AE on Telly News (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

Since you mention it, why am I paying Sky squillions every month and getting ads? Is it worth signing up for the free Amazon service, ask your daughter.

[Mick Harper]

Casanova in London R4X

It was odd hearing Casanova's words for the first time after writing so much about him. I can't tell how much I'm second guessing but the 'local colour' was entirely of the London Tourguide sort and betrayed no evidence of the writer having actually been there. I don't know if the individuals he meets have been checked out. Popping into see a 'George III ' for example. Was there ever such a person in London during the 1760's?

His exploits were strictly softcore and quite unbelievable. You know, leaving a tavern and finding his hackney carriage has left without him, standing helplessly looking around whereupon a beautiful woman in an 'immensely comfortable carriage' comes along and says, "If you are going anywhere in Whitehall, I can drop you at your door." They do the nasties on the way, natch. Though to be fair that's happened to me more than once. "If you're going anywhere near Catford..."

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Wile E. Coyote]

The Dark Side of Ballet (Schools) BBC1

Ballet dancers, Sumo Wrestlers, Basketball players, Line Backers, Jockeys, Discus Throwers, have to be a certain size or shape to have any real chance of success, statistically.

At some point it is actually kinder to point this out to youngsters. Wiley reckons they deserve to know if they are too fat, slim, tall or weak, and have no hope of making it.

Hopefully, rather than waste a few years pursuing an impossible dream, they can achieve sucess as something they are more suited for?

The schools were opting for a tough/love approach, just lose a few more pounds, well done, you can do it .... which of course was interpreted as body shaming by these already painfully thin youngsters interviewed.

The reality was no Ballet company was ever going to employ any youngster they deeemed too large. Some of the dancers just had developed the wrong body shape for the hoped for profesion. It wasn't these children's fault, it was just no-one was being "up front" with them. They were simply the wrong shape to be ballet dancers.

[Mick Harper]

I think you misunderstand the nature and purpose of these vocational enterprises for youngsters. Let me instance the one example I was personally involved with. A protégée spent her teenage years zealously practising her cello and went on to Cardiff School of Music where she joined many other would-be professional cellists. When this is multiplied by the number of music colleges in Britain and divided by the number of professional cello vacancies arising each year, the co-efficient says it all. Would she have benefited from someone taking her aside and telling her in no uncertain terms she'd never make it? Let's see...

1. She was a relatively trouble-free adolescent
2. She seemed to get every satisfaction from playing in amateur scratch orchestras
3. She got the occasional paid gig in string quartets for weddings et al
4. She had a mum who was pleased as punch throughout.

So was it all worthwhile? The first thing to say is there has to be a job at the end of the rainbow, however theoretical. Otherwise the whole thing is just bourgeois posturing. Or proletarian moon-dreams in the case of serried youth at football academies. Where, be it noted, the winnowing process is callous in the extreme, without any accusations of undue cruelty. The second thing is: who pays? Not just financially but psychologically. It seems to me that so long as it is the child who wants it, not the the parent pushing the child to do it, and so long as the rest of us are not picking up the tab, everything is as it should be.

Life's unfair, you'd better believe it, kiddo.

[Mick Harper]

Panorama (cont)

Well, Wiley, I didn't get as far as you did. These Shock! Horror! exposes always put the best first and after ten minutes I'd got two girls who were clearly wrongly shaped for ballet despite strenuous efforts on the part of the schools, and a boy with self-worth issues. There were complaints about cruelty from teachers but nothing out of the ordinary for a competitive environment. There's carrot and there's stick, little poppets, it's called life.

It was so pitiful I had to give up. Did I miss 'owt?

[Boreades]

That "wrong shape for ballet" also applies to gymnastics and divers.

Fortunately for the girls (maybe the boys as well), puberty blockers are now a banned drug, so there are fewer unnaturally-thin women winning Olympic and World gymnastics championships.

Curiously, some of the very best world-class practitioners of martial arts (such as Karate and Taekwondo) had started in ballet and/or gymnastics. They had already honed their skills in things like poise, balance, flexibility, speed and spatial awareness.

Put that combination into someone with the martial skills and it's awesome to watch. Maybe having been a reject from another sport also gives them an aggressive edge, or a keenness to prove a point.

[Mick Harper]

This idea of sport-to-sport transfers is highly under-explored. I first came across it when speed-skaters discovered they had exactly the right muscle development for the more lucrative world of road cycling. The Commie bastards are our mentors here with their child sports clinics who take any likely-looking candidate and then find a sport that suits them. If necessary, more than once. There should be some sort of 'science' but typically there isn't. Sport is so laissez-faire.

[Boreades]

Hence the Jamaican bobsleigh team. It started as a joke, even made a film of it (Cool Runnings).

Just wait until they get serious. Pick a bunch of really good sprinters. Probably world-class but not-quite-Olympic-medal standard, with some better equipment and pilot training.

Not the current bunch of optimists and chancers, however romantic or endearing their effort is.

[Mick Harper]

This is a completely different phenomenon. Since the only part most of any bobsleigh outfit play is the running and pushing at the start, they select burley sprinters rather than bobsleighers. Somewhat similar to Colin Moynihan who built an entire political career out of being an Olympic rowing silver medalist when he was selected to be cox of the British eight on account of him being a midget (o.n.o.) and, thanks to his public school education, was able to say 'in' and 'out' in the correct sequence.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Looks to me that speed skating is a tougher, more technical sport, so it's easy for skaters to switch. Cyclists don't appear to be capable of becoming speed skaters, could be training regimes, skaters train in part by cycling, cyclists train by....cycling.

[Wile E. Coyote]

I think Ten Hag has got the wrong idea of man management, he seems to think it's clever to want to "throw the boot" at anybody that disagrees with him or he doesn't like as a player. The latest being Sancho, with a few leaks to the press and then a big hint. "I don't know if he will play for Man United again"

Ten Hag won't change now as the fans and pundits love this sort of cartoon management, ignoring all the previous evidence, e.g. the reign of tyrant and self proclaimed Messiah, Jose Mourhino.

In a year's time and another three hundred million wasted, they will be blaming Ten Hag for, err, "losing the dressing room".

No shit......

[Mick Harper]

Problem is it works a lot of the time too. The uber-problem is that it works at one club but not at another, then not at another time at that club but it does at the other, for one player but not another player but then it doesn't, etc etc. If we knew we could bottle it, as they say. If only Sancho had gone to Real Madrid...

[Wile E. Coyote]

It works when you are bringing through younger players who are used to this approach, the Giggs, Scholes, Nevilies, Beckhams, who thrived/survived on this regime developed by Eric Harrison as they came through the ranks and progressed into the first team and later became seniors. What Fergusson did was minor to what they were used to from Harrison. Ten Hag could also get away with this at a young Ajax. It won't work with older players who have been coached in different, more modern ways, they will just consider you a total bastard and ask for a move.