24hoursfromtulsehill

No such luck. I'm working on it. I don't believe in taking wild guesses anymore.

He's gone a long way from fish and chips and Yates's though... There was a story on popbitch the other week about his manager, who has a catchphrase. Carl's rider is bottles of Moet and Chandon, so when taking bookings, his manager always says: "No Moet, no showey. No Chandon, no band on."

Diego! Much as I love the Oldham, I also like London and married life. Mrs. 24hours would never stand for me going to Boundary Park every other week, not least because she absolutely despises football. I plan to go to every game, home and away, in the 2010-11 season, which Mrs. Tulse knows and accepts. Until then, I must scratch and bite for every football moment I can get which, this season, will include about 15 games, not counting the various funerals and family emergencies that I shall invent in order to "visit Oldham" on certain Saturdays. Am I a fan?

The Specials' version is definitely more match-friendly. I reckon: Out of the Tunnel: Mouldy Old Dough Goal (of which there will be plenty): Guns of Navarone (The Specials) Out After Half Time: Hard To Beat by Hard-Fi (remeber them?) Full Time, win or lose: The Boys In Blue, re-recorded by Slayer (Surely they could be persuaded?)

I saw this stadium when I was looking for the stadium in the first quiz, but I didn't have the time to systematically retrace my steps...after which impressive excuses, do I get a point?

Did you go to the Baum last Friday? Perhaps he limits himself to Sundays. Perhaps the world did end, and this is all a dream...

You may say just such a thing. I'm getting battered tonight because today is, barring formalities and end-of-term shindigs and what-have-you, the Last Day Of Work Before Summer. Don't worry: when the real, as opposed to the phoney, holiday season begins, I'll be sure to let OWTB readers know all about it. Personal Message to LL: I won my argument with BigFin, mainly because I scared him. The next time he reads a children's book, he's gonna think I'm coming to get him, that I'm waiting for him at the next bus stop, or that I'm going to go around to his house to leer at him. Fat chance. Little does he know that I saw all that I needed to see when I saw you cuddling your hobbit teddy bear. Incidentally, have you finished with Mr. Nonsense yet - you seem to have been reading it for ages? BTW, BigFin: I was short of time, but I can type real fast... Not Jekyll, only Hyde...

Is Mr. Baum still going? Of course he is, because the world hasn't ended.

Whatever happens, we cannot have big Gordon's choice of "Jump" and "Another one bites the dust". Much as I like those songs, they are full on cheesy.

I'm short on time. 1. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Potter is studied in universities. The Government want 50% of people to go to them, and more means worse... 2. Technically brilliant? I might take that from someone who could spell. 3. Revolutionise the genre of children's story telling. Again, doubtful. People have been flogging baloney to children for well over a century. Anyway, doesn't "revolutionising the genre" mean that any two-bit hack with an eye for a quid will now try to write something similar? Big deal. 4. Subtext? The subtext is uglier than the actual text: like I say, the fact that adults become so happy that they do little wees because of a children's book is utterly and incontrovertably grotesque. 5. Intricacy of the story? BS. 6. Piece of imagination? I heard that someone wrote a book about a school for wizards years ago, and that rowling had read that book. Imagination or flat out desperation and plagiarism? 7. Linguistic advancement? New words and concepts? Such as? Any you know of made it into every day usage? Hear these words down the pub, do we? Thought not. 8. Rowling and Shakespeare? Now I know you're having a laugh. I've seen "articles" by those hacks too. They say things like "Tony Blair is just like Hitler", "The Streets is the modern Bunyon", or "Freddie Star ate my hamster". The books might be on a par with lotr (lower case, counter-honorifically), but to compare sheet with manure is really stretching one's appetite for pedantry. I haven't read Underworld or Mao II yet, but they're on my shelf. If only I could get a job that gave me three months off in the summer so that I could really get down to some serious reading... Funnily enough, I haven't read Coacaine Nights either, but I've read some of the early ones and quite a lot of the short stories. (BTW, I got Super Cannes and Cocaine Nights last week at Oxfam for 40p the pair! They're going to charge £18 for Harry Potter. A fool and his money...)

We should sort the spelling out on the poll, otherwise people won't be able to find The Guns of Navarone on youtube! It's by The Skatalites, too. I don't think I've heard it anywhere else, which would make it quite a classy choice.

I am very disappointed that you seem to have found new lotr "friends". I thought that you would be on the verge of dropping it, but that's obviously not the case. One mere mention of dorks and you're off again! Honestly, Andrew: people were impressed that you were a dorks and pricks and baloney fan in primary school; after all, who doesn't warm instantly and permanently to a child prodigy? Those glory days were 25 years ago. Please let it drop now. There's no need...

I am under a lot of pressure. You would not seriously defend reading children's books though, would you? What about kids TV? Should we all watch that, too? I watched lord of the rings once and it was torture. I'm glad they left the scouring of the shires out, but why couldn't they leave the rest out, too. Why couldn't we have sat and watched the test card for the best part of a day? I was so horrified by that film that I wanted to smash lees' television in with a big stick. They might have left the scouring of the shires out, but when the credits rolled, I swear to god that I felt so bad that I was () that far away from riot and revolution, and the pursuit of death on some unbelievable scale. I know what you Tolkein and Potter fans are really about. You spent god-knows-how-much cash on the fad, and you can't bring yourselves to admit that it was a load of old pony. It's alright: everyone's wasted time and money at some point, so you can all come out now and admit that that's what happened. You don't have to pretend any more, just come out and hold your hands up and say "I wuz robbed". No one will blame you. It's okay.

I've tried to stay out of this one, but I can't. Lord of the Rings is rubbish: anyone who fails to realise that is an eejit. Lees has been reading that drivel since he was a child, and he won't be told how actually rubbish it is. I don't mind children reading it, but grown-ups really ought to know better. The same goes for Harry Bloody Potter. Do yourself a favour, Maddog, and burn them there books, or take them to Oxfam. I could be wrong about Harry Potter, of course. In fact, my needs are the same as the nation's. What I need is to sit down for six weeks to read about the trials and tribulations of kids who go to an exclusive school, as related by a school-marmy do-gooding zillionaire. I need to know that, by means of a clever plot device, anyone who does not go to such a school is a bit crap, and that I should yield to their de facto superiority. When I've finished reading, I could go and watch (for how many hours?) people who used to go to such exclusive schools act out the scenes. A more realistic portrayal of life in exclusive schools would involve soggy buscuits, fagging, and sodomy. Where are they in Harry Potter? Where? It's hard to know what's in worse taste: Harry Potter or the nation's infatuation. The whole thing is totally corrupt, it stinks, and it's ugly. And as for all that dungeons and dragons baloney in Lord of the Frigging Rings... If Tolkein weren't such a blatant fraud, he would have written something decent about modernity and the yearning for an England that never existed. Instead, you get some dork wanting to find some pointless symbolic object, having to talk to some other dorks and pricks along the way. Big deal. Fake fake fake. Here's ten absolutely cracking books for grown ups, if read books ye must: 1. Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut 2. Anna Karenina by Tolstoy 3. White Noise by Don DeLillo 4. Bleak House by Charles Dickens 5. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert 6. Lolita by Vladimir Navokov 7. For Esme - with love and squalor by JD Salinger 8. Money by Martin Amis 9. One day in the life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexandr Solzenhitsyn 10. Crash by JG Ballard There is absolutely no need for grown-ups to read children's books or to watch children's films. It drives me fully bananas.

Stadio Flaminio. A desperate guess, but I don't have the time to trawl through all those bloody websites today...

Stade Velodrome?

I was really excited when this series started, but after about a week, I really couldn't give a . The show seems to be less about the foibles of talentless fame seekers now. When it was about that, it was pure telly gold. It's now about the extent to which the producers can annoy the poor mites, which is not as funny. Besides, Diego's picture quizzes are surely all the entertainment that a man could need of an evening!

Northerners: I could not be bothered to read the last few pages of drivel that you have no doubt written about the game. Be assured that we are coming up there to win and to win well, no quarter. Let's all of us hope that you'll at least be worthy opponents. No one likes a walk-over...

It's all quiet because we're keeping things secret. We'll be ready for, S_W, don't you worry your pretty head about that, sonny. We'll be ready...

There must be plenty of Oldhamers, like me, who have made their way down south in the past 10 years or so. I used to diss OASIS back in the Div 2 days, when I thought that they were trophy-chasing part-timers, when I was a northerner, now I can't wait to see them at those choice, close-to-London away games. Long live the exiles, and long live OLDHAM ATHLETIC.

oops.

Anyone up for a football-style get together on Sunday on Clapham Common?

If we sign that Ronaldinho one, I'll rip a tissue.

Don't agree. The defence is shaping up nicely, we've got one top quality winger, a goal machine awaiting parole, what looks like a ball-winning midfield, and a keeper whose head is okay. We might not need a dinky-passing, forward-looking midfielder who can't shoot. Goodby and good luck, Richie. Onwards and sideways, and down a bit. I posted a few weeks ago to say that a move to Wolves was imminent, but what a load of old that was. Championship? He was having a laugh.

Hubertz - a total monster of a player. Or Leon.