Seemingly trivial things that cheer you up
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'that Mariah Carey' tune?! Aren't they all earworm?seanoconn - gruagach craic!0
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At least their output can be measured unlike many Olympic events which are judgedpblakeney said:"There have been great efforts by various official dart organisations to get darts into the Olympics, and the Olympic Committee have said it may become incorporated in the 2024 games."
Crazy. I know...
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I love it when people get called out, nothing against her personally.
Greta T tweeted a picture today of her sitting on the floor of a train saying "Traveling on overcrowded trains through Germany. And I’m finally on my way home!"
Rail operator Deutsche Bahn responded to say they were pleased to have her aboard their eco-friendly train. "It would have been even nicer if you had also reported how friendly and competently you were looked after by our team at your seat in first class."You can fool some of the people all of the time. Concentrate on those people.0 -
Double post (after moderation)You can fool some of the people all of the time. Concentrate on those people.0
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In a sad and tragic turn of events, the current highlight of my week is getting a new printer installed in the office. I'll focus on the positives, the quality is fantastic and it prints so fast it basically shoots them out like a cannon. It has a function to staple documents too which is almost witchcraft. Great stuff.
The negative is that my life seems to have tipped the balance in favour of drudgery at the moment. Still, the print quality of these maps is exceptional0 -
.... especially with a Christmas bonus due :-)GiantMike said:I'll start:
Pay day.0 -
The Channel 4 "steel man logo" thing.
Makes me smile every time I see the one where it shouts across the valley and the kids are leaning into the noise.
The older I get, the better I was.0 -
Sounds like she had a bit of a 'Jeremy Corbyn' moment.Longshot said:I love it when people get called out, nothing against her personally.
Greta T tweeted a picture today of her sitting on the floor of a train saying "Traveling on overcrowded trains through Germany. And I’m finally on my way home!"
Rail operator Deutsche Bahn responded to say they were pleased to have her aboard their eco-friendly train. "It would have been even nicer if you had also reported how friendly and competently you were looked after by our team at your seat in first class.""I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
This hit the bullseye at the time... maybe things have moved on...pblakeney said:"There have been great efforts by various official dart organisations to get darts into the Olympics, and the Olympic Committee have said it may become incorporated in the 2024 games."
Crazy. I know...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SJnSmQCxkg 0 -
I remember that, classic Not the Nine O'Clock Newsbriantrumpet said:
This hit the bullseye at the time... maybe things have moved on...pblakeney said:"There have been great efforts by various official dart organisations to get darts into the Olympics, and the Olympic Committee have said it may become incorporated in the 2024 games."
Crazy. I know...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SJnSmQCxkg
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
Yep, at the time it finished TV darts for a while, the sponsors didn't want to know after that was shown.Stevo_666 said:
I remember that, classic Not the Nine O'Clock Newsbriantrumpet said:
This hit the bullseye at the time... maybe things have moved on...pblakeney said:"There have been great efforts by various official dart organisations to get darts into the Olympics, and the Olympic Committee have said it may become incorporated in the 2024 games."
Crazy. I know...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SJnSmQCxkg
The older I get, the better I was.0 -
Ed Sheeran taking a break from music and touring. Hoorah!Always be yourself, unless you can be Aaron Rodgers....Then always be Aaron Rodgers.0
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Ms MM (21) and master MM (19) back with us for Xmas, and independent enough that they’re only staying a few days. Not that I don’t love having them back, but seeing them find their own way is uplifting.
Mixed thing - discovering they have both now moved on from sweet cider or bland lager to proper beer (which is good, obvs), so I may have miscalculated the beer shopping.
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Do you have a source for this? I am very interested in Barry Hearn’s transformation of darts.capt_slog said:
Yep, at the time it finished TV darts for a while, the sponsors didn't want to know after that was shown.Stevo_666 said:
I remember that, classic Not the Nine O'Clock Newsbriantrumpet said:
This hit the bullseye at the time... maybe things have moved on...pblakeney said:"There have been great efforts by various official dart organisations to get darts into the Olympics, and the Olympic Committee have said it may become incorporated in the 2024 games."
Crazy. I know...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SJnSmQCxkg
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Seems like it could be true.surrey_commuter said:
Do you have a source for this? I am very interested in Barry Hearn’s transformation of darts.capt_slog said:
Yep, at the time it finished TV darts for a while, the sponsors didn't want to know after that was shown.Stevo_666 said:
I remember that, classic Not the Nine O'Clock Newsbriantrumpet said:
This hit the bullseye at the time... maybe things have moved on...pblakeney said:"There have been great efforts by various official dart organisations to get darts into the Olympics, and the Olympic Committee have said it may become incorporated in the 2024 games."
Crazy. I know...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SJnSmQCxkg
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/darts/2998699/Sport-on-TV-Darts-sunk-by-heavyweight-drink-problem.htmlTelegraph said:
Anyway, darts now had, classically, "an image problem" - one which Croft, who disliked PR consultants, or anyone he perceived to be muscling in on his territory, seemed powerless to solve. And then along came Griff Rhys-Jones and Mel Smith with the coup de grace.
Their sketch for Not the Nine O'Clock News, in which two well-padded darters dispensed with the darts and the board and instead took it in turns to pick three drinks off a table, is a period piece itself, now: the meter registering the darts players' exact degree of inebriation peaks at "Completely Newscastered", an allusion to the golden age of Reginald Bosanquet.
Yet the sketch cut darts to the quick and stands, perhaps, as an extremely rare instance of satire actually changing something. Darts decided, fatally, to de-tox. Perhaps the saddest passage in the programme was the one that showed Wilson attending an aerobics class - not because aerobics has seldom seemed aerobic, but because what did aerobics have to do with what Wilson did?
The de-tox didn't work. The BBC cut back to one tournament a year and ITV, who were in the mood for abandoning sports in the Eighties, ditched darts altogether. As the programme's voice-over put it, "the long wild dance of darts was over".0 -
I think its probably partly true, in that both BBC and ITV sports were struggling for budgets and chasing audience numbers,which meant they needed to drop stuff so they could concentrate on what they perceived to be their bigger market which even in the 80s was still football/rugby/wimbledon/olympics etc. and stuff like darts was easy to drop, it wasnt that popular a sport, in terms of viewer numbers at the time, it was probably horrendously expensive given it involved live outside broadcasting coverage, the governing body at the time was a pain to deal with, hence also put off sponsors, as it was still stuck in a 60s timewarp, thats why the PDC even exists today.briantrumpet said:
Seems like it could be true.surrey_commuter said:
Do you have a source for this? I am very interested in Barry Hearn’s transformation of darts.capt_slog said:
Yep, at the time it finished TV darts for a while, the sponsors didn't want to know after that was shown.Stevo_666 said:
I remember that, classic Not the Nine O'Clock Newsbriantrumpet said:
This hit the bullseye at the time... maybe things have moved on...pblakeney said:"There have been great efforts by various official dart organisations to get darts into the Olympics, and the Olympic Committee have said it may become incorporated in the 2024 games."
Crazy. I know...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SJnSmQCxkg
so the NTNON sketch is a convenient coat hook to hang it all on but I think there were other factors in play
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awavey said:
I think its probably partly true, in that both BBC and ITV sports were struggling for budgets and chasing audience numbers,which meant they needed to drop stuff so they could concentrate on what they perceived to be their bigger market which even in the 80s was still football/rugby/wimbledon/olympics etc. and stuff like darts was easy to drop, it wasnt that popular a sport, in terms of viewer numbers at the time, it was probably horrendously expensive given it involved live outside broadcasting coverage, the governing body at the time was a pain to deal with, hence also put off sponsors, as it was still stuck in a 60s timewarp, thats why the PDC even exists today.briantrumpet said:
Seems like it could be true.surrey_commuter said:
Do you have a source for this? I am very interested in Barry Hearn’s transformation of darts.capt_slog said:
Yep, at the time it finished TV darts for a while, the sponsors didn't want to know after that was shown.Stevo_666 said:
I remember that, classic Not the Nine O'Clock Newsbriantrumpet said:
This hit the bullseye at the time... maybe things have moved on...pblakeney said:"There have been great efforts by various official dart organisations to get darts into the Olympics, and the Olympic Committee have said it may become incorporated in the 2024 games."
Crazy. I know...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SJnSmQCxkg
so the NTNON sketch is a convenient coat hook to hang it all on but I think there were other factors in play
Hence my "might". As ever, correlation does not equal causation... but I don't find it impossible to believe that the sketch did shift perception, maybe just enough to change minds.0 -
Though the Spam sketch... killed Spam sales.
If Darts was floundering, perhaps NTNON was the straw to the Camel..
I do remember distinctly Jockey Wilson and Eric Bristow, so some of that marketing/promotion stuff stuck.seanoconn - gruagach craic!0 -
Oh and BTW, Barry Hearn is a tw@t. He's a sort of Bill Gates figure in that killed off a very vibrant and well sponsored national Amateur leagues and competitions (to which I was a part of).
On the one hand Hearn pushed snooker to dizzy heights in the 90's but on the other, he introduced a 'professional system' whereby players (with wealthy parents) paid for a 'professional ticket.
Before, to turn pro, you had to win the Irish, Welsh or English open or rank consistently high.
That was a problem as it only allowed a few people every year to turn pro in the UK but the solution wasn't the pro ticket.
What happens now, is that if you are ranked outside of primarily the top 16 but mainly the top 32, you have to qualify for events by travelling to Belgium and Holland and wherever to accumulate enough ranking points to gain entry to say the UK open. If you can't afford it, you will struggle and forget flying to HK, China or Singapore.
I met an Alec Higgins (not to be confused with the legend). Played out of a club in Sheffield. Had done 3 maximum's and was dragging his @rse on the ground.
The club gave him free, unlimited table time - but that wasn't enough because the top pro's with their own tables (and wealthy parents) practice on fast, tight tables, professionally leveled - what we used to call exhibition tables for speed and cushion bounce but with Billiard tables for narrow pockets.
He qualified for the World championships (in his home town) but had to go to Blackpool to play 5 qualifications rounds first, costing £200 entry fee. On the way, his car broke down - it got towed away and then he paid £80 per night for B&B. Paying one night at a time as he didn't know how far he was going to go.
Needless to say, the first televised round (he was knocked out) paid him £2k - which just about covered costs.
The problem is that the amateur leagues supported many players and the criteria for turning pro was too strict but the pro ticket system is highly discriminatory in that it is only accessible for the few.
The other caveat is that if you play some wannabe who just happens to have a good day (a lot of qualification rounds are best of 9 frames which often means luck and a good run of the balls is a high factor, rather than skill), then you go out to someone who has no hope of ever getting anywhere.seanoconn - gruagach craic!0 -
The Christmas card from next door cheered me up loads yesterday: the kids had signed their names, one is 6 and the other 4.
The 4 year old's was a wiggly line right across the card annotated with "Nick's writing"
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absolutely not discounting the "might" partbriantrumpet said:
Hence my "might". As ever, correlation does not equal causation... but I don't find it impossible to believe that the sketch did shift perception, maybe just enough to change minds. but the NTNON sketch is paying more of a nod towards Fred Truemans Indoor League style of show from the 70s, I mean the sketch first aired in 1980, stuff wasnt repeated ad nauseum back then either and people didnt have video recorders to rewatch it, and the BDO world champs was only 2 years old at the time, when even the likes of Eric Bristow had only one his first world championship that year two months earlier.so the idea it instantly nixed the future of darts on mainstream tv, when it must have stumbled along for at least another 4-5 years is the bit I question thats all.
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surrey_commuter said:
Do you have a source for this? I am very interested in Barry Hearn’s transformation of darts.capt_slog said:
Yep, at the time it finished TV darts for a while, the sponsors didn't want to know after that was shown.Stevo_666 said:
I remember that, classic Not the Nine O'Clock Newsbriantrumpet said:
This hit the bullseye at the time... maybe things have moved on...pblakeney said:"There have been great efforts by various official dart organisations to get darts into the Olympics, and the Olympic Committee have said it may become incorporated in the 2024 games."
Crazy. I know...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SJnSmQCxkg
Sorry, I don't.
It was featured in a TV program some years back. Could even have been one of those "Top 20 TV disasters" or "Things that used to be and aren't now" type of things. Not the best of sources I'll admit, but they seemed to have it fairly straight
I think there might have been something in the papers about it too, when the NTNON thing was first aired, regarding the sponsors and the image.
The older I get, the better I was.0 -
Planning a new route in my head and get home after 104km keeping me on target for the Festive 500. Impressed myself with the guesswork, if I do say so myself. 🤣The above may be fact, or fiction, I may be serious, I may be jesting.
I am not sure. You have no chance.Veronese68 wrote:PB is the most sensible person on here.0 -
The rugby club I support just competing their second consecutive calendar year having won every league game. They've now won every game bar one in the last 3.5 seasons, something like 57 on the trot (but haven't been promoted at all!).0
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How come they haven't been promoted? Top division already? Stadium not up to standard?Pross said:The rugby club I support just competing their second consecutive calendar year having won every league game. They've now won every game bar one in the last 3.5 seasons, something like 57 on the trot (but haven't been promoted at all!).
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The smell of solvent/GT85/chain lube from a freshly cleaned and serviced bike.0
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Two seasons the league above was ring fenced then last season it was opened up but they were reducing its size so there were 4 teams relegated automatically and my team had to play off against the 5th from bottom. Automatic promotion this season and currently top but a bit of competition from 2 of the 4 that came down last year.thistle_(mbnw) said:
How come they haven't been promoted? Top division already? Stadium not up to standard?Pross said:The rugby club I support just competing their second consecutive calendar year having won every league game. They've now won every game bar one in the last 3.5 seasons, something like 57 on the trot (but haven't been promoted at all!).
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the Tour Down Under stage 1 womens race ended in Macclesfield...you go all that way around to t'other side of world and end up in Macclesfield...ecky thump 1
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"The Goes Wrong Show", one of those rare "whole family" viewing shows.
It's quite hard to believe they did most of it live on stage night after night.0
