Baker street

It's strange but the more TV channels there are to chose from, the more I seem to watch only a handful.

I mainly seem to watch the BBC, Sky Sports and the comedy channels, with the occasional dip into Dave. I rarely watch ITV, except for football, Channel 4,  Five, Sky 1 (or 2 & 3) or the hundreds of other satellite channels that I pay for each month. In fact if my sons didn't watch those other channels at weekends I would probably reduce my sky bundle (or switch to Virgin - which I am seriously thinking of doing).

The BBC has recently produced three excellent programmes, all of which I have genuinely looked forward to watching.

The first is "Rev", an half an hour comedy about an Anglican parish priest in London. Not the most original plot synopsis, but due to some great writing (by James Wood) and   similarly great acting by Tom Hollander and Olivia Coleman as the Vicar (Adam) and his wife it was a joy to watch. It dealt with real issues and as someone who interacts with ministers and vicars on a regular basis got the "feel" of the role spot on. The Rev chose subject matter that many people may wonder about including divorced people getting married in church, homosexuality and the priesthood (as a result of nerves, Adam announces on the One Show that "all the Anglican church is gay") and "happy clappy" churches (the local example of this type of church have to use Adam's Church - biggest problem - where to put the smoothie bar!!!).

The second programme has only broadcast one episode but I know that I will enjoy the rest of the series just as much. This is called "Vexed" and is an one hour comedy/drama detective series. It stars Toby Stephens (who played the Bond villain Gustav Graves in "Die another Day") and newcomer Lucy Punch as his partner. The main hook of the programme is that they disagree on almost everything but underneath there is a clear attraction between the two. It is funny with a semi-serious case to solve each week and works again through good writing and Toby Stephens "chewing up the scenery". While known as a "serious" actor he is excellent in this comedy role.

Finally we have the best of the three "Sherlock". This is a 90- minute "re-imagining" of the classic Conan-Doyle stories, set in 21st century England. It stars Dominic Cumberbatch as Holmes and Martin Freeman as Watson. On paper it sounds very hard to pull off, but they do and how. The scripts are very fast paced and do take concentration but they follow the originals but use modern technology (Holmes has a mobile phone!). It has a feel of "Dr Who" about it, which is not surprising as it was co-created by Stephen Moffat who produced the latest series. The genius of the original stories means that they keep you fully involved and guessing what will happen but the modern take on them also means that if you know the original story you are still engaged with the plot. Cumberbatch as Holmes is a joy to watch, he plays the part wonderfully and while Freeman as Watson takes more time to adapt to, by the third episode he feels right for the part. There were only three initial episodes but the good news is that another series has already been commissioned.

Adam Crozier has a big job on at ITV if this standard of programme making continues.

Don't stand so close to me

Cash machine etiquette is an evolving process, but I was stood in the queue the other day waiting to use the machine when I was reminded of an incident that happened five or so years ago.

My sons and I were queued waiting to use a machine on fairly a narrow pavement. We were stood behind the man using the machine rather to either side of him as that always feels like you're trying to see the users pin number as they key it in.

As it was a narrow pavement people were trying to walk along it as well which prompted us to move closer to the machine, my eldest son in particular.

When the man in front finished using it, he turned around and indicated that my son particular was too close to him and to be aware of that in the future. Being the indignant father I reminded the man that as my son was only 12, he didn't use cash machines and was only trying to keep out of the way of passing pedestrians. Cries of "Dad don't get involved" from my sons stopped it going any further as the man further muttered his unhappiness and I carried on with using the machine.

Ever since then I have tried not to crowd out the user and not stand to the side, but I do regularly see queues for machines straggling out into streams of pedestrians, as I guess others use my same thought process.

It seems that the British understanding of " how waiting in a queue works" does mean that this mainly goes on without a problem, but I wonder what happens in Europe and the USA?

The boys are back in town

I joined the Tesco DVD club about three years ago and in the interim period have watched about 208 DVD's ranging from live concerts, comedy series, boxed sets and films.

The joy of the club is that every so often I'll pick a film that in all honesty was a bit of a gamble and when it comes and I watch it, it actually proves to be an inspired choice.

"The boys are back" the film that I watched tonight, was definitely in that category. Mainly set in Australia, it concerns how a sports journalist (played by Clive Owen) copes with the death of his wife and then has to look after his 8 year old son. Add into the mix his 14 year old son (from his first marriage in England) coming to stay shortly afterwards and a mother in law who thinks that he doesn't know what he's doing and the emotional rollercoaster is at the top of the ride, ready to go.

Fairly soon after the death of his wife, we meet a Mum at school (who he thinks is his sons teacher) and frankly I thought we were revisiting Jack & Sarah. But the good thing about this film is that just as you think "ah right he's going to do this, then that and then they'll do that and then happy ending" then the story goes against the obvious route and delivers in the end a heart warming but not obvious end.

The final bonus was that the music was largely provided by Sigur Ros and was exactly what the story needed.

Embarrassment

Let's face it from the first game we were never in this tournament. Flattered by beating a nation of two million in the last group game, we were made to look what we are, a collection of individuals by the Germans.

The simple fact is that we don't have enough English players playing Premier League football at a high enough standard. When Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea, Man Utd and Man City fill their starting line ups with foreign players (funded by the TV money), then where are the future English internationals going to play football at the highest standard? Now you can argue that if they're good enough then they will break through but that simply means that when one or two do, you end up with players (Rooney, Gerrard & Lampard) who have no competition for their places. Others like Theo Walcott don't play regularly enough which just adds pressure when they do play and some of the "top" players actually aren't.

This has two impacts firstly the good ones get too complacent and secondly their replacements (if they get injured) play for West Ham, Aston Villa and the the like and that drop in class shows.

The future, I fear, is bleak. Our "golden generation" is getting old, many will not play in another World Cup and the players coming up from the Under 21's don't look of the same class (and who do they play for both now and in the future?).

As worrying is, if you read the BBC gossip column, all the talk is of Premier League teams buying more foreign players. Less and less English players will be playing Premier League football at any standard if this carries on.

The first solution is that we introduce "caps" on foreign players, but firstly "money talks" and secondly european/international law probably forbids it. Secondly we need to improve our coaching acadamies, but they too are now filling up with foreign youngsters, and the success that Arsenal had with Fabregas, will only encourage that approach. So there needs to be some intervention there too, but "money" and" European law" probably also apply?

Still we did get further than both the winners and runners up of the 2006 competition!

Festival

I've just been looking through the full Glastonbury line up for the week end after next.

One of the wonders of the festival in particular is the acts performing "down the bill" who you had no idea were performing (either at Glastonbury, or for one or two, at all!)

This year, among the hundreds of bands there, the following should be appearing :-

• Jackson Browne
  
• Lightning Seeds
  
• The Pet Shop Boys
  
• The National
  
• Nouvelle Vague
  
• Toots & the Maytals
  
• Mumford & Sons
  
• Ash
  
• Gang of Four
  
• Hypnotic Brass Ensemble
  
• Nick Lowe
  
• Al Stewart
  
• Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel
  

I wonder how many of those the BBC will manage to show at least one song live?

The Sound of the crowd

For those of you who follow this blog and don't know, each blog title is also a song title. Clever huh?

Most of the time I have the subject of the blog first and then fit the song to it. Occasionally though a song title jumps into my head and the blog then writes itself. This is one of the latter type.

Every World Cup game this tournament will sound like a swarm of angry bees are loose near to the effects microphone. The reason for this is a trumpet like instrument, widely available in South Africa called the "vuvuzela". This has led to wide scale debate on whether this is adding to the experience or ruining it. Most comment seems to be against the noise they make. Indeed Bill Turnbull on BBC Breakfast this morning even had a conversation with the sound engineer as to whether the feed from the stadium could have the crowd noise "turned down"? Simple answer – no it can't!

There has been talk of having them banned, but the SA economy is likely to be c$2m better off through sales so that's fairly unlikely. If someone throws one at a player then that could change, but let's hope that doesn't happen.

I actually quite like them; after all during the first England game I didn't hear the entirely inappropriate "Great Escape" at all!

Back home

So we put the wall chart up at work this week, the excellent Baddiel & Skinner podcast has examined the squad (main question – "Will Peter Crouch suffer more from playing at altitude as he will be higher up than the rest of the squad or as he plays at a slightly higher altitude than the rest of the squad all the time, will he be less affected by it?") and shops from "99p stores" to Waitrose have a special section of merchandise!

The BBC & ITV cannot have a gap between programmes without having a trail for it and programmes "remembering previous ones" have been commissioned. Last night Radio 5 live had "the 1986 squad" looking over the current squad and reminiscing about their tournament.

Most offices have drawn their sweepstake and twitter is full of posts along the lines of "I got Algeria in the sweepstake so that's me stuffed"

As we have no official song for this tournament, lots of quite dreadful remakes or new songs are about to be unleashed on an unsuspecting public.

And the boy who was the shock inclusion in the last squad is the shock exclusion as a young man for this one.

Ladies & gentlemen the 2010 Wold Cup is a week away...enjoy.