I was lucky enough to be invited along to a very special event on Tuesday night. Seamus and Diane Dolan, proud parents of my recently married friend Mark, were leaving the Sir Robert Peel pub in Kentish Town after an amazing 32 and a half years in charge!

I thought it was a really special night. Special for all the family like Mark and his brother and sisters who had all grown up there, special for the community in NW5 for whom the pub (and the Dolans!) were clearly important, and special from Seamus and Diane who I hope got to see how much their time there meant to so many people. Seamus entertained the troops in a manner that made it easy to see where Mark gets it all from (they even hold the microphone in the same way). I hope the new gaffer can follow it up.

Just back from an excellent weekend in Liverpool visiting Alice.  Among the highlights was a tour of Anfield...


The Liverpool museum and tour was really good. The history of the club is fascinating and the tour is full of interesting tidbits. We saw the away team dressing room and our guide explained how LFC do everything in their power to make the away dressing room as unsuitable as possible: it's slightly too big and thus very echo-y, it's got no decent ventilation so it gets really stuffy and they've got the cheapest flooring the FA will alow! Apparently all teams do something like this for their visitors - charming! The guide also let us in to the half-time secrets of the stars as well. It's coffee and Jaffa Cakes apparently. Nice.





Most interesting was all the Bill Shankly related info. He really was an incredible man. The story I loved was about his instruction to the Liverpool team to duck slightly as they walk out of the dressing room door (which faces the away team room). The idea was that the visitors would think they were all giants and could barely get out of the room! Genius. It was great to touch the "This is Anfield" sign (another Shankly innovation). It was a shame we couldn't run on the pitch but we had a walk around and down to the Kop end.

We also visited the fascinating Williamson Tunnels, two cathedrals, the Tate and a great restaraunt that does the best French Toast this side of Canada. Good times. At home we relaxed with a bottle of wine, a DVD and the house speciality - Jimmy Floyd Hasselbank potatoes. Yum

xxx to Alice for being the hostess with the mostest.

 
- They won't walk alone
- A permanent state of flux
- Scumbag!
- Frankly Mr Shankly
- This is Anfield
- Liverpool has ace purple wheelie bins!

Great gig last night at a fantastic outdoor venue. It was a charming (if not exactly balmy) evening and Somerset House proved to have excellent agnostics.

Great set from B&S - almost none of my real favourites and yet full of old favourites. Go figure! They are SO much tighter as a live unit now than when they started out.

On the celeb. spotting front we spotted Graham Linehan co-writer of Father Ted and Black Books. I am not worthy.
  
 
- Stuart and Stevie close up
- Who booked the Madness tribute band?
 
Look at this... Andy the Hobbit 

The Butler Report has really got my back up. His Lordship seems to have done a thorough enough job, but once again Blair has got away with it and nobody is responsible for anything. It smells like another Establishment stitch-up to me. What really makes me mad is the issue of the JIC caveats not appearing in the government dossier. In other words, Number 10 "sexed it up". I heard one commentator saying that the warnings and caveats got lost somewhere along the way.
 
Got lost?
 
They didn't get lost. They didn't fall down behind the sofa or get thrown out with last week's Radio Times. Somebody took them out because somebody else wanted them taken out. That somebody else being Jonathon Powell, Alistair Campbell or their minions at Number 10. But nobody is to blame. It's all "collective misjudgement" or "groupthink". Grrrrrrr!
 
It's pretty obvious how this came about. We were going to war with Iraq whatever happened and the government was absolutely desperate to try and find something they could sell it to us on. It's obvious that WMD were not a real issue. I don't even think it was really about oil (although that's always nice to have). We went to war  because George W. and a coterie of neo-conservative advisors actually thought regime change in Iraq would be good for the war on terror. And we do whatever America wants us to do.
 
Can we please have an inquiry into that? 

A recap on recent events:

Mum is not so well. I'm afraid my mother's condition has worsened quite considerably in the last month. But she remains mentally as alert as ever and her fortitude and spirit continues to inspire me. I am going part-time at work to spend an extra day per week at home in Oxford.

Luxurious new flooring at 5 Scotts Road. Shepherd's Bush's most desirable bachelor pad [or should that be most-desireable-bachelor's pad - eh eh ;)] just got better. I've got a new carpet and it looks ace! So it's shoes off when you come round. At least until I've got a couple of major spills on there. Which wont be long.

Music. Went to see the fabulous Cheap Dates at the Borderline last night. They play a kind of alt.Country and it's fantastic. I'm never impartial where friends are concerned and as the band is choc-full of friends of mine I was always going to think they were great. But I honestly thought they were even better than great - fantastic was the word. It will be a travesty if they don't get the Fruitstock gig.

Sport. Played some cricket - won! Played some frisbee - lost. But I enjoyed both.

Comedy. Exciting developments on the showbiz front. A new impro show will be hitting the London stage later this year. You heard it here first...