Whatever happened to the spirit of cricket, golliwogs, and why it took 90 minutes to get served at an Eastbourne restaurant

THERE is something about cricket and rugby which sets them apart from other sports. Players are expected to compete according to the spirit of the game even in the heat of the battle.
However, as the financial stakes get higher, it seems sportsmanship is dwindling with a win at all costs mentality.
In rugby, if a player oversteps the line with a referee, the team is frogmarched back a further 10 metres.
And in cricket, if a player catches a bounce ball he acknowledges it, just as you are expected to walk if you have clearly snicked the ball to the wicketkeeper.
In football, it's now anarchy on the field of play where all respect for opponents and referees have disappeared. Professionally, it's an ugly game played by obscenely-paid, foul-mouthed prima donnas.
It is disappointing to see an Ashes series dominated by television reviews, and not featuring honest, sportsmanship. Stuart Broad should have walked when he clearly edged the ball during the first Test at Trent Bridge, just as Aussie skipper Michael Clarke should have accepted the contentious LBW decision with grace and dignity.
It was hard to accept Broad's team-mates and even ex-professionals justifying the England player's defiance at the crease by insisting a player should wait for the umpire's decision. That's gamesmanship and not the spirit of cricket which sets the sport apart. Maybe, regrettably, that is the way professional cricket is going.
Is sportsmanship relevant in this day and age? Absolutely. Should win at all costs matter? Definitely not.

Fair play to Andy Murray last weekend. There was plenty of grace and dignity about his performance in beating Novak Djokovic in the Wimbledon final.
Murray wasn't spectacular but business-like against an opponent reeling from his five-set semi-final 48 hours earlier. Yet you couldn't help but be moved by how much victory meant to the Scot and his family. It was immense.
Stop all betting for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year, with the British Lions shoe-ins for the team award.

Talk about sportsmanship, but did you notice after Andy had embraced his mother in the players' box after his victory, Novak Djokovic's parents offered their congratulations to Judy?
As BBC commentator, Andrew Castle, said at the time - pure class. And that is sportsmanship.
Fair play to Andy too afterwards in his Monday round of press calls and rebuffing Holly Willoughby's question whether he would be getting engaged to long-standing girlfriend, Kim Sears.
"I’m trying to think what your next challenge will be. You’ve had the US Open, the Olympics, now Wimbledon, could it be popping the question?," asked Willoughby.
Wily Andy was having none of it. "I only met you like ten minutes ago so I wouldn’t be telling you first," he said. Genius!

Front page story in the Eastbourne Herald this week is about a tourist shop at Beachy Head which is selling a golliwog-style doll. www.eastbourneherald.co.uk/news/local/is-sale-of-golliwog-style-doll-beyond-the-pale-1-5277012
It's a good story for the newspaper and a talking point. But I get so exasperated by these so-called guardians of society's morals who become professional moaners.
Are these the same people who call up the BBC to complain about swearing on Centre Court at Wimbledon - come on guys, get a life.
I don't have a problem with golliwog-style dolls.
I had one when I grew up and didn't figure the connotation as a racist one. I collected the Robinson's Jam tokens too.
My colleague, Annemarie Field, put it neatly in her column www.eastbourneherald.co.uk/news/columnists/golly-what-a-fuss-over-a-doll-1-5276927 when she wrote:
"Are we going to end up banning more of our childhood favourites? After all Pinocchio told lies, Cinderella stayed up till midnight at parties, Sleeping Beauty got to sleep forever, Aladdin was a thief, Snow White lived with seven men and Goldilocks broke into a house.
Perhaps the PC brigade will start calling for Bugs Bunny to be banned in case it upsets children with buckteeth."

I love the Belgian Café in Eastbourne. It is one of my favourite eating haunts in the town serving gorgeous food, but this week I had the worst service ever.
On a lovely summer's evening, it took one hour and 25 minutes to get our meal served, other customers were complaining, and the toilets were a disgrace.
Worse, while sat outside overlooking the seafront, the table was consumed by cigarette smoke from neighbouring tables - a major pet hate.
The waitress apologised when I paid the bill, pointing out how they were chronically under-staffed, but why were they not prepared?
It's high season in Eastbourne, we're finally experiencing gorgeous weather, so the seafront eateries should be cashing in after what has been a difficult start to the year.
I wonder if any of those grumbling customers will return?

Why I'll be cheering Novak Djokovic in the Wimbledon final.

SO the Dunblane sourpuss has reached another Wimbledon tennis final. 
Get the Kleenex on standby for another emotional Centre Court showdown - win or lose, will Andy Murray be blubbing when Sue Barker asks those searching post-match posers?
Hopefully, her questions will be much better thought-out than Garry Richardson's crass and cringy Alex Ferguson "hairdryer" enquiry which he asked Murray after his quarter-final win over Spaniard Fernando Verdasco.
www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/tennis/wimbledon/10159079/Wimbledon-2013-BBCs-Garry-Richardson-tests-Andy-Murrays-patience-and-apologies-for-hairdryer-question.html
Richardson's "Sportsweek" on Radio 5 Live on a Sunday morning is one of the best sports magazine programmes around, but on this occasion the man from the Beeb made the fatal error of having the germ of an idea and then asking his question as he was thinking about it. The result was a total Horlicks.
Sadly, television and radio is littered with a few poor journalists tasked with eliciting immediate post-match quotes for the delectation and delight of a mass audience. Too often they ask the most brown-nosing and naive of questions. Just get to the point, and ask the question withoutt being laden with opinion.
However, I digress. I don't warm to Andy Murray, a man whose moody ways and brand of clinical tennis do not make him particularly endearing. But then again, the years when I covered Wimbledon I never warmed to Tim Henman, but found Greg Rusedski much more interesting to interview, and preferred watching.
Greg Rusedski, Rod Laver, Rafael Nadal, Brian Lara, Phil Mickelson, John McEnroe, David Gower, Gary Sobers, Diego Maradona, Ryan Giggs, Johan Cruyff, Lionel Messi, John Barnes, why is it always left-handed/left-footed sportsmen who make the classic entertainers?
I read a while back how research had found that left-handed people have an advantage when playing sport because of the connection between the left and right hand sides of the brain, which are faster in southpaws.
One of my friends, Andrew Thompson, posted this on his Facebook page earlier today, and he is so right:
I nearly always want the Brit to win in a sporting contest, today included, but it's ridiculous really. There's plenty of British people I know who I find insufferable. I wouldn't want them to win an egg and spoon race.
Is it a sign of getting older that you become far less patriotic and jingoistic about sport, and begin to appreciate the sporting quality? Why should we be binded to someone just because they were born in the same country, but possess the dullness of flock wallpaper?
I shall be cheering on Novak Djokovic, not out of any sense of disloyalty or being anti-Scottish, but simply because Djokovic plays the far more entertaining brand of tennis and, after the amazing five set classic semi-final against Juan Martin Del Potro, deserves to win.
Also, I'm pretty sure that Djokovic and I share a passing similarity in the looks department along with Syrian President, Bashar Hafez al-Assad.

Separated at birth, Novak, Bashar and
some guy with a cup cake!

Thanks to the ignorant crinkly motorist who sent me flying from my bike this week. "Are you alright, luv?" she asked, as I picked myself off the kerb. "I thought you were turning, so didn't think you were going straight on." Numpty!! This was one of those moments when the blinding stupidity of the woman left you speechless. So many comebacks, so little time.
If ever there was a need to place age limits for elderly drivers - or at least a re-testing over the age of 70 - then here was a classic case in point.

The newspaper was invited to follow police on a cannabis factory raid the other week when the boys in blue netted around £250,000 worth of drugs.
It was an impressive-looking operation. Officers wearing helmets, sporting Kevlar jackets and some who were clearly armed, forced their way through the front door. There's a magic moment as the police charge through. One of the door-bashers steps out of the way to allow his fellow officers to charge into the house, and promptly falls backwards over the low wall.
I caught up with District Chief Inspector Steve Biglands this week who said the tumble was the talk of the station. By the time the unfortunate fall-guy got back to his locker, his sympathetic colleagues had changed his name-tag to "Humpty".
Here's the video, can you spot the fall?: www.eastbourneherald.co.uk/news/local/police-raid-eastbourne-homes-seizing-cannabis-worth-180-000-1-5231089

Why the genie is out of the bottle when it comes to the citizen journalist

Jeremy Forrest's sister, Carrie Hanspaul, appeared on ITV's "Daybreak"
programme this week to defend her brother

HARD as we try to move on, the Jeremy Forrest child abduction case continues to dominate the news agenda in East Sussex.
The Eastbourne schoolteacher has now served the first week of a five-and-a-half year jail sentence for his naive and foolish pursuit of a love affair with a 15-year-old schoolgirl.
We've had Forrest's sister share ITV's "Daybreak" couch to insist her brother is not a paedophile but is in love with the teenager.
The girl's biological father managed to eke a shekel or two from one national newspaper proclaiming how he would shake Forrest's hand to walk his daughter down the aisle should the couple one day decide to tie the knot.
And we have had the great and the good moralise over the rights and wrongs of this story - "Jeremy Forrest is no Romeo, neither is he a pervert" (Guardian), with the NSPCC patronisingly reminding the media not to romanticise the case, warning us to be careful of presenting the relationship between the teacher and pupil as a love story. Thanks for the egg sucking exercise guys!
Now there are whispers, totally unsubstantiated, that one tabloid has offered the schoolgirl £60,000 for her exclusive story, as the newspaper tries to persuade a judge to lift the anonymity clause - a request I find hard to believe any judge would oblige.
Yet that is the nub of a thorny problem, which I wrote about last week since the schoolgirl's identity was once in the public domain. Although the media have and will comply with the law, in other words a section 39 order under the Children & Young Persons Act, the public won't necessarily have the foggiest that a ban exists, or even understand the complexities of the law.
There was an interesting article written this week from by David Banks, one of the top journalism law lecturers in this county and who I know well, who wrote about the dangers of Twitter relating to this case. www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jun/26/jeremy-forrest-twitter-users
He correctly pointed out the dangers of Twitter users who named the schoolgirl, either out of ignorance or pure defiance, and who will have broken the law.
We've seen this before with the libel case involving Lord McAlpine and Speaker's wife Sally Bercow over her errant and ultimately costly Tweets. Then there was a court case in April when two men received suspended jail sentences for posting photographs on Twitter and Facebook of the killers of toddler James Bulger.
The genie has well and truly escaped from the bottle. There urgently needs to a complete shake-up of the laws, as well as their application to society as a whole, now that social media has opened up the channels of communication and a huge worldwide audience to anyone with a laptop or mobile phone.
There also needs to be a greater awareness campaign of digital media social responsibility.
Citizen journalists can seemingly Tweet or Facebook what they want. At times it is as if they can do so with impunity, without having to carry that same social responsibility as the media. Yet on all fronts, the law has been caught napping and doesn't seem to be doing anything about. The nine-month suspended sentence for the Twitter and Facebook photos was ludicrous.
This is why I worry about the rise of the citizen journalist. Not because we as professionals are special or being protective about our trade, but because we as professionals know the boundaries, the right boundaries, which society sets to protect the individual. Without them you get a form of digital vigilantism.
Too often the sword is struck in the belly of the media. Too often it is forgotten how justice requires those reporting the courts to do so with exacting standards where those who fall foul are punished.
Maybe it's time that the clever armchair journalists who disobey the law, or report in such a cavalier fashion are held to account too. That would certainly sober people's minds.

When Rory McIlroy was turned away from an Eastbourne golf club, Jeremy Forrest and Facebook parties

TENNIS week in Eastbourne is when you see the seaside town at its regal best.
All around Eastbourne there are flags and banners heralding the Aegon International tournament which features the world's best women players looking to find some last minute grass court form ahead of Wimbledon.
Devonshire Park itself is a wonderful place to watch tennis as when you step into the grounds there's a warm, friendly atmosphere about the courts. Unlike Wimbledon, where you really are kept at arm's length from the players by stern-faced, Ray Ban-wearing security guards, Eastbourne is far more relaxed.
This week we had Rory McIlroy fly back to East Sussex to cheer on his Danish girlfriend and former world number one, Caroline Wozniacki.
I'm not sure whether Rory got in a game of golf during his stay in Eastbourne - last year he was turned away from the Royal Eastbourne Golf Club when officials feared the course was too small for him. What a wasted opportunity for the golf club, who instead sent him packing with his clubs up the road to the East Sussex National at Uckfield.
Television can never really portray the speed of tennis or how hard these giraffe-like women hit the ball over the tallest of nets and across the tiniest of courts. It is phenomenal to watch sport at the highest level.

But above all for Eastbourne, there is such a terrific buzz when the tennis charabanc arrives in town. The hotels are full, the restaurants are brimming and along the seafront it's really bustling.
The other evening I ran along the seafront for a Wednesday speed session with Meads Runners on the Western Lawns, which is situated right outside the elegant splendour of the Grand Hotel where the likes of Wozniacki and McIlroy were staying.
It was a beautiful summer's evening. On my half-mile jog to the Western Lawns I passed a couple of leggy and well-fit tennis players going at quite a lick running with their barrel-chested, Marine-like personal trainers sticking alongside them. They looked fearsome and pretty no-nonsense - the sort of guys who you would not say "no" to.
I skirted the bandstand which was bursting at the seams on a summer's evening with a full house listening to the brass band strike up some familiar tunes.
And for those who skipped paying for comfortable seats on the balcony of the bandstand, they had grabbed promenade benches within easy hearing distance, nursing boxes of fish and chips on their laps with a strong smell of vinegar wafting in the air surveying the majestic seaside scene.
Later, as the night drew in, fireworks lit up the sky as they do every Wednesday during the summer.
It was a picture-perfect evening and Eastbourne at its finest.

WHILE tennis has dominated much of our newspaper's coverage this week, it has been totally overshadowed by the Jeremy Forest court case.
He's the 30-year-old Maths teacher who ran off with a 15-year-old pupil at his school in Eastbourne last year and went on the run with her for seven days, until they were picked up by French police in Bordeaux.
Forrest was jailed for five-and-a-half years at Lewes Crown Court yesterday after being found guilty of child abduction by a jury - he also later pleaded guilty to five charges of having sex with a child.
Our website and Facebook page has gone mental with comments. Some had sympathy for Forrest suggesting the sentence was too harsh wondering how the Eastbourne teacher got five-and-a-half years for something which was clearly an offense in the eyes of the law, but which was consensual. Yet TV presenter Stuart Hall was jailed for 15 months after admitting abusing 13 girls, the youngest of which was aged just nine-years-old.
I heard one lawyer on the radio last night suggest this discrepancy was because of the historic nature of Hall's offences and because, up until 1985 when the offence was known as indecent assault, sentencing was different, and less severe. I still can't work out why today's sentencing guidelines did not apply to Stuart Hall.
The national media were all over this story like a rash. Once again, they distinguished themselves in the lead-up to the case by badgering friends of the 15-year-old and knocking on doors with open chequebooks for any dirt they could dig up. Talk about ethics, this was journalism at its lowest.
The irony of this case is that we weren't able to name the teenage girl, even though we identified her and carried photographs of her when she disappeared with Forrest last autumn. The law is a bizarre animal when it tries to put a lid back on the genie's bottle when anyone with a Google search can find out who she is.
Embarrassingly, Sussex Police inadvertently revealed the girl's family name at a press conference after the trial. There were plenty of red faces and a hasty media advisory sent out:
GUIDANCE FOR MEDIA
Media are advised that following the guilty verdict of Jeremy Forrest a statement was read on the steps of Lewes Crown Court on behalf of the mother of the victim. At the beginning of the statement the name of the mother was clearly audible and there was heckling from the crowd gathered outside which named the girl. There are court restrictions in place which prevent the naming of the victim, or any information.
In truth, this was a fascinating and absorbing story to cover, one all journalists love to report.
The women in our office were really impressed with the revelation that Forrest was an eight times a night lover - the fellas in the office just broke out in a sweat merely thinking about it!

FINALLY, it was hard not to raise a smile at the plight of one of my work colleagues this week.
She's due to head off on a jaunt to Ireland later this month, but this week was alerted to discover that her teenage son has arranged a party while his mum is away and advertised it on Facebook!
Fortunately, she was tipped off by the mothers of a couple of his school friends who wondered what was going. Afterwards, my friend was fairly laid back about it and saw the funny side after having an "interesting chat" with her son.

Only the other week, a police helicopter was scrambled to help disperse gate-crashers after a party at a house on a private estate in Surrey got out of hand. Unsurprisingly, the party had been advertised on Facebook.
Objects were thrown as police officers with dogs arrived at the home in Copthorne near Gatwick Airport, where almost 150 people had turned up uninvited to the party being held in the garden while the teenage host's parents were on holiday. http://news.sky.com/story/1101790/gatecrashed-facebook-party-ends-in-carnage
Fortunately, there will be no repeat in Eastbourne.
Police have said they're going to keep an eye on the house while she is away - now that would have been a heck of a story, and one big teenage headache!

Paradise in the Loire Valley and a tribute to Rex Barnett

TALK about far from the madding crowd, but the French town of Montreuil-Bellay, which sits on the western edge of the Loire Valley, is like stepping back a generation.
The 11th century chateau sits high on the hill, surrounded by medieval walls overlooking the tranquil River Thouet.
It is a picture postcard scene with buildings in the area sympathetically designed in keeping with the heritage of this fabulous fortified town which lies just ten miles south of equally beautiful Samur.
There's a fantastic boulangerie which serves an amazing array of breads and cakes, a florists, an impressive charcuterie, plus a host of restaurants and bars.
And yet there is an old-fashioned air about the place, just as there is in much of France.
Shops shut on a Sunday, and many for Monday as well - and lunchtimes the store doors carry the sign fermez. One of the main supermarkets in the town is called 8 a huit - eight till eight - but it is anything but, and even the bigger Super U has restricted hours.
It's a hail back to a different era when we were used to Wednesday half days and when most shops shut on the Sabbath in Blighty. That all changed with the Sunday Trading Act in 1994, when suddenly Sundays no longer became special.
Of course, the internet has changed all of our shopping habits, but there was something very relaxing about the shops being shut in France on Sunday and Monday, when the only sounds in the town were from the occasional passing cars, and the hourly tolling of the church bells.

Home for the week was La Maison Aubelle which is owned by English couple, Peter and Sally Smith. It was a slice of England in the heart of France at a beautiful residence which has been carefully restored by the couple over 15 years ago.
The house itself, which is built from the local tufa limestone, was restored using local craftsmen, a restoration which has gone down extremely well with the villagers who have come to love "Les Anglaise".
There are now five wonderful apartments, a secluded walled garden, a heated swimming pool and a games room. Armed with paperbacks and deckchairs, it was the perfect sanctuary.
When Britain entered the Common Market in 1973, the couple decided to head across the Channel and to exploit the opportunities which a new Europe offers. Theirs is an amazing success story which has seen them settling in the heart of a UNESCO world heritage site.
They've been approached a couple of times by television documentary makers wanting to feature them - but only for the wrong reasons. They have wanted to exploit any rifts between the English and French, the cultural misunderstandings and blow open the typical stereotypes.
Both Peter and Sally are charming and amiable people, who speak French fluently and have a passion for France.
Theirs is a success story we rarely hear.

Driving through France, I was struck how quiet the roads are, both the Route Nationale and the motorways with the tolls or peage. The French are building new roads, and yet you have to wonder why.
Every time I have visited France the lack of traffic jams and the quiet roads have been a regular theme.
It's a far cry from the car park which is the M25 and the lack of green space in Blighty.
France is two-and-a-half times bigger than the UK. With Europe struggling to cope with the increasing tide of displaced people from across the world, it is bewildering why every bit of green space in the UK is taken up with building development.
Yet, drive down the relatively traffic-free roads of France all you see are swathes upon swathes of unspoilt countryside.

While in France, I learnt about the sad death of my good friend, Rex Barnett.
Rex died on Tuesday at the age of 74 from the asbestos-related condition, mesothelioma, which Rex picked up while working for the Great Western Railway at the Swindon Works.
I got to know Rex and his wife Sandra well during his amazing year as Mayor of Swindon, during which Rex managed to raise a record-breaking £68,000 for three local charities. At a time of economic struggle, it was an amazing result achieved in no short measure to the fact that Rex was admired, respected and loved by those who he met.
Rex was a truly lovely man who even during the two years he battled with lung cancer kept a smiling and happy face. He always underplayed in condition, and was unselfish in his care and concern for others.
I visited Rex and Sandra at their Haydon Wick home just five weeks ago. Rex wasn't feeling his best and was a little off his food, but he was still bubbly and infectious with his enthusiasm as ever. We caught up on the latest gossip, chatted about his family and recalled a couple of stories from his mayoral year.
He and Sandra were the dream team, a loving couple devoted to each other - married for 52 years.
I will miss Rex enormously but feel very privileged to have counted this amazing man as my friend.

Why can't you have a sweet tooth when you are 50?!!

I REMEMBER hitting four-oh thinking what a fuss about nothing. They made a bit of a fuss at work in Southampton with a birthday cake in front of the editorial team, but that was about it.
When you hit the half century mark, suddenly you find your mind doing some life stock-taking; looking back at what you have achieved over the past 50 years, savouring the highs and cringing at the lows, agonising over the "what ifs" and, for the first time, possibly, considering your own mortality.
For me this introspective navel-gazing hasn't been too heavy. I've always believed if you keep looking over your shoulder you'll miss out on the opportunities lying in front of you.
But last Sunday I had a terrific run over the South Downs.
I'd dropped my son Ross back with his mum in Chichester, driven back towards Eastbourne and about 10 miles out from my destination turned down a small lane which meanders with a steep ascent to a spot on the Downs called Bo Peep.
From there I set out on a wonderful eight-mile run in the evening sunshine over the Downs towards Firle Beacon and Itford Farm on the main Newhaven road, before heading back.
A patchwork quilt of fields lay before me, and it was a magnificent sight. I've written about this rave run before but it is wonderful. Just sheep, a couple of cyclists and a guy with a paraglider as company on the route 1,000 feet up;
I returned home on a high, had a bath and then when I looked in the mirror I was aghast at how swollen my stomach was. A week of looking after Ross, 10 days of bourbon biscuits being stolen along with Cadbury's chocolate buttons had clearly taken their toll.
It wasn't vanity, but in proportion to the rest of my body, the added intake of sugar had now sat on my stomach as fat.
Ten years ago when I was working in Southampton, I would always work on a Saturday and before getting to work I would always pick up a couple of almond croissants, a box of Battenberg cakes, a carton of cranberry juice and that sugar-fest would get me through the day. I never had to worry about the Mr Blobby look.
Now if I tried that crazy diet, people would look at me in the street and call a midwife.
So, after dabbling with a sugar-free diet earlier this year, the brakes have firmly come on again with a far more disciplined approach.
The running is going great. Talk about having a pastime which keeps you young and fit, and running does it for me.
I am running with a fantastic group of guys in the New Forest most weekends, all of whom are faster than me and we're running in some terrific places.

And in midweek I'm loving the camaraderie of the Wednesday runs with Meads Runners in Eastbourne.
This past Wednesday, we had 30 runners of mixed abilities running at the foot of the downs in a place called Whitbread Hollow, with the sea running along one side and the Downs rising behind us forming an impressive backdrop, sweating our socks of on a 400 metre circuit doing Paarlaufs - a continuous relay, but with a posh name!
Myself and running partner Melissa finished a creditable fourth from the half-hour session which was so energising and terrific fun too. Sadly, it's just all being undermined by my sweet-toothed palate.
Five days in, it's working, but I can't deny I would love a couple of almond croissants for breakfast right now!

I see Jahmene Douglas is due to release his debut album "Love Never Fails" on July 22. It seems finishing runner-up in X-Factor has served the cheeky Swindon chappy well - what's happened to winner, James Arthur?
He's released one track, which is a cover version of Beyoncé's Halo which is very haunting and moving. www.vevo.com/watch/jahmene-douglas-1/halo-official-audio/GB1101300385

Having following Jahmene's career closely I hope the new album is a success. My only worry is that all the tracks on the album are covers, and I just wish that he had recorded some original material.
Because of his championing of domestic violence, and by wearing his faith firmly on his shiny jacket, I can see the former Asda shelf-stacker going far. Who knows, a presenter on Songs of Praise maybe?

On the subject of talent shows, it's the finals of Britain's Got Talent this weekend. In Eastbourne, we're wondering if ventriloquist Steve Hewlett, who just missed out on a final spot with his puppet Arthur Lager, will received a wildcard for the Saturday showdown.
Steve came into our newspaper offices last week with Arthur and was great. He gave a video interview for us, and there were certainly no airs or graces about this very amiable entertainer.

I enjoy watching Britain's Got Talent although bridle against the contrived process acts go through to get to the audition stages where many are being set up to fail from the greatest of heights - they have to go through at least three auditions with producers before even being seen by the BGT judges.
But what I can't figure is why Simon Cowell and the team are auditioning so many foreign acts.
It's Britain's Got Talent, for heaven's sake - so let's keep it British for Her Majesty!

Costa Coffee wi-fi, the South Downs Way Relay, Bradley Wiggins and the dental work of guests on the Jeremy Kyle Show!

TWO blogs in two days, surely some mistake? Not really. I'd written last week's blog at home but was unable to upload it because I couldn't get a Wi-Fi connection.
In fact, in order to work remotely from home over the Bank Holiday weekend, it meant several visits to Costa Coffee to use their Wi-Fi.
There are only so many cakes and coffees you can buy in one sitting, aren't there?

As I write this, it's a glorious, sun-blessed Saturday morning along Eastbourne's seafront.
A couple of miles up the road, several of my friends from Stubbington Green Runners will be setting out from Beachy Head on the 100-mile South Downs Relay which consists of 18 stages for the six-strong teams to Chilcomb near Winchester.
I've run this relay three times and loved it.
It's always staged on one of the hottest days of the year, with teams setting off from 6am by the war memorial for a tough run set against a spectacular backdrop.
The fastest teams will complete the relay in just under 11 hours.
I'm envious at not being able to take part. But I will content myself with a run on Sunday evening on leg 3, from Bo Peep near Alfriston, over Firle Beacon to Itford Farm on the A26.
It is a fantastic run high up on the Downs, with the glistening English Channel to the left, and the patchwork quilt of countryside lying in front of you. Good luck Stubbies!

I see Bradley Wiggins has been forced to pull out of the Tour de France because of the illness and injury he suffered at the Giro d'Italia.
The sport of cycling fascinates me, and having read Lance Armstrong's book "It's Not About the Bike -  My Journey Back to Life", I was intrigued to read what Sir Brad had to offer after his Tour de France and Olympic triumphs with his book "My Time".
What a dirge! For a book which promised so much, it offered so little. It was fully of dull cycling data and lacking the rich stories and intrigue which exists in the sport.
One of the worst sporting books ever - and what's worse, I got 17p fine for it being overdue at the library!

Book-wise, I picked up an excellent novel the other week, Simon Mawer's "The Girl Who Fell From The Sky". It's a fascinating book set during the Second World War about a female agent working in occupied France.
The main character is partly based on a real SOE agent, Anne-Marie Walters, codenamed Colette, who was one of the most resourceful of British agents operating in France.
The bravery and selflessness of these people is hard to imagine. Anne-Marie went on to receive an MBE as well as the Croix de Guerre and the Medaille de la Reconnaissance francaise for her work in occupied France.
It's a great thriller, and an absorbing read.

My middle son, Leo, is looking at universities. What a rigmarole. He's a bright kid like his older brother Micah, who is studying English and history at the University of Southampton.
Micah's choice of subjects, having initially dabbled with law for a year, were not unexpected.
But left-field Leo, has come up with the combination of linguistics and Japanese! I don't blame him.
The opportunity to spend a year studying in Japan, with endless sushi would be hard to resist.
So now he is trotting round universities in the coming weeks, with Leeds an early favourite.

And finally...a week off at home with my youngest son, Ross, has meant the occasional dabble into daytime TV. No wonder unemployment is low with the unimaginative drivel which is served up every weekday with the TV schedules dominated by antiques, home restoration and quiz shows.
Of course, the centre-piece of any daytime schedule is the Jeremy Kyle Show - car crash TV at its finest. It is bizarrely compulsive as you watch the most grotesque of characters air the most delicate of family linen on national TV in order to get that precious DNA test.
You can always tell how lurid the story is based on the number of tattoos and combined weight of the jelly-belly guests.
And then, of course, there is their curious dental work. This graphic was doing the rounds on Twitter the other week - it's spot on!