Is weatherman Gordon Brown’s lovechild?
WATCHING the weather forecasts on BBC TV over the past week when we had the hottest day of the year so far followed by one of the loudest thunderclaps I’ve ever heard, I was reminded of how my late wife referred to some of the presenters.
Baby faced Matt Taylor, who still does forecasts occasionally, was naturally “Pixie Boy” but others owed their nickname to their lookalike similarity to celebrities.
Stav Danaos, who appears quite regularly, is “Mike Winters’ twin” a reference for those who remember them to half of the comedy duo with his real life brother Bernie while another one, whose name I can’t remember, will always be “Gordon Brown’s lovechild”.
Does anyone else have similar little games they play?
Spoiled sport
I enjoy watching live sport on TV where one of the attractions is that you don’t know what’s going to happen but this is not the case with coverage of the World Snooker Championship which has been spoiled for me by commentators not keeping things to themselves.
Granted as most of them are former players they can predict what is likely from knowledge and experience but I do not want to know what the next three or four shots will be or see drawn on screen the getout path from a difficult snooker. I’d rather find out for myself how things develop.
It is like reading a thriller and part way through being told the suspect being interviewed by police is not the murderer but so and so is!
If soccer players who were in the game did the same as in snooker they would say: “Next he’s going to pass to the striker who will flick the ball to the winger for a centre from which they will score.”
It’s too much information. Twitcher turns
It’s like Boris Johnson stopping paying Conservative party subs. Well known twitcher David Abbott has abandoned support for the Royal Society for Protection of Birds!
After reading my piece last week on one of the many moggies in my area lying in wait near a blackbirds’ nest in a neighbouring bush, David emailed to give me his backing.
He wrote: “After 30 years of paying annual membership to the RSPB – at present over £50 a year – I’ve finally cancelled my membership as a protest that hey are not drawing sufficient attention to the millions of birds killed each year by the domestic cat.
“We know only too well on small islands where there are so many ground nesting birds, both rats and cats have been destroyed. Dilemma of course lies in the fact so many cat owners also cough up to support the RSPB.”
During my two week absence David had also contacted about cuckoos in the latest report on birds in West Midlands counties.
Quoting from the report he wrote: “The full Cannock Chase survey produced a maximum count of 45 birds, demonstrating what a key site this is for a declining species.”
David commented that habitat is of central importance and there is a good chance of encountering them on scrub land like that in Barwell where another reader heard the distinctive call reported in an earlier column of mine.