celebrity lookeylikey of the day

Anyone been wondering: what's that lanky guy out of The Verve been doing for the last 20-odd years? No, me neither, and to be honest you won't find out by reading this article on the BBC website which is basically just a promo piece for some upcoming solo gigs. What you will find, though, is that having avoided the stereotypical fiftysomething route of just getting really fat and bald, he's (we should give him a name: Richard Ashcroft) instead just got slightly more big-nosed and wrinkly while seemingly still retaining the leonine rock star mane - I say "seemingly" because he could of course be completely bald on top under the hat, indeed the whole hair could be one of those comedy hairpieces that's attached to the hat and lifts right off. 

Ashcroft and The Verve have parlayed quite a long and intermittently successful career of the back of maybe two years in the late 1990s when they coincided with the Zeitgeist, basically around the time of their third album Urban Hymns. In hindsight a lot of it sounds a bit one-paced and dreary these days - Sonnet would probably be the one to hang on to. 

Anyway, Ashcroft resembles no-one these days so much as 70s and 80s cannabis-smuggler, Welshman and late-90s celeb (surfing the same vaguely Loaded-esque ladsy Zeitgeist as Ashcroft) Howard Marks. You can make up your own The Drugs Don't Work jokes if you like. 

I hate you, Butler

A couple of related things following the sudden death of rugby pundit and journalist (and former Wales rugby captain) Eddie Butler. Firstly that while I do retain some vague memory of seeing the Grand Slam game in 1978 and probably a handful of other less individually memorable games from the same era my formative rugby-watching years were in the early 1980s when pickings were a good deal slimmer in terms of Welsh wins, let alone titles and trophies. The statistics are stark: 1969-1979 brought eight championships (two shared), three Grand Slams and six Triple Crowns, while the period from 1980-2004 brought two championships (one shared), no Grand Slams and one Triple Crown (in 1988). Obviously I've chosen the dates carefully there for maximum impact, and things have picked up quite a bit since 2005, but it's quite a contrast. Butler came into the team and served a stint as captain during the early part of that era (his debut was in 1980).

I recall that during Butler's time in the Welsh team and particularly on his being named as captain in 1983 there was a bit of suspicion of him in some quarters owing to his public school and Cambridge University background (and not, presumably, something more appropriate like coal-mining). Similarly during his career as writer and broadcaster his penchant for slightly flowery poetic flights of fancy was a bit Marmite-y, and occasionally prompted the thought that he was enjoying the sound of his own voice more than the audience was. But his occasional commentary sparring with Brian Moore was always entertaining and clearly derived from mutual affection, like for instance this entertaining exchange about Gavin Henson's leg-shaving habits before he kicked the monster penalty that defeated England and started Wales' 2005 Grand Slam campaign.

He also did some interesting stuff outside of the narrow subject of rugby union, including this half-hour documentary about his birthplace and my place of residence, the city of Newport. Among the many interesting historical snippets included are a bit about the city's key role in the Chartist movement, the Newport Rising in particular, and the role of John Frost in all of it. Frost managed to avoid being massacred and lived to the ripe old age of 93, long enough to be pardoned for his role in the uprising, but not long enough to see various Newport landmarks being named in his honour including John Frost Square in the city centre and John Frost School.

We'll come back to the square in a minute, but the school illustrates the city's rather incoherent approach to commemorating its Chartist history: it was renamed (it was formerly plain old Duffryn High School) in 2015, but only two years earlier the city had approved the demolishing of the Chartist mosaic/mural in the city centre, albeit in a rather unprepossessing location on an underpass wall. 

Anyway, back to John Frost Square, in a roundabout sort of way (that's a hilarious pun, for reasons that you'll see in a minute) - I was delivering Nia to her best friend's house at the weekend for a sleepover and pointed out the big clock sitting on top of a pair of steel columns that occupies the roundabout at the entrance to the new(ish) Glan Llyn estate, which in turn occupies part of the western end of the vast Llanwern steelworks site. Anyway, I told Nia that I was vaguely aware that the clock used to be in the city centre somewhere and moreover had some sort of mechanism that opened up the top and did something dramatic on the hour.

Further investigation reveals that it is a mechanical sculpture designed by a guy called Andy Plant , was formerly situated in John Frost Square (between about 1994 and 2008, as far as I can gather - there is some info on that Wikipedia page) and did some fairly bonkers stuff as part of its on-the-hour routine. It does seem a pity that the mechanism isn't operational any more - I've no idea whether it's still in there but needs a squirt of WD-40 or if it's been removed, but if it's the former (as seems more likely, on balance) it seems a shame not to spend a bit of money repairing it. That said, it doing its thing in the middle of a roundabout might be deemed a bit of a distraction hazard for motorists and there might not be the appetite for another relocation (nor indeed anywhere for it to go).

Just to clear up another couple of Newport claims-to-fame in the Butler documentary: it is certainly true that Joe Strummer lived in Newport in the 1970s (when he went by the name Woody Mellor), but it seems to have only been for about a year between 1973 and 1974, so any formative influence on his later work with the Clash seems a bit dubious. Even more dubious is the claim that Newport was the place where the mole grip was invented, as there seems to be a general consensus that it was invented (admittedly under a different name) in Nebraska in the 1920s. Newport was certainly the centre for UK manufacture from the 1950s onwards, but anyone claiming that means they were invented here needs to, so to speak, get a grip. 

celebrity cookeylikey of the day

The Velvet Underground's bass- and viola-wrangler (and, hey, why not, Welshman of the Day) John Cale (pictured here in 1967) and absurd Turkish steak-wrangler and internet viral sensation Salt Bae (real name Nusret Gökçe, so, yeah, Salt Bae it is). Note that literally the only difference between them is that Bae's chin hair extends to a goatee whereas Cale restricts himself to a thing that I would call a "soul patch", but which apparently has various other names including a "jazz dot" and, incomprehensibly, a "Nollsey". That last one may of course just be a mischievous Wikipedia edit (the only person I could locate who goes by that name is this guy) and so should probably be taken with - no, wait for it - a pinch of salt.

France is de la Tour

Not much competition for Welshman of the Day today; obviously it's going to be Geraint Thomas, the man who won the Tour de France at the weekend, thus becoming the third British winner of the event (but, oddly, the first British-born winner) and the sixth British winner in the last seven years. That last sentence sounds a bit contradictory until you realise that in addition to Sir Bradley Wiggins' trail-blazing win in 2012 four of the wins were accounted for by one man, Chris Froome.

It's impossible to celebrate the unprecedented success of Team Sky in the Grand Tours - Froome has now won all three of them, the Tours of Spain and Italy being the other two - without also mentioning the cloud of doping suspicion and allegations that hangs over Wiggins and to a lesser extent Froome. No specific suspicion has ever been attached to Thomas that I know of, but he does ride for the same team and so there will be some suspicion by association, as unfair as that might seem.

Doping, and doping in the Tour de France in particular, is a long-running and complex topic and if anyone has any romantic ideas about the old-school cyclists being unsullied Corinthian paragons who lived on nothing stronger than a couple of glasses of red wine a night then they should read about Jacques Anquetil and Eddy Merckx, among a host of others. Just as the selection of one drug and not another for prohibited status is at least partly arbitrary, so is the decision to expunge the wins of Lance Armstrong, Alberto Contador and Floyd Landis from the record books but not, say, Anquetil, who was pretty open about his drug use.

Well, that turned out less celebratory than it should have, so I should follow up by saying that I'm convinced that cycling now is cleaner than it's ever been, but that equally people will find new ways to cheat and new drugs to take that aren't yet on the banned list. Equally, I've absolutely no reason to imagine that Geraint Thomas is powered by anything more sinister than leeks and Welsh cakes - on that subject I should say that I heartily endorse his choice of Tan y Castell Welsh cakes, as they are indeed the best.

I should also say that my wife photographed his wedding in 2015 and he is apparently lovely, and so is his wife. And he's called Thomas so I expect we're probably related.

bevan knows I'm miserable nye

It's a few days late for the official anniversary but let me commemorate the 70th birthday of the National Health Service by appointing as Welshman Of The Day its primary architect Aneurin Bevan.

The really interesting thing about the inception of the NHS, a much-beloved institution by all right-thinking people, many of whom are currently rightly concerned for its future, is how unlikely it all was, and how several different things had to align in order for it to happen, any one of which could have scuppered the whole thing by its absence.

• Bevan's own personal drive, deriving in large part from his Welsh working-class background, was a major factor. The historical narrative which has Great Men standing head and shoulders above their contemporaries and achieving Great Things is generally wrong, or at best a gross over-simplification, but if Bevan hadn't been in the role of Health Secretary at the time, would the changes have been driven through? My friend Ben wrote this article as part of Welsh History Month in 2015 which gives some interesting context.
• Secondly, the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the general mood of optimism and brotherly love, perhaps accompanied by a general flattening of the class hierarchy after everyone's shared experience of warfare and existential peril, all of which led to the Labour landslide in the general election of 1945 and a massive political mandate to do a bit of the old socialism. But it was a fairly narrow window of opportunity: Labour won the 1950 general election only narrowly and then lost in 1951 after an ill-conceived snap election designed to increase Labour's slim majority. Clearly no-one would be foolish enough to try a similar gambit nowadays, hahahaha. Imagine!

So what do we conclude? Most obviously that it's very possible none of this would have happened but for the unique set of circumstances that existed in the wake of the Second World War, and therefore: no Hitler, no National Health Service. There, I've said it. Obviously Hitler never lived to see the scheme come to fruition, which is a shame as I gather the NHS leads the world in reconstructive testicular surgery and the treatment of cranial gunshot wounds.

Finally, no blog post mentioning Nye Bevan can fail to address the question of what Nye Bevan would have done in the event of a nuclear holocaust.

celebrity lookeylikey of the day

Nuclear-powered immaculately coiffured weirdly unlined futuristic sexbot Gigolo Joe, as played by Jude Law in A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and leek-powered immaculately coiffured weirdly unlined futuristic soccerbot Gareth Bale, nominee for tonight's BBC Sports Personality Of The Year. And, heck, Welshman Of The Day as well; why not?

I wasn't quite sure what to make of A.I. when I watched it, many years ago now (though I think I still have the DVD so I could watch it again easily enough). It was famously conceived by Stanley Kubrick and filmed by Steven Spielberg, but not surprisingly the end product feels more Spielberg than Kubrick, most obviously in the central character's being a child. This is unfair, since that was in Kubrick's version as well, but while the visuals were stunning there was just too much sugar and not enough vinegar for me. Spielberg's very next film Minority Report, while in similar futuristic vein, was a great deal better, though both films suffer from going arse-numbingly on for about 20 minutes longer than it feels like they ought to.

o captain my captain

Just a quick round-up in the aftermath of Europe's victory in the Ryder Cup. Firstly an updated version of my points table from last time round:

Year	Foursomes		Fourballs		Doubles		Singles		Overall
	Eur	USA	Eur	USA	Eur	USA	Eur	USA	Eur	USA
1979	4½	3½	3	5	7½	8½	3½	8½	11	17
1981	2	6	3½	4½	5½	10½	4	8	9½	18½
1983	4	4	4	4	8	8	5½	6½	13½	14½
1985	4	4	5	3	9	7	7½	4½	16½	11½
1987	4½	3½	6	2	10½	5½	4½	7½	15	13
1989	3	5	6	2	9	7	5	7	14	14
1991	2	6	6	2	8	8	5½	6½	13½	14½
1993	5	3	3½	4½	8½	7½	4½	7½	13	15
1995	5	3	2	6	7	9	7½	4½	14½	13½
1997	5	3	5½	2½	10½	5½	4	8	14½	13½
1999	4½	3½	5½	2½	10	6	3½	8½	13½	14½
2002	3½	4½	4½	3½	8	8	7½	4½	15½	12½
2004	6	2	5	3	11	5	7½	4½	18½	9½
2006	5	3	5	3	10	6	8½	3½	18½	9½
2008	3½	4½	3½	4½	7	9	4½	7½	11½	16½
2010	4½	3½	5	3	9½	6½	5	7	14½	13½
2012	3	5	3	5	6	10	8½	3½	14½	13½
2014	7	1	3	5	10	6	6½	5½	16½	11½
Totals	76	68	79	65	152	133	103	113	258	246

What this doesn't show you (since it aggregates the scores from Friday and Saturday) is that for only the third time in the history of the modern Ryder Cup (i.e. USA against Europe, the period covered by the table) a team won all three individual days of competition. Europe won Friday 5-3, Saturday 5-3 and then Sunday 6½-5½. The only other times this has happened were the two thumping European victories in 2004 and 2006. The winning teams also led after all three days in 1979, 1987, 1997, 2008 and 2010, but in these years they all lost a day's competition along the way: Saturday in 1979 and 2008 and Sunday in 1987, 1997 and 2010.

Clearly there's no competition for Welshman of the Day after Jamie Donaldson's shot to the 15th on Sunday. Donaldson was rock-solid on his Ryder Cup debut, and in fact in general the rookies on both sides all did very well, Donaldson and Dubuisson for Europe, and Patrick Reed, Jordan Spieth and Jimmy Walker for the USA. I felt a bit sorry for Stephen Gallacher, who got saddled with an out-of-sorts Ian Poulter against a fired-up Spieth and Reed on Friday and then drawn against Phil Mickelson on Sunday, tough enough even had Mickelson not been pissed off at being benched for Saturday's foursomes and out to prove a point.

So once again we can indulge in some amusing speculation as to why the Americans seem to be unable to get to grips with the Ryder Cup of late. The fractious post-match press conference suggests choice of captain may be an issue. Legendary golfer though he is, Tom Watson did have the air of a bemused great-uncle watching the kids running about at times, and at 65 he was 18 years older than Europe's captain Paul McGinley. The 25 years since Watson's last appearance as a player in 1989 is the second-largest margin for a captain in the modern Ryder Cup era, behind only John Jacobs who captained the losing European team in 1981 having made his sole playing appearance in 1955. By contrast, McGinley appeared as a player as recently as 2006.

So here's an esoteric piece of trivia for you - only once in the last nine Ryder Cups (and only 5 times in the modern era) has the contest been won by the team with the captain with the longer gap since his last playing appearance: Europe in 2006 captained by Ian Woosnam (last playing appearance 1997) beating the USA captained by Tom Lehman (last playing appearance 1999). Five times (Langer and Sutton in 2004, Ballesteros in 1997, Wadkins in 1995, Nicklaus in 1983) a captain was appointed who'd played in the previous Ryder Cup, and, uniquely, Raymond Floyd enjoyed an Indian summer to his career that enabled him to play in two further Ryder Cups as a player after his appearance as captain in 1989.

celebrity lookeylikey of the day

Current World Snooker Championship quarter-finalist, devoted family man and (I've just decided) Welshman Of The Day (you see what I did there) Ryan Day, and shape-shifting gelatinous alien blob and head of Deep Space Nine security Odo. It's the slightly blank expression and the weirdly sunken eyes, I think.

they mervynned me

Two further quickies: firstly let's give a posthumous Welshman of the Day award to Mervyn Davies, the former Wales and British Lions number 8 and Grand Slam-winning captain in 1976, who has died aged 65. I don't think I ever saw him play "live", as my earliest rugby-watching recollections that I can attach a specific date to are from Wales' next (and last until 2005) Grand Slam year, 1978, by which time Davies had been forced into early retirement by a brain haemorrhage.

Secondly, I caught most of Frost On Interviews on BBC4 the other day, and I was struck firstly by how interesting it all was, despite being at times a bit of a mutually congratulatory circle jerk between Frosty, Parky, the Melvster and others, but secondly by how odd it was to hear Sir David Frost refer to Anthony Eden by pronouncing the "th" in "Anthony" as a "th" and not as a "t", i.e. as in "anthology" rather than "antidote". This sounds odd when someone with a still nominally English accent (though Frost's tortured vowelisations are pretty uncategorisable these days) does it, as it's a specifically American thing. I have no idea why this pronunciation became the standard one in the US while the "t" one is the standard one in the UK. I suppose the many decades Frost has spent in the USA have had an influence (on him, that is, rather than pronunciation habits in general). The Americans still drop the "h" when abbreviating the name, though: the only person Wikipedia has a page for who goes by the first name "Thony" is this obscure French footballer.

howls of derisive laughter, bruce

More interesting and revealing word choices from the Daily Mail today as they attempt to wind their readership up to a frothing climax of right-wing outrage. Here's Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, the brazen hussy, not only failing to wear a hat in the presence of the Queen, but also failing to display the correct degree of servile forelock-tugging deference to unearned privilege by curtsying in the designated manner. I don't know, you hand the bally country over to the bally convicts and this is the sort of thanks you get. As always the comment thread provides some amusingly frothing lunacy:

She has no breeding whatsoever, that is why she didn't curtsey. Awful excuse for a woman, and an even worse example for a leader of a government.

Explanation for this weird and seditious behaviour is provided just beneath the main banner headline: apparently Ms. Gillard is a "self-confessed republican". Not only that, but she is - you might want to sit down at this point - an atheist; self-confessed, I shouldn't wonder. And not married. And, most troublingly for the Mail's readership, it is strongly rumoured that she is a woman. The horror!

Fortunately the Queen is a good Sheila, and not at all stuck-up.

[Following a brief exchange in the comments wherein it was pointed out that Gillard was born in Barry, I hereby nominate her Welshman of the Day as well; for a gender-based disclaimer regarding this title see this post.]

non-overlapping my arse

This morning's post-9am traffic jam Radio 4 accompaniment was a bit of Start The Week with Andrew Marr. The usual array of luminaries including Sarah Bakewell, author of a new biography of Michel de Montaigne, an author who I have to admit I'd never heard of, 16th-century French essayists not really being my forte, and also Will Self, who with a trademark display of his inimitable sesquipedalian logorrhoea memorably referred to Montaigne as being "instantiated by his methodology". How true that is.

Also appearing was biologist Steve Jones, who I hereby nominate as Welshman of the day, just because, well, he's Welsh. I'd switched off before they got to the bit that explained what he was doing there, but he and Will Self did get into a conversation about science and religion that caused just a faint plume of steam to start issuing from my ears.

Basically Jones trotted out some analogy about conflict between science and religion being a bit like a fight between a shark and a tiger; each is great and pretty much invincible on its own turf, but useless in the other's. This is basically a slightly cutesy version of Stephen Jay Gould's non-overlapping magisteria argument, and I suspect Jones offered it for the same reason Gould cooked it up in the first place, which is as a defence mechanism to avoid getting sucked into a clabby conversation he didn't want to get involved in.

That is the only acceptable defence for offering it as an argument, though, as it's completely bogus; there are no circumstances where religion is more useful to you than science, and they certainly do obtrude on each other's territory, unless you claim that your putative God intervenes in the world in no detectable way whatsoever, in which case what you've got there is a sort of loose Deism which resembles any of the world's major religions in no way whatsoever. The only way you can justify the notion of religion as useful in any real-world situation is to conflate the concept of religious faith with concepts like ethics and morality, which despite being clearly nonsensical is precisely what proponents of religion do all the time, in a desperate scrabbling attempt to claw back some real-world relevance.

A fight between a shark and a tiger would be pretty awesome, though. Perhaps in a paddling pool or something. Or a bath full of custard. Then again maybe they wouldn't want to fight? Maybe something deeply beautiful would happen.

quotes of the day

In the first place divest yourself of all bias in favour of novelty & singularity of opinion. Indulge them in any other subject rather than that of religion. It is too important, & the consequences of error may be too serious. On the other hand shake off all the fears & servile prejudices under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

Thomas Jefferson

There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dares not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed.

Bertrand Russell (found here). Incidentally Russell was born in Trellech in Monmouthshire, which makes him eligible for nomination as today's Welshman Of The Day.

if you tolerate this your stationery will be next

Always nice to read an interview with the Manic Street Preachers as in this month's Q magazine - one of the reasons this is such a pleasure is that bassist and de facto band spokesman Nicky Wire is so refreshingly willing to pontificate on all subjects, and generally make an utter tit of himself. I have a sneaky affection for him, but clearly not half as much as he has for himself. I offer you the following jottings, which form some sort of half-cocked manifesto:


You might have to click on it for a larger version if it's illegible. Just a quick trawl though the list:

• Points 1-3 are the usual self-aggrandising bollocks.
• #4 I bet Kubrick could bleedin' spell "stationery" though.
• I've no idea what #5 is about; that's precisely what makes the internet so great. Well, that and the porn.
• #6 is the usual Mr. Benn & Bod nostalgia bollocks. Nothing wrong with a bit of Dik & Dom, it's just that I'm not six any more.
• #7 refutes #5 a bit - log onto the internet, Nicky, there's lots of knowledge just lying around waiting to be picked up. Did you know the gastric-brooding frog is now believed to be extinct? I did.
• #8, well, yes, I agree. The South Bank Show must be starting to suffer from This Is Your Life syndrome, though, i.e. there's no-one left alive who hasn't been done. Me next, I reckon.
• #12, Christ, Tutti Frutti. Great series, I'd snap it up like a shot if it came out on DVD. The "destruction" referred to is of the original film stock, which makes DVD-quality picture a bit tricky. That doesn't rule out a release, though clearly the air of imminence given off by this 2006 article was a bit premature. I was briefly in love with Emma Thompson in her ginger-haired incarnation as feisty guitarist Suzi Kettles around the time the series was shown - she appears briefly in this clip.
• #13 - Simon Jenkins? This Simon Jenkins?
• #14 oooooh, get you with your poetry appreciation skills. And in touch with the feminist struggle as well, right, sisters?

I mock in an affectionate way, of course - it's refreshing to read interviews with people who have actual opinions about things, and sound as if they might have read the odd book. Intelligence is undermined somewhat if you feel the need to keep pointing it out, though. Nonetheless I hereby anoint Nicky Wire Welshman of the day, just because I haven't done one for a while.

that was quick

Just to underline my point about cover versions, I hear the worrying news that X Factor winner Alexandra Burke has released a cover of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah as her first single.

The most famous version of Hallelujah was by the late Jeff Buckley, though as I understand it his version was heavily influenced by an earlier cover by Velvet Underground co-founder and - heck, why not? - Welshman Of The Day, John Cale. Here's a brief Guardian article about Cale - notable mainly for some brief but highly concentrated utter bollocks in the comments section.

heavy medal mayhem

This (via Strange Maps) is very cool indeed: an interactive series of maps of the competing countries in each Games in the modern Olympic era, with the size of the country dictated by its total medal tally.

While we're on the subject of the Olympics (again), let's do a Welshman Of The Day: sprinter Christian Malcolm, who has just qualified for the men's 200m final, though unless one of Usain Bolt's freakishly long legs comes off at some point during the race the result seems like a foregone conclusion. He's from Newport, you know (Malcolm, not Bolt). There's lovely. Isn't it.

Welshman of the day

Sue Jones-Davies, the current Mayor of Aberystwyth.

SJD, as her mates probably call her, is currently campaigning for the lifting of the ban imposed nearly 30 years ago on the showing of the Monty Python film Life Of Brian in Aberystwyth. The interesting bit is that SJD herself appeared in the film as Brian's girlfriend Judith Iscariot ("Leave that Welsh tart alone"). So what we have here is, essentially, a prominent public figure campaigning for nude footage of themselves to be brought into the public domain. Which makes for a refreshing change.

Interesting SJD fact #2: she used to be married to comic writer and actor and for-research-purposes-only-child-pornography-downloader Chris Langham. Some might wish to theorise that Langham was traumatised into his kiddy porn habits as a compensating reaction to frequent exposure to his ex-wife's unkempt Immac-free womanly magnificence (as featured full-frontally in the film). Frankly I would find such speculation distasteful and inappropriate.

And yes, I know she's a woman (I've seen the film, remember), so "Welshman" is slightly inaccurate, but I'm not relabelling all the previous posts.

Welshman of the day

Ray Gravell, who died suddenly yesterday.

Mainstay of the Welsh Grand-Slam-winning teams of the late 1970s, British Lion and stalwart of Llanelli for many years. The centre partnership is perhaps the least-celebrated bit of the legendary Welsh teams of the late 1970s golden era (1976 through 1978 in particular), although the partnership of Steve Fenwick and Gravell (with occasional contributions from Roy Bergiers and David Burcher in the event of injuries) was an important one, and prefigures modern centre partnerships quite closely: Fenwick at inside centre the skilful footballer and distributor (and handy back-up goalkicker), and Gravell at outside centre the big aggressive battering ram in attack and thumping tackler in defence.

Following his retirement in the mid-1980s Gravell carved out a second career as an actor, indeed he may be one of the few British Lions to have his own IMDB page. Which reveals that he starred in 1992's Damage, which I've seen, although I can't recall his appearance in it. I expect I was probably distracted by a naked Juliette Binoche.

More recently he became a commentator for BBC and S4C and had been battling diabetes for some years, eventually having a leg amputated earlier this year.

what in Swansea am going on here?

Anyone who's of roughly similar age to me (say 4 or 5 years either way) will surely remember Absolutely. Sketch show, primarily Scottish cast, went out on Channel 4 at about 10pm at various points between 1989 and 1993. And it was very very good - the "Stoneybridge" sketch is the one everyone remembers, judging by how often it features in those "100 Greatest Comedy Sketches" shows, but there was lots of other great stuff as well, the best of which usually featured John Sparkes, one of the great unsung comedy geniuses of the 20th century. And, interestingly, or perhaps not, one of only two regular cast members who weren't Scottish (he's Welsh. Another candidate for Welshman of the Day, perhaps. The other non-Scot, Morwenna Banks, is, as far as I know, English).

So why am I telling you this, assuming you don't know it all already? Well....I decided, several months ago now, that I'd quite like to own the whole thing on DVD. And since every half-baked unfunny sitcom you can think of is out on DVD these days, I fully expected just to log on to Amazon, click the "Buy Now" button and that would be it. But....no. It turns out that Absolutely has never been released on DVD, much to the chagrin of the large fan community. So much so, in fact, that one particularly rabid fan has set up a website specifically dedicated to getting it released. There is an online petition which can be found here: I strongly urge you to leave a comment (this counts as signing it, I guess). Then once it's been released you can buy it for me for Christmas! Perfect.

Welshman of the day

Actually this is more a couple of of everyday objects that you might have lying around the house, not knowing that they are named after Welshmen.

Captain Morgan rum

Named after Sir Henry Morgan, notorious 17th-century pirate and later, slightly more respectably, Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica. Born in Llanrhymny, Glamorgan in 1635(ish), did lots of looting and pillaging in South and Central America, hot-footed it back to England and got knighted by Charles II and sent off to the Caribbean. Nice work if you can get it!



Mount Everest

Named after Colonel Sir George Everest, born near Crickhowell in 1790, geographer and Surveyor-General of India. The mountain itself was surveyed by Everest's successor, Andrew Waugh, who named it after his predecessor, presumably because he didn't know what the native name was, or he couldn't pronounce it. Speaking of pronunciation, an interesting footnote is that Sir George pronounced his surname "Eve-rest" and not "Ever-est". So we've all been saying it wrong all these years.

Welshman of the day

Robert Recorde, 1510-1558, physician and mathematician.

Born in Tenby, attended the universities of both Oxford and Cambridge, acted as physician to the royal family, and died in a debtors' prison in Southwark.

Inventor of the equals sign (that's this for you non-mathematicians: "="). Also the inventor of the word zenzizenzizenzic meaning "raised to the eighth power", e.g. the zenzizenzizenzic of 2 is 256. This word has the most z's of any word in the English language, but it is a bit difficult to slip into conversation. Give it a go, though.