how the game, that used to be working class, is now out of the price range of the working class. He was building towards something before he mentioned the McCann story. Now I happened to be sitting on the row with two people, either side of me, who weren’t too pleased and didn’t understand that he was obviously building up to something. They started heckling him and he was visibly taken back by it. Eventually a few more people joined in with the heckles culminating in ‘You’re losing the audience’.

Now that’s not just any heckle, that essentially halts the whole gig. You can’t really come back with many retorts to that. To be fair he didn’t have any retorts to the original heckles and didn’t seem like he knew what to do. He froze up, never really finished that story and fumbled around with some props but he never got to finish what was, up until that point, a good set. It just goes to show how one line, one joke can be taken the wrong way and totally destroy any rapport with the audience.

I felt bad and talked to him afterwards and bought a DVD that he signed. So it worked out alright in the end. Still…

Tough Crowd

It’s the one day that people remember that pancakes taste nice, so I guess I should blog about that.

Bacon and maple syrup pancakes aren’t as bad as they sound, honest. I know we only have a few hours left but you should give it ago. Actually screw that, you can eat pancakes on any other day as well, I don’t think there’s a law against it.

Why not put bacon and maple syrup in that pancake you’ll make tomorrow?

Don’t worry this isn’t going to be of those I can’t be bothered posts, I would never do one of those. It’s just that after the rush that was our Nerv iPhone application – that we presented last Friday to a seemingly great response – it’s nice to get some time off. Normally between projects we get a good week off after the final deadline day rush, it’s quite lethargic.

However because this project’s deadline was at the end of the week we only had this weekend off before moving onto the next one. Actually I don’t mind that so much as it’s made me appreciate this weekend. Not that I’ve done anything interesting except for failing to go surfing, receive Stewart Lee tickets in the post, getting tipsy on way too much wine for a Sunday morning and making some damn good saves at football.

Oh, and Football Manager… but let’s not talk about that.

As per usual I didn’t know what to post about until I had a conversation. So rather than come up with something poignant or thoughtful I’m just going to relay a few facts.

The conversation basically had a few of us discussing celebrities we’ve met. While I don’t have anyone who has actually done something worthy of instant recognition – I once met Wolf and Falcon from Gladiators.

Except for that I haven’t really met anyone that famous. Well except for that time that Gus Poyet winked at me in the Majeski Stadium’s bar before a pre-season match.