More Spanish Football

One cracking goal and some hideous blunders from last night's Valencia-Barcelona clash.

Real Madrid-Getafe

A great article from Sid Lowe in The Guardian about last night's Real Madrid victory over Getafe. Watch down below for Pepe going mental and one of the worst penalty kicks of all time.

Liverpool and The Sun

A good article in The Guardian about the people of Liverpool's continued hatred for The Sun thanks to the lies the paper told about Hillsborough.

Cut Scene from In the Loop

Some cracking stuff from Steve Coogan.

Jimmy Fallon Gets Susan Boyle Crazy

Late Night with Jimmy Fallon finds that Susan Boyle soothes all.

Wes Craven's Health and Safety

Apparently this is a real health and safety in the workplace training video. It's not for the squeamish.

Bongos

Rainn Wilson from The Office joins Weezer's Rivers Cuomo on a cover of Joan Osborne's hit 'One of Us'.

America's Team

I was up in Fort William yesterday to see the local team take on Deveronvale. Fort William haven't won a match since September 2007. Well, they didn't win yesterday either. Although they took the lead early on, they finished on the wrong end of a 6-1 thumping.

You can have a look at my report of the game on my other site here. However, the reason I want you to go and have a look is because of the scheme Fort William have got themselves involved with. When you click on the link play the video I have embedded. It's a film by the company making the America's Team project that's designed to take Fort William 'From zeroes to heroes'. Although it's clearly amusing, I found it offensive to the football team and everyone involved with it.

I've written more about why and about the scheme on the link.

UPDATE: My post has received a response from Paul McDonald, the man behind the America's Team project. Go and have a look at the comments section for our back and forth.

Odds and Sods - The Verdict

I thought I should write a wee bit on 'Odds and Sods' our rehearsed reading which played to a sold out Ramshorn Theatre last night.

It seemed to go over pretty well with the audience and certainly everyone I spoke to said that they enjoyed it. A lot of people decided to hang around afterwards as well, which was nice.

It was slightly unusual as this was the first production we've undertaken where neither Fraser nor I took a part in it, so we watched proceedings from the back of the theatre.

The cast we put together were all really good. Moira Byrne of course we know and love from Glue and we wrote the part of Janice especially for her. It's easily the best part we've ever given her and she really excelled.

John Love fitted the part of Shug really well. He got the character from the off and really gave his all to it. The wee tender moment he has near the end John performed with aplomb.

James Keenan relished the opportunity to play a bastard in Sandy and seemed surprised when people told him afterwards that they were sympathetic to his character. Just proved how much he put into him that made people care about him, even if he isn't the nicest guy.

Robert Radcliffe handled the part of Frank brilliantly from the get-go. Along with Jen Byrne, who gave the character of Shelagh a lot more sass than we'd envisaged, he formed a great romantic duo.

Scottish Comedian of the Year Scott Agnew, making his acting debut, perfectly fitted Jordon, the washed up former boyband singer. We always had Scott in mind for the part and he did a really good job with it, using his comedian's improvisational skills when the need arose.

Last, but definitely not least, was Will Speirs as Milton. Will brought a manic energy to the part we never saw coming. Always explosive in rehearsals he was a real hit with the audience on the night.

With any luck 'Odds and Sods' will be back as a full-length play in the Autumn.

There is a review on our mate John's site.

The Damned United

I'm loathe to link again to TalkSport for the second time in a week but here we are. There's good reason though because this week they are doing a special on The Damned United, the film of David Peace's book which hits the cinemas tomorrow.

This an interview with Michael Sheen discussing playing Brian Clough. It lasts for over 17 minutes.

This is a 2 minute interview with Timothy Spall about playing Peter Taylor.

There was also an interview this afternoon with director Tom Hooper. I'll stick that up when it's on the site.

Iannucci In the Loop

Armando Iannucci talks about In the Loop in The Observer. The Sunday Times talks to Iannucci and Peter Capaldi. The Sunday Herald chats to In the Loop star Chris Addison.

Down below Iannucci talks to the Edinburgh TV Festival about the film.

Graeme Souness on TalkSport

Former Liverpool and Scotland captain Graeme Souness has hit the headlines today thanks to a bust-up at his son's Under-10s football match. The Sun ran this story telling of Souness's 'foul-mouthed rant'.

Jeff Goodwin, 46, who was watching his son Jacob, said: “This guy should know better. There were ladies in our group. He did say to them, ‘Excuse me.’

“But he told our coach, ‘If you think this is the way to teach kids to play, you’ve no f***ing chance.’

It's a bit of a non-story, perhaps not such a coincidence that this film featuring Ray Winstone has just been put up on the FA's website as part of the Respect campaign.

But far more amusing was Souness's call to his former Scotland team-mate Alan Brazil on TalkSport in order to clear the matter up. You can listen to the 6 1/2 minute call here. He's pretty angry. This was what woke me up this morning. The Souness Alarm Clock, I think you could market it.

Odds and Sods - 4 Days to Go

If you fancy coming to see the rehearsed reading of the play what we wrote - Odds and Sods - then get yer tickets fast. There's only about 20 or so left.

You can reserve tickets and pay on the night by phoning or e-mailing the Ramshorn Theatre on 0141-552-3489 or ramshorn dot theatre (at) strath dot ac dot uk. You can also buy them through the SECC on 0870 0135464 or through their website.

I've already heard the "I'm skint" excuse trotted out. It's only Four pounds (£4). Going by rehearsals it should be a laugh. Of course since it's partially a You Owe Me Glue production it's not been going as smoothly as we would like. But everything will come together on the night I'm quite sure.

So do come along.

Bathtub IV

This is a great tilt-shift video. It's worth a few minutes of your time to watch it. Via.


Bathtub IV from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Another Pundit Loses It

Ronnie and I discussed this on Twitter within minutes, then I stuck it up for folk to have a look at on my Facebook page. The discussions have slowly been spreading round the net. On Match of the Day 2 last night former West Ham and Charlton gaffer Alan Pardew described a piece of play by Chelsea's Michael Essien by saying "He absolutely rapes him there."

I froze when I heard it and thought, 'He didn't just say 'rapes him' did he? 'Rakes him' mibbie? But slowly it seems football fans throughout the country have been thinking the same thing. 'I didn't imagine that did I? He did say it. He did.'

It's already on his Wikipedia page, although since the content there will no doubt be amended soon I'll just quote from it here.

" * In March 2009, on Match of the Day 2 Pardew stated that Chelsea F.C. midfielder Michael Essien "absolutely rapes" Manchester City player Ched Evans during a midfield tussle, Essien has since gone AWOL since the accusation was made leading many people to believe the claims were probably true.

The BBC after terminating his contact announce that they will be replacing him on MOTD2 with Ron Atkinson."

Some folk are insisting it's just a saying, although I go to a lot of football matches and I've never heard anyone say it (and at a Clydebank game several years ago I once heard a guy loudly instruct a player that the best way to deal with an opponent would be to "Pish in his mooth.")

The guys on football programmes talk a lot of rubbish for the most part and the basic rule that will keep you coming back on these shows is just knowning not to swear on air. Or make racist remarks, or, you would imagine, not to make casual comments about rape.

I'm not making any call for him to be removed from telly. (Although since there's hunners of ex-pros out there, maybe someone else could have a crack at it) I just thought it was a ridiculous thing to have said.

I'm sure we'll hear more about it in the days to come.

With the wonders of the internet, footage was up on YouTube in about 15 minutes. (Ignore the chatter from the two guys who've filmed it, as it's frankly more offensive than Pardew, but they're not being paid to sit and talk about football on BBC 2.)

Arshavin vs. Blackburn

Was this not just pure class?

In the Loop Trailer

It's the film of the year for me so far. Here's the trailer.

Ricky Gervais and Elmo

"You can't even control a muppet and a fat guy."

Watchmen Opening Titles

No surprise but Warner Bros have again requested that the Watchmen opening titles be taken down from YouTube. Instead, although it's all over the internet, so you've probably already seen it, here's the opening to Watchmen the Saturday morning kids' TV show.

Cavett Talks to Updike

If you've read this blog for a while you may know that one of my big comedy heroes is Dick Cavett. He's also, I think, one of the best TV talk show hosts of all time. The New York Times has posted a full half hour show where Cavett talks to John Updike and John Cheever. Cavett is also one of the many real life characters portrayed in the new Watchmen movie.