Exclusive: Chelsea’s New Signing

The biggest news of deadline day broke as Carlo Ancelotti unveiled the latest addition to his Chelsea squad at Stamford Bridge today. Kevin Pietersen has been signed on a free transfer from Hampshire.

Pietersen explained that there had been little hesitation in his mind once the offer had been tabled. “I had no choice. Middlesex was out of the question because the Jubilee line can be murder in the mornings. And I decided against Surrey because the traffic can be quite awful on Vauxhall Bridge. Chelsea was the only option as the ground was within walking distance of my home”.

He added that “the facilities here for getting down the gym and looking at yourself in the mirror are second-to-none”.

Pietersen left Hampshire earlier this summer, citing the issues created by his yearly commute down to Southampton. The journey is notoriously hard-going with a complete lack of Little Chefs, and only one KFC coming at the Fleet Services.

New team-mates Pietersen and Lampard: A Match Made in Self-Regarding Heaven

Ancelotti answered those who queried the recruitment of a cricketer into his Premiership squad. “It’s not a problem. It’s not like he’d play anyway. And besides, I’ve seen him in the field for England. He’s probably better than Hilario”.

Shifting the Goalposts. And Defenders.

One tiny little goal scored in this week’s Champo League semis may seem a paltry morsel compared to the veritable KFC Family Feast of football we’ve been served up in recent weeks, but for me it represents a comforting return to the stolid tactical fare that is normally dished up, particularly on the European stage.

Don’t be mistaken, I like goals as much as the next fan. And I have slurped up the recent action like a greedy toddler with his milkshake. But my entertainment is laced with strange brand of paranoia. That the current pandemic of defensive incompetence is part of a hideous conspiracy to make football a more palatable prospect to a global audience.

The inane defending from normally solid yeoman such as Terry, Vidic and Skrtel suggested that they were now beholden to a restraining order stating that they are not allowed within ten yards of a would-be attacker. And was an electric circuit wired around Petr Cech’s frame which completed when he laid two hands on the ball thus delivering an unpleasant shock?

Similar thoughts resurface every time there is a freakish upsurge in goal-scoring – which happens more regularly than you think. I am never quite sure who is responsible for these sinister edicts but this is paranoia. It’s not supposed to be rational. It wouldn’t be paranoia otherwise. It would just be thinking.

Happily, normal order was resumed this week. The plot has failed, and cagey football has won through again.

Or maybe it was simply a failure with the circuitry on Cech’s electrokit.

Good Night With The Viennese

There are two World Darts Championships in the sporting calendar and they happen virtually simultaneously just after Christmas. It creates a kind of darting chemical reaction, the primary result of which is a massive surge in interest in the sport. Visit any good sporting emporium in the New Year and the darts will be flying out of the door. So watch yourself.

It’s the reason why Great Britain is so rubbish at the Winter Olympics.

My friends and I are impressionable folk: we get caught up in the whole craze. So we get tooled up with our arrows and head down to the nearest suitable establishment. Which is the Princess Alice pub on Commercial St in East London.

We were down there other night cheering on a 59-dart finish or a checkout of 4, when I became aware of a pair of unsavoury-looking types lurking near to the oche. They looked suspiciously at us: and it didn’t seem to be just the standard of darts.  Worried speculation grew amongst our mob that we may have inadvertently stepped on the darting manor of some latter-day Krays. Or more frightening still, Mitchells. So we hurriedly finished our game and waved them onto the dartboard. It transpired then that they weren’t Cockney gangsters at all. They weren’t even from London.

They’d flown in that afternoon from Vienna on what they called their ‘London Dart-Exkursion’, which roughly translates from the Austrian as ‘a trip to London to play darts’. And they were catching the night flight that evening back from Stansted to their homeland.

They wanted to play in the East End: they considered here to be the cradle of darts. So they found the Princess Alice on the internet and over they came. I think they expected wall-to-wall dartboards and possibly Eric Bristow somewhere in the vicinity. Instead they found one mouldering board and me, who had just thrown 27 darts at double one. And it’s my favourite double.

I hadn’t realised that there was a tradition of darts in Austria, but I had a peek on Wikipedia and there’s an entire category page dedicated to ‘Austrian darts players’. Admittedly I’ve never heard of any of them, including the improbably-named Didi Burger, who I’m sure I ate once in KFC.

Eventually we joined our continental comrades in a game and I was pleased to discover that they were equally as inexpert as us. Kinship in incompetence.

We promised to visit their website. They explained that they’d only had one hit in three years. Which is the sort of the point of this post. I reckon with the volume of traffic that this blog gets we can at least double that. So here it is.

You can check out the photos of the night. Some of the pub. Some of the action. Some slighty suspicious ones of girls who don’t look as if they know they’re being snapped. And one of some crocusses. Of course.

Burns Night

A world without Woolworths is one thing. But life without Emmerdale is a bleak dystopian vision that even the most pessimistic futurist would have difficulty comprehending. Slightly overdramatic possibly, but news that ITV is closing its Kirkstall Road studios in Leeds will be sending shockwaves through sitting rooms the nation over. But despite the cutbacks, filming continues and the doors of the Woolpack remain open. And the viewing punters keep pouring in.

However the Sunday night staple of Heartbeart has been told go and put its feet up and have a cup of cocoa: production has been suspended. The plan is to broadcast the stockpile of episodes already in the can and then resume filming in sunnier economic climes. But the denizens at ITV should be wary of prolonging the break too much: sometimes absence does not make the collective heart grow fonder.

The Krypton Factor returned to the screen in January after 13 years and ITV sounded the trumpets in fanfare: “we are taking a brilliant format and bringing it bang up to date with state-of-the-art technology.”

Amazing. My first thought was how this new technology was to be applied to the response round: that part of the show where the contestant was required to land a plane or a helicopter or a space shuttle using a flight simulator. I had visions of some whizzo virtual reality concept where competitors fought against evil aliens in a massive intergalactic scrap. Instead we got nothing. The round was scrapped.

I see no reason why the production team couldn’t have removed the tarpaulin off the old simulator and given her another spin: the response round was strangely riveting and had huge comic potential. I remember sobbing with laughter watching one confused contestant ignore the runway completely and career off into the stratosphere perhaps to an attempt a lunar landing. A laudable, if misjudged, game plan.

The observation round was also entertaining. It was usually based on a specially-made skit starring Tony Slattery or Bob Carolgees or some other god of the televisual pantheon. For the new series they have just raided the ITV archives to use clips from favourites shows of the recent past. I’ve heard there’s a few spare episodes of Heartbeat in case you’re interested.

The assault course has returned as well, and was hyped up as “iconic, menacing and 100% entertaining”. Which is true. If you consider a man slowly climbing up a tree to be iconic and menacing. I’d rate it as 47% entertaining. The lack of physical prowess among the contestants makes it feels like you’re watching a team-building weekend for an insurance company.

The essential problem with the Krypton Factor is that it has been brought back on a budget. It makes you wonder why they bothered. I assume that ITV banked on the original magic of the show adding the requisite lustre without having to throw money at it. It’s slightly like renewing your wedding vows at KFC.

And of course the most ingredient was missing: Gordon Burns. Bring him back and the audience ratings would go the same way as that lady in flight simulator: into orbit.

Burns. Immaculate.