What represents the best of being British? Why, Test Match Special!

WALKING along the Eastbourne promenade this morning on a bright and crisp start to the day, the lawns near the bandstand had been recently manicured and the flowerbeds festooned with blooms.

Up the way, near the Western Lawns, barriers have been laid out for this weekend's carnival, as well as for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations next week.

Then, while walking through the town centre, plenty of shops and homes have already got their Union Jack bunting out.

There's nothing like the best of British to bring the party spirit out, especially when the sun in shining!

And that got me thinking. How would you describe Britishness in a couple of words or even a sentence?

Is it all the flags and bunting, the pomp and circumstance, Land of Hope & Glory, the Queen, Big Ben, men in bowler hats on their way to work in the city?!!

Bizarrely, if you wanted to capture the essence of being British, the good qualities which define our isles, then I would throw into the ring....Test Match Special!

Okay, hugely left-field and to the younger generation (jeez, I am sounding old and decrepit) a revered institution whose significance would fly right over their busy heads. But this BBC cricket programme, broadcasting live ball-by-ball coverage of England's Test matches, quintessentially represents the heart and soul of our nation.

Of course it's not about the cricket; the sport is an ancillary, a running thread to the programme. In fact, if TMS was just about the cricket, probably no-one would listen!

No, TMS is about the characters who have frequented the commentary box over the years, their quirky and witty observations on life, and the cake-loving commentators' carefully crafted interaction with their devoted listeners. They are people you trust and would love to spend time with chatting over dinner.

My one regret in life is that I'm not able to listen to TMS as often as I would like. In fact, if I was stuck on a Desert Island, give me a shelf-full of Wisdens and a rack of recordings of TMS going back in time, and I wouldn't even need beach babe Pamela Anderson to give me a daily rub down.

I was listening to TMS over the weekend during the second Test match with the West Indies at Trent Bridge. At times, the commentary is much ado about nothing, but the characters are charming, their conversations absorbing. The modern day team of Jonathan Agnew, Henry Blofeld, Tony Cozier, Michael Vaughan, Vic Marks and even Sir Viv Richards are just decent chaps. There is no jingoism about their commentary, there is fairness and thoughtfulness about their words and observations.

Five-day cricket Test matches have stood the test of time despite all the modern sporting innovations of the limited over game and notably Twenty20. Tradition is sometimes looked upon with disdain, but too often we try to reinvent something which is far inferior to the original for the simple desire of change. TMS is about tradition, respecting the past and revering the present.

TMS, going back to the great days of Brian Johnston, John Arlott, Trevor Bailey, Don Mosey, Tony Lewis, Jack Bannister and Fred Trueman, has for 55 years also represented the very best of British.

There is a levity about the programme, no-one takes themselves too seriously. It is that sense of fair play, maybe even a touch of old school tie, appreciating the core values which seem so easily lost in this dog-eat-dog world we live in.

The detractors would say the TMS concept is snobbish, a commentary team consisting of Home Counties' privately-educated toffs who don't have a handle on real world reality. What tosh!

The phrase "it's just not cricket" is very apt, because the spirit of cricket is true today as it was in the days of WG Grace. "It's just not cricket" should be a mantra for our daily lives.

For me, however, TMS represents the heart and soul of being British and long may it carry on.

Belle Tout and the rave run across the South Downs

STANDING proud atop Beachy Head with a sweeping, panoramic view of the English Channel is the old Belle Tout lighthouse - an astonishing Grade II listed building which was once moved away from the cliff edge for fear the nearly 200-year-old building would fall into the sea.

On a glorious Monday evening after work, my friend Helen and I took a run out to Belle Tout, climbing steadily out of Eastbourne to the top of Beachy Head overlooking the familiar red and white striped lighthouse, before setting off across the rolling South Downs towards the Belle Tout at the end of the peninsula.

This was one of those dreamy, rave runs set against a perfectly blue sky, a cool breeze, evening sunshine and the most spectacular of surroundings. The chalky hills provided challenging climbs but the reward standing beside Belle Tout was immense.

When we set out from the promenade for the slow and steady climb out of Eastbourne to Beachy Head, we both felt rough and clunky. Those first couple of miles of running are always the worst, when your legs feel so heavy, your stomach is churning and your mind is telling you that you might as well give up and turn back.

But then once your feet settle onto the soft, springy grass at the start of the South Downs, the breathing becomes a little easier, your legs a little less leaden as together Helen and I pushed up the sharp hills sychronised in our footsteps, one trying to keep up with the other not wanting to sit off the pace.

The reward for those efforts were awesome, a dawning realisation as your eyes swept across the amazing vista of the Downs that this was why you run. Mentally photograph the scene, capture the physically feelings of well-being, store the data and use it every time you're sloping around the home making excuses for not running.

The run out to Belle Tout was undulating; sharp downhills and leg-aching climbs while skirting the clifftops and the sheer drop below. It was thrilling and liberating by the time we made the final climb up a chalky path to the old lighthouse.

There has been a lighthouse at Belle Tout ever since 1928, when a temporary wooden structure rested on the rocky outpost to ward over shipping from straying too close to the rocks around Beachy Head; the scene of numerous shipwrecks in the 17th and early 18th centuries. The current granite building became operational in 1834 when it needed two gallons of oil every hour to operate the 30 oil lamps.

However, Belle Tout was not a successful lighthouse, and was eventually decommissioned in 1902 when the Beachy Head lighthouse was built. Part of the problem was that the lighthouse became obscured by sea mists which swept across the cliff-top beacon, and vessels sailing too close to the famous white cliffs could not see the lighthouse.

So Trinity House sold off Belle Tout, which has since had several owners, and was once badly damaged by Canadian artillery fire during the Second World War during tank practice.

In recent years, this iconic landmark building has been the scene of the TV mini series "The Life and Loves of a She-Devil" and in the James Bond film "The Living Daylights".

Today, it is now a bed and breakfast which once received a TV makeover from Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen, and charges over £200 a night at weekends.

One of the remarkable aspects of Belle Tout is that in 1999, thanks to a remarkable feat of engineering, the former lighthouse was moved 17 metres away from the cliff face. The 850-ton lighthouse was moved using a pioneering system of hydraulic jacks which pushed the building along four steel-topped concrete beams.

You can still see the site where the building once rested; concrete foundations nestling right on the edge of the eroding cliff face. The view out to sea is still formidable.

I've now been living in Eastbourne for eight months. During the winter, nightly runs were restricted to a canter along the windswept promenade, but now, with the lighter evening,s the South Downs offer a fantastic and challenging backdrop to running.

Running is very selfish and cyclical in terms of moods - some days you run like a sack of potatoes in appalling conditions, and then there are runs, such as the one on Monday evening, when you are absolutely blazing.

To feel the soft grass under foot, a slight breeze to cool you, the smell of the sea and the rich scent of grass, the hypnotic sight of waves crashing over rocks hundreds of feet below while layed out in front of you are the rolling South Downs - well, you couldn't wish for better.

Isn't Frankie Boyle a funny wee man?

AS a person, wee Scot Frankie Boyle is probably a very charming and sensitive man, who buys flowers for his partner every Sunday, adores his two gorgeous children, cries at those sentimental Channel 4 weepies and regularly reads Mills & Boon.

But as a comedian, Frankie Boyle is a totally odious creature, who is about as funny as the bubonic plague.

Of course humour is a very subjective notion. Yet there were legions of fans lining up to support fearless Frankie this week for his side-splitting brand of jaw-dropping, close to the knuckle laughs.

That was when he perceptively chose to take a pitiful pop at a group of Hampshire schoolchildren who set a world record by arranging themselves in the shape of the Olympic logo.

Wise-cracking Frankie really hit the funny bone by describing the effort as “the most autistic response to a global event.” And the Mock The Week star added: “For the kids of Gosport, learning how to stand bewildered in a blue jumper is all they need to qualify them for a life of working in 99p stores.”

Oh how his fans lapped it up, loving the cheap, moronic humour. “Frankie's a comedian, he tells jokes and is very good at it,” wrote one on a comment board,

“Grow up for goodness sake.” Another chipped in sagely: “If you take things too seriously, then avoid this style of comedy and quit moaning all the time. Get over yourselves.”

And then this from another fervent Frankie fan: “A while back, audience members complained when Frankie Boyle made a disabled joke. However, they shut up after he reminded them that they had laughed all evening at ginger jokes, Irish jokes, sexist jokes, religious jokes and chav jokes. It's a bit hypocritical being touchy about one particular subject because it's close to your heart, but okay to pick on everyone else, don't you think?”

Well, they're welcome to fun-filled Frankie's brand of subtle as a sledgehammer humour, which is not clever, inventive or sophisticated. It's one-dimensional, based purely on the ability to shock.

I detest political correctness, as much as I loathe the words health and safety, so if there is an arena for Frankie's comedy then fine. But don't try to justify it as generally acceptable. Because it isn't.

Ironically, the Frankie story broke on the same day that we launched the Doughnut Dash 5k in aid of the Hampshire Autistic Society. Record-breaking 400 metre runner, Iwan Thomas, who I first met at the Atlanta Olympic Games 16 years ago, where he went on to win a silver medal in the 4x400m relay, had agreed to help promote the event.

Now retired, Iwan does a lot of TV work and corporate events - and recently ran the London Marathon - so trying to tie him down to a time for a photo call was tricky. But he was superb and posed for cameras and chatted to reporters to help launch the Doughnut Dash which takes place at the Mountbatten Centre in Portsmouth on Sunday, July 29^th.

Iwan admitted he would love to be there himself for the 13-lap race where competitors have to eat three Krispy Kreme doughnuts half way round. 

Already, we've had a good number of entries for this unique venture - the first of its kind in the UK. So with the race taking place over the first weekend of the London Olympics, I'm hoping that this unique fund-raiser will touch a nerve and we'll be inundated with folk wanting to compete.

All the money is going to the Hampshire Autistic Society which has been going for more than 30 years now, providing a wealth of services for the 16,000 people in the county who are affected by autism.

My son, Ross is one of those. Sadly, he suffered his first epileptic fit this week in almost six months which was hugely disappointing. Ross, who is now 14, has been taking the anti-seizure drug, lamotrigine after suffering a series of fits. This one on Wednesday was brief as he fell of his chair while going into a fit. We can only hope this is a rare lapse, but it is scary to have to deal with Ross's epilepsy on top of his autism.

Ross cannot talk, he cannot express his fears or his pain. He is an innocent autistic, the sort of victim that the courageous Frankie Boyle chose to pick on. How brave and wise of you, Frankie - pushing the bold boundaries of humour in aid of a cheap laugh.

The Doughnut Dash should be a fun event, let's hope the weather brightens up over the coming months. Besides the 5km run, there will also be children's races over 400m and 800m and there will be an adult 4x400m doughnut relay.

So, if you are down on the south coast, or know friends on the south coast who fancy a run and a few doughnuts, then log onto: www.doughnutdash.co.uk

I've got a meeting with the Portsmouth sports shop Alexandra Sports in the next week or two who have promised to supply some prizes, which is fantastic.

We'll have plenty of laughs on July 29^th, and when you are dealing with autism, you have got to keep your sense of humour – but there is a limit to that comedy, especially when it becomes tasteless and crosses the line.

When football had soul and humility

BLINK and you may have missed it on television, but at the end of the FA Cup Final last Saturday, Chelsea captain, John Terry, was pictured shaking hands with Fabrice Muamba on his way to holding aloft the famous trophy.

Terry, followed by Frank Lampard along with a succession of Chelsea players, warmly embraced and spoke to the Bolton Wanderers footballer who, just weeks earlier, had been lying critically ill at a London hospital after collapsing during a Premiership match.

The unbelievable outpouring of compassion and care shown towards the unfortunate Muamba by players and supporters from all shades of football was heart-warming and benevolent, yet it was also at odds with the ugly side which, at times, the professional game seems to represent.

As a piece of entertainment, the professional game is right up there. Skill levels are supreme, the quality of football sits at an unparalleled and unprecedented level. 

Yet the pay-off is that professional football is also a sport riddled with arrogant, millionaire footballers whose foul-mouthed pitch side tirades require few lip-reading skills, and whose propensity to play the game without honour betrays a spirit of the game where it once mattered.  

Equally, watch any television close-ups of some of the fans, spittle spewing from their mouths, fists thumping at rivals supporters, players, the referee - it borders on the moronic and pathetic. 

So like Jekyll and Hyde, these same upstanding citizens bowed their heads in sombre silence, put partisanship to one side, to describe football as a force for good in coming together for Fabrice Muamba. 

To me, this banal behaviour bordered as hypocritical, as if football was playing its credibility card.

Football lost all credibility the day it sold its soul and traditions to commercial television. How can the FA Cup Final be relegated to a 5.15pm sideshow on a Saturday afternoon following a programme of league football where key relegation and promotion issues were being decided?

Remember when FA Cup Final day was a day when football stopped and everyone's day was shaped around three 'o clock kick-off at Wembley Stadium's Twin Towers – the long TV lead-in from early morning with “FA Cup It's A Knockout”, interviews from the team hotels, cameras on board the team coaches, all the previews and goals, celebrity chats, Goal of the Season, the players walking out on the pitch, “Abide With Me” and then the final itself with David Coleman, John Motson, or if you fancied the simultaneous ITV offering, Brian Moore?!

I've just finished reading a book called “Steak...Diana Ross – Diary of a Football Nobody” by David McVay. He was a journeyman defender who played for unfashionable Notts County during the 1970s. The Magpies were my team, lumbering around at the time in the old Division 4, before eventually working their way up to the nose-bleeding heights of Division 1 guided by the irrepressible Scot, Jimmy Sirrell and later Howard Wilkinson.

The book is not a ghosted autobiography written by one of the Premiership fancy dans after a career spanning the life cycle of a rabbit. 

Instead, McVay's delightful book is a gentle jaunt through life as a footballer when the game was so much simpler, and poorer. It unstrips some of the legends who I grew up with and idolised; Don Masson, Brian Stubbs, Steve Carter, Les Bradd, Eric Probert and Arthur Mann. Their photos, cut from the pages of the Nottingham Evening Post, along with the match reports remain glued in scrapbooks hidden somewhere in my loft.

McVay's book tells of players' nights out after games, their madcap antics in training and even before matches. The played hard, and enjoyed life too – mainly Woodbines and Shipstones Ale! McVay was paid a paltry £25 a week and £40 a point, and drove around in a battered K-reg Fiat 218. No quarter was given in matches, or even in training at times, especially if one of the young apprentices tried to show up one of the pros, but there was a humility about the players and a depth to the game.

These players connected with their community and understood how it felt to go to work on a Monday morning after a team's loss on the Saturday – which was a frequent occurrence for County fans. They also respected their rivals as the book details how closely the Forest and County players got on even though the Reds from across the Trent were always regarded as the illustrious cousins.

Of course, football wasn't so wonderful then. Hooliganism, poor stadia, boggy grounds, hardly any live football on TV – just Match of the Day or the Big Match on a Sunday – and often the quality of football wasn't that great. But the atmosphere at grounds was generally rustic, and the pie and chips tasted bloody great. There was a charming innocence about football in the 1970s.

There is much to praise the modern game for, notably the rapid medical attention which Fabrice Muamba received at White Hart Lane which saved his life and the excellent stadia we now enjoy at top dollar prices.

However, football has lost its soul and will sadly never regain it.  

First rule of a successful marriage - clean out the mud-strewn shower tray!

JUST cleaned out the messy shower which, despite my best cleaning efforts this morning, still had a coating of mud round the fringes of the tray.

This, after returning home just before breakfast, caked in mud along my arms and legs having gone arse over tit Bambi-like during a quagmire run along a river path. My footing was all over the place, sliding away with every impact along the mud-strewn path, where the river had burst its banks and was flowing into fields alongside.

Catastrophe struck as I tried to leap across a ditch and embarrassingly ended up on my back. Conditions were treacherous, the path never ending, and it was a relief when I managed to get onto firmer ground with the road back home.

Clearly the first lesson for a harmonious marriage, besides not peeing when the toilet seat is down, always remembering to replace the top on the toothpaste tube and never inflict your cold feet on your partner in bed, is don't leave muddy dregs in the shower tray!

The first week of married life has seen us return to our normal working lives - Alison working as a staff nurse at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital and me back in Eastbourne.  During the week, I've had the opportunity to see close at hand how tomorrow's journalists are being taught with visits to Brighton and Portsmouth universities. It's light years away from Harlow College where I trained in journalism for a year.

Media then was so much simpler - we were trained as newspaper journalists, sufficiently skilled in 100 words a minute shorthand, law, local and central government, newspaper practice, and we even had typing classes! Now, students are being equipped as multi-media journalists, as journalism reaches across as a diverse discipline encompassing newspapers, websites, including social media journalism, video and audio.

The world of newspapers is going through its biggest cultural change ever. A storm rages inside this media snow-shaker with everyone wondering what the landscape is going to look like once the snow settles. At Johnston Press, my current employers, the thinking is definitely digital. By 2020, the plan is for revenue between digital and print to be split 50-50, yet despite the uncertainty this is an exciting era we live in.

Newspapers will always exist, but they will no longer be the prime source of information. Instead, newspapers will gravitate to become news organisations built around their historic brand providing news across a variety of media. To stand out amid the flotsam and jetsam of micro-blogging and hyper-local news sites of one man in his bedroom, the regional press has to retain its integrity and reliability as accurate sources of information.

Speaking to some of the journalism students struggling to get to grips with their shorthand, unsure of its relevance today when all you need is a voice recorder, is they remain tremendously excited to be in the foothills of the media challenge.

There are clearly issues of media trust from the fall-out of the Leveson Inquiry - it was a shame that the voice of the regional press was not heard so loudly at the inquiry since we live in a totally different orbit to our national cousins.

For those journalists who cut their teeth on typewriters, subbing by hand and dealing with tetchy compositors from the hot metal era of newspapers, we have to adapt and change. If we don't, then newspapers as a brand will die. However, news is news; recognising its value as a commodity and re-purposing it for the 24-hour news environment we now live in.

The way ahead is potentially treacherous, we just have to be sure of our footing along the news information highway to make steady progress.

A wonderfully wet white wedding

IT must be the wettest drought for years, as I look out of the window at a bedraggled dog-walking neighbour returning home after an early morning constitutional through driving rain.

The Environment Agency's bleating about the drought conditions, even though there are flood warnings posted around the UK after the wettest April in 100 years, is about as lame as the memorable "wrong type of snow" which British Rail found in Excuse Alley in the early 1990s after severe winter weather disrupted the rail network.

However the rain failed to dampen spirits - there's a newspaper cliche if ever I wrote one - for Alison and my wedding on Saturday. All week, the Met Office had predicted that Saturday would be cloudy but mainly dry - but no, it rained all day. Bring back Michael Fish and Jack Scott with their sticky-back plastic symbols, they were probably more reliable.

Wedding days are always memorable occasions for the happy couple. For Alison and I, second time round the mulberry bush, we wanted something which was different from our first weddings, retained the solemnity of the church service with our own personal touch, but a day which very much involved our friends and family, particularly our eight children.

We had a blast. The genuine love and affection from friends and family was like a warm soft wave, lapping over your toes as you stand on the seashore; so comforting, so kind, so perfect.

We married at Christ Church in Swindon for a service conducted by our good friend, the Rev Simon Stevenette, who had caught the first 20 minutes of Swindon Town's last home game of the season before dashing back to the church. Simon told me he had done that once before, catching most of the first half of a game, and then heading back to the church, which is a half mile sprint from the County Ground, only to find the bride and her father had arrived 10 minutes' early!!

The service was perfect. Simon had warned us not to have the letters H-E-L-P stuck to the soles of our shoes as we knelt in prayer. The 160-year-old church has never looked better, vibrant in colour with flowers adorning the aisles, and the atmosphere was electric when 15-year-old soprano Eleanor Williams sang "You Raise Me Up" and "Pie Jesu". What a talent.

For Alison and I, it was about involving our children in the service; Alison's son Alex gave his mum away, and my eldest son, Micah, served as best man, as well as giving one of the readings. Charlie and Phlippa, Alison's two daughters, were bridesmaids, and sons Leo, Sam and Ben, helped my friend Gary Littlecott, were there as ushers. It was wonderful that my youngest son Ross could be there too with this respite carer Martin, and it was a joy to have the whole family together.

The reception at the Blunsdon House Hotel went swimmingly well - a rather apt phrase on such a wet wedding day - with a floor show in the evening which included a magician, singers, Elvis and a sketch involving myself and friend Will Feebery which consisted of eating sausages and doughnuts with my head poked through a sheet and Will operating my arms from behind!

Many guests chose to stay over on the Sunday and it was lovely that we were able to spend time with our family and friends. For Alison, she has friends going right back to her early nursing days and a year's trip to Australia who were at the wedding. For me, I had my group of school friends with partners and children to continue a friendship which goes back 40 years. We don't see each other often, but the cameraderie and the friendship is picked up immediately.

Now back home, Alison and I begin a new and exciting life together. We've got more baggage than lost luggage at Liverpool Street Station, but in Alison I have found a soul mate and a friend, and in turn we have found ourselves surrounded by such good friends and families.

It is a commodity which is priceless.