Sports Day and Lee Hurst

I say sports day, but it was the pensions department equivalent. For our annual social we headed to a bar in Shoreditch which in its bowels contained a pool table, two ping pong tables and a further room set up for throwing games. Split into 5 teams (allowing one team each round to have a time-out at the bar) we played each other at these miscellaneous "sports" (well as they are as much sports as golf) in a light-hearted sociable manner. But my team won. YES!! Don't want you to think I took it at all seriously, but I brought my own bat for the table tennis. At last, my playing for school and college came in handy. We even had a tie between the two best teams so had to play off - a table-tennis double match. Yes, in my comfort zone.

(You will appreciate this is the sad culmination at being rubbish at everything through life - you enjoy beating your colleagues at ping pong when 50 (almost). Even have the medal made in China of finest alloy to prove it. Must find room in my display cabinet....)




Receiving our instructions



 The pool hall


The pool sharks





The serious hustlers

  The throwing room. Its harder than it looks.

Go Maria. And stop playing with your balls Ewan

 And the serious action at the table tennis tables


Do I look like I am taking this too seriously?





Not everyone taking it as seriously as me




Don't try this wrist action at home. Leave it to us real athletes

  The play-off for the winning teams - table tennis doubles



Just like a gold medal battle at the Olympics, the crowd in rapt attention





What it was all about





Or maybe it was more about this




The lengths some folk will go to just to get out of games. (No one thought about this one at school, but then it was a boys' school)




The glorious winning team. Mo Farah eat your heart out.


Then on to a trendy bar in Hoxton (ie very ordinary bar, but has the word "Hoxton" in it) and drunk far too much for a Thursday night.

Luckily recovered to have a second wind Friday night in going to see Lee Hurst at the Fox, my local comedy club, with a mate of mine. The Fox being a pub did mean a few more beers, but not as much as the night before. And conversation didn't have to take place in a way which required me to holler at the top of my voice for hours just to speak to the person opposite me. Lovely to see Stuart again too as work had thwarted most of our recent attempts to meet up.

Lee Hurst will only be known to "lads" of a certain age. He was the big thing in comedy in the late nineties as a regular on the sports panel game called They Think its All Over - a real lads version of the very tame middle class Question of Sport. It was the sports equivalent of Never Mind the Buzzcocks. Actually it ran for years (indeed, for years too long) but at the time worked very well and Lee was one of the two regular comics, with Gary Lineker and David Gower the two captains. But he gave it up to run comedy clubs (and disappeared rather from doing comedy, I think mostly due to ill-health. ) Anyway, it was interesting seeing him again after all these years (as a tall, bald bloke, he did of course look exactly the same as he ever did.)

Clearly he still has a big following as the place was sold out (ok, the Fox is not exactly Wembley Arena, but it doesn't usually sell out). He was very good - good material, good delivery. He went in stark contrast to the bloke before him on the bill who was truly awful in every way and died on his feet. So an easy act to follow. But Lee was terrific. Did like his observations on the Paralympics too. (Keep it topical.) "Don't know about you, but sometimes I just watch a race and then think, yeah, what's wrong with him? Counted all the limbs and he has a full set. So what's that all about?" I too have found myself watching highlights and that's all I am left thinking. And being PC the the TV coverage wants to concentrate on the "athletes" not the disability, but then these folk would only be here if disabled. Somehow. So we want to know. (The swimming is clearer. Watched the 4x100m men's medley relay yesterday, and being swimming you do get to see all the deformities - missing limbs etc when they strip down. The one that impressed me most was the Chinese guy doing butterfly with one arm. I could never do it with two. Not a stroke. Why doesn't he go round in circles, like rowing with one oar?)

"Was watching this race and the commentator said lane 7 was empty because the competitor was injured. How injured do you have to be to miss a disabled race?"

I should add Lee is delightfully non PC. "Was disappointed at the Olympics that Sharapova had dropped out of the tennis due to a shoulder injury. After all, I would have made the effort to watch her despite my wrist injury."