I have discovered a new vice. Like all vices it will pall soon enough, but right now I’m really rather taken. It’s the Champions League round-up programme on BT/ESPN, and it allows you to watch all the matches at the same time. But only the sexy bits. So you go from goal to goal to… [Read More]
Elephant stories and David Gower
Last Friday I did a gig for the World Land Trust with David Gower. Gower — former England cricket captain, should anybody need to know — has been a patron of the organisation since 1996; I am a council member. We had an audience at The Cut in Halesworth, in Suffolk and we did our… [Read More]
How to be patient
Not a subject on which my wife would consider me an authority. Yesterday I did a quick spot on the Today programme on that subject, with respect to Alastair Cook, the England cricket captain and his astonishing 14-hour innings against Pakistan. They embarrassingly called me Simon Barnes of The Times, but I rose above it…. [Read More]
A bitter old man
I reviewed a sports book the other week and expressed some reservations about it. The author – let’s keep him nameless – sent me a series of abusive emails. He concluded that I wrote as I did because I am a bitter old man. I was taken aback by this, and thought it advisable… [Read More]
Birding with Nicole Cooke
The first Brit to win the Tour de France wasn’t Bradley Wiggins. It was Nicole Cooke. She also won the gold medal in the road race at the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008. She and I were in contact about her feisty and hugely enjoyable autobiography The Breakaway. After I had written about it… [Read More]
Living in Hell
The trial of Oscar Pistorius is almost at an end. He was found not guilty of deliberately murdering his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, but guilty of culpable homicide; we would say manslaughter. He will be sentenced next month. The whole business had been deeply dismaying, because Pistorius was a hero… [Read More]
Knowing the Unknowable
Last week I did a charity gig for World Land Trust. David Gower was the star; Bill Oddie and I mostly asked the questioned. It was a good mix: Bill wanted to know why cricketers have such silly nicknames and what they actually ate during the lunch interval; I wanted to know how David played… [Read More]