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Wayne Rooney charged with drink-driving – BBC News
Deadline day plus one, US Open tennis, Italian Grand Prix, Vuelta de Espana and yet this is the lead story on BBC Sport on line.
Priorities gone awry?
Bob Who?
Over the last 24 years I have appeared at more public events than I can remember, in eight nations, on three continents. My favourite part is always the Q&A section when the audience talks to me, rather than the other way around. Beyond a doubt one question has been asked more times than any other, so often that it’s pretty much obligatory at gigs.
‘If Bob Skinner is ever made into a TV series, who do you see as Bob?’
Over the years I have offered many answers. This thing has been going so long that when it started people were talking about Iain Glen as Andy Martin! Sean Connery, Liam Neeson, Idris Elba, John Hannah, (no kidding, Ian) Patterson Joseph, Clive Russell, Iain Glen as Bob Skinner, they’ve all been put out there. For a while I would suggest Peter Capaldi to audiences. Almost invariably they laughed. Then ‘The Thick of It’ happened and they stopped laughing. Mr Capaldi is too old now, so he has dropped off at my list.
To tell you the truth, I’ve never had a favourite. There has never been a stand-out candidate in my eyes. When Skinner did have a close shave with Yorkshire TV, they were thinking of David Morrissey as Bob. That might have worked, but it never happened.
But now, after all these years, I do. The scales have fallen from my ageing eyes.
My ideal Skinner has been around for a while, but nobody has picked him out, not even me, until very lately. Maybe a production company will have the same vision that I have. Step forward Sandor Clegane, aka The Hound . . . in real life, Rory McCann. He’s a big bloke, a genuine Scottish actor, hugely recognisable thanks to ‘Game of Thrones’ and he’s just the right age.
How about it?
Savage
Finally got round last night to watching the Oliver Stone film adaptation of ‘Savages’, by Don Winslow. (Do not be misled by a book with the same title, published recently by someone who either didn’t do his research properly, or did, if you get my drift.)
* Health warning *: there is a horrific beginning, and seriously graphic violence throughout. (Oliver Stone does not do subtle.) That said, somehow it all blends into a logical and very satisfying conclusion. The Blu-Ray includes an uncut version; I chose the theatrical version, but I plan to watch the other, not because I’m a sadist and want even more blood, but to see whether the endings are the same.
‘Savages’ is one of the few Winslow novels I haven’t yet read, but I decided to do the movie version first. Now I will find it difficult to read the original without the presence in my head of the magnificent Benicio del Toro, who steals the film out from under a very fine cast.
Around ten years ago, I read that Robert de Niro had acquired the rights to ‘The Winter of Frankie Machine’, another of Winslow’s ‘surfer’ novels, maybe his best. I thought even then that he was too old for the title part, so it didn’t surprise me when it was never made, but good news, the project has resurfaced, with William Friedkin hired to direct. News also that Fox have bought the rights to ‘Power of the Dog’ and it’s sequel ‘The Cartel’, to be produced by Ridley Scott.
Change needed?
Absolutely. The jury makes its decision on evidence led, but a max of two years for snuffing out a life? The law needs updating.
The future?
On the road in L’Escala this morning I travelled for a while behind a Tesla model S, all-electric, with Dutch plates.
Baking hot morning, but all the windows were open. Was this because the driver had switched off the air-con to save battery power? Whatever it made me wonder about the practicality of electric vehicles as they stand. My bruv-in-law has a Nissan Leaf, and is very pleased with it, but there is little need for air-con in Wooler, and he doesn’t test its range. Great, no doubt, for commuting, as long as the owner has charging facilities at home. But for a journey from Spain to Holland?
Tesla’s site suggests that some configurations can achieve a range of up to 400 miles, at 55mph with the air-con off. Switch it on and go a little faster, make allowances for an extravagant driving style, and that declines rapidly.
I have to admit that I’d fancy one of the beasts myself, but I doubt that I’d be bringing it to Spain. I hope that Mr Hollander has his return journey planned very carefully, and knows exact where the charging points are.
No!
I’ve just finished the best new read I’ve had this year, ‘Fatal Sunset’, the sixth in a brilliant series of crime novels featuring anarchist Valencia detective, Chief Inspector Max Cámara, the creation of my friend Jason Webster.
I had the pleasure of sharing a stage with Jason a few years ago, at Bloody Scotland. We’ve kept in touch and since then I’ve been following his career and that of Max, with great interest. There are three essential elements in crime fiction, location, characterisation and plotting, and Jason scores top marks in all three.
Each of the Cámara novels is a work of art, and there is very little that’s predictable in any of them, but the ending of ‘Fatal Sunset’ took even me by surprise.
Will there be another? Only Jason knows that, but hopefully his ever growing army of fans, will persuade him, and his fortunate publishers, that there must.
There’s not a team like the Progres Niederkorn . . .
I had no idea that Luxembourg football had advanced so far.
Tasteless
BBC Breakfast this morning made a child survivor of Grenfell Tower cry on camera then broadcast it, with the participation and apparent approval of her father.
The point being?
Trump lawyer targets poor for donations to fight Obamacare via charity that pays his family millions
Jeremy Corbyn calls for unity in Glastonbury speech
How many more times? He lost. He f*cking lost.
Empathy
Portugal forest fires: Three days of mourning for 62 victims
The Queen’s (hidden) Message
HM got it right again. There is a sombre national mood, after the Westminster Bridge attack, Manchester, London Bridge, and now the Grenfell Tower fire. Tragedies, all of them, occurring against the background of the most divisive und ultimately pointless General Election campaign in living memory.
At a time when we should be drawing together as a nation, we are being driven apart by the continuing political shambles and the petty point scoring that goes with it. That’s why this morning I find myself contemplating the unthinkable.
Nobody wants another election right now. Very few really want to see the Conservative Party doing a cheap deal with the fundamentalist wing of Northern Irish politics to retain a Commons majority. Therefore, given everything that has gone on recently and given what is to come in the near future, I wonder if the time has come to seek stability through a government of national unity, with the Tories and Labour declaring a truce and burying their differences for the period of a five year parliament, tackling the Brexit negotiations as a nation rather than a faction, and pursuing an agenda for all the people not simply for those on whatever side of the political divide comes out on top.
I don’t imagine that Mrs May would head such a government. She’s a busted flush. Neither could Jeremy Corbyn because he didn’t win the seats. But I could see him as deputy Prime Minister, behind a sensible, strong and acceptable Tory leader, for example, Michael Fallon. McDonnell as Chancellor, no. Vince Cable? Maybe. Home Secretary? Boris? Why not?
In five years normal hostilities would resume, but one would hope with the various parties showing more respect for each other than we have seen in the last two months.
Off the wall thinking, I know, but has its time come?
Update
This needs updating; delete ‘Leave’ and ‘Remain’, insert ‘Tory’ and ‘Labour’. This year the principle should be the same.
Bye
I’ve just deleted Facebook from my phone. The thing has become toxic. When you waken up on a Sunday and find a bloke who took the Daily Express shilling for years banging on about pro-Corbyn polls, it’s time to go.
Update
From the jaws . . .
It’s pretty obvious to those who did not know that neither David Cameron nor Theresa May were lawyers. Had they been, they would have been aware of the first law of cross-examination: Never ask a question unless you know the answer.
First Dave with his EU Referendum, which he thought he’d win handily. Now Theresa with the snap election that all the polls told her she would walk. The lesson? Unless you have it written in blood, take noting for granted.
It’s okay for Dave; he ran away from the mess he’d made, to trouser ridiculous sums of money on the high-level speaking circuit. Not so easy for Theresa; while she didn’t win the election she didn’t exactly lose it either. The Conservatives lost their absolute majority, nevertheless they won almost sixty seats more than the second largest party, and with the support of the DUP in Northern Ireland, and the continuing abstention of the Sinn Fein members, they seem virtually certain to form the next Government. Theresa could nail it down by sticking Vince Cable into the Treasury, a job he’d take for sure, as the LibDems have always been for sale to the highest bidder.
There were supposedly clever people on telly this morning, supposed experts, who declared that we have returned to the two-party state. They are idiots, because when no party can command a majority without the support or acquiescence of others, then manifestly that cannot be the case.
No question, Jeremy Corbyn fronted an excellent campaign . . . okay, he was helped by the political vacuum that the Tories presented . . . and he thumbed his nose at most of the tabloid media, but he didn’t win. There are people today who are trumpeting the result as the biggest upset since Clay beat Liston, but it isn’t because he came nowhere near to walking away with the title. This morning I heard the staff at Labour HQ singing ‘One Jeremy Corbyn, there’s only one Jeremy Corbyn’, but the majority of us are still thinking ‘Thank Christ for that!’ As for that smug smile that he’s been wearing for the last forty-eight hours or so, I prefer the sour-faced bastard that he really is.
When Labour come face to face with reality they will realise, that even though they captured and mobilised the youth vote, and rode on the crest of a wave, they are a stonking sixty-five seats short of an absolute Commons majority, and won one hundred and fifty seven seats fewer than did Labour under Tony Blair in 1997.
FACT: Labour under Corbyn is still not electable, not by a long way.
Yesterday, I said to a friend who is an elder statesman of the Labour movement, and who campaigned hard in what he always knew would be a losing cause, that I hoped to see his party rediscovering itself in the wake of this defeat. I still do, but I could say the same to my Tory and SNP friends. (I don’t have any Lib Dem friends.)
Theresa’s going to see the Queen in two hours. I’d love to be a fly on that wall.
Oz and son, on the trail
The promise will be kept: the third Oz Blackstone short, The Quasimodo Trunk, will be published on Amazon in ebook format next Thursday, June 15, and will be available for pre-order worldwide very soon. If you need to catch up, its predecessors, Born to be Wild, and The Last Chickenpig, are live and available in the same place.
Quintin Jardine's blog 