Wouldn’t it be nice if Cardiff City took the FA Cup out of England on Saturday?

Nothing against Portsmouth because if they win it takes it out of the big 4.

Me though?

I’m with my Celtic cousins.

“Fingers twitch over keyboard.

Mind wanders off to the wildreness of Arran.

As the prospect of conflict weighs heavy.

On the soul.

Bring it on.

The Auchrannie Quaich.

To the victor.  The spoils.”

Yes.  I’m off in search of the trophy.  Shame I’m pish at golf.

I will, of course, win best dressed man.

Ok.  Let’s get Raef out of the way early.

He dressed up like this…

…to sell thongs.

Prick.

He said “People who are size 16 are that size for a reason, because they eat cake.”  Well, as Marie Antoinette said “Let him eat cake.” Tittyboy. (She didn’t say the last bit).

Aside from that he was just your average run of the mill, run of the mill posh contestant.

Lucinda, on the other hand, rises above her poshness increasingly and is my current idea of the winner.

Claire has been on a “debooting” regime and is becoming not only marginally likeable but a contender too.

Michael Sophocles however is the real villian of the piece this, and pretty much every, week.

When, having gained a six hour “passion” for selling Wedding cakes, someone said no to his extremely hard sell approach that lacked entirely in sympathy, he exclaimed “You’re making a mistake.  I mean God above…” and then gave the camera a wee insight by claiming they were all “dum dums.”  Takes one to know one Michael.

Frankly there is only one word for this tosspot.

“Goodbye.”

I don’t like this little nyaf very much.  He has a habit of making you want to punch him, very hard, very often, in the testicles and follow that up with a bit of bashing them between breeze blocks.

Sarah had to go, in due course, but not this week.

Her only crime was averageness.

Whatever.

After all the fuss about referee Mike McCurry’s performance in the Rangers v Dundee Utd match last Saturday the SFA is in no position to defend his behaviour as this photo of the linesman demonstrates.

Doh!

Apparently a West Lothian councillor has had to apologise after claims she referred to Fauldhouse as a town of inbreeds.  Hailing from Broxburn, Councillor Ellen Glass was in safe territory as it takes one to know one.

Although I guess I shouldn’t say that as half of my family originated from Broxburn.

Apparently she raised the issue at a health meeting, saying she was worried because of inbreeding in the town, before being told to “shut it” by her colleagues.

What a cracker.

I’ve been itching to write about this for months but have been worried about displaying political niaivety. However, even I cannot be accused of that in the face of Wendy Alexander’s kindergarten politics

It would seem that in attempting to raise a referendum bill she is simply not permitted to do so by Holyrood protocol because Smiley Alec Salmond beat her to it! Now that’s a silly wee mistake to make. Just like accepting £900 of unrecorded political support was.

But by taking a personal independence agenda into the public domain at total odds with the Labour party in Millbank she has managed to piss off Gordon Brown and most of the National Executive of the Labour Party, the Scottish Labour Party, John Prescott, The Lib Dems - who may or may not be Labour’s allies - and most amusingly of all, the Scottish Tory Leader, Annabel Goldie, who sees her behaviour as tantamount to destroying the Union.

Needless to say Alex Salmond must think he’s died and gone to heaven.

But what underpins this ‘car crash’ politics? I think it must be ego. She is well known for having zero people skills and has dodged and ducked her way through political minefields for a while and bottled a leadership contest with Jack McConnell.

She’s just not good enough. Intellectually brilliant perhaps: as the author of the Smart Successful Scotland strategy I have to say I admired the way in which this document seemed to lucidly capture the issues facing the nation. But her job is not an academic one, it’s a political one and politics appears to be the least of her talents.

A bit of a handicap as a party political leader.

You know what Wendy?

As Sir Alan should be urging Big Goggsy to say…

“You’re fired!”

This was the scene that greeted us on the first at Dundas Parks Golf Course today as we teed up for the Club championship doubles.

Frankly, it was uninviting.

But we didn’t hesitate. Twice we had to come off the course as the lightning pelted the course left right and centre. But the game must go on.

And, sure, it rained a bit.

A lot actually.

Like Gladiators. myself and Dick Whittock, a nice older guy from Kirkliston (known locally as Cheesetown) built up a two hole advantage, ground out over the first ten holes only to play like a couple of fannies on the 11th to go back to one up.

By the 13th it was all square as Trevor Jones sank putt after putt. And his playing partner, Douglas was rock solid throughout.

And level was how it remained until the 17th when they snuck into the lead. The damage was done. A half on the 18th meant dreams of trophy lifting in the Greensomes will have to wait until 2009.

Bummer.

This is brilliant.  Click on the interview panel on the BBC sports page at this link.

Craig Levien, Dundee Utd’s manager, letting off steam after losing a crucial game to Rangers today. Now, when I say letting off steam I mean totally losing it. I like and respect Craig Levien - even if he is a Jambo - and I know exactly how he must feel

And oh what joy to find this old school photo of him on google…

And this one…

Yes, that’s right. It is yours truly on the left. A vision in black. And not overly gaylordish.

Now, we all know that referees favour Celtic and Rangers, but according to Levien, Mike McCurry’s performance today was nothing short of a scandal. He calls him a cheat - which will get him in big trouble with the numpties that run our game - but he is almost certainly right. I haven’t seen the incidents in question, but judging from this outburst I think he probably has a point.

Listening to discussion about it on Five Live’s 606-phone in a Rangers fan brushed it off by saying…

“They’re getting all excited about this one game. Maybe if they’d tried this hard all season against lesser teams this would be less of an issue.”

A neat body swerve I have to say, but, you know what? Totally true!

And that applies to every other team in this shitty league.

And Hibs are no exception.

They turn up for the old firm and Hearts matches and don’t bother their arses against the likes of Aberdeen, Motherwell, St Mirren…

That’s why I don’t go along any more.

I was delighted with some recent shots I got of the Rail Bridge with a foreground of oil rapeseed.

Until that is, my Mate Doug Cook stuck one in the back of the net.

This is great photograh by anyone’s standards.

I rather like this ad to encourage kids to cycle to school.  It made me laugh out loud when I saw it.

The target audience, of course, will hate it because they won’t empathise with the geek in the shot.

I think the research was a bit misplaced too because we all know that green and yellow are Catholic School colours (indeed this was my school uniform at Holy Cross) and the ginger hair of the wee lad also has massive catholic symbolism.

Not smart.

Breaking news.

Based on Rudyard Kipling’s iconic poem the new Irn Bru commercial has landed. Set in various locations across Scotland and somewhere abroad it features some lovely vignettes. Some work brilliantly, like the Loony Dooking pensioners (at 33 seconds) which struck a real chord with me, also the kissing Celtic and Rangers fans, the despondent Scotland fan with his wee lassie and the way folk choose the wrong descriptor for their meal times are all great.

Others are  less succesful and I’d question Martin Compston’s voiceover.

But three cheers for the choice of South Queensferry for two of the settings!

I feel the whole campaign suffers from being shackled by a weak strapline. Phenomenal does nothing for me. It’s unphenomenal frankly.

Overall it’s a nice, rather touching return to form.

But judge for yourselves.

]

I have supported Rangers’ dogged and boring progress through Europe but I am not, repeat not, a closet Hun. And they couldn’t have achieved it without ripping the guts out of The Hibees first 11.

This is funny. Thanks Mike.

One thing I am 100% behind them on is condemnation of the stance that the SFA have done nothing to further the cause of the Scottish game.

Exactly.

SFA.

Here’s another two that James McLaughlin did when he should have been working - if he was working late. Outstanding

So’s this. Damn. I’ll need to think of some myself.

made by sftekbear

Originally uploaded by boyshapedbox.

Kenneth Fowler pointed me in this direction via his blog. It’s a really funny set of Flickr ‘artworks’ on boyshapedbox’s Flickr sirte and turns well known songs, like this one, into graphs, Pie charts and the likes. Hugely clever and rather amusing. Well done Boyshapedbox. Check it out by clicking on the image. It’ll take you straight through to his Flickr site.

There are over 100 of them.

I told you this was a great event.  Particularly because Alfredo Marcantonio showed us a reel of commercials that were all low budget but brilliant.  Here are a few of them.

I’d never seen this VW Karmann Ghia ad before but it really is a classic.

]

He showed this too.  Which made us all laugh.

And this cracker for Carling Black label.

He showed a different ad from this one for the x show.  But this is a pretty good alternative…

Is Walter Smith the greatest football manager Scottish football has ever enjoyed?

I think so.

I was in Glasgow tonight to witness, in a pub, the effect this remarkable man has had on a patently average football team. Not only has he achieved greatness for Rangers Football Club but he has done so with six Scottish players on the pitch. Sadly, two of them Hibbies.

Clearly Rangers were not actually better than Fiorentina (or Werder Bemen, or Sporting Lisbon) but they beat them all- this is not typically Scottish behaviour.

But a Scottish team, is in a European Final.

This is genuinely something to celebrate.

C’mon the huns!

Got a nice cheeky note from an old friend and mentor, Roger Stanier, who now works at Lowe in Londinium this morning.

It made me laugh.  The cheeky monkey.

If I was a reasonable person, and I’m not - or else you wouldn’t be reading this - I would not slag off twitty Raef at all in this post because the volume of alternative quality material on tonight’s Apprentice leaves him trailing.

But, and it’s a big but, he did say…

“The spoken word is my tool.” (Well, we all know he IS A TOOL, but this was a different take on that thought.)

And

“”Bravo!” after Myleen Klasse’s recital in the house.

And

“”Single people are the forgotten part of society.” (Oh really Raef? How awful for you.)

However, the week’s delights were saved for Kevin Shaw.

Let’s put this all in perspective before we start on the details.

Kevin Shaw is an arse.

For instance he said that he…

“Will do anything to be the most succesful businessman in the world by the time I am 40.”

Which obviously sits squarely with his declaration that

“I always try 150%.” (Not quite sure how one does that actually.)

Kevin Shaw - this is him here…

…put the “laughing at you” into the “I”m not laughing at you, I’m laughing with you.”

I mean, if this is the cream of British management potential, I am a potential Chelsea player.

The ineptness of his management of the task, which consisted of him authorising the creation of a greetings card to celebrate being green, was unprecedented. Ria, my 13 year old daughter said, (IMMEDIATELY the idea was raised) “You can’t send a green card! It would need to be an e-card because sending a card isn’t green.”

And so did Sir Alan. But ugly Ginger Spice railroaded him into it.

Claire, who accused Kevin of having “short man syndrome” - that’s rich from someone with “ugly boot syndrome” - spent most of the task being nicer than she’s ever been in her life before (she didn’t actually sever anyone’s head during the making of the programme for a start) and, as a consequence, survived.

Oh, it was a goodun.

Well. Google seems to think so…Then again, we’re only 21st out of 36 million. Must try harder.

Check out this wonderful craziness.

I met Jim Sutherland last week at a Guardian event in Edinburgh. A really interesting and modest guy with a great vision for this orchestra.

I particularly liked the ideas of the four Hurdy Gurdies that feature in his orchestra.

He brought along a Japanese Saw player (Su-a Lee) who performed ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow on the saw’. Cracking and really beautiful.

You can hear some of the music on their myspace site here. I urge you to do so because it is stunning. Beautiful. Magical.

And this is what his myspace site says about the orchestra.

La Banda Europa is an extraordinary 35 piece band of virtuoso musicians assembled from some of the finest musicians across Europe

“The Hurdy Gurdies are amazing to look at, like Elizabethan ships, with a sound somewhere between the violin and the bagpipes. The nykelharpas are similar, having a strange, other-worldly sound to them.”

In 2006, composer, Jim Sutherland was awarded the Creative Scotland Prize for artists of distinction It is one of the richest arts awards to an individual in Europe….. The Award allowed him time to develop his ideas for an orchestra that could make a unique ’sound of Europe.

“All in all we’ve got some incredible musicians, some of the very best in the world on their particular instruments.”…… …..“The Armenians play an ancient instrument called the duduk made from the wood of the apricot tree and which sounds like a woman singing alto.”

The whole thing was initially Inspired by Jim’s score for the BAFTA and Brittish Comedy Award winning film Festival when they famously flew the Drambuie Pipe band over to Seville to record Jim’s score with La Banda Tres Caidas, an Eighty piece Semana Santa band.

“Instruments like the ancient Celtic carnyx will grab the eye – it’s the only one of its kind in the world and was reconstructed from one found in bogland in Scotland. It’s a bronze war horn which was 6ft long and held vertically above the player’s head.”

Jim initially put the orchestra together to perform his score for ‘Before the Wolf’, a theatrically presented outdoor production. Niel Butler of UZ events raised the funds and facilitated the shows. These first performances were very successful and have lead to enquiries from event organisers and festivals throughout Europe.

“Bagpipes of 5 countries, Swedish nyckelharpas, , Armenian duduks, Turkish drums, trumpeters from Scotland and Serbia……..Many of the players in the Banda Europa are exciting composers in their own right.”.