Cheggers plays pop with his strop

I LIKE Keith Chegwin. Okay he's a bit cheesy, countless folk have taken a pop at the erstwhile entertainer - once he was accused of plagiarising other comedian's jokes, but he's charming and harmless, belonging to a rose-tinted era of Swap Shop, Saturday Superstore and even Cheggers Plays Pop! 

Not the greatest TV in the world for sure - nor was Mike Reid's "Runaround" or "Crackerjack" with Don Maclean, but it was still vintage Nesquik and biscuits telly. For folks like me who grew up in this cosy age of innocence and fun, Cheggers is just fine.

So surprisingly, Cheggers became embroiled this week in a Twitter row with a BBC journalist who insisted: "Keith Chegwin's voice makes me feel physically sick".

Cheggers is due to take on the role of Aladdin at the Swindon pantomime this year - last Christmas he starred as Buttons in the town's panto and, according to the manager of the Wyvern Theatre, Derek Aldridge, who I know well, the TV entertainer was brilliant - both on and off stage with all the promotional work.

Now the journalist who sent the inflammatory Tweet is someone I also know. BBC Wiltshire's Marie Lennon is a sweet, petite lady who is a producer for the radio station. She also presents a Thursday evening music show for unsigned bands which has been running successfully for a couple of years now. 

While I was editor in Swindon, Marie and I used to meet most mornings when I was doing a daily slot on BBC Wiltshire's breakfast show which she helped produce. 

Now Marie is not exactly one of BBC Wiltshire's frontline presenters, unlike my former sparring partner Graham Mack, the radio station's breakfast show presenter, who enjoys a very high profile in Swindon.  A Twitter fiend, who even Tweets his daily weight, Graham even has his own band which features the chief executive of Swindon Borough Council, Gavin Jones, on lead guitar.

Taking over the mantle which I once held, if there's an envelope opening in Swindon then you can be sure you'll find Graham there; so much so that had he offered a similarly barbed opinon to Marie's then a few more heads would have been turned, albeit still unjustifiably!

Marie, to be blunt, doesn't enjoy the same high profile in the town, let alone Wiltshire or nationally. Her Twitter account, now deleted, stated that she is "a reporter and presenter @ BBCWiltshire, radio fan, gallivanter, ranter, views are MINE". She had a prolific number of followers on Twitter - 283 folk followed her 1,361 Tweets! 

Even so, despite the small numbers of followers and her relatively low profile, Marie's Cheggers Tweet was picked up last Saturday by my former paper, the Swindon Advertiser; within days the story had reappeared in the nationals and was soon all over Twittersphere. 

Marie hastily pulled the Tweet once the flak had started flying. This, not before Cheggers had Tweeted angrily: "@BBCWiltshire Top presenter @marie_lennon using BBC’s name, is slagging me off. How BBC Radio has changed. Sad." with the ungracious follow-up: "@marie_lennon the @BBCWiltshire presenter has deleted rude Tweet about me. Still using BBC's name 2 get followers?"

The BBC even put out an unnecessarily starchy statement: "This was her (Marie's) personal view for which she has now apologised. It doesn't reflect the views of the station. BBC Wiltshire is looking forward to Keith Chegwin appearing in the pantomime at the Wyvern Theatre this Christmas."

My friend Derek at the Wyvern must have been rubbing his hands with glee at the unexpected pre-panto publicity, but come on, what agenda was being played here? 

I have my suspicions - but that's the point, I'm not going to spout forth at this point because I know that this blog will be picked up by journalism websites and by Monday you can be sure you'll have another headline: "Former regional editor slams...." (as has happened twice already).

As for Marie, she voiced an honestly held opinion. She stated in her Twitter account that this was her opinion, and not the BBC's, but that doesn't seem to count a jot.

 

 

Hers was not a unique thought, and not one I necessarily agree with - I can't stand Johnny Vegas or Joe Pasquale's squeaky tones, that's my personal preference, but why should she be roasted by the media for voicing an opinion?

 

 

As for Cheggers' over-the-top reaction, come on Keith, I'm sure you've heard worse insults - I certainly have! Are you really bothered what a BBC journalist who you had probably never heard of before has to say?

And isn't that the problem? The knee-jerk nature of the Twittersphere, Facebook and blogs, even texting, means that now we are all being judged more than ever by our digital words - our off-the-cuff reactions.

 

 

As a result, those with an agenda or an axe to grind will exploit them with no perspective or context given to the comments. I'm not suggesting we should shed responsibility and accountability for our actions and words - actually, if you've got nothing worthwhile to say, then don't say it. It's that word - perspective, as well as understanding the value of those words which should be foremost with any judgement or recycling.

 

 

I have Tweetdeck running on my work laptop every day where I can see Twitter conversations from a host of people - from Alan Sugar and Piers Morgan having their daily rants at each other, to sports stars like Rio Ferdinand and Joey Barton letting off steam, along with hundreds upon hundreds of folk from all walks of life.

Some of the comments are so crass and turgid, you wonder why they bother to Tweet. I don't Tweet regularly because who is really interested? At least in a blog you can put forward a more cogent opinion, but even then you need restraint for fear of those words being turned against you. And isn't that wrong. Shouldn't there be a freedom of expression?

 

 

Why are we so judgemental, why are we do disproportionate in our judgements? 

 

 

Ultimately, this mealy-mouthed attitude is going to sound the death knell of quality blogging and Tweeting, which instead will just become banal and boring. Those with something worthwhile to say will either walk away or won't voice well-held opinions for fear of being publicly pilloried.

Cheggers remains a decent guy in my book, and I'll probably get along to the panto in Swindon this Christmas, but talk about a storm in a tea cup.

Marie had nothing to apologise for, and as for her Tweet being considered a major news item - well, it must have been an extremely slow news day in Swindon!

Why do Wimbledon's female tennis players orgasm on every point?

THE television has been on the blink in the flat this week. In fact, it's been on the blink for well over a month.

Despite running numerous articles about the Digital TV switchover in the papers in East Sussex, come the day when the analogue signal was condemned forever we did absolute zip and instead were delivered a screenful of fuzz!

Attempts to retune to get a TV signal from anywhere, even Hilversum or Luxemburg TV, reaped nothing. So, having ordered a Sky TV package, the guy who owns the flat I share called in someone  to fit the box, a fella who proved to be a total job's-worth since he wasn't prepared to scale the outside of the listed sea-front building to dangle wires from a rooftop dish into a third-floor flat!

In the meantime, we had to retreat to the nearby David Lloyd club to watch Euro 2012 football matches, while we tried to blag a Freeview box and Heath Robinson aerial contraption from a neighbour to see if we could fare any better.

At last we got a picture, albeit stuttery reception. So this week, while watching Andy Murray's escapades at Wimbledon, the screen shows Murray and his opponent in mid-rally as the picture freezes for about 20 seconds. Just like "A Question of Sport's" what happened next question, you're trying to figure out who's going to win the next point based on where the player was positioned on the court.

It's so frustrating and intensely annoying, moreso that if you hold the aerial you create a circuit and the picture is great, but step away and you've got dandruff all over the TV screen. I'll be damned if I'm standing by the window holding an aerial for a couple of hours so I can watch cheerful Andy Murray win a match.

We've called the local repair man and aerial specialist to help out. He can't see us until next week since he is rushed off his feet dealing with similarly television-challenged customers who didn't get their act together with all the warnings of the Digital TV switchover.

It's going to cost the best part of a couple of hundred quid to get a new and powerful aerial installed in the roofspace of the flats. In the meantime, we're going to try our luck with BT Vision and see what success we can enjoy there once the aerial is installed.

As for Wimbledon itself, it is so hard to like the ungracious, unsmiling Murray, yet watching the quarter-final against David Ferrer last night, the pair served up some scintilating tennis. I love Wimbledon and the whole atmosphere of the place having spent many years at SW19 reporting on the event from a small cubbyhole positioned high up on Centre Court, right opposite the umpire's chair.

This was the Cliff Richard singing in the rain era, and before the days of a roof on Centre Court, player challenges to line ruling, and the tradition for women players to have an orgasm with every forehand and backhand. Why do they do it? Talk about unsportsmanlike conduct, and bloody annoying!

Actually, tennis has moved on and for the better. The introduction of technology is great and adds another element to the match. The covered court is a bonus to ensure you do get play and actually the nighttime matches have a special frisson about them - just a shame about the 11pm curfew; surely the council and the All England Tennis Club can lay on contingency plans since the trains run until well after midnight.

The one disappointment is how the BBC's tennis coverage is so lame. What a joy to hear Barry Davies's voice on our screens again after a long absence, but some of the camera work is awful. The lack of replays on key points, or shots to capture the drama of some of the matches is woeful. The graphics too are so basic. Imagine Sky TV covering the match and the innovations they would introduce. The BBC's TV coverage is still stuck in the days of Dan Maskell.

Mind you, with the way our TV is working right now, it wouldn't matter whether the BBC, Sky or Martian TV were broadcasting Wimbledon, we wouldn't be fully in the picture anyway!

Are IT the new powerbrokers in the business world?

MANY moons ago I used to volunteer at a hospital radio station. I had a blast spending a couple of nights a week and every Sunday afternoon working at the hospital, visiting the wards to chat to the patients and collecting record requests, as well as stealing sweets off the nurses.

The highlight for me was hosting a bingo show on the radio every Sunday afternoon when patients – even the big biker types with broken legs in traction in orthopaedic - would play the game from their beds in the hope of winning absolute tat – the sort of plaster of Paris garbage you win at fairgrounds. They loved it since it was a fun half hour, switched off from the tedium of the hospital routine, with the radio station volunteers mixing in the wards and then running to a phone to call the studio once someone shouted “house”.

We had a guy at the radio station called Phil. He was Mr Indispendible; a geekish sort of character, big into IT, who was a fixer. If anything went wrong with the technology in the studio, Phil would be there with his soldering iron and his box of tricks to rustle up an answer. This guy even had a state-of-the-art studio in his bedroom back home in Greenford, West London.

There was a certain amount of humility about him. His world was one I knew nothing about – I’m creative, he’s technology, but the two of us worked well together. He was a "can do" guy. Above all, we got things done to ensure the radio station ran smoothly.

I think of the humility of IT guys like Phil when I think of the world we endure today. Who are the most powerful people in business? No, it’s not necessarily the chairman or chief executives, it’s the guys in IT who, as we saw with the banks whose computer systems crashed this week, can bring a business almost to its knees if the systems don’t work.

I am wary of IT because too many of these Gods know they have this amazing power and boy do they let you know it.

Once there were IT folk on site to help if you had problems with your PC. Guys like Phil who knew the various tricks of the trade and would not only help you instantly, but would probably throw in an upgrade or two. All it would cost you would be a coffee from the office machine and a couple of Bourbons! Now, somewhat laboriously you have to put in a ticket to a helpdesk, track its path and your ability to work is dependent on their desire to help.

Theirs is a complex world of permissions, unyielding doctrines of protocols and policy. Common sense is not always on the radar. They just shut things down tight as can be and sod the practicality or common sense. Of prime importance to them is the integrity of the system and its security. And yet the truth of the matter is that with the various newspapers I have worked for over 30 years, I’ve not worked for one which, despite all these claustrophobic protocols, has a computer system that is reliable and works. It would be lovely if there was one because then there would be less need to deal with IT!

At one paper I worked with a guy we nicknamed Semtex because of his potential to explode whenever the system crashed when he would take out his aggression on the nearest waste paper bucket. You can have your Sarbanes Oxley and all the rigorous security procedures in the world, but give us a system that works and can handle the ever-increasing demands of the media platforms journalists work to.

Of course, all this comes from a guy who’s had his Twitter and Facebook accounts hacked into several times this year to allow some pre-pubescent, specky geek send shedloads of spam to my friends. I’ve got heaps of anti-virus software installed, but still the morons get through.

I blame my computer woes on all the constant changing of passwords! I don’t know about you, but I lose track of mine – I’ve gone through my complete list of past girlfriends!! It might have to be pets next.

At one former place of work, the IT guys went from being very hands-on and extremely helpful, to running the place like a bank, posting opening hours on the door of their room which had a password lock on it. Woe betide you if you had an IT issue before 9am, they would be sitting there on their Facebook and MSN accounts, tapping away, while you were trying to decode a warning which had flashed up on your screen. It was so juvenile and pathetic, so much so that one of the reporters put up a similar sign to the newsroom in response with the words “Open all hours – unlike IT!”

Oh yes, the powerbrokers in business today, not just in newspapers but business generally are IT, and woe betide anyone who should cross their steely paths.

How I wish there were more IT people like Phil who just got on with their job where you didn’t need to put in a ticket first!

Running is the route map

THE rain was lashing down on the promenade at just after six 'o clock this morning.

It was still warm enough to wear shorts for the gentle four-miler out and back to Sovereign Harbour, a neat development of luxurious studio flats which sits on the eastern edge of Eastbourne - tennis champion, Martina Navratilova apparently has a pad there overlooking the tiny harbour.

This was my first run-out for a couple of weeks and the beginning of a new training programme building towards a couple of half marathons in the autumn and then, if I'm fit enough by Christmas, a tilt at a sub 3 hour 30 minute run at the London Marathon next April.

When the black clouds hover over the stresses and strains of life, running should be the cathartic pressure release. Running alone, running free, running without pressure. It's what I was writing about only a month ago with the spectacular rave run over the South Downs.

But these past few weeks, with the pressures of moving home and dealing with life's various tricky travails, there has been little incentive to get out and pound the country lanes. In fact, the mood has been one of a reluctance mentally to run alone for fear of being overwhelmed by negative thoughts as your body reaches for another running gear. Running is a confidence thing - when you're floating, your running on gas; when you're struggling, especially inside, it's like tripping through treacle.

How easy it would be to exist in this vortex of running despair; one week's procrastination turns into two, turns into a month, before the spell is broken. Maybe I should have taken my iPod to dance away the demons, to have mask those undermining thought .

For me, the spell was broken last Saturday when I attended a charity curry night out for some of the London Marathon runners who completed the race on behalf of the Hampshire Autistic Society, raising more than £18,000 in the process. I had held a couple of sessions with the runners to guide them through their training and race preparation. Yet to hear their war stories last Saturday evening in Southampton, to understand their sense of single-minded achievement, was hugely uplifting.

Each one of them had worked hard over the winter with their training, on the day they had gone through the pain barrier around the streets of the capital to realise their gutsy goal. Anyone who has ever run 26.1 miles will know the feeling of ecstasy they shared and would have relished what they have done.

I've now set out a programme, borrowed from the American coach Hal Higdon, which will take me up to the Swindon Half Marathon in October when I'm one of the pacemakers at 1 hour 50 minutes. Five runs and more than 30 miles a week, mixing tempo runs with speed sessions and one long weekend outing.

This morning along a relatively deserted, rainswept seafront, I ran four miles in a very sluggish 34 minutes, roughly what I'll have to run in Swindon this autumn. Back home, I was straight on the scales to measure body fat and water mass, so I know I've got plenty of conditioning work to do over the coming months.

The first run was good and enormously energising. Now I know I should have set out these goals earlier when I would have simply run away from the hovering black clouds, instead of trying to hide beneath them.

The tough training schedule, which is now Sellotaped to the plain wall by the side of my bed, would have given me the route map I needed. So it was four miles today, five tomorrow morning and then two long runs over the weekend.


Sometimes in life we need a route map or two when the path ahead seems unsure. I can't wait for tomorrow.

Who said global warming was a bad thing?!

THE Monday morning drive from Hampshire to Eastbourne is only 76 miles, but because of the tortuous and grinding A27 which stretches across the south coast, the journey tends to take nigh on two hours.

This last Monday, with the rain hammering down on the car, the drive took four and a half hours!

The reason, the main A27 road, which is the transport lifeline for the south coast, had been shut between Havant and Chichester because of flooding. It would be closed for most of the day.

Overnight, one month's worth of rain had fallen in just 12 hours. The sewerage system couldn't cope and the A27 was shut.

We were diverted in this slow moving convoy of vehicles through the tiny villages of Southbourne and Fishbourne which were themselves knee deep in water. We were following this articulated lorry with Polish plates which seemed to have any disregard for the conditions sweeping through the flooded road leaving a wake of water in its trail.

My colleague Keith who was driving admitted that conditions were pretty hairy at times. We saw vehicles stranded on the side of the road, people wading through the water in their wellies almost knee deep - you expected to vehicle to seize up and stop. Driving was really hazardous and the scenes were quite unreal.

It was incredible. Just 24 hours earlier, I'd been watching pictures of the flooding in mid-Wales. It was almost if you expect those sort of conditions in a rural part of the country, but the south coast? There were 12 miles of tailbacks at one stage, and another of my colleagues trying to get to Chichester had to turn back to work remotely from home.

It was amazing how one piece of adverse weather grinds the country to a standstill; snow, rain, wind - leaves on the line, wrong type of snow! Our infrastructure cannot cope with the extremes of climate. Maybe we are all being deluded and should welcome global warming - no more snow and no more rain!

At least that way the journey along the agonising A27 would be quicker.

Portsmouth to Chichester gets you off to a flier, but then the grind begins through picturesque Arundel and less than pretty Worthing, before a brief skip on the dual carriageway skirting Brighton with the glorious sweep of South Downs flanking one side and the ribbon of blue that is English Channel stretching out on the other.

It's then crawl time again along the roundabout-littered single carriageway road past Lewes before finally arriving into Eastbourne.

The train is not much better - although it might have been quicker on Monday. Two hours, two trains and 20 plus stops on the Southern Railway route between Eastbourne and Southampton, with that interminable squeaky-voiced woman making announcements every minute or two over the Tannoy that the next station is.... If only there was a direct train service or a dual carriageway stretching right the way along the south coast, travel time would be halved.

It's crazy when you compare other parts of the country which are so well served by the motorway and road network.The A27 is a main arterial link serving the south coast, yet the road and rail network is second class. There's no investment whatsoever. North to south is fine, but east to west? Forget it!

Anyone who has travelled towards the west country along the A31 or the A303 via Honiton will know that east or west the roads between Devon and East Sussex are pitiful. Get stuck behind a lorry or a caravan on one of those single carriageway roads where there's no way of overtaking and you're beaten. You might as well crank up the radio and enjoy the crawl to your destination.

Today, I'm looking out over Eastbourne pier on a beautiful, sun-kissed day. There are a few lorries unloading lighting stacks and cameras outside the pier - sweet manufacturers Haribo are in town to make an advert.

Flags are flying proud with a stiff breeze - Union Jacks alongside banners promoting the international tennis tournament which takes place in Eastbourne this week, ahead of Wimbledon.

There are a few runners and dog walkers on the promenade basking in the early morning sunshine by the sea which is gently rolling waves onto the stoney beach, all set against a brilliant blue sky with not a cloud in sight.
Monday's rains, you know, seem a lifetime away!

11 moves in 7 years - what a load of rubbish!

YOU would imagine there are few places where a man could feel intimidated. Finding yourself surrounded by a couple of bouncers feeling the worse for wear in a Ladyboys' bar might be one - but since I don't drink, that's pretty unlikely!

However, shopping in Ann Summers or the lingerie department of a store would be one. Surrounded by spotty, pre-pubescent geeks in a computer store would be another, closely followed by a Klingon-speaking motor mechanic trying to explain why you will need a second mortgage to pay for a seemingly innocuous repair bill.

But how about those household waste recycling centres, or rubbish dumps as they're known in simple, plain English? Now these certainly are testosterone testing grounds where as soon as you reverse into the parking bay you feel the unsympathetic eyes of those cigarette smoking, luminous jacket clad rubbish sifters casting judgement on you and your garbage.

The only similar experience is a supermarket check-out girl who can tell you've sneaked in the packet of flavoured condoms disguised amid a pot pourri of weekly shopping. You know she is going to ask an assistant for a price check on the condoms!

I've just returned home from our local dump. The sense of relief once I'd driven out of this unwelcoming hell hole having passed this smelly Krypton Factor-like test was palpable.

Which bin to put your rubbish in? - household waste is the default position, lest you get an admonishing finger and grunt from the stern-looking official who directs you to green waste, metals, cardboard, wood; in fact more categories than on a Trivial Pursuit board! The whole dump experience fills this sad person with unusual, yet tremendous anxiety.

I've been to numerous rubbish dumps, but I still feel as if I walk around the cars and the trucks with 'L' plates on my back. There must be some sort of nightclass experienced folk go to. You can tell them as they strut around between the waste bins, waving their rubbish in the air, an unnerving air of confidence about them. "Look at me, getting rid of this concrete while I build a new conservatory in just one day. Anneka Rice, eat your heart out!"

For me, I'm moving again. It's my 11th move in seven years. Surely by now I qualify for a Blue Peter or Cub Scout badge in removals and a new address book for my friends.

I rented a van yesterday to begin moving my gear from Hampshire to Eastbourne. White van man, egh?! As someone not used to driving vans, you start off so gingerly, looking in all your wing mirrors, sticking to the speed limit, and be careful on the road. By the end of the day, you're throwing the van around and are like all the other reprobates.

You can certainly detect the hostility on the road. No-one, and I mean no-one let's you out, motorists will speed up towards you on roundabouts and cut in front of you. Crikey, talk about pressurised driving.

But I've now got used to this moving malarky. Last autumn, I spent £700 on paying furniture movers to deliver my gubbins - a lot of stuff, and I mean "stuff", which has trailed around in boxes, never looked at and stuck in a loft. Stuff like old photo albums, scrapbooks bearing cuttings of my first published newspaper articles some 30 years ago, a Persian carpet which was a gift from colleagues in Bahrain 20 years ago, and books which I've not read for over decades. Sentimental garbage.

Well, enough is enough. ELEVEN moves, SEVEN years! This time the cost of the move was a tenth of how much I forked out last autumn. But now, newly married, was time to get rid, to downsize, time to be ruthless.

So for the past couple of weeks, the Eastbourne pile has been put to one side; any clothes not worn in the past six months has gone into black bin liners, I'm even getting rid of old running shoes, which is a real wrench.  I did think about car booting a lot of the junk, but could I be bothered? And who would really want a second hand pair of smelly size 10 trainers with 500 miles of running on their soles?

Part one of the move to Eastbourne with my boys in tow went pretty well. It cost me a couple of chocolate sundaes at a delightful seafront ice cream partner.

And then part two this morning with the dump run was really a testing experience and a bit of a watershed getting rid of so much of my lfe which has trailed round with me from loft to loft.

I hate all this recycling. To be fair, I can never be bothered with it. When you see how wasteful the rest of the world is, I wonder what difference it makes. Does it matter whether I recycle that plastic bottle or coke tin, or just bin it?

But under the eagle eye of the intimidating rubbish sifters, clearly looking for a few bargains themselves, you had to put the right rubbish in the right bin.

The rest of the gear; washing machine, fridge/freezer, sofa and book cases will just be palmed off to a charity shop in the coming week.

 It's been a cathartic experience, but hopefully I won't be returning to the dump anytime soon.

It's coming home, it's coming home, patriotism is coming home!

BANK Holiday Monday, Diamond Jubilee weekend - it really was a time to roll back the memories.

As the nation hung out the bunting and put on a right royal celebration to celebrate 60 years of the Windsor dynasty, the fast passage of time flashed before you.

Channel surfing on Monday morning, I killed a couple of hours watching one of those old ESPN football classics - this one England versus Scotland, Euro 96 at the old Wembley Stadium.

Remember the year? "Football's Coming Home", the peroxide-haired Gazza with his dentist chair goal celebration, David Seaman brilliantly saving Gary McAllister's penalty, Teddy Sherringham and Alan Shearer up front, with Paul Ince and Gazza pulling the midfield strings alongside Darren Anderton and Steve McManaman, and a back four of Gary Neville, Tony Adams, Stuart Pearce and Gareth Southgate.

Some team, and calling the shots on TV that day was the legendary commentator Brian Moore alongside the forgettable summariser Ron Atkinson.

1996 for heaven's sake - 16 seemingly short years ago. I watched the match at the Twin Towered Wembley Stadium with a warm glow of a wonderful summer remembering when I covered Wimbledon tennis fortnight and then spent a month in Georgia reporting on the Atlanta Olympics. It all seems like yesterday. Where did those years go. Sixteen years from now I'll be collecting my pension - possibly!

In a sense, watching the Diamond Jubilee concert at Buckingham Palace last night served as another sweet reminder of yesteryear, temporarily packing away the world's current travails. Stevie Wonder - it's not Her Majesty's birthday for heaven sake! - Madness, Robbie Williams, the hula-hooping Grace Jones (what was she doing there?), Elton John, Paul McCartney.

At times, the Buckingham Palace hoe-down evoked memories of the greatest concert ever Band Aid 1985 - 27 years' ago! TWENTY EIGHT years ago. OMG!!! Phil Collins, U2, Spandau Ballet, Paul Young,  Dire Straits, The Who, David Bowie, Elvis Costello, Status Quo, Bryan Ferry, Sting and, of course, Queen!

Elton John sang that memorable night at Wembley, including "Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me" with George Michael, but last night you sensed maybe it was time for Elton to move deftly aside. Sometimes it's best to tuck away the memories and don't bring them out the box again. Elton's creaky performance, along with those of Paul McCartney, Grace Jones and even Cheryl Cole were a salutary reminder of that golden principle - although was Cheryl ever that good?!

I took my youngest son Ross for a walk into the village on Bank Holiday afternoon. Titchfield was beautifully bedecked in flags, and on Barry's Meadow, a small Jubilee Fair was taking place with a host of small stalls, the carnival queen, bagpipers and a load of activities. Children were dressed up, the local Army Cadets were out in force, the scouts were parading, the community came out in force.

The occasion was beautifully undersold and unashamedly patriotic. In Britain's bid to become a multi-cultural society, our own patriotism and identity seems to be questioned as untrendy, marginalised and totally un-PC. Here was our chance to come out of the closet!

For the whole jubilee, surely that has been the stand-out feature of the celebrations. There has been a lot of pomp and circumstance (what is circumstance, does it have anything to do with measuring the size of a circle?), but no hyperbole. With the royal procession down the Thames - didn't the Queen look thoroughly miserable and fed up? - the flotilla and the whole occasion was simple without being over the top.

The Jubilee celebrations followed by the Olympics couldn't have come at a better time, consigning to one corner for a while the republicans and anti-monarchists, allowing those who really do care about their country to show what it means to be British.

It very much reminds me of the summer of 1996 when the feelgood factor on the streets of the nation was palpable.