gair rhydd - Issue 723

Fallen hero

Inside GRiP: Art from the Valleys takes over the city centre

Sport’s verdict on the demise of Roy Keane Printed at Westcountry Design and Print

MONDAY 27TH MAY 2002 / FREE WORD 723

gairrhydd

Homelink in bond disgrace

The Homelink office and BELOW: a disgruntled Jon Wilks

Letting agency accused of withholding housing bonds in new case of poor practice against students Lydia Kirby reports A Cardiff based letting agency has failed to return hundreds of pounds worth of bonds to students.

Homelink, situated on Albany Road in Roath, has withheld bonds from at least two student houses despite constant letters and telephone calls from them demanding money owed from last June.

Jon Wilks, who rented a house for two years from Homelink was told the company was in ‘financial difficulty’ when he asked for his bond last June.

“Homelink told me to write to them for the bond money. I was given the impression that they were almost bankrupt.

Then a few days later I saw people handing out leaflets for their property so they were obviously still operating,” he said.

“We had heard about the problems people had with getting bonds back from Castle

Management last September so had made sure someone from Homelink checked the house for damages when we left it and signed a piece of paper saying the house was ok. We knew there was no reason why we couldn’t have our bond back.”

Unable to get hold of Homelink, Mr. Wilks went to the Cardiff Housing Help Centre who sent a letter to the agency asking for an explanation into why they had failed to return the bond money. No response was received.

“I haven’t heard anything from Homelink since,” Mr. Wilks said. “It’s so annoying because none of us have much money so we can’t afford to lose out.”

A Homelink employee

“I haven’t heard anything from Homelink since. It’s so annoying because none of us have much JON WILKS ON money” HOMELINK

revealed that this was not the only time the agency had failed to return bonds.

“We had a group of girls coming in asking for their bonds recently and I was embarrassed not to be able to help them,” he said.

“As a tenant myself I do feel for these students. It’s really embarrassing.”

However, Homelink Manager, Sunhi Sinha, stressed that he would be willing to discuss returning the bonds to the students but that they needed to get in contact with him.

“From what I can see the problem was with unpaid bills.

If the students get in contact with me there should be no reason why they can’t have their bond money back. They just need to come and see me.”

However, Wilks and his housemates deny there were outstanding bills.

Cardiff University Student Adviser, Sue Harris, stressed that while Jon had done the right thing in contacting the Housing Help Centre, he should have kept pushing the case.

“The letter sent by the Centre says that if Mr Wilks didn’t receive a response he could lodge a claim against Homelink in the small claims court. This is something which scares most students but we can give advice on this sort of thing. We have a solicitor that comes into the office fortnightly to give advice to students.”

In September 2000 hundreds of students failed to receive their bonds back from Cardiff based housing agency Castle Management who later declared themselves bankrupt.

To avoid being left in this situation the Union advises students to persuade their landlords or letting agencies to join the bond Bank Scheme set up last year.

Equal Opportunities and Welfare Officer, Rohan Tambyraja said, “The Bond Bank Scheme is the best way to ensure the money is dealt with fairly because its not dealt with by the letting agency or landlord. At the moment only a few landlords have signed up because they say students aren’t asking them to. I would encourage everyone to ask their landlords to sign up so events like this don’t happen again.”

CARDIFF’S STUDENT WEEKLY

Cardiff Uni students get fresh on HTV Lydia Kirby reports CARDIFF UNIVERSITY Freshers are the focus of a new documentary series that promises to show students ‘warts and all.’

Freshers, a six part series described as ‘shocking, controversial and sensational’ by the Wales on Sunday, follows four Cardiff freshers through the ups and downs of their first year at university.

As expected, much of the story line focuses on getting drunk and lairy but, promises Director and Producer of the programme, Steve Callan, also portrays a “completely real picture of student life.”

“There were no barriers between the production team and the four students being filmed. And as a result what we get is the truth,” he said.

The documentary was filmed on the University campus between September 1999 and Summer 2000 but is being broadcast for the first time this month. Hugo Cox, one of the stars of the show and described as ‘a laid back surf dude’ in the show synopsis admits at times it was a bit awkward being constantly filmed.

“It was a bit awkward having the cameras there at

times – some people were put off by it. And I had to think about what I was saying because I knew it would all be caught on camera.”

“There are a few scenes which are a bit cringe-worthy and friends have taken the piss a bit but I’m not too embarrassed about it. It just shows how I was two years ago,” he said.

Director Steve Callan was also a student at Cardiff University when the programme was being filmed and believes this is what made the documentary so realistic. It is a sentiment that is shared by Executive Producer, Elis Owen.

“Freshers gives an excellent ‘warts and all’ view of students going through their first year of college life,” he said.

This week the second part of the documentary will be broadcast, focusing on the raucous Athletic Union Slave Auction and the drunken antics of Hugo and fellow starring students, Emma Bussey from Buckinghamshire, Neno Malisevic from Germany and Rachel Argent from Cornwall. The programme will be shown over the next few weeks on Tuesdays at 11.30pm on HTV Wales.

“More than three-quarters of Americans don’t believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing JFK. One in ten Americans think that the 1969 moon landing never occurred.

Conspiracy theories sell.”

JONATHAN STEVEN INVESTIGATES THE MYTH OF THE CONSPIRACY THEORY P28 News p1–4 ● Letters p7 ● GRiP 9 TV listings p20 ● Features p27 ● Sport p30

News 2

IN BRIEF Union plays World Cup World Cup Fever will be hitting Cardiff Union next week with matches being broadcast in the Tafarn, Games Room and Cap ‘n’ Gown.

All the games, including the friendlies , will be played with alcohol served after 12pm.

To celebrate the event the Union will be running special promotions details of which can be found on the Union noticeboards.

‘Secret’ gig in Great Hall Spiritualized have announced they are to play the Union’s Great Hall in a warm-up gig for their Glastonbury show.

The concert will take place on June 27th and ticket can be

Gair Rhydd MONDAY 27TH MAY 2002

NUS in trouble as more Unions opt out Aimee Bryant and Abbie Jackson report THE NUS is losing support as universities across the country voice their dissatisfaction with the organisation.

Southampton University Students’ Union has announced its decision to pull out of the NUS and UMIST, Edinburgh and Imperial discussing taking similar actions.

The motion, passed at Southampton’s AGM last month, arose as a result of

bought from the box office.

CU scientist reaps awards A CARDIFF scientist has received another international honour for his research into cancer and genetic diseases.

Professor Martin Evans FRS, Director of the School of Biosciences at Cardiff University, has been awarded an honorary doctorate from a school in New York, regarded as one of the world’s foremost centres for medical and scientific training.

The honour comes just six months after he received the Lasker Award, a prize known as the American ‘Nobel’, for his work which was said to have ‘revolutionised the study of human health and disease.’

Going it alone A NEW publication aimed at the one in three graduates who want to be self-employed has been launched by CSU, the higher education Careers Services Unit.

Prospects Focus on Selfemployment aims to inform and support students looking to become budding entrepreneurs.

Copies are available from the Careers Services and also accessible on www.prospects.ac.uk/self.

Gair Rhydd ADDRESS University Union Park Place Cardiff CF10 3QN

“I don’t feel that Cardiff students are receiving value from the NUS ACADEMICS AFFAIRS OFFICER, IAN HIBBLE at present”

Promiscuous students ignore health risks Charlotte Spratt reports STUDENTS ARE becoming even more reckless in their sex lives, according to a new study by City University in London.

Over half refuse to use condoms or other contraception and expose themselves to the risks of Aids, pregnancy as well as other sexually transmitted diseases.

Cheating is said to be prevalent at university with almost half of both men and

EDITORIAL 02920 781434/436 ADVERTISING 02920 781416 EMAIL SSUGR1@cf.ac.uk VISITORS Find us on the 4th floor of the Students Union

longstanding dissatisfaction with the NUS. Alex Bazin, Clubs and Societies Officer at Southampton said, “The NUS does not provide the level of support or representation that our students expect for the amount of money we pay.”

Each year, Southampton pays a membership fee to the NUS of £68,850. At Cardiff this fee is £50,000.

Cardiff Union’s Academic Affairs Officer, Ian Hibble echoed the concerns of Sabbatical officers at Southampton stating, “I don’t feel that Cardiff students are receiving value for money from the NUS at present”.

The NUS campaigns on behalf of Universities on issues such as tuition fees and enables Students’ Unions to sell products, like alcohol, at reduced prices.

The NUS card provides students with discounted

CONDOMS: a necessity

women admitting to adultery.

Ten percent of men and six percent of women admitted to having over 20 different partners.

Students are also the group most likely to change partners. Half of male and nearly a third of female students confirmed that they have had sex with someone and then later regretted it.

Student Welfare Officer at City University, Andreas Siostrom, said, “This might be part of the student lifestyle; the experimenting and excitement of being totally free to do whatever you want for the first time.”

With knowledge about STD’s and STI’s improving, this information may surprise some students.

Recent campaigns aimed at developing student’s sexual awareness mean that 78 percent of men and 84 percent of women claim they find it easy to discuss protection.

In February the National Assembly launched a campaign to encourage young people to use contraception after it was discovered that sexual diseases among 16-25 year olds had risen dramatically in the last 10 years.

goods although, if a university decided to disaffiliate, this benefit could still be obtained through individual membership with the NUS. Following a conference in April, delegates from Cardiff were left disillusioned with the current state of the NUS. Describing the shortcomings of the NUS, Ian Hibble said, “I think that the NUS needs to reform its methods in order to continue benefiting students.”

Indeed, the organisation has recently been criticised at the NUS national conference for financial losses that are expected to top £1.5 million over the next three years.

This had led to a reduction of the services that the NUS provides for students, such as cutting the number of staff dealing with liberation campaigns and reducing mailouts to Unions.

However, NUS President Owain James defended the organisation pointing out that exceptional circumstances, including the threat of top-up fees, have been to blame for this overspending.

At present, the possibility of Cardiff’s disaffiliation is

NUS CAMPAIGNING ON TUITION FEES: yet their money is not going to help students, and LEFT: NUS President Owain James

only a marginal.

Ian Hibble, although maintaining his support for NUS Wales, said, “I would like to see a review of Cardiff’s NUS membership looking at the intangible and tangible benefits that it provides our students.”

However, Cardiff’s Sabbatical officers are divided on the issue. Finance and

Services officer, Alex Molokwu, emphasised the commercial benefits of NUS membership which he felt could not be bettered.

There will be a chance for students to air their view on Cardiff’s potential disaffiliation from NUS at the next meeting of Student Union Council on Monday 27th May at 6.30pm in the Council room.

TAI I’W RHENTU

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News 3

Gair Rhydd MONDAY 27th MAY 2002

Hi-tech voting system to revolutionise lectures segment in Who Wants to be a Millionaire, are distributed throughout the lecture theatre, giving students the opportunity to respond anonymously to multiple choice questions posed by the lecturer.

These responses can then be relayed back and displayed for the whole class.

Various universities, including Glasgow, Strathclyde and Lancaster, are now testing the PRS measure of student response and participation.

So far it has proved immensely popular amongst students and lecturers.

A senior lecturer in the School of English, who admitted never having previously heard of PRS, said that it sounded like a “trivialisation” of higher education.

Strongly reinforcing the fact that modern technology is not welcomed by all, he categorised such advances as “academic surrendering to the David Blunkett mentality” that sees “universities as factories

Students may soon be taking a front seat in lectures

John Collingridge reports STUDENTS MAY soon have the chance to say exactly what they think in their lectures with the aid of a new hand-held

voting device.

The Personal Response System (PRS), designed specifically for higher

education, is an interactive way of measuring student responses.

Handsets, similar to those used on the ‘ask the audience’

producing morons”.

He suggested that while the system is perhaps inappropriate for arts subjects where “the emphasis is on the written and spoken word rather than numbers”, such introductions could possibly “prove popular in the Business School”.

Cardiff Students were more supportive of the idea.

Sammy Preston, a second year French student said, “It could work in certain lectures where there are loads of students and you can’t always ask questions if you don’t understand.”

A first year Business student said, “It sounds like a good idea, if a little expensive”.

He agreed that it certainly would encourage student participation. “Falling asleep in lectures would be a thing of the past,” he said.

As yet, there are no plans to introduce the system to Cardiff although, if the scheme continues to prove a hit in other universities, it is likely that PRS may be considered in Cardiff lectures.

Flag waving ban as Union fears violence

Lydia Kirby reports DESPITE THE coming Jubilee and England’s place in the World Cup, students at Warwick University have been branded racists for showing support for their country.

Residents at a Halls of Residence on the university campus, who had put up the St. George flag in preparation for the World Cup, were ordered to take it down by university officials.

They were told the flag was ‘racist’ and ‘likely to incite violence and conflict’ among foreign students.

Warwick Student, Susanna Steptoe, said the university’s reaction amounts to “ludicrous levels of political correctness.”

“Foreign students have put up French and Brazilian flags. We just wanted to cel-

ebrate our culture,” she said.

The group of ten students have refused to remove the flag and bunting from their flat window despite repeated warnings from the university.

“We had a visit from our resident tutor who said it was offensive and would maybe incite violence with those who might have a problem with England,” Susanna said.

These sentiments were backed by the university’s head of accommodation who, according to Susanna, told the students “there would be no debate, no discussion, the flags were offensive to foreign students and could cause violence and problems.”

A spokesman from the university denied that staff had deemed the flag racist claiming that the university

wanted to have it removed merely because it made the campus look messy.

“It’s to do with what the place looks like,” he said.

“The campus needs to be a pleasant environment for everyone to live in.”

But the students believe the university’s decision is an infringement of their human rights.

“We are standing our ground because we feel we’re not allowed freedom of speech or expression.”

Susanna added.

Conservative education spokesman, Alistair Burt said, although the university’s reaction was ‘wrong’ it was also understandable given people’s view of St. George’s flag.

“We need to break the stranglehold that the far Right has on these flags and take them back,” he said.

Such displays of patriotism are banned in Warwick

Saturday Night ‘star’ to play Ball Lydia Kirby reports NEWS THAT one-hit wonder Whigfield will be headlining at this year’s Summer Ball has left students annoyed and disappointed.

Following the cancellation of Atomic Kitten last month, the Union’s Entertainments Department has been desperately searching for an act to replace the trio.

Despite reports that it was too late to guarantee another act, Finance and Commercial Services Officer, Alex Molokwu, last week announced that Whigfield, who had a hit in the early 1990’s with ‘Saturday Night’ would now be playing in place of Atomic Kitten.

South Wales based band, Manchild, who supported the ‘No Fees’ campaign earlier this year, will also be playing at the Ball.

The booking of Whigfield has proved unpopular with many Cardiff students, most of whom feel the Union could have put their ticket money to better use.

“It’s a bit of a joke that we’re paying £28 for Whigfield,” said second year Maths student, Lizzie Butler. “She’s not exactly on the same level as Atomic Kitten.”

Third year student, Matt Davis agreed. “6,000 tickets have been sold and the only act they can get is someone who had one hit and hasn’t been around for years,” he said.

But fourth year Language student, Caroline Spencer, believes that the change in lineup will make little difference to the night.

“It’ll be a good night anyway because you’ll be with your mates and probably pissed.

Whigfield could be a laugh anyway – take you back to school disco days.”

Alex Molokwu, who admits to having his nights in the Tafarn disturbed by friends complaining about the Ball, is not surprised by the reaction. “I thought people would diss Whigfield but she’ll create a good atmosphere.”

He added, “We’ve made a real effort with the inside of the Ball and with sorting out queuing. I think, despite all the complaining, people will be pleasantly surprised with this year’s Ball.”

Debt-ridden student newspaper forced to close

David Lindsell reports Writers as varied as Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle, Gordon Brown and Pop Idol’s Darius made it great but now Britain’s oldest student newspaper, Edinburgh Student has folded.

The 32 page weekly paper has run up debts suggested to be as large as £10,000 and has not been printed since February 20th.

According to the editor, Chris Page, the advertising slump since September 11th has heavily affected the paper’s finances.

“Every media organisation has felt the pinch since September 11th - but unlike Rupert Murdoch, we don’t have millions to fall back on,” he said.

“When I took over as edi-

tor, I opened the books and got the shock of my life.

There were unpaid bills dating back to 1997. Then we got a couple of big bills from the printers and distributors and the usual telephone and insurance bills on top. Morale is at an all-time low.”

The Edinburgh Student is independent from the university and the Student’s Union and instead relies solely on advertising to exist.

Past editors include David Steel and Gordon Brown.

The Chancellor wrote a regular column on the paper for three years. He was a news editor, then editor and finally Rector of the University.

Robin Cook was arts sub-editor and Darius Danesh was an arts critic.

Kitchener, David Lloyd George and Sir Winston Churchill all wrote for the newspaper while holding the

post of Rector. In 1896, Conan Doyle, a former Edinburgh student, wrote a spoof Sherlock Holmes story to help it raise funds for a cricket pavilion.

Fundraising efforts around the university have raised £2,000 so far but there is still £10,000 to raise.

A spokeswoman for Edinburgh University said “It would be a great pity were it to cease to exist. Various uni-

versity bodies have given practical assistance to help Student try to recover from its difficulties.”

David Seymour, political editor of the Mirror Group, who edited the paper in 1962, said: “I believe it will rise from the ashes. I am considering sending some money.”

The newspaper will continue to be published on the Internet in the meantime.

Gair Rhydd MONDAY 27th MAY 2002

News 4

The Week British Bulldog In Print

bows out Blaine takes pole position David Lindsell reports

James Bladon reports LAST WEEK thousands of fans filled a park on Fifth Avenue, New York, to watch magician David Blaine carry out one of the most dangerous stunts of his career.

Blaine leapt from the 80 foot pillar, just 22 inches across, on which he had been standing for 35 hours.

In front of a live audience in the US, the magician plummeted to the ground, landing on his back in 12ft of cardboard boxes.

What made his efforts even more remarkable is that he went without food for the duration of his time at the top of the column, choosing only to drink water.

Blaine was not harnessed to the structure; the only concession to safety were two handles for him grip to stop him falling on the bare flag stones

beneath and the cardboard boxes were not put in place until shortly before he was due to jump Blaine, who is known for his the sinister stare and monotone voice which famously made the unflappable Eamon Holmes positively squirm during a live interview on GMTV, is no stranger to feats of extraordinary endurance.

Blaine was once buried alive for five days, with only water to survive on and more recently spent 61 hours in a block of ice in the middle of Times Square.

Before the his latest stunt went ahead Blaine explained how dangerous it would be.

“With the ice, if there was a problem, they could cut me out. With this one if there’s a problem, and I come down there’s nothing but pavement, so...you can figure out what would happen.”

IT IS with genuine sadness that Gair Rhydd announces the death of a great sportsman.

In a world where money grabbing, hype, match fixing and ludicrous personalities are rife it has always been a pleasure to watch a true sportsman in a true sport like American Wrestling.

British Bulldog of the WWF was a star. His tragic death of a heart attack at the age of 39 has left a genuine gap in many wrestling fans hearts.

Real name Davey ‘Boy’ Smith from Wigan, Lancs, British Bulldog flew the British flag in the WWF winning the Intercontinental Championship and several tag team titles.

He was a true ambassador of the sport for fifteen years at the highest level. Many students will remember him from their wrestling sticker album collections. He was due in Cardiff to wrestle only last year, but pulled out at the last minute.

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The legend of the British Bulldog will live on

David Lindsell reports THIS WEEK US troops turned their ferocious military power to a familiar use – by attacking their own side.

‘Crack’ troops from the US have begun a vicious war of words on the walls of portaloos at Bagram air base.

The graffiti, uncovered by the Mirror’s intrepid war journalist Tom Newton Dunn, criticises British marines for their ‘disappointing performance’ in a range of colourful and witty pieces of prose.

One piece asked “Where were the Brits during Operation Anaconda? Not getting shot up, that’s for sure.”

With a considerable grasp of history, the piece commented,

“No wonder the Brits lost their empire.”

The graffiti got worse.

“How about I give you a spoon so you can eat my ass, EURO TRASH BITCHES” And in a verbal burst to rivals, one passage said, “PS Prince Charles is a f****** w***** and all his sons are drug addicted t**ts.”

British troops retorted with “Good luck guarding the toilets for us – it will take all 3,000 of you to guard them while we’re away.”

US and British army chiefs were dismissive of the graffiti but further criticism in US ‘Stars and Stripes’ magazine of the British efforts threatens to destroy the special relationship.

Advice not being heeded in Afghan toilets

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McGuyver, said, “He was a true role model for all of us Brits who aspire to express ourself through wrestling.”

Wrestlers worldwide queued up to offer tributes including current British great William Regal “He was a bloody good wrestler who was always up for a laugh.”

In 1999 British Bulldog’s brother-in-law Owen ‘Blue Blazer’ Hart, 33 died live on television when a high-wire stunt went tragically wrong.

US and Brit troops wage war of words

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MESSAGE Please print your Message in the box below. One word in each box. Capitalise words you want in CAPITALS. Underline words you want in bold.

TICK BOX IF BOX REQUIRED: TICK BOX IF PHOTOGRAPH REQUIRED: FOR INSERTION IN THE FOLLOWING ISSUE(S): CONTACT ADDRESS/TELEPHONE: TOTAL COST: Please circle the category you require: Personal; Services; Employment; For Sale; Wanted; Accommodation; Societies; Miscellaneous Please complete this form and return it to: Gair Rhydd, Cardiff University Students’ Union, Park Place, Cardiff CF10 3QN. All cheques should be made payable to Cardiff Union Services Ltd.

gairrhydd, Monday 27 May 2002

NON-SABBATICAL OFFICERS

PERSONAL

SHAG OFFICE HOURS: Tuesday 3-5pm and Friday 12-2pm W E L S H A F FA I R S O F F I C E R / SWYDDOG MATERION CYMRAEG: Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday afternoons 2-5pm.

Contact Cerith Spooner on SpoonerC1@Cardiff.ac.uk I N T E R N AT I O N A L S T U D E N T S ’ OFFICER : Wednesday afternoons.

Contact Minelle Gholami on GholamiM1@Cardiff.ac.uk STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES OFFICER: Monday 2-4pm. Contact Natasha Hirst on HirstN2@Cardiff.ac.uk WOMEN’S OFFICER: Monday and Wednesday afternoons. Contact Sally Cameron Griffiths on Cameron-Griffiths @Cardiff.ac.uk.

LGB OFFICER: Wednesday afternoons 2-5pm, Wednesday afternoons. Contact James Knight on KnightJ2@Cardiff.ac.uk.

BLACK AND ETHNIC AFFAIRS OFFICER: Contact Prab Ramkumar on RamkumarP1@Cardiff.ac.uk.

MATURE STUDENTS OFFICER:Wednesdays 10am-1pm in the TV lounge on the 3rd Floor. Contact Gareth Hiscocks on HiscocksG@Cardiff.ac.uk.

XPRESS STATION MANAGER: Contact Emma Gait-Carr on StationManager@Xpressradio.co.uk.

All officers (except Xpress Station Manager) can be contacted on the third floor of the Students’ Union.

Every night between 8pm and 8am nightline is just a local telephone call or a short walk away.

Here to listen.

Here for you.

Tel: 2038 2141 Drop-in: 148 Column Rd. Want to talk about sexuality? Or do you want information about lesbian, gay or bisexual issues? No hassle, no pressure, just a friendly ear. Ring the LGB PHONELINE on 029 2039 8903, Monday, 7.00pm-9.00pm BEREAVEMENT SUPPORT GROUP Open to anyone who has suffered a loss.

First meeting on 3pm Wednesday 8th May 2002 facilitated by Barbara Fairfax.

Contact the Dean of Students office on 029 20 874966.

ACCOMMODATION HOUSEMATES WANTED Looking for two people to share a house on Arabella Street with two current first year girls. Please contact us soon on 07812 142584 or 07813 084230.

For Sale 2 BALL TICKETS FOR SALE. CALL 029 20 912318.

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Cardiff University Students’ Union does not endorse or accept liability for any product/service advertised within this publication.

DON’T FORGET: The Classifieds page is the best way to sell stuff, ask for stuff, sort out a house, stitch up a mate with ‘an hilarious’ birthday photo or to make an announcement to the general populous. Use the form up there. Go on!

gairrhydd, Monday 27th May 2002

Letter of the Week The author of this week’s Letter of the Week wins a month old slice of barbecue flavour pizza.

Dear Gair Rhydd, I write on behalf of the many people who have voiced their opinions to me over the past week regarding last week’s 'Star Letter' from Ceri, 4th year Astrophysics. Like yourselves they agree that culture is not something that should be forced upon people. It should be encouraged, so as to increase openness of mind, rather than turning people away from the great cultural experience in Wales.

I am a patriotic Welshman. I was born and grew up in the county of Monmouthshire. The Welsh language here is non-existent amongst locals. It is not that we are more 'Anglicised' than other Welsh people, but like Somerset, Devonshire and Cornwall (which were classed as part of Wales until the Middle Ages) there has never been an historical basis for the Welsh language in this area. The language known as Cymraeg actually originates in the North of England and moved south over hundreds of years, but never actually became the universal language of Wales (though Cornish was widely spoken in the south).

Perhaps in future other militant supporters of the Welsh language, the so-called 'Taffia', should check their history books before putting their thoughts to pen. There is more to Welsh culture than the language and we can find far more imaginative and helpful ways of conveying this culture to outsiders than legislature and force. Or perhaps the Taffia should just save as all from having to read their thoughts by writing all future correspondence in Welsh.

Cymru am byth, Andrew P. Murphy Lettersdesk says: There has been a veritable influx of letters very similar in tone to this, two of which have been included here. It would seem that the majority of people don’t take too kindly to the idea of having to learn a minority language. In fact, I’m sure a lot of people don’t realise that Cardiff is in Wales at all when they apply to come here. I know I didn’t. Biggest mistake of my life . . .

Cardiff Culture Dear Gair Rhydd, I know I shouldn’t take the bait, but I thought someone should respond to the recent outburst of Welsh nationalism appearing in these hallowed pages. As a thoroughly English student my choice of Cardiff had nothing to do with the Welsh or Welsh culture, but the type of course, the

friendliness of the city and the quality of teaching. I would not choose to go to university in any other city in England or Scotland and be expected to learn the history of the place, although some people might choose to if they found it interesting.

In reference to the article by Siwan Roberts – if there are problems with the spelling of Welsh language signs I agree that this is a big oversight on the university’s

behalf but complain to them and get them to do something about it.

Non-Welsh speakers can sympathise, but what do you expect us to do about it?

Furthermore, before you try to enforce Welsh or Welsh culture on students who are only in Cardiff for a few years, you should first look at the 80% of the Welsh population who are proud to call themselves Welsh but do not speak a word of the language.

Yours, 2nd year language student

Oi, Give It Back!

Dear Gair Rhydd, To the young lady to whom I lent my torch to help her find her ring outside the Talybont bar a fortnight ago; and who has neglected to return it – Thank you for demonstrating why there is no reason to help a stranger. Thank you for pointing out that the next time I have the opportunity to help someone, I have one more reason not to.

However, if you feel that stealing from those trying to help is not for you, I would still like my property returned, either to the Talybont bar, or the Talybont gym.

Yours, Disgruntled

Acting Up Dear Gair Rhydd, I am writing in response to the letters complaining about the set up of the Summer Ball this year. When the Union gets big acts, people say we should get small acts, when we get more small-time acts, people complain that other Unions in the country have bigger acts than us.

Pleasing 16,000 different students, all with a different idea of how the Ball should be is a pretty impossible task, so complaints are pretty inevitable.

When the Summer Ball was in Cooper’s Field, everyone

complained it was too wet and muddy and tacky. We responded to that by moving to the CIA, and now people complain that it’s not in Cooper’s Field. Although Cooper’s Field, obviously, has a larger capacity than the CIA, it costs £250,000 for the venue and equipment hire and many people are put off going because of unpredictable weather conditions.

Furthermore, we can’t control which bands we get, as not all acts want to do a Students’ Union Ball.

In previous years this has led to the Ball making losses of up to £30K, which is completely unsustainable and has forced us to move from there.

We try our best to put on a Ball which suits as many people as possible. Inevitably though, a number of people are going to be dissatisfied with this, which is why this is the time of year for complaints about the Ball. Fair enough – this is your right, but please try to bear all this in mind when you wonder how we choose the bands.

Yours sincerely, Alex Molokwu Finance and Commercial Services Officer Lettersdesk says: So can everybody just calm down? Big acts, small acts, medium-sized acts, who cares? Its not like you’ll remember it anyway. And as if to prove their point to the student population, the Union have shown that they have their collective fingers on the pulse of popular culture by signing. . . Whigfield. You know, Saturday Night and all that. I personally can’t wait.

Tr o u b l e s o m e Te s t i n g Dear Gair Rhydd, In response to Andrew P Murphy’s letter regarding animal testing. Firstly, the campaign is against the University buying guinea pigs from Newchurch Farm.

This is a farm that has atrocious animal welfare conditions –

Letters ● 7 something that Murphy or Cardiff University cannot and have not disputed.

Secondly, the reason there is so much opposition to animal testing in general, is that it is very unreliable due to species difference. Attempts to sue the manufacturers of the drug Surfam failed due to the testimony of medical experts that “data from animals could not be extrapolated safely to patients.”

According to animal tests lemon juice is a deadly poison but arsenic is safe. Cancer has never been replicated in lab animals from smoking or asbestos and aspirin and penicillin fails animal tests.

Animal testing delays scientific progress but continues because for massive drug companies it is the cheapest option for churning out drugs onto the market. Many drugs are withdrawn from the market due to side effects and deaths, despite being passed safe on animals. Most recently, Baycol, an anti-cholesterol drug was withdrawn after it killed more than fifty people. Perhaps Mr. Murphy would like to try and convince their families of how reliable animal testing is.

Yours sincerely, Mark Thomas Lettersdesk says: Yeah, this whole animal testing issue is a slippery one, and no mistake. There’s nothing quite like the destruction of small cuddly animals in dividing opinions. But hey, not everyone takes these things so seriously. . .

Food for Thought Dear Gair Rhydd, A letter in Gair Rhydd a couple of weeks back claimed that Guinea Pigs are, by definition, there to be experimented on. This is WRONG; Guinea Pigs were bred by the South American Incas for food, so by definition they should be eaten.

Best wishes, Ebichu, your Friendly Neighbourhood Hamster

Please send your letters in to us at Gair Rhydd, Students’ Union, Park Place, CF10 3QN or preferably e-mail SSUGR1@CARDIFF.AC.UK. Gair Rhydd will attempt to print any letter sent in, but apologises for those that do not make it in due to space restrictions. The views expressed in these letters are usually not those of the newspaper or the editor.

Crossword A very poor show from you people last week I’m afraid.

Sometimes I wonder why I bother. If you’re not careful the crossword will be replaced with a half-page ad for cat-food, and I’ll be out of a job. Would that make you happy?

ACROSS: 1.Colliery (8) 5. Johnny _____, star of Edward Scissorhands (4) 9. Talk about old times (9) 10. Signal to speak (3) 11. Light fog (4) 13. Lacking vitality (7) 16. Forewarning (4) 18. Audience’s cry for more (6) 19. Choice (6) 21. Of sound mind (4) 23. Arrange (7) 25. Water grass (4) 27. _____ Marie Saint, actress (3) 28. Lacking backbone (9) 30. Satisfy (4) 31. Conspirators (8)

DOWN: 1. Stiff paper (4) 2. Intention (3) 3. Observe, record (7) 4. Curl oneself up in a soft place (6) 6. Newspaper scoop (9) 7. Imploring (8) 8. Gas used in fluorescent lights (4) 12. Without pause (9) 14. Author unknown (abbrev.) (4) 15. Not required (8) 17.Untidy state (4) 20. Without fault (7) 22. Antenna (6) 24. Structure for drying hops (4) 26. Poses a question (4) 29. Adam’s wife (3) Get your answers to the gair rhydd office before Wednesday and the winner will be announced in the next issue. 722’s winner was Kelly Allen. Let me hear you say bo!

722’s solution: ACROSS: 1.Muffle; 4.Swathe; 9.Trinket; 10.Manor; 11.Organ; 12.Dungeon; 13.Pride; 15.South; 20.Redhead; 22.Ensue; 24.Heart; 25.Oppress; 26.Needle; 27.Lyceum. DOWN: 1. Motion; 2.Fling; 3.Likened; 5.Woman; 6.Tangent; 7.Errant; 8.Etude; 14.Radiate; 16.Overpay; 17.Urchin; 18.Idiom; 19.Jetsam; 21. Extol; 23.Swede.

Name:_______________________ Email:________________________ The funniest joke I know is. . ._________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________

This week’s winner wins a meal for two at Chillies Restaurant and Takeaway

TAF WORLD CUP Fri 31 May 02

FRANCE v

SENEGAL KO 12.30 BST

ÂŁ1 a pint

on

Fosters/Worthy/Strongbow until first goal scored

MUSIC review LTJ Bukem’s latest release

FILM wake up to adult animation

GAMES bring the World Cup home

Sign of the Mines James Donovan displays his images of South Wales at the Martin Tinney Gallery Fifa World Cup 2002 • The Shining • 40 Days and 40 Nights • Cosi Fan Tutte • Sahara Hotnights Inside: Get There! The ultimate guide to Cardiff and beyond!

Contents

02. Get There

Newly interactive and more pointless than ever: it can only be Get There!

04. Books

Books guru D.C provides some insightful comments about some up-andcoming literary releases.

05. Games

Games get overly excited about the World Cup by reviewing the latest football games to bring the excitement into your home.

07. Film

Film review the American Pie rip-off 40 Days and 40 Nights and the revolutionary Waking Life.

08. Music

Music go singles and albums crazy with LTJ Bukem, The Shining and see if The Sex Pistols Jubilee remix is up to scratch.

10. Arts

Arts review the Welsh National Opera’s sexually charged version of Cosi Fan Tutte and previews the Jubilee celebrations in Cardiff.

11. TV Guide Far funnier than it has any right to be- it’s the Gair Rhydd TV guide!

GRiP Editor Sarah Hodson GRiP Editor Mike Parsons Arts Lizzie Brown and LaDonna Hall Books D.C. Gates Film Neil Blain Games Chris Faires Music Gemma Curtis and Gemma Jones Get There Neil Krajewski TV Listings Alex Macpherson and Nick McDonald GRiP needs your help! We are overworked and losing our minds.

Visit our media penthouse on the 4th floor of the Union or • E-mail ssugr1@cardiff.ac.uk • Hear us speak 029 2078 1434/6

02

Get There

et There enters the final straight. Anyone hoping for a final burst of energy should wait a few weeks though as, once again, G Get There remains the only page that looks the same every week but is in fact different! This week, we review absolutely nothing and interview no-one. It’s all about dates in out little world and we’re all the better for it. Remember, gang: Get Hip – Get There!

Exams appear, deadlines arrive, but you all still love Cardiff enough to make looking at this page worthwhile! Good luck over the next few weeks and remember Cardiff will still be there waiting for you once it’s all over.

Union Monday 27/05

Fun Factory @ Solus 9pm-1am, free.

Everyone needs to escape every so often. Why not support your Union as you emancipate yourself from your desk. Watch out for those cheap drinks though.

Tuesday 28/05

Candy @ Solus Postponed for this term, but set to return in September.

Wednesday 29/05 Jive Hive @ Solus 9pm-1am, £2.50.

Noted absence of activity on Union steps suggests attendances are falling. The Union’s solution: buy one Lash ticket and get a Jive one free! Inspiration of the highest order achieved without the acquiring the burden of an unpredictable music policy.

Splendid! Economic analysis plotting the value of the lack of time spent queuing and drinks prices against the virtues of potentially free admission are welcome.

Thursday 30/05 Well, there’s always the Taf.

Friday 31/05

Lashtastic @ Solus 9pm-1am, £2.50.

Now the weather has warmed up perhaps this night is set to compete with student barbecues, but I doubt it.

Saturday 01/06

Flirt @ Solus 9pm - 1am, free In a gesture to reward your loyalty, the Union offers you the chance to spend another craazy night in the presence of a host of ‘dance anthems’.

Sunday 02/06

Java @ Seren Las 7.30pm, £1 Laid back sounds, wine and food. Decide on their order of importance for yourselves.

Clubbing Monday 27/05

Rational Thinking @ The End...

8pm-11pm.

Drum’n’ Bass Djs are promised in ultra student surroundings.

Happy Mondays @ Barfly Sounds like a cash-in off the back of 24 Hour Party People to me, but you could always go and find out.

Salsa Lessons @ Bar Med Probably an inferior version of that hosted by Bar Cuba, but probably worth a look.

Guru Vibrations @ Berlins 9pm-2am. Soul, funk, hip-hop and, er, 80’s. NUS only. Why bother?

One Mission @ Cafe Calcio 8pm til late. Cracking night, cracking venue.

Cheese on Toast @ Cuba 9pm-2am, Free b4 10pm. Better than Zeus.

MAD @ Dylan’s 8pm-1am. Rated Cardiff’s best by Zeus, you only need stand outside and look what’s next door to find out why.

Exit Club 8pm. Free entry before 9.30pm. Gay venue. Chart and Dance. Original, eh?

Student ‘Night Fever’ @ Flares Til 2am. £1 drinks all night. Suggs hosts edition of crap karaoke quiz show in Cardiff theme pub.

Possibly.

Salsa Classes @ Latino’s

Classes from 7.30pm, disco 10pm til midnight.

Surprisingly good fun. All abilities catered for.

Universal @ Liquid 9.30pm-2am. Student night.

Retro Night @ The Roxy Free entry. Retro music played in a club, one presumes. Oh, the joys of blatant sarcasm!

Tuesday 28/05

Electromagnetic @ Clwb Ifor Bach 9pm-2am. Positive vibe hop-hop / pre-gangster rap / battle breaks / electro funk.

Absolutely splendiferous night, worth two quid of anyones money. Which is just as well, as that’s what it costs to get in! Tonight featuring DJ Mass.

Rock Inferno @ Clwb Ifor Bach (Top Floor) 9pm-2am. £2.50. Ifor Bach complies with convention and offers its own prescription of metal for the masses.

Hoochy Koochy @ The Emporium 9pm-2am, £1 b4 10pm/£2. Student madness, courtesy of the amusingly named Jockstrap 5.

Salsa night @ Cuba 8pm-2am, £4. Salsa classes from 8pm, disco afterwards. Great fun with a really friendly crowd.

Bonk @ Zeus 9pm, £3 Teens, tunes and terror. Oh the joys of subtlety.

Student Night @ Is It? Cafe. Bar. Place.

Open til 1am just like most places.

Alternative Beats @ The End...

8pm-11pm. Another night of total pish at The End, with ‘choons’ from the naffly named DJ Pete the order of the day.

Exit Club 8pm. Free before 9.30pm. Gay Venue. Chart and Dance. Who’d have thunk it?

YMCA Night @ Flares 8pm, I dread to think what this might entail.

Take Warning @ Metros 9pm-2am, £2 b4 10.30pm. Ska Punk Night with cheap drinks. It’s sweaty, it’s smelly, it’s dingy and it’s actually great fun!

Karaoke @ Reds If you must, I’ll not hold you back, but don’t expect me to join you unless you’re offering a duet. Shall I be your George, your Kiki or your Elton?

Latin Dance Party @ The Toucan 8.30pm-2am. Latin music, dancing, party vibe.

Obviously.

Alternative @ Sam’s Bar £2 - £5. Live music from local bands plus alternative indie and retro from resident DJ’s.

Bar 150 @ Bar Med Everything £1.50 all night. Beware that this fact alone might not justify the name magnificent.

Wednesday 29/05

The Cheesey Club / The Milky Bar / Popscene @ Clwb Ifor Bach 9.30pm-2am. £2/£2.50 after 11pm. A veritable melting pot of great music, local rivalries and Welsh music celebrities. Spread out over three floors, its technically possible to get through the whole night without seeing a single member of Tommy & the Chauffeur, but highly unlikely.

Twisted by Design @ Model Inn £2 Official pre-Welsh club night, get stamped at Clwb and then come back here to enjoy a few hours of indie from the 60s to the present day.

Student Night @ Bar Ice 9pm-2am. Late bar, drinks promotions, painfully average.

DJ Nicodeamus @ Moloko Electro and Funk in plush surroundings.

Shooters and Slammers Party Night @ Bar Med Theme night, where you get to shoot the retarded fuck-wits that drink here with a large gun, then slam their heads repeatedly into the bar. Maybe.

Cross the Tracks @ Cuba 9pm-2am, free entry. New(ish) night, with the Hustler seal of approval. Soul, funk and Old Skool are the order of the day. Sounds good, and the flyers are ace. Check it out.

Down to It @ Berlins 9pm-2am. I’d rather not, thanks. Ever.

Uni-Sex @ Club X 10pm-2am. Gay Venue. Student Night, worth a mention if only for the highly amusing name.

Toucan Acoustic Sessions @ Toucan Club 8pm-2am. £3. Open mic, hosted by Little Miracle.

Entry gets you into the chilled DJ happenings in the downstairs lounge, too. Perfect for a relaxed midweek night out.

The Boogie Box @ Flares Karaoke from the 60s and 70s. The value of the 80s continues to be denied so I recommend a boycott!

Is it Chilled? @ Is it? Cafe. Bar. Place.

If your week has brought you down to the depths, perhaps you’ll end up here to sink down still further.

Latin Night @ Life Bar Cafe 2-4-1 drinks offers and dancing.

National Student Night @ Evolution 9.30pm-2am. Carlsberg £1, all spirits £1, all other drinks £1.50. Simple, but no doubt quite effective.

Wipeout @ Reds Meet UWIC students at their own night and steal secrets that could potentially accelerate the demise of the University of Wales.

Handbag 120 @ Zeus 9pm-2am. Utterly evil with garage and r’n’b.

Thursday 30/05

Singles Night @ Life Looking for love? Try this. Be sure to come dressed smartly though.

Student Night @ Bar Ice 9pm-2am. Late night bar and drinks offers.

Hard House @ The End...

DJ Jomec does the honours.

Big In Japan @ Clwb Ifor Bach 9pm-2am. The coolest Japanese thing this side of Banzai. Cracking tunes, cool clientelle and a permanent in Clwb Ifor. Corking night all round.

Plush @ Emporium £3 /£2. Anything with a groove, says the press release, and they’re not far wrong. Sexy, sassy and really too good for a Thursday, Plush truly is a top night for those who like their R ‘n’ B, garage and house slinky and sexy. Of course, if you’re a big Sisters of Mercy fan, you should give it a miss.

Enthusiasm @ Moloko Breaks, hip-hop and drum’n’bass.

From the Hip @ Incognito 8pm-1am. House and Dance.

Is it for Real? @ Is It? Cafe. Bar. Place Open til 1am. Like everyone else Bar Is It offers a night of R’n’B. Only this time you get the company of DJ Tony-C. Soul Power @ Liquid 9pm-2am. Soul and R & B, with Trevor Nelson every other week. A more extensive, and far less effective, version of Plush.

Higher Learning @ Toucan 8pm-2am, £3. Beats of a hip-hopping and funky nature. Excellent night.

Spellbound @ Metros 9pm-2am. 2-4-1 cocktails, metal early on, then indie classics. Arrive after 11pm, then, and it should be a right laugh. Hooray!

Cabaret @ Minsky’s Show Bar Cabaret is the order of the day, usually courtesy of camp men dressed as women. Great fun, actually.

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that Noel ‘All Man’ Sullivan of Hear’Say used to work here.

Nudge nudge, wink wink etc..

Dance Night @ Oz Bar 9pm-1am. Dance music, £1 entry.

Aspire @ Reds 9pm-2am. Great.

Alternative Student Night @ The Roxy 10pm-2am. Another night clinging on to the word ‘alternative’, as if it makes any piss poor cobbled together event worth a look. It doesn’t. As The Strokes sort of said, This Is Shit.

Friday 31/05

Precinct @ Clwb Ifor Bach 10pm, £8 Jazzanova are joined by AIM from Grand Central records. AIm apparently offer a tantalising hybrid of chilled instrumental hip-hop and generally laid back sounds. That could, however, be a lie; just who should you trust nowdays?

Robots Eat My Face @ Oz Bar Live Bands and Rock, Alternative Djs. Forward Motion @ Moloko Cardiff’s underground comes together for those who can’t afford Emporium or Clwb.

Chaos @ Metros 9pm -3am, £4 DJ Hwyel offers a selection of tunes in an alternative vain.

Drinks 4 FREE @ Liquid 9.30pm, £5 entry with 4 free drinks as a bonus if you arrive before 11pm. You’ll have to be over 20 though; who knows what that drink might do to you otherwise.

US Garage @ The End...

8pm-11pm, With DJ Gavin. Great.

Want your club night or event to be listed in the legendary Get There section? Then email us at SSUGR1@Cardiff.ac.uk including the date, time, price of your event, including any drinks promotions and we’ll include you on the page.

03

Get There

Sonic trawlers Radar Brothers + Vegas Superstars

Friday 31st May @ Barfly, 7.30pm, £5 More Chemikal underground related shenanigans. In a monumental scheduling error, four quiet men from the United States hit Fever, Barfly’s weekly night of Britpop revival. Nevertheless, Radar Brothers offer their own version of the gushing melodic ballads that Mercury Rev have succeding in making famous.

Heaven @ Evolution 9pm-2.30am. £10. Brash and brassy hard house night, with a liberal sprinkling of? Its not a sodding wrestling match, people, its a frigging disco!

Exit Club 8pm, free entry before 9.30pm. Gay Venue.

Commercial chart and dance. Again! PLAY SOME DIFFERENT SODDING MUSIC! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! Get Down and Groove @ Flares Til 2am. Funky disco says the press release. A bit crap says Get There. You decide.

Mellow Mellow @ Metropolis Not the same as Metros; no this, is Metropolis where tonight Andy Loveless continues to move his mobile entertainment installation around the city. Is his name related to the My Bloody Valentine classic? Meet him and find out.

Flirt @ Club X 10pm - 4am, £9 It may have the same name as one of our union nights. Why not go to both. Attend tonight and you’ll be enterntained by K-Class, The Superstarz and Andre.

ROAR @ Vision 2K A confirmed appearance is rarer in the world of house and trance. Like the Gair Rhydd team, you always finds there’s so many demands and so little time. Listening to all those new 12”s can be so tedious too! However, if they have the time, you can expect to see Corvin Dalek, Scott Bond, Matt Hardwick and, the inimitable V2K resident, Fry. Bugged Out@ Elements (formerly Reds) 9pm, £10 Excellent monthly club night returns with performances from FC Kahuna, Funk D’Void and a Freestylers DJ set.

Heavy Metal @ The Roxy 10pm-4am. £5. Unsurprisingly, heavy metal.

Actually very good at what it does, though.

Saturday 01/06 Fever @ Barfly

Having collaborated with Slint founder, Brian McMahon, as part of the excellent The For Carantion, the Radar Brothers have unsurprisingly been adopted into the hearts of the lo-fi hoards. Now, with the the release of their acclaimed third album And the Surrounding Mountains they’re perhaps about to make that crossover and become, perhaps, as important as well, maybe, The Notwist. Probably the closest Cardiff will come to hosting a gig by Smog or Low, you would be a fall to remain at home.

10.30pm-2am. Indie classics and lager. Expect a lot of contrived ‘dancing’ and that not very funny Limp Bizkit version of Faith. Not at all bad, though.

Deliciously Wicked @ Berlins 8pm-2am. Repulsively awful would be a more accurate description.

Deep Heat @ Club X 10pm-4am. £4-£7. Gay venue. 6 rooms, 3 floor balcony, games room & garden terrace. Well worth a look!

The Big Party @ Dylan’s 8pm-1am. The party sounds like a great idea.

Sadly,it’s in Dylan’s.

Funky Techno @ The End...

8pm-11pm, with One Mission DJ’s. At last! A night a decent night at The End The ever reliable One Mission crew do what they do best – make people smile and dance!

Skool Disco Party @ Philarmonic 9.30pm -2am The Betty Ford Guest List @ Metros 9pm-3am, £3 b4 10.30pm. Top alternative night, with tunes courtesy of the great and the good of Cardiff’s indie scene. More leftfield than other Metros nights, the crowd and the music are slightly older and slightly cooler.

Weekend Madness @ Bar Cuba 10pm-2am. £2/£4. DJ Andy Loveless.

L’America @ Emporium 9pm, £10 Featuring appearances from Knee Deep, Craig Bartlett, Dave Jones and Neil Young Twin Scene @ Reds Same as Friday, only more expensive! Hooray!

Glam Night @ The Roxy 10pm-4am. £5. Expect an orgy of all things glam.

Apart from Gary Glitter, of course. And Jonathan King. Or that bloke from Slade...

Desire @ Zeus 9pm-3am. A night so unimaginably bad, I refuse to waste a witty comment on it.

Deep Heat @ Club X Dance and Funky house

Worldwide Special @ Liquid Can you resist.

Sunday 02/06

Rational Thinking @ The End 7pm-10.30pm The same as Mondays except with the added promise of Guest DJs.

Live Music A week where many an act returns to Cardiff to show just how much they love our wonderful city.

Go out and show them just how grateful you are.

Monday 27/05

Vegas begin thir trawl through the British provincal venues. We wish them good luck, but, in reality, we would rather have another Death in Vegas LP. Pep Le Pew + Skep + DJ Moon Monkey 9pm, £4 Boobytrap present a night of local hip-hop in the salubrious surroundings of Clwb Ifor Bach.

Fantastic.

Sunday 02/06

Acoustic Jam @ The Toucan Club 8pm, FREE. A chance for all budding songsters to get up and show off their wares, which is usually a good thing.

Chemical Reaction + Pete’s Sake + Stupid Brick @ Barfly 7.30pm, £3

Arts

Tuesday 28/05

Fuicchi @ St. Davids Hall Wednesday 29th May, 7.30pm, £10 Chapter sponsored modern dance from Japan.

Expect high energy as this renowned collective cross the boundaries of what was previously deemed possible in the world of dance.

The Slumber Party + Black Nielson + JT Mouse @ Barfly 7.30pm, £5 One of the Von Bondies, specifically the one rumoured to be involved with Jack of White Stripes fame, returns to join the omnipresent JT Mouse.

The Slumber Party have supported Belle and Sebastian in the US, whilst JT Mouse continues to support everything musically associated with Cardiff.

A + guests @ Solus 7.30pm, £10 Dispensible pop-metal collective continue their university tour with a date in Wales. Better than 100 reason and cheaper than Ozzfest, why stay at home?

Wednesday 29/05

The Catheters + Fantastic Superfoofs + Down Impact @ Barfly 7.30pm, £4

Thursday 30/05

Oceansize + Presto and Spartanite + Flipside @ Barfly 7.30pm, £3 The only poster I’ve seen promises a clash of damp melancholy and exhilarating noise.

Admittedly, this is the only reference I’ve seen of the event, but its sounds tremendous!

Douglas + Jeff Killed John + Trip @ Clwb Ifor Bach 8pm, £3 Local punk rock metal types play unique homecoming show.

Friday 31/05

Radar Brothers + Vegas Superstars + Santa Cruz @ Barfly 7.30pm, £5 See above left.

Saturday 01/06

Original Bedroom Rockers + The Error Plains + Mainline @ Barfly 7.30pm, £5 The new band fronted by Steve from Death in

Experimentica @ Chapter Saturday + Sunday 25th/26th May, £3 (NUS) Experimental theatre comes to Cardfiff once more.

Explore the possibilties of media in the new age.

Coming Up Everyone needs to leave the house or the library at the some point. Therefore, if there’s nothing that catches your discerning eyes this week then take a glance at these forthcoming events.

Kid 606 @ Clwb Ifor Bach Monday 10th June, £10, 9pm - 2am Amazing noise pioneer in rumoured Cardiff appearance shock! The most exciting Clwb event in ages.

Mr Scruff @ Clwb Ifor Bach Saturday 8th June, 10pm-3am After a stunning show at Bristol’s Essential Festival, Mr Scruff begins a series of late nights out.

Fugazi @ Bristol Academy Sunday 9th June, £7.50 The problem is can I wait this long. A band capable of making you forget all others roll in the UK for the first time in about five years. They’re from Washington DC, they’ll make a considerable amount of noise and, if the 22:50 train back to Cardiff isn’t full I’ll be a disappointed man. Words cannot even hope to convey my excitement about this end of term thriller.

Spiritualized @ Great Hall Thursday 27th June, £12 From Opera houses to University social centres, Spiritualized are certainly coming down.

Nevertheless, I don’t doubt that the’ll be fantastic with huge solos and epic sounds in tow.

booksreviews

04

Creditor to the nation?

COMPETITION HUZZAH! As announced last week, Books opens up its Grand Prize Draw!

The inaugural book giant is no other than canting Frenchman Jean-Jacques Rousseau

HOW TO SETTLE DEBTS WITH CREDITORS: A BANKRUPTCY ASSOCIATION GUIDE John McQueen (Bankruptcy Assoc)

J

OHN MCQUEEN, who one must assume to be a natural pessimist, founded the Bankruptcy Association and has advised “at least 20,000 individuals on their bankruptcy problems”. This man then, who must surely list Hornby trains among his interests, seems well qualified to bless us with a guide to dealing with those troublesome finger-removing loan sharks, or “creditors”.

Handily pocket sized, you’ll never find yourself unprepared when curtailed in a street, dragged down an alley and ‘disciplined’ by those young men in dark suits from the company.

McQueen seems to find some romanticism in the whole debt palaver, “If you lived in the richest, most powerful city it was possible for a man to imagine, but there was no love there, no mercy and no justice for those who met with misfortune; then you would be better off dead than to live in such a place,” reads the

uncredited intro. It seems that this dude is in fact a bit of a revolutionary. Well, not quite, but he isn’t exactly Tony Blair’s flag-bearer.

As well as having a section entitled ‘The government cares not a jot’, of the general public he states, “They are encouraged in these irrational fears (of bankruptcy) by the sharks of the Government led insolvency world who circle them looking for plunder”. He then goes on to recommend drawing up a budget plan. While ‘Endowment policy’ and ‘TV rental’ get entries in the expenditure section, lack of recognition for outgoing costs such as ‘recreational drugs’, ‘Smirnoff Ice’ and ‘T&A kebab outlet’ render the plan pretty non-representative of most of the student market he’s targeting.

“Do not be an ostrich” advises a sub-heading. While initially this might seem like pretty pointless advice, it is indeed sound. For one, ostriches are armless and as a result have great difficulty

ROUSSEAU: let the image of his piercing, glassy-eyed stare rock you to sleep

BANKRUPTS: gin consumption an inevitable by-product signing contracts. But then again, if one were indeed an ostrich, the chances of being accepted for a credit-card leading to subsequent debt would be minimal. Being an ostrich may have seen the problem avoided in the first place after all. If anyone happens to be particularly inspired by McQueen’s jour-

ney through the world of debt and bankruptcy, they can order his related publications for a cost of £50.75, or even join the bankruptcy association for £15, which probably results in receiving the greatest ironic pin badge of all time. Just don’t pay for it on the card.

Jamie Fullerton

“Hello, it’s me, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, aka the Abominable Ho-man. I’m liscenced to ill, I am. I speak out of the void not to correct you all on your wicked ways, or speak of my achievements in political philosophy, but to offer you my questions three. Riddle me this: 1. What was the name of Topsy and Tim’s adopted sister?

2. Emile was my titular hero of one of my philosophical works, but what was the name of his partner?

3. “I’ve got a brand new combined harvester/ And I’ll give you...” Give you what?

Got that? Answers to the office, by post, in person, or through the interweb.”

Thanks, Jean-Jacques. This week’s BIG MONEY cash prize is £1! ONE FUCKING POUND! The winner will be notified by an announcement in next week’s KentuckyFried Gair Rhydd. It just gets better and better, doesn’t it?

Meal Deal McCoys Crisps Bottle of Coke Fanta or Lilt Sutherland Sandwiches triple pack

All £2.50

Tel: 029 20 781472 E-mail shops@cardiff.ac.uk

www.cardiffstudents.com

filmclub

05

Affairs of the Hart 40 DAYS AND 40 NIGHTS Starring: Josh Hartnett, Shannyn Sossamon, Adam Trese.

Dir.: Michael Lehmann 15, 95 mins.

T

HANKS TO American Pie, there has been an influx of sex-obsessed movies recently. But 40 Days and 40 Nights is different.

While American Pie centred around characters who were trying their hardest to have sex, 40 Days and 40 Nights is the opposite.

Josh Hartnett plays Matt, a young website designer, who is not dealing well with the collapse of his last relationship.

When Nicole dumps him, he starts sleeping around with any girl with a pulse. But it begins to get to him that he cannot commit, and spends a lot of time jumping out of girls windows afterwards.

The final straw comes when he proves that it isn’t just women who fake orgasms!

Realising that sex is not having a positive effect on his life, he is inspired by his priest brother to take a vow of celibacy for Lent – and not just giving up sex itself.

The vow includes no kissing, no touching, no foreplay and especially no self-gratification.

Predictably, within a week, Matt meets Erica (Shannyn Sossamon), the new love of his life. Obviously he falls for her, and the vow gets harder and harder to keep.

Despite wanting to keep the vow a

There are more masturbation jokes than you can shake... well you get the point personal matter, not even telling Erica, he has to confess to his roommate Ryan (Paulo Costanzo) why all their porn has disappeared.

As soon as Ryan hears of the vow, he lets Matt’s colleagues in on the secret. Immediately a betting pool opens on the internet with everyone taking bets on which day Matt will

give in.

As Matt lasts longer than they all expected, they start playing dirty. The women wear less and less each day, drinks are spiked with Viagra and copies of Penthouse are waved in front of his face.

It just goes to show that blokes will bet on anything.

According to the flyer, this is a teen comedy that isn’t strictly about sex.

Yeah right.

Anyone who goes to see 40 Days and 40 Nights expecting that, is seriously delusional. The film is ultimately about nothing else, so if you’re embarrassed about sex I wouldn’t bother seeing it.

It comes complete with the typical gross-out moments; you’d think his parent’s house would be a refuge for Matt, but no! No-one wants to hear their parents discussing their sex life and the positions they’ve tried, especially if you’re trying to forget that sex exists.

There is no complex plot, there are no moral issues and there are more masturbation jokes than you can shake... well you get the point.

It’s a very funny film because it is so shamelessly blatant and there is more than enough female nudity to keep the average bloke distracted.

Unfortunately, although the blokes are left happy, a lack of Josh Hartnett nudity might leave some female fans dissatisfied.

If you liked films like American Pie or Road Trip you’ll like 40 Days and 40 Nights, which still manages to put a different spin on the typical sexobsessed teen movies.

And you’ll be amazed by the power of a flower, but you’ll have to watch it to find out what I mean.

Kate Shaw

Wake up it’s a beautiful morning WAKING LIFE Starring: Wiley Wiggins, Robert C. Solomon.

Dir.: Richard Linklater.

E

VERY SO often a film comes along that makes you realise exactly how little effort goes into the majority of mainstream cinema.

Waking Life is both an experimental film and a triumph of effort, style and highbrow ideas over actual content, but it’s the originality of it that really sticks in your mind in the way most films

wish they could.

The making of the film is interesting. To start, Linklater filmed the story: a boy (Wiley Wiggins from Linklater’s Dazed and Confused) journeys about, unsure whether he’s awake or not.

On his travels he has lengthy

chats with philosophers and gets a bit confused. That’s pretty much the whole film.

But here’s what they did with it: an all-star animation team traced every frame of the movie and digitally painted every single frame

of the print.

The process is called ‘rotoscoping’, and was used in the old computer game Flashback, to make the little man run realistically.

Anyway, this left the filmmakers free to transform the original footage into a proper dream world.

The new visuals are unlike anything ever seen on screen before. Faces crack and fuzz and blur, and the representation of the people goes through a whole range of artistic styles.

One of the most dreamlike qualities of the film is that when an object is put down, it floats and bobs like a moored boat, or just drifts off. Another is that everything is the wrong colour, and people’s pigments slip out of their skins and into their surroundings.

The overly talky and philosophical nature of the dialogue will go over most people’s heads – as it did mine – because it refers to academic philosophical viewpoints.

The philosophers (most of which are Linklater’s old lecturers and not actors) all talk in a very knowing, Montell Williams-ish way that grates quite a bit, and made me wonder what was the point in so much complex dialogue.

However, the affecting end to the story makes it all understandable.

The questions that the film raises about life, free will and dreams are not as new or groundbreaking as Linklater seems to believe, but the overall effect of the film is to remind you of them, and hopefully, reconsider them.

And if nothing else, the sheer brilliance of the visuals has to be seen to be believed. Mat Croft

gamesreviews g

06

World in motion FIFA WORLD CUP 2002 (All Formats) EA

X

BOX'S first football game is the tie-in version of FIFA, but is the game with the shiny hologram of official authenticity able to bend it like Beckham, or be utter turd like Phil Neville?

“You’re on your own out there with ten mates," said Michael Owen. "The tide is very much in our court now," said Kevin Keegan. "Possession is

nine-tenths of the law," says John Motson, in every match you play.

Has anyone else noticed that one of John's ears sticks out and the other doesn't? It's really freaky, and can be seen in a mini-interview on the bonus section of the DVD. What could be just a few extras is actually a nicely assembled section, comprising said interview, some behind the scenes footage, and a montage of football soundbytes from fans all around the world.

This isn't just a game, it's a souvenir, an interactive memento of

the World Cup. The players names are all here, the kits, the astounding stadia and the incredibly bizarre mascots. But it is also a game, one unsurprisingly similar to the FIFA formula, except that you can only play the World Cup or a friendly and you cannot choose club teams or training modes, which is a very bad thing considering the weakest aspect of the game – its absolutely horrendous control system.

On further play, it raises itself above all the Dreamcast football games. Once you've got used to the timing and directions you can knock the ball around for a fair while, but it doesn't feel totally under your control and passing, the basic of basic elements, is poor compared to Pro Evo. 2002WC has a slightly less than authentic 'star sytem' where your best players can perform superduper skills, for example Ljundberg's speed has a motion blur when he runs, and when Scholes shoots a decent shot it is followed by a Sky Sports-esque red trail. The top strikers are blessed with incredible curling shots which would impress even Roberto Carlos, and which defy the laws of physics to get past the keeper as you outpace the defence yet again.

This is the problem with FIFA, it's all style and no substance, geared to mass scoring rather than rewarding buildup play as in Pro Evo, the

greatest football game ever made. In that, the forward players will make runs, darting out of the defence. In FIFA, you have to press a button to make them run. In Pro Evo, your defence will at least try to get in the way of the strikers. In FIFA, they're gossiping on the half-way line.

For a game that is deliberately trying to replicate an event, there is a major error – the squads aren't fully

“Possession is nine-tenths of the law,” says John Motson, in every match you play up-to-date. I'm not expecting there to be an injured Beckham in the team, but there's no Wayne Bridge or Darius Vassell present in the game.

Meanwhile, Ecuador striker Austin Delgado has turned white. Like a cheap football cash-in, there's also a few teams who aren't in the World Cup, like Scotland and the Czech Republic, but no Holland or Wales.

More 'all-Europe' teams are opened when you win the Cup. The players look realistic from far away, but up close they look a bit pastelly. Micheal Owen looks uncharacteristically scary, as do most of the other players with the graphical problem areas: (1) eyes, (2) teeth. The stadia look great though, as do the wind mascot things by the side of the pitch.

The commentary is on a par with

Manager: Redux CHAMPIONSHIP MANAGER 01/ 02 (Xbox) Sports Interactive/ Eidos

C

HAMP MANAGER 01/ 02 comes out at the worst timing just before exams start, and causes much concern for games aficionados. An updated port of the PC version – sacrilege! “It's a PC game,” I hear you cry, but the Xbox is the only console that can take the power of Champioship Manager, thanks to its hard drive. So what's changed?

You can't play more than three leagues at a time, but then who could? Only those with an absolute bad boy of a PC. The menu screen is the same, except the sidebar isn't on screen all the time and is called up by pressing the black

button. The core difference is the control method– as Xbox hasn't got a mouse all the control is through the joypad. The analogue and digital sticks control the pointer, while other buttons select and go back. When the need arises a virtual keyboard will spring up, for player searches and the like, but you'll soon realise how little you use it. It takes a while to change the habits of pressing and moving more than one button rather than a mouse and you’ll wish you had that direct control over the game with the one control object.

Championship Manager isn't just a game, its a immersive virtual reality experience without any need for silly helmets and data gloves. The PC version allows you to sit very close to the screen and only use the mouse.

Part of the reason it's so immersive is that there is only one button to press (most of the

the awfulness of Pro Evolution.

Motty's phrases are repeated in almost every game, and Andy Grey deadpans the most tedious of facts without any of the life he puts into his usual work. Despite this, just hearing Motty's voice while you play is good, for he isn't Chris James.

Some Pro Evo problems are addressed – you can now move at set pieces and the throw-in system

time), no need to think, no decisions of where your fingers should be. The game is active and passive, but encourages you to keep going with the flashing 'continue' sign. The Xbox version is less immersive because of its multi-button control system, and the contunue prompt is msissing, but the gameplay is totally the same.

CM is the most realistic football management game ever created. Hundreds of players and stats are available at a fingertip as you control your favourite team and take them to glory. This version is up to date since the beginning of the season, and therefore bizarrely starts with players that your club didn't have then. The new transfer and contract laws are set into the game, to make you use your money wisely. But there isn’t the downfall of ITV sport to contend with either, so you’ll stay in business whatever happens, which may not be totally realistic but is the heart of the game.

If you've got CM 01/02 there's no need to buy this version, but if you haven't got a PC then here's where you start playing the greatest game of your life, one that has greater depth than any other and will suck you in. Hours will go past, seasons will change, and soon you'll be wondering what you've been doing for the past three years. What else is there to say? If you like football, you'll like this. If you play it more than once you'll play it for the rest of your life. It's got something that no other game has – an incredibly deep addictive nature that can be more than damaging to your social life.

Something like CM should be given to old people in retirement homes, so we have something to look forward to as we get older.

But then, I'm saying that because I'd rather play Championship Manager than do anything else. It’s not as good as the PC version so you might want to wait six months for CM4, or you could fill up those six long months with the best game ever made. Chris Faires

H

is very effective – but more are created – you can't have inswinging corners because they go off the pitch before they go in, and the referee consistently gets in the way of the action. Prick.

At the end of the day, it's a game of two halves. The first is a memento of a global event, a £40 interactive souvenir which will give you some idea of the atmosphere for Korea/ Japan.

The second is a shockingly average and underdeveloped football game that isn't fit to rub the boots of Pro Evolution Soccer. It's worth playing for the event it recreates, rather than the game dynamics. Rent it for a couple of nights after England are (sadly) knocked out, and replay what could have been... Chris Faires

EY KIDS! Do you wanna look really cool when you play these football games? Why don’t you try Thrustmaster’s brand new peripheral, the World Cup Football Stadium! When playing games like FIFA 2002, you can chip and pass to make your favourite players chip and pass. When you want to run, er, you’ve got to awkwardly hold the controller in your hand and hold the run button! Could anything be more convienient? Why go to a park when you can play the World Cup in your own home?

WARNING: No refunds on purchase. This may contain nuts, 0 % credit and harm your health and social standing. Oh, and you’ll look like a twat as well.

gamesreviews g

07

No Wales but dolphins

RED CARD SOCCER

(PS2/ GC/ XBOX) Midway

P

ICTURE THE scene if you will. It’s the last minute of the World Cup final and you are through on goal. All that lies between you and glory is their goalkeeper. You bear down upon him seeing the fear in his eyes, hearing the thumping of his heart and smelling the stench in his pants. You know that you will score. Then, out of nowhere you are

taken out by a brutal flying headbutt.

The culprit clears the ball; no whistle is blown, no free-kick given.

Welcome to the world of RedCard Soccer!

Basically, you take control of an international team (there are 50 teams in all but no Wales!) and try and beat all others that cross your path. After choosing your team you can now make a bid for world domination in a James Bond villain kind of way, but be warned – this will require you to defeat all other teams in the game unlocking various stadiums and characters along the way.

Your quest begins in Oceania where, after defeating Australia you will face the might of the dolphins – not some regional Australian team but the cute, tuna loving aquatic stars of Flipper. When you have fin-ished (I’m sorry) this first stage your journey continues as you are forced to battle and beat (quite literally) teams from North America, Asia, South America and Europe respectively. Only then can you truly say that you are king of the world!

Alternatively if you are the timid type who does not fancy wasting away hours trying to overcome the

On the ball ISS2 (PS2/GC/Xbox) Konami

A

FTER MONTHS of Pro Evolution Soccer, I tried going back to the Nintendo 4 version of International Superstar Soccer. Oh, how it's aged. What was the hallowed of virtual turf is now a slow botchy affair, where the ball doesn't bounce right and the keepers are still dodgy. But what about now?

ISS is made by the same development team as before, and is intended to be more arcade-oriented (this means 'faster' and it is bloody quick) than Pro Evo. ISS2 has more in common with it's Playstation predecessors than the Nintendo version, primarily because it looks and feels pretty much the same. The players are reduced in size to fairly small sprites while the pitches look like grassy turf, nice surfaces but they tend to distract you from the players.

ISS2 is easier to pick up and play than Pro Evo, has more depth than

FIFA, no dolphins as in Red Card, but is the best 'straight' football game out for the World Cup. It is strippeddown gameplay at it’s worst – through ball passes are absolutely useless, long passes seemingly have only one length, and there are no

step-overs or any other skills you can use, which means its a game of pass and move, pass and move. This is hampered by the appaling change player system, which just doesn't change to the player you want it to.

ISS veterans will recognise many

mighty U.S.A (who are way too f**king good for my liking) there are other options open to you. You can start a tournament, employ a finals mode (play off system) or even take part in an apparent ‘friendly’ exhibition match.

Where RCS really differs from its rivals is that fouls as we know them do not exist. You can headbutt, elbow and kick your opponents to your hearts content and no free kick will be given against you (just like Alan Shearer). All of this makes RCS a welcomingly unique football game in an already cluttered market. Put characteristics – by that I mean 'flaws'.

The keepers are dodgier than Paul Jones, more eccentric than Fabian Barthez and less agile than Richard Wright. They can't catch anything.

One goal was even scored by the keeper walking to the edge of the area and turning around so the

simply it offers something different and proves once and for all that football is a contact sport where even the poor referee is not safe. But, as the Big Brother contestants have found out, the novelty does wear thin quickly.

So what is left after you stop laughing at the dolphins and drop kicks that inhabit the game? RCS does represent a fairly realistic attempt at a football game, albeit one with no rules. You are likely to see your team full of real life players playing in real life stadiums filled with real life fans (possibly).

The graphics are everything that we have come to expect from the PS2, smooth and neat, and some of the players really do look like their real life counterparts. The game itself is played at a frantic pace with virtually no stoppages to speak of.

The controls are fairly easy to get used to and there is a ‘boost’ option which, when used in conjunction with other easier moves, produces a much more exaggerated version of the command. For instance if the boost option is used at the same time as you are shooting the game will be put in to slow motion, the camera will zoom in and your player will perform a spectacular strike at goal (my favourite is the cart wheel shot).

RCS does run in to some problems especially concerning the multi-player option, or, more to the point, the distinct lack of one. At the most two people can play the game at once, and even then they are forced to take opposing sides.

But this is a minor glitch and should not detract from the fact that ultimately RCS is a very good game.

Midway have ventured away from their previous simplified sporting games (like NBA Jam and NFL Blitz) and it has paid off handsomely. In RedCard Soccer they have created a game that is easy to pick up yet hard to master with massive playability and a glut of violent behaviour – what more do you want in a game?

Ryan Young international squads of which there are a good selection (i.e Wales) but still 'Grespa' and 'Eta'a' crop up, but can be changed in the player edit mode. The squads are a bit crazylike Chris Powell in the England team. I know he played a couple of times, but there's no need for anyone to remind us about that. Let's just

There's much to be critical about in ISS2, but it has many virtues attacker just walked past and slotted the ball home. Many goals occur after the keeper dives to save a shot, punching it out for you to score from the rebound.

The controls are never as responsive as you want them to be, but the ball does feel under your control. The dead-ball system is quite good – for corners and direct free kicks the interface resembles a golf game, allowing you to specify your height, power and curl, which is easier for skilled players like Beckham than Allan Johnston.

Unfortunately, you get no interface at all for indirect freekicks, leaving you helpless in midfield because you can't judge where the ball will end up.

Like Pro Evo, ISS has the FIFPro license for the major teams, all

forget it ever happened like the Arman Tamzarian episode of The Simpsons.

There's much to be critical about in ISS2, but it has many virtues, the highest of which is the excellent commentary by John Champion and Mark Lawrenson. It seems to actually apply to what is going on, isn’t noticeably repetitive and shows a good interchange between the two guys. Another good feature is the stadium announcer (Chelsea’s Carl Chapman) calling out the name of the goalscorer. If you've already got Pro Evolution, there's no need to invest in ISS, but if you want a Game Cube or Xbox fooball game then this will last you the World Cup and beyond, but for quick thrills you might prefer FIFA or Red Card. Chris Faires

musicsingles

08

PIC: Jamie Fullerton

History Repeating

THE SHINING: the drugs look like they’re working

THE SHINING I Wonder How (Zuma) AFTER A hard day’s accounting, one likes to relax, put the Corolla into 5th gear, fluff up the ponytail and crank

CLÉAN Room 16 (Sugar Shack)

IT’S NOT every day one comes across Swiss/ Austrian four-pieces who work the hitherto unoccupied terrain between Doves and Beck, but Cléan aren’t an everyday sort of band. The four tracks here – remarkably un-Alpine tales of urban ennui and illicit trysts – boast among their many delights funktastic beats, screamingly prog guitar solos and strong evidence of regular attendance at the Suzanne Vega School of Chord Progressions.

Meanwhile, Pascal Gamboni’s voice exudes sordid melancholy; to put it bluntly, he sounds as if he wants to fuck you senseless while crying on your shoulder. It’s an offer you’d be well advised to take up.

Alex Macpherson

GERLING Dust Me Selecta (Infectious) AFTER A few forays into the murky world of electronic music, Gerling return with a new single which aims directly at the dancefloor. 70’s disco sample, funky diva vocals and tight production all mix together nicely to form a catchy little stormer.

While not necessarily my usual cup of tea, it’s a pretty good tune and there are several good remixes (notably Jacques lu Cont returning from hiding to electrofunk it up) to keep it interesting.

Deserves to be big, in a ‘massiv’ stylee… Andy Parsons

CICCONE All Stacked Up (Muff Records) ANYONE WHO misses early Blur and Supergrass or the under-rated glories of Kenickie need look no

up the volume on The Shining’s I Wonder How. JESUS! I thought this sort of tradrock, dadrock, fuckmethisisbadrock was outlawed in 1997 when someone declared recreating 1969 stupid. The only thing that this makes me wonder is how The Verve were any good with this shower of twats on board.

Paul Barnett

further than Ciccone’s two-minuteindie stompers. All Stacked Up is almost – but not quite – an anthem in the mould of There’s No Other Way. You’re eight years too late, you poor fools! But whatever its shortcomings, it’s a fun bit of bubblegum pop to make you feel fifteen again.

Mat Croft

MILLIONAIRE Come With You (PIAS Recording) BELGIUM’S MILLIONAIRE have only been to the UK twice and the campaign to get them back starts here. Some of them used to be in Evil Superstars. They aren’t evil any more, but hopefully they’ll make it as superstars. Live, they’re an insane ball of funky energy: a Beck/ Prince shebang with the warped edge you can only get from Europeans.

Although it’s less raw on record than on stage, its still fantastic disco rock to get your ass moving. Mat Croft

more thoughtful Menswear. Jesus – in this day and age. Contains references to skin jobs, amphetamines, placebos and shrinks, coupled with the phrase ‘Oh no’ repeated ad nauseam in a slightly fey Britpop accent. You have been warned. Maria Thomas

VINNETTE Lost In Berlin (BMP) WARNING: WHEN tempted by tedious r‘n’b/ soul/ gospel/ pop, keep hands firmly by side, avoid all eye

contact with the bestower of such goods and look as if staring in to the distance. Damn my twitchy right arm for procuring this lazy tune with embarrassingly trite lyrics and a woman who sounds like Alison Moyet.

It’s true! I came to review this by mistake and I’m not from London you know. Paul Barnett

SPARTA Austere EP (Dreamworks) SPARTA CONTAIN three former members of At The Drive-In and their sound is fairly reminiscent of ATD-I’s hard and heavy emo rock.

The first track Mye is heavy and abrasive yet gentle and emotional at the same time. The vocals sound incredibly raw and convey feeling in the screeching emo style. Cataract displays a style that ATD-I never displayed. It is a slow and dirge like song that says “Time goes nowhere” and conveys deep sadness and fear.

All three songs appear to deal with the break up of At The Drive-In and say “You’re caught up in the memory,” which you are because they sound a lot like ATD-I, which is a shame because Sparta are a much better band. Anthony Lloyd

ALEX LLOYD Amazing (EMI) FROM THE land of Down Under to the shores of Britannia comes Alex Lloyd with his frankly unamazing new single Amazing, a sub-David Gray singer-songwriter circular slice of boredom which at one point nearly mutates into Travis’ Writing To Reach you. Says it all really. Was it really worth the flight? Jamie Fullerton

ROMEO TRADING CO. My Town [Blond & Dumb] ROMEO TRADING Co. attempt to mix the vocal talents of Jarvis Cocker with the musical ‘talents of manufactured bands such as Cooper Temple Clause, and to a certain extent they achieve it quite well. The song chugs along quite merrily, in a Brit-pop kind

of way, but then after about 2 minutes you realise one thing. It’s still playing!

It hasn’t finished! Argh! Make it stop!

Oh the humanity! Tim Carne

SEX PISTOLS God Save the Queen (Virgin) When John Lydon of Leftfield was approached with the idea of a remix of this record, he declared, “With an idea like that you should shoot yourself in the morning.” How right he was. If only Neil Barnes had taken his advice.

Anarchy and dance doesn’t quite go.

God Save the Queen is was a groundbreaking hit in 1977, yet a complete load of bollocks in 2002.

Don’t even bother to take these songs out their context, it doesn’t work – punk has developed.

Remixing The Sex Pistols is nothing but sacrilege. Kate Price

LOOPER The Snare (Mute) OH DEAR. Stuart David had the most emotive voice in Belle and Sebastian and now this. Looper, appearing a less attractive prospect with every release, give us this slice of cod-noir trifle. Breathily reciting a paranoid tale of inevitable entrapment, David, with a toy town Barry Adamson backing, has been messing on his cheapo keyboard too long. With the possible exception of a turn as a kids TV theme, The Snare should be kept well locked away. Paul Barnett

JAMES YORKSTON AND THE ATHLETES St. Patrick (Domino) THE SOUNDTRACK to a summer spent lazing in a field, sun shining and carefree, Yorkston’s 2nd single is a hazy delight. Take Badly Drawn Boy’s more pastoral moments, sprinkle a handful of Jim O’Rourke’s graceful musicianship and a melody that ambles like Belle and Sebastian minus the cloying tweeness and you get the understated beauty of St Patrick. It’s Scottish drone-folk-pop at it’s beautiful, evocative best.

Paul Barnett

PEACHES Set It Off (Kitty-Yo) NOTORIUS FOR her filthy mouth, the supreme queen of lo-fi is toned down for a radio edit. But no-one can hide Peaches’ seedy sex appeal flaunted in this catchy slice of funked-up electro. You like it dirty? Peaches will seduce you. Kathryn Archer

SIX BY SEVEN All My New Best Friends (Mantra) FOR THOSE expecting the usual Six

By Seven jarring wall of discordant whining, prepare to be confused. All My New Best Friends, no doubt some ironic treatise on the cruel and shallow nature of fame, actually succeeds in sounding like a slightly

T H E S AW D O C T O R S: D a d ro c k

THE SAW DOCTORS This Is Me (Sham Town) Tell you what; if someone can tell me what a saw doctor actually is before this three minute chunk of Guildford Festival mid-life scottish AOR finishes, they can have a kick in the face from me. The Saw Doctors are probably promoting their fiftieth album now, and they still sound like a third rate Big Country (RIP Stuart Adamson). This is pretty likeable in an “I’ll pretend I don’t like They Might Be Giants too” kind of way, and implausible as it sounds does explore the same themes as Eminem’s The Way I Am only sung by secondary school music teachers.

Fucking class, though. John Widdop

musicalbums

Rare and well-done LTJ BUKEM Producer 5 Rarities (Good Looking) DJ, LABEL boss, club night visionary, musical entrepreneur, standard barer. For well over ten years now, Danny Williamson has been at the forefront of the ‘intelligent’ drum‘n’bass movement in Britain. Under the moniker LTJ Bukem, and armed with his Good Looking Organisation record label, ‘Speed’ nights at London’s Mars Bar, and phenomenal talent, Williamson helped take a scene dogged by an unpopular and violent public image, and made it cool.

Packed with a broad range of rare and before unavailable material, Bukem uses this Producer LP to guide us through his ground breaking career, where he started, where he’s been and where he’s going. From his first ever release, Delitfol, a mix of the ambient and the full on, bleeps and beats, through to a modern day re-mixing of jazz master Herbie Hancock’ s Essence, it’s the life and work of one of the UK’s dance pioneers. The birth of Good Looking Organisation is marked with a re-worked Demons Theme, the track that helped launch the label, and previously unreleased material is given an airing with the funky latin orientated beats of Dream World.

Not just a producer but also a remixer, Bukem’s extensive remixing represented with his original mix of The James Bond Theme for David Arnold’s Shaken and Stirred project as well as the Herbie Hancock mix, Bukem taking on a legend and a hero and coming out victorious.

A collection of the old and new, the rare and the slightly better known, Producer 5 is a fascinating journey into the mind and the influence of LTJ Bukem, the jazz, house, ambience and break beats that have becomes Bukems trademark sound that has always been ahead of it’s time. As the sample on another featured oldie Bookworm goes: “If you have a quality let it define you.” Whatever. LTJ Bukem: definition, genius. Rob Jackson

DAVID GRUBBS Rickets And Scurvy (Fat Cat)

HOT ROD CIRCUIT Sorry About Tomorrow (b-unique)

“SOMETIMES JUST a breath in a song can make you weep”, Polly Harvey once said, and indeed the best art can conjure emotion out of nothing. It’s this maxim which seems to underpin David Grubbs’ work, sparse yet affecting. “Are you ready for a white light storm in a teacup?” he intones on opener Transom.

Initially backed only by a single repeated guitar note, tolling like a funeral bell, and a heartbeat rhythm, the intensity of Grubbs’ dread monotone is reminiscent of Cat Power.

Meanwhile, malevolent electronics fill Pinned To The Spot with outright menace, whilst the circular chord progressions of A Dream To Help Me Sleep lend it an appropriately lullabic charm.

Over all this, Grubbs muses on loneliness and isolation with an astonishing clarity. “How sharp those steeples, and how fucked those people,” he reflects on Aloft, every syllable filled with immense world-weariness. It’s bleak stuff, perfect for grey Sunday afternoons; truly a gem of an album. Alex Macpherson

HOT ROD Circuit spent most of their vital teenage years that all skate punk bands sing about in every song, bumming around Alabama playing shows with fellow emotional wrecks The Get Up Kids. Now, five whole years since those (presumably) endless summers finished, both bands are set to trailblaze across the States, The Get Up Kids now being the tradition answer to the command “name me an emo band”, and Hot Rod Circuit look set to be the answer to “name another one that isn’t Jimmy Eat World.”

Sorry About Tomorrow opens with it’s best song: the prozac-punk of The Pharmicist.

Complete with “I’ve washed my hands of you / I’m getting on with my life,” refrain, it’s a fair indicator for the rest of the album. Too heartfelt to be Green Day (although Andy Jackson’s vocals do stray towards the yee-haw sound of Billy Joe Armstrong in places) and too sensible to be Blink 182, the album’s mission statement shoots out of the tracks in promising style.

Sadly, the rest of the album gets lost amongst many of the cliche’s of the genre, and tends to melt, rather than weld together. Numerous thoughts arise, such as “where’s the hit single?” and “name me another band that’s not Hot Rod Circuit either”. To many, Jimmy Eat World’s sublime self titled major label debut was the death of emotional punk music, and in some ways, it is. Whereas Hot Rod Circuit have not necessarily made a bad album, it’s simply not very good when compared to the benchmarks of the genre. Kathryn Archer

VARIOUS ARTISTS Escape to Formentera (Europa) FORMENTERA, A little island off the south coast of Ibiza, a Mediterranean paradise. This compilation sets itself apart from the mainstream chillout albums by situating itself somewhere a bit more stylish than the balearic clubbing capital. This is captured by the lush selection of very lazy deep house grooves that will slowly fly you away to a beach without a care in the world.

Not an entirely original concept but there are some very pleasurable highlights. The intergalactic Tom Middleton reworking of Hefner (not the indie band) shouldn’t be missed whilst the Maas fiddling of Two Banks of Four is simply gorgeous. For any anoraks there’s also a rather fine Doc L Jnr tune co-written and co-produced

by Royksopp.

Unfortunately this is not the chillout equivalent of paradise, but it’s got loads of class. An essential listen for anyone with a passion for deep soothing grooves. Kathryn Archer

THE SOMATICS The Somatics (Beggars Banquet) QUESTION: WITH the exception of Family Fortunes, sunshine and playing cricket in the park, what provides a worthwhile excuse for revision-time procrastination?

Answer: Music desk doesn’t know.

It most certainly isn’t the drearisome mundanity of this recording by any stretch of the imagination. Whilst at times a bluesy chord progression might seem close to Beatleseque

09 and vocal harmony reaches the dizzy heights of... average, there’s little to hold the attention.

Apart from, that is, the odd moment when you’re reminded of another equally mundane indieguitar band.

It’s a shame really, we could do with something to fill the long long hours spent trying to concentrate on passing exams. So, if you have a response to the above question please reply to the usual address and your correspondence will be dealt with in person, as if there’s anything more exciting to be doing.

Andrew Davidson

WYCLEF JEAN Masquerade (Columbia) SINCE THE demise of the great covers band that were The Fugees, Wyclef Jean seems to have been happy to float in his own little media bubble, pupating into the hairy awards show host we know and love him as today.

Pop gem hits like Gone ‘Till November, and Perfect Gentleman are totally absent throughout Masquerade, an album that aspires to mishmash hip-hop, reggae, and easy listening.

And man, is this easy listening, Wyclef’s dopey rap is Andrex puppy soft, the man never gets remotely excited even when M.O.P. gatecrash the still largely bland title track. The dreaded wonder seems to be drastically short of ideas, but why Jean resorted to sampling Tom Jones’ What’s New Pussycat? raises an eyebrow or two to say the least. This offering can be enjoyed two tracks after Wyclef’s version of Oh What A Night featuring the cringeworthy lyric, “Late December 1993…What an M.C. what a night,” over a plunky rhythm lifted straight from Sesame Street. Shocking.

Dumbed down disco hits, mid paced hip-hop without any urgency in rap delivery and textbook reggae without hooks, welds together to form an album that sits on it’s arse right in the centre of the hip-hop mediocrity scale. In terms of relevance, at least in the U.K. Wyclef Jean version 2002 is on a par with Bernard Manning.

Jamie Fullerton

LACH Kids Fly Free (Fortified) WHILE THE title “Godfather of the anti-folk scene” could suggest an individual who

organises riots outside Fairport Convention theatre gigs, this is not in fact the case. The man Lach is the owner of this title, an American who drove his tongue-in-cheek speedstrumming to the Big Apple, was told to fuck off, and opened his own illegal club. The Fort led Lach to pioneer a new movement which inspired the likes of dictaphone level lo-fi weirdoes The Moldy Peaches, bald guitar-joker Hammell On Trial and even claims to have left its mark on Jeff Buckley and Beck who have both appeared at Lach’s club nights.

Lach sings about Hilary Clinton (“Think of the great political wives of history/who outshone their husbands, just like Hilary”) and taking up smoking, not downloading porn and watching Thundercats, as well as providing snapshots of Lach’s bittersweet relationship with his home country. “How could beauty have so many enemies...I love America but she don’t love me,” he wails on I Love America.

With Hammell and Lach himself blessing us with Barfly appearances, The Moldy Peaches scheduled for a June show as well as a certain JT Mouse creating a similar strain of comic/heartfelt acoustic-fare, could we be witnessing the birth of the Welsh branch of the NYC anti-folk scene? Jamie Fullerton

AIRWAVES Infomaniac (Ignition) LIKE SCREAMADELICA? Like Fatboy Slim?

Like Midnite Vultures? But are you tired of having to listen to them all separately? Well here’s the answer to your problem: Airwaves’ Infomaniac, the party album of 2002. Assuming the role of a big-beat Funkadelic, they strut through every track like John Travolta out for a night on the town.

The uncredited vocalists put on the voices of David Bowie, George Clinton and Scott from Fu Manchu (unless it really is them – but I doubt it) and groove along with the funky organ, samples and ass-shakin’ beats. When the jazz guitar solo starts up on Sock It To Em, you could really believe it was 1975, while Psycho manages to grab hold of a sixties garage soul vibe and ride with it almost too convincingly.

Most of it is disco-stodge, of course. Like any self-consciously ‘party’ album, you couldn’t even try to sit down and actually listen to it, but as a soundtrack to summer nights of drunken partying it’s just about right. Mat Croft

LORIEN Under the Waves (Instant Karma) IT ALL starts off so well. Ghostlost’s brash, defiant posturing, Human Beings’ earnest tenderness and Shivering Sun’s humble, quiet-loud emotion all point to what could be a lost gem. OK, so their blueprint is clearly The Bends-era Radiohead, but what better place to draw inspiration?

Singer Fabio’s voice lands at a fragile, high-ranging point between Sigur Ros’ (fellow countrymen and seemingly another Lorien inspiration) Jonsi Birgisson and JJ72’s Mark Greaney.

Guitars either softly chime or crash restrainedly depending on the mood. And then? Well, nothing really. It all just stays the same. Gradually songs blur into one another and weariness replaces expectancy.

With a little more imagination and diversity this album could have been a treasure. As it is Under the Waves remains an agreeable charm and suggests that there could be more to come from Lorien. Paul Barnett

artsreviews

10

Sex, lies and opera?

COSI FAN TUTTE Welsh National Opera New Theatre

Q

UESTION TO be posed to the Welsh National Opera: are they trying to attract higher audience numbers by showing as much bare flesh as possible?

Cosi Fan Tutte, or in English

‘that’s how all women behave,’ is a tale that tests the fidelity of two sisters. Unlike your normal trip to the opera – nobody dies! Instead, they have loads of sex. Yes, that’s right – sex and opera. It isn’t even implied in the programme that there is humping aplenty in the performance. It’s therefore not the kind of opera that your Grandma would like.

Set in Naples, two friends Ferrando and Guglielmo, place a wager with their cynical

A big ‘Thank you’ to the WNO: I’d always wanted to see old men having sex. Oh well: all in the name of art

friend Don Alfonso. They bet a hundred gold coins that their girlfriends, the sisters Dorabelle and Fiordiligi, are completely faithful. With the help of the sisters’ ‘trusty’ maid, Don Alfonso attempts to proves otherwise. What follows is lies, lust and laughter aplenty. Naturally the sisters aren’t faithful when they are wooed by two handsome Albanians (Ferrando and Guglielmo in disguise). Little of the action between the lovers is left to the imagination. I’d like to say a big ‘Thank you’ to the WNO: I’d always wanted to see old men having sex. Oh well, it’s all in the name of art.

Despite being slightly repulsed at certain points; especially when a random pair from the chorus start getting ‘down and dirty’ in the middle of the action (why?), Cosi Fan Tutte is really funny, the music is impeccable and beautifully composed; all the voices were amazing. Alwyn Mellor as Fiordiligi rose to the challenge of one of Mozart’s demanding pieces. It’s not your usual opera but definitely one of the best. Kate Price

Coming soon... C JAMES DONOVAN: young, gifted and Welsh

ARDIFF GETS its fair share of the Jubilee celebrations on the bank holiday weekend. Cardiff Bay sees most of the action, the centre point being the Oval Basin, which sets the stage for three open-air music festivals.

Proverbially kicking off on Saturday June 1st, soul and gospel music from Ruby Turner, Joe Cocker and the London Community Gospel Choir are set to entertain from 7pm.

A three day live theatre festival, working its way through the streets of the Bay, is made up of a diverse range of artists.

The highlights include an

appearance by American group Pink Ink, with ‘FabricAction’, billed as an imaginative playground created from brightly coloured spandex.

Welsh National Opera are also performing at the Oval Basin, with special guests Rebecca Evans, Dennis O’Neill and Jason Howard, starting at 6.30pm on Sunday June 2nd.

Monday’s programme includes the Red Dragon ‘Street Party in the Bay’, featuring the final of their Reach for the Stars competition, starting at 7.30pm. No doubt Her Majesty will be amused.

To apply for tickets to the concert of your choice, call 09069 12 26 66.

T

HIS COMING week, Martin Tinney Gallery is host to a new exhibition by South Wales’ Artist of the Year 1998, James Donovan. His paintings draw inspiration from his life in and around South Wales, as you can see in his moody images of miners’ lives. You can find the gallery on Windsor Place, just off Queen Street, where the exhibition will run from 24th May until 15th June.

From June14 –16, you can get your little selves down to the Old Passenger Shed in Bristol. When you get there, check out the Affordable Art Fair. What that actually means is that everything is under £2,500.

While most of us might not be willing to dig that far into our overdrafts, Arts can assure you that the art on offer, from such talents as Noel Betowski, Virginia Dowe and Kristan Baggaley, is worth the trip to see.

THE AFFORDABLE ARTS FAIR IN BRISTOL: a delightfully genteel day out

Television

12

27 May

Monday HTV

S4C

CHANNEL 5

6.00 Breakfast 9.00 Kilroy 10.00 Ruby 11.00 Big Strong Boys 11.30 Bargain Hunt 12.00 No Win No Fee 12.30 Call My Bluff 1.00 BBC News; Weather 1.30 Regional News and Weather 1.45 Neighbours 2.10 Diagnosis Murder 2.55 The Bench 3.25 CBeebies: Tweenies Songtime; Tweenies 3.45 CBBC: Dennis the Menace 4.10 50/50 4.35 Kenan and Kel 5.00 Blue Peter 5.25 Newsround 5.35 Neighbours Karl demands that Liz tell Elly if she is going to take her to Sweden.

That has to be a filthy euphemism – fnarr!

6.00 The Write to Choose 6.30 Musical Prodigies?

7.00 CBBC: Really Wild Show 7.25 Smurfs' Adventures 7.45 Blue Peter Unleashed 8.15 CBeebies: Brum 8.25 The Story Makers 8.40 Clifford the Big Red Dog 9.00 Teletubbies 9.50 Playdays 10.10 Tweenies 10.50 Magic Key 11.05 Primary Preview 11.35 Watch 11.50 Watch 12.05 Tales of Europe 12.20 Landmark Shorts 12.30 Working Lunch 1.00 Brum 1.10 Wildlife on Two 1.40 FILM: The French Line 3.20 BBC News 3.30 Flog It! 4.30 Ready Steady Cook 5.15 Weakest Link

6.00 GMTV 9.25 Trisha 10.30 This Morning 12.00 This Morning: Inside the Royal Family Ew. Not a nice thought at all. 12.30 ITV Lunchtime News and Weather 1.10 Shortland Street 1.40 Crossroads 2.10 Heartbeat 3.10 ITV News Headlines 3.15 HTV News and Weather 3.20 Tiny Planets 3.25 Sabrina, the Teenage Witch 3.50 Sabrina, the Teenage Witch 4.15 Sabrina, the Teenage Witch 4.35 Sabrina, the Teenage Witch Insane scheduling here from HTV. Run out of programmes, have we? 5.05 Never Had It So Good 5.30 Crossroads

6.05 The Hoobs 6.55 RI:SE 9.00 Bewitched 9.30 I Dream of Jeannie 10.00 FILM: Joey Boy 11.40 Supporting Acts 12.00 Six Experiments That Changed the World 12.30 Planed Plant: Rhacsyn a'r Goeden Hud 12.45 Sali Mali 12.55 Ding Dong 1.00 Twm 1.05 Anturiaethau Smot y Ci 1.15 Pet Rescue 1.45 Working with Dinosaurs 2.45 Fifteen to One 3.15 Countdown 4.00 Sam Tan 4.10 Na Dderyn 4.20 Cnafon Coed 4.50 Ffeil 5.00 Richard and Judy 6.00 Newyddion 6 6.05 Wedi 6 6.30 C'mon Midffild 7.00 Pobol y Cwm

6.00 Sunrise 6.30 Beachcomber Bay 6.55 Nosey 7.00 Happy Monsters 7.15 Little Antics 7.20 Mr Men and Little Miss 7.30 Rolie Polie Olie 7.55 Bear in the Big Blue House 8.30 Barney 8.55 Jay Jay the Jet Plane 9.25 The Dog Listener 10.00 The Wright Stuff 11.00 T J Hooker 12.00 5 News at Noon 12.30 Home and Away 1.00 Family Affairs 1.30 It's Your Funeral 2.00 Divine Designs 2.20 Open House with Gloria Hunniford 3.40 FILM: Caprice Presumably not about the pathetic, terminally dumb glamour model. 5.30 5 News

6.00 BBC News 6.30 Wales Today 6.55 Party Conference Broadcast by the Welsh Conservative Party 7.00 X-Ray 7.30 Holiday on a Shoestring That wouldn’t be a very nice place to holiday – doubt the view’s up to much. 8.00 EastEnders Janine's luck turns from bad to worse.

Surely with her muntingness life can’t get any worse? 8.30 Changing Rooms 9.00 Spooks 10.00 BBC News 10.25 Regional News and Weather 10.35 When Pele Broke Our Hearts A tribute to the outstanding achievements of the Welsh soccer team at the 1958 World Cup finals in Sweden – the first and only time Wales have ever managed to qualify for the tournament.

And this has what, precisely, to do with Pele? 11.05 Match of the World Cup 12.15 FILM: Elmore Leonard's Gold Coast Complex crime drama about a widow who will only inherit her mobster husband's fortune if she stays away from men for the rest of her life. Ooh, a toughie this – sex or money? I’d go for sex.

Money can be made other ways. 2.05 Joins BBC News 24

6.00 The Simpsons 6.20 Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons 6.50 The New Adventures of Superman 7.30 Bill Oddie Goes Wild: Hebrides 8.00 University Challenge Reunited The allfemale 1965 team from St Hilda's, Oxford, take on 1984 champions Dundee. Did you know that students at Hilda’s are collectively referred to as Hildabeasts, after their penchant for invading other Oxford colleges in hordes in search of men? 8.35 Malcolm in the Middle 9.00 The Kumars at No 42 9.30 Coupling 10.00 The Day Today 10.30 Newsnight 11.20 Party Conference Broadcast by the Welsh Conservative Party 11.25 Tinsel Town 11.55 Tinsel Town 12.25 The Witness: Football - The First World Cup 12.30 Open University: Ever Wondered?

12.45 Personal Passions 1.00 Ever Wondered? 1.30 Looking for Hinduism in Calcutta 2.00 Secondary Schools: Languages: Isabel 4.00 Languages: Get By in German Steve knows a phrase, but can’t spell it.

Gutted. 5.00 Working in Travel and Tourism: Careers and Health and Safety

6.00 HTV News 6.25 Party Election Broadcast by the Welsh Conservative Party Gah! They’re everywhere tonight. Possibly the epitome of the word ‘evil’. Actually, no, that would be the utterly dreadful new Oasis single.

6.30 ITV Evening News 7.00 Emmerdale Tormented by demons, Zoe pays a midnight visit to Frank's grave. ‘Tis all a bit pagan and satanic for Emmerdale, isn’t it? The Daily Mail should be informed. Tsk. 7.30 Coronation Street 8.00 Tonight with Trevor McDonald 8.30 Airline 9.00 Plain Jane 10.30 ITV News at Ten 10.50 Wales This Week 11.20 HTV News 11.30 UEFA Champions League Weekly 12.00 FILM: Nowhere to Run 1.45 Wish You Were Here...? 2.15 The People's Vets 2.40 Trisha 3.35 Tonight with Trevor McDonald 4.00 Judge Judy 4.20 ITV Nightscreen 5.30 ITV Early Morning News Remember to email us whatever’s on your mind the grtvdesk@hotmail.com inbox is ready and willing to receive you, spreading its legs to your thoughts in the style of a very enthusiastic whore.

7.30 Darllediad Gwleidyddol gan y Blaid Geidwadol 7.35 Newyddion 8.05 Taro Naw 8.35 Caru Oddi Cartref 9.35 Mae'r Byd yn Grwn: Mawredd Mawr 10.05 Big Brother 10.40 V Graham Norton 11.10 Party Political Broadcast by the Conservative Party 11.15 The West Wing 12.10 FILM: Sirens With Hugh Grant and Elle Macpherson yum, yum, yum! 1.55 Affairs of the Heart 2.55 FILM: Texas CH4. As S4C except: 6.00 Ivor the Engine 12.00 Suddenly Susan 12.30 ER 1.25 Ed 2.20 Ally McBeal 3.15 Pet Rescue 3.45 Fifteen to One 4.15 Countdown 5.00 Richard and Judy 6.00 Hollyoaks 6.30 Hollyoaks 7.00 Channel 4 News 7.55 The Political Slot 8.00 Junkyard Wars 9.00 To the Ends of the Earth: Pacific Hell 10.00 Big Brother 10.35 V Graham Norton 11.05 Porn Star - The Legend of Ron Jeremy 12.40 Big Brother 1.10 Best Friends: Katrine and Sara 1.40 FILM: Enemies, a Love Story 3.40 FILM: Martha and Ethel 5.00 The Colombian Connection 5.55 The Magic Roundabout

6.00 Home and Away Noah is still drinking. Good on ya, boy. That’s the spirit. 6.30 Family Affairs 7.00 Topranko! Not, it has to be said, the best name for a game show in recent history.

7.30 5 News 8.00 The Most Evil Men and Women in History: Countess Dracula In 16th- and 17th-century Transylvania, in a massive mountain-top castle, the sadistic Blood Countess – Erzabet Bathory of Hungary – perpetrated a horrific series of cruelties upon her servants and local peasant girls – over six hundred and fifty murder victims in all. She sounds like just my kind of girl. I *heart* Erzabet Bathory.

8.30 5th Gear 9.00 FILM: US Marshals “Piss-poor follow-up to The Fugitive.

With Tommy Lee Jones, aka the most overrated actor ever” – Nick. 11.35 CSI: Crime Scene Investigation 12.30 The Pepsi Chart 12.35 US PGA Golf 1.30 NASCAR Busch Series Motor Racing 2.20 V8 Supercars 3.10 Argentinian Football: Lanus v River Plate 4.40 Channel 5 Football Classic: Germany v Argentina Anyone who watched any of the sport above needs to be shot.

Spooks BBC1 9.00pm

The Kumars at No 42 BBC2 9.00pm

Airline ITV1 8.30pm

Junkyard Wars C4 8.00pm

CHOICE Trisha HTV, 9.25am, 2.40am Lately, TV Desk has been acting strangely.

The realisation that this thing called ‘work’ is necessary to pass these things called ‘exams’ has meant that it has been rising

early, in true lark stylee, and therefore has also managed to catch this utterly fab way of easing into the day. You can’t go wrong with a combo of laughing at quite possibly the most stupid people in the country (no coherent sentences here) and marvelling at Trisha’s permanent faux-innocent, openmouthed stare of shock, almost as if she hadn’t heard of such things ever before.

Monday 27th May

Evening

BBC 2

Today’s Highlights

Daytime

BBC 1

Anyway, there are three broad genres of Trisha: ‘My child is pregnant!’, ‘My child is pregnant and I don’t care – but you’re the father!’, and ‘My child is pregnant! Who’s the father?!’ To all of these, the child in question will merely gape dumbly, mouth opening and shutting like a particularly inane goldfish, and continue to sit pudding-like in its seat.

Brilliant stuff.

Television

13

28 May

Daytime Evening

BBC 2

HTV

S4C

CHANNEL 5

6.00 Breakfast 9.00 Kilroy 10.00 Ruby 11.00 Big Strong Boys 11.30 Bargain Hunt 12.00 No Win No Fee 12.30 Call My Bluff 1.00 BBC News; Weather 1.30 Regional News and Weather 1.45 Neighbours 2.10 Diagnosis Murder 2.55 The Bench 3.25 CBeebies: Tweenies Songtime; Tweenies 3.45 CBBC: Dennis the Menace 4.10 Get Your Own Back 4.35 Big Kids 5.00 SMart 5.25 Newsround 5.35 Neighbours

7.00 Chuck Finn 7.25 Smurfs' Adventures 7.45 Blue Peter 8.15 Binka 8.25 The Story Makers 8.40 Clifford the Big Red Dog 9.00 Teletubbies 9.50 Playdays 10.10 Tweenies 10.50 Landmarks 11.10 English Express 11.30 Music Makers 11.50 Zig Zag Shorts: France 12.00 Shakespeare: The Animated Tales 12.30 Working Lunch 1.00 Binka 1.10 Pingu 1.15 FILM: Mr Lucky 2.50 Assembly Live 3.20 BBC News 3.25 Regional News and Weather 3.30 Flog It! 4.30 Ready Steady Cook 5.15 Weakest Link With Ann ‘knob-grater’ Robinson.

6.00 GMTV 9.25 Trisha 10.30 This Morning 12.00 This Morning: Inside the Royal Family 12.30 ITV Lunchtime News and Weather 1.10 Shortland Street 1.40 Crossroads 2.10 Heartbeat 3.10 ITV News Headlines 3.15 HTV News and Weather 3.20 Tiny Planets 3.30 Tiny Planets 3.35 Hey Arnold!

4.05 Hey Arnold!

4.35 Hey Arnold!

5.05 Never Had It So Good 5.30 Crossroads Not as good as the song by Free.

6.30 The Hoobs 6.55 RI:SE 9.00 Bewitched 9.30 I Dream of Jeannie 10.00 FILM: Watch Your Stern 11.40 Suddenly Susan 12.05 Friends 12.30 Planed Plant: Tweenies 1.00 Bibi 1.10 Tic Toc 1.15 Pet Rescue 1.45 Junkyard Wars 2.45 Fifteen to One 3.15 Countdown 4.00 Chwedlau'r Byd 4.15 Cnafon Coed 4.50 Ffeil 5.00 Richard and Judy 6.00 Newyddion 6 News.

6.05 Wedi 6 6.30 Brodyr Bach 7.00 Pobol y Cwm 7.30 Newyddion News.

8.00 Clwb Garddio 8.30 Aduniad Gelli Aur Ffermio 9.00 The Edwardian Country House

6.00 Sunrise 6.30 Beachcomber Bay 6.55 Nosey 7.00 Happy Monsters 7.15 Little Antics 7.20 Mr Men and Little Miss 7.30 Rolie Polie Olie 7.55 Bear in the Big Blue House 8.30 Barney 8.55 Jay Jay the Jet Plane 9.25 The Dog Listener 10.00 The Wright Stuff 11.00 T J Hooker 12.00 5 News at Noon 12.30 Home and Away 1.00 Family Affairs 1.30 US PGA Golf 2.20 Open House with Gloria Hunniford 3.40 FILM: Danielle Steel's Palomino 5.30 5 News

6.00 BBC News 6.30 Wales Today 7.00 Wildlife on One:This week a shrivelled old reptile believed to be over a thousand years old, looking at some animals.

7.30 EastEnders Kat takes it upon herself to help Little Mo. “Get some slap on and find yahself a bloke ‘ung like a gibbon.”

8.00 Holby City 9.00 Murder in Mind: Regrets 10.00 BBC News 10.25 Regional News and Weather 10.35 Week In, Week Out 11.05 Match of the World Cup Paul Whitehouse, in the guise of Ron Manager, looks back at classic moments from previous World Cup. With the noted absence of Sports I’ll have to make something up on their behalf...Pearlo: Spurs, rant, rant, Ariel Sharon. Mr T: Arsenal, Tony Adams, Man U scum, etc, etc.

12.20 FILM: Formula for Death Guns, drugs and Dre, bee-atch!What? I’m from Dorset actually...

1.55 Sign Zone: Panorama 2.35 Sign Zone: Queen and Country 3.35 Sign Zone: See Hear on Saturday

6.00 The Simpsons 6.20 TOTP2 Performances from the `Top of the Pops' archives. Artists include Sister Sledge, Blue, the Divinyls, and Foreigner. All toss, my amigos.

6.45 Star Trek 7.30 Rough Science That bloke from Tomorrows World tests a revolutionary new toilet paper-made from glass.

8.00 Country House 8.30 The Best Cookery 9.00 A History of Britain by Simon Schama 10.00 Harry Enfield and Chums 10.30 Newsnight 11.20 Storyville: Who Is Bernard Tapie? A singer, actor, politician, millionaire businessman, variety-show host, best-selling author and, ultimately, convict – apparently.

12.30 BBC Learning Zone: Open University: 1.00 A Language for Movement 1.30 Dynamic Analysis 2.00 Secondary Schools: Languages: Le Cafe des Reves 4.00 Languages: Discovering Portuguese 12/French on a Plate: Provence 5.00 Working in Travel and Tourism

6.00 HTV News 6.30 ITV Evening News 7.00 Emmerdale Syd makes a pass at Chloe. Chloe volleys home left-footedBANG!, “Pick that out!”

7.30 The Real Dad's Army 8.00 Soap Star Lives 8.30 Barbara A day in the life of Babs Windsor’s wig maker. “I like to go for realism in my designs” she divulges.

9.00 Plain Jane Snobby Bobby.

10.30 ITV News 10.50 The Ferret 11.20 HTV News 11.30 Freshers Documentary series exposing the social life of first-year students at Cardiff University. Expect some hideous minger action at Jive involving TV’s Amy. 1-1, you hairy legged, ginger bee-atch.

12.00 Tin Gods This week founder of spam, Mr Spam.

12.35 FILM: Cagney and Lacey Noo! surely not.

2.15 World Sport 2.40 The Big Match 3.15 Box Office America 3.40 Judge Judy 4.00 ITV Nightscreen 5.30 ITV Early Morning News Alex thinks the new Ludacris song is good, his music credentials thus tarnished.

10.30 Big Brother 11.05 V Graham Norton 11.35 Porn Star - The Legend of Ron Jeremy 1.05 Tourist Police 1.35 Secrets of the Dead 2.35 FILM: Guadalcanal Diary 4.20 Death of the Solar Temple

6.00 Home and Away Duncan accuses Alf of not being there for him. Gay subtext or completely innocent?

6.30 Family Affairs Karen is hurt when Maggie chooses Kelly as her birthing partner.

Umm...fnarr? Perhaps not.

7.00 5th Gear “Ease up on the clutch, shift, and now...you’ve fucked it up again you useless twat!”

Driving lessons with my Dad. 7.30 5 News 8.00 McCartney on McCartney Paul McCartney clones himself, then buggers himself silly. The wierdo.

9.00 FILM: No Way Out Sounds toss, don’t watch it.

Tell Channel 5 I told you not too. The power is mine, all mine!

11.15 Serial Killers: Ted Bundy Wot about Ice-T? Cop Killah!

12.10 La Femme Nikita 1.00 Channel 5 Football: European Under-21s Championship Report 1.30 NFL Europe 1.55 NHL Ice Hockey Live 5.00 NHL Ice Hockey Replay Look, send me emails or I’m gonna write “plastic fantastic” for every listing. You have been warned......................wankers

CHOICE Porn Star: The Legend of Ron Jeremy S4C,11.35 pm Big fat bloke with dodgy tash makes it as porn legend in rags to riches fare, one suspects. He hangs out with bands, probably does loads of

CH4. As S4C except: 6.00 Ivor the Engine 11.40 Encounters 11.45 Jesse 12.10 Suddenly Susan 12.35 ER 1.30 Ed 2.20 Ally McBeal 3.15 Pet Rescue 3.45 Fifteen to One William G Stewart asks the questions in the fast-moving quiz. 4.15 Countdown 5.00 Richard and Judy 6.00 Hollyoaks 6.30 Hollyoaks 7.00 Channel 4 News Including sport and weather. 7.55 The Political Slot 8.00 Other People's Houses 9.00 The Edwardian Country House 10.00 Big Brother 10.35 V Graham Norton 11.05 Oz 12.15 Tourist Police: Tenerife 12.45 Big Brother 1.15 FILM: Blankman 3.00 FILM: Jury Duty 4.25 To Have and to Hold 4.40 The British Rally 5.10 F3 on 4 5.35 2002 Pirelli British Rally Championship

coke...umm, might have shagged someone famous and...who knows? To be honest I didn’t think this through, but will probably have tits in though.

Yeeeesss!

Eastenders BBC1,7.30pm Jamie: Sonya!

Sonya: Jamie!

Phil: Wots goin’ on?

Peggy: Get out, the pair of ya!

See, I could write this shite. All they do is shout other names and repeat a few phrases. Complete pony. And is it me, or is Sonya the personification of an overly maternal Hippo? Watching this rots your brain. Fact.

Murder in Mind 9.00pm BBC1

The Best 8.30pm BBC2

Plain Jane 9.00pm ITV1

Edwardian Country House 9.00pm C4

Tuesday 28th May

BBC 1

Today’s Highlights

Tuesday

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Television

14

29 May

Wednesday HTV

S4C

CHANNEL 5

6.00 Breakfast 9.00 Kilroy 10.00 Ruby 11.00 Big Strong Boys 11.30 Bargain Hunt 12.00 No Win No Fee 12.30 Call My Bluff 1.00 BBC News 1.30 Regional News and Weather 1.45 Neighbours 2.10 Diagnosis Murder 2.55 The Bench 3.25 Tweenies 3.45 Dennis the Menace 4.10 UBOS 4.35 Even Stevens 5.00 Blue Peter 5.25 Newsround 5.35 Neighbours Flick and Marc grow closer. Stuart is put into a compromising position.

Double fnarr, and lots of jealousy at first two: is it some sort of soap rule that the most fuckable characters have to get together?

6.00 Following a Score 6.30 Global Warming 7.00 Get Your Own Back 7.25 Smurfs' Adventures 7.45 Blue Peter Unleashed 8.15 Bob the Builder 8.25 The Story Makers 8.40 Clifford the Big Red Dog 9.00 Teletubbies 9.50 Playdays 10.10 Tweenies 10.50 Come Outside 11.05 Watch 11.20 Words and Pictures Plus 11.35 Cats' Eyes 11.50 Hands Up! 12.05 Pod's Mission 12.20 Landmark Shorts 12.30 Working Lunch 1.00 Lifeline 1.10 FILM: Underwater 2.45 Assembly Live 3.20 News 3.30 Flog It! 4.30 Ready Steady Cook

6.00 GMTV 9.25 Trisha 10.30 This Morning 12.00 This Morning: Inside the Royal Family 12.30 News 1.10 Shortland Street 1.40 Crossroads 2.10 Heartbeat 3.10 ITV News Headlines 3.15 HTV News and Weather 3.20 Tiny Planets 3.35 Are You Afraid of the Dark? 4.05 Are You Afraid of the Dark? 5.05 Never Had It So Good 5.30 Crossroads Virginia returns from her cruise. Hope she had a good time – fnarr!

Incidentally, Tom Cruise and rumours about sexuality.

Think about it: why would a straight man choose a stage name like ‘Cruise’?

6.05 The Hoobs 6.30 The Hoobs 6.55 RI:SE 9.00 Bewitched 9.30 I Dream of Jeannie 10.00 FILM: For Better, For Worse 11.35 Suddenly Susan 12.00 Friends 12.30 Caio 12.35 Caffi Sali Mali 12.55 Mistar Morgan 1.15 Pet Rescue 1.45 The Tower 2.45 Fifteen to One 3.15 Countdown 4.00 SuperTed 4.10 Cnafon Coed 4.50 Ffeil 5.00 Richard and Judy 6.00 Newyddion 6 6.05 Wedi 6 6.30 C'mon Midffild 7.00 Pobol y Cwm 7.30 Newyddion 8.00 Prydain Wyllt: Y Gwas a'i Gyfnither 8.30 Ffermio 9.00 ER 10.00 Big Brother 10.30 Brookside

6.00 Sunrise 6.30 Beachcomber Bay 6.55 Nosey 7.00 Happy Monsters 7.15 Little Antics 7.20 Mr Men and Little Miss 7.30 Rolie Polie Olie 7.55 Bear in the Big Blue House 8.30 Barney 8.55 Jay Jay the Jet Plane 9.25 The Dog Listener 10.00 The Wright Stuff 11.00 T J Hooker 12.00 5 News 12.30 Home and Away 1.00 Family Affairs 1.30 Oprah 2.20 Open House with Gloria Hunniford 3.45 FILM: Hart to Hart: Till Death Do Us Hart Is this supposed to be a pun or something?

Looks like an unbelievable crock of shite. 5.30 5 News

6.00 BBC News 6.30 Wales Today 7.00 Tomorrow's World 7.30 So You Think You're a Good Driver? 8.00 Weakest Link 8.55 The National Lottery: Midweek Draws 9.00 The People's Queen Reveals a side to the Queen which is seldom seen.

Presumably not her raving republican anarchist side.

10.00 BBC News Spare a thought for Jennie Bond, as the Queen speaks thus: “Everyone tells me about these people called royal correspondents. But I have no idea who they are.”

10.25 Regional News and Weather 10.35 The Bench Work threatens to damage personal lives. Tell me about it ::sigh:: 11.05 Match of the World Cup I’ll always remember Iran beating the Great Satan four years ago.

Awesome scenes. 12.20 FILM: Exposure 1.55 Sign Zone: Holiday on a Shoestring 2.25 Sign Zone: The Toughest Job in Britain 2.55 Sign Zone: Ice Dogs 3.25 Sign Zone: MacIntyre Investigates 4.25 Joins BBC News 24 New Prodigy single’s on the radio.

Bit shit to be honest - sounds like they’ve ripped off one of their songs. ‘All very 1997’ DC.

5.15 Weakest Link 6.00 The Simpsons Awesome Simpsons top trumps scenes earlier. 6.20 Star Trek: The Next Generation 7.05 Scrum V Live: Wales v Barbarians “It’s the fucking World Cup, stop wasting my time” - Sports Desk. Hear hear! 9.10 Murder Sounds reasonably intriguing - same story told from a different perspective each week. I think, anyway. 10.00 Dossa and Joe 10.30 Newsnight 11.20 Your Money or Your Life Alvin Hall offers advice to a couple from Lancashire whose rows over money are threatening to undermine their marriage. To divorce, perchance? 11.50 Back to the Floor: Women's Prison USA 12.30 BBC Learning Zone: Open University: Images over India 1.00 The Battle for Congress 1.45 Personal Passions 2.00 Secondary Schools: Languages: Clementine In which country do they speak ‘clementine’, then? That’s not a language, that’s a fruit. Or a crap Mark Owen solo effort. 4.00 Languages: Discovering Portuguese 34/French on a Plate Burgundy 5.00 Working in Travel and Tourism: Selling and Communication Skills

6.00 HTV News 6.30 ITV Evening News 7.00 Emmerdale Syd sets about seducing Nicola. Too obvious. And everyone in this soap is beyond minging – in fact, they munt – so we’re going to withhold their ‘fnarr’. 7.30 Coronation Street 8.00 Holidays from Hell 2002 A catalogue of holiday disasters, including a hotel so awful the holidaymakers took the rep hostage. Sounds like a good future tip to me. 9.00 Survivor: The Million Pound Final 10.00 ITV News at Ten 10.20 Survivor: The Million Pound Final Result 10.50 HTV News 11.00 FILM: Divided by Hate “Pearlo vs.

The World?” hazards TV Nick. 12.45 F1: Monaco Grand Prix Replayed 3.40 2002 FIFA World Cup Christing hell, I hate Dave Pearce. In the past hour the twunt’s played precisely two good songs. He’s not, however, quite as bad as Trevor Nelson, who MUST DIE. Anyone willing to do the job at the upcoming ball?

4.05 ITV Nightscreen 5.30 ITV Early Morning News Why do anarchists drink herbal tea? Because all proper tea is theft.

11.05 Brookside 11.35 V Graham Norton 12.05 Jackass 12.35 Mark Thomas's Secret Map of Britain 1.35 FILM: En face 3.15 Catastrophe - The Day the Sun Went Out

6.00 Home and Away 6.30 Family Affairs Shocked to see that the Social Services investigation is already under way, Jim attempts to talk to Cat. Wouldn’t talking to animals be more likely to spark off another investigation? Or is it talking to plants which makes you mad? Hang on, Prince Charles does that. Actually, point proved. 7.00 Danger!

50,000 Volts 7.30 5 News 8.00 FILM: The Shadow Men 9.55 5 News Update 10.00 FILM: Fort Apache, the Bronx 12.20 NHL Ice Hockey Live 4.00 NHL Ice Hockey Replay This week, TV Desk loves: Anna Kournikova (she’s going to bankrupt Penthouse, you know), Ms Dynamite and the fit blokes who’ve been distracting me from revision these past two weeks by playing frisbee outside my window. Topless next week please, boys. TV Desk hates: getting caught in rainstorms, Graham Norton, and fucking kids who walk into my legs when I’m trying to shop. The brats need to be shot at birth.

Ooh, and TV Desk lusts after the singer from a band called Modey Lemon. Their music’s good, too. 5.00 Australian Rules Football

CH4. As S4C except: 11.30 Icons: Diana Dors Ooh, one of her distant cousins lives in the village up the hill from me. Caused a stir when she moved in, that did. 11.45 Jesse 12.10 Suddenly Susan 12.35 ER 1.30 Ed 2.20 Ally McBeal 3.15 Pet Rescue 3.45 Fifteen to One 4.15 Countdown 5.00 Richard and Judy 6.00 X-fire 7.00 Channel 4 News 7.55 The Political Slot 8.00 Brookside 8.30 Brookside 9.00 ER 10.00 Big Brother 10.35 V Graham Norton Steadily growing ever pisspoorer. 11.05 Mark Thomas's Secret Map of Britain 12.10 Ally McBeal 1.00 Big Brother 1.30 Jilted 2.25 When a Wife Loves a Woman ...her husband asks if he can watch. 3.20 Sacred Weeds: Blue Lilya 4.15 Poisoned: The Killing Fields 4.45 Vee-TV 5.10 Countdown I got a sevenletter word the other day. Oh yes, I’m good. 5.55 Animal Alphabet

The People’s Queen BBC1 9.00pm

Your Money or Your Life BBC2 11.20pm

Holidays from Hell ITV1 8.00pm

ER C4 9.00pm

CHOICE Mark Thomas’s Secret Map Of Britain Channel 4, 11.05pm

Sounds awesome – I actually actively want to watch this. Activist comedian Mark Thomas draws up a map of Britain that reveals the places the

government and the establishment do not want the public to know about, disproves the claim that the government is an ‘open’ institution, and looks at the secret democracy that Britain really is. It’s increasingly apparent that political apathy in this country stems from complacency in the infallibility of a democratic

government, a concept as effectively drummed into the public as any Stalinist propaganda. And, secure in their relative prosperity and mistaken belief that government will never fall into the ‘wrong’ hands, they cease to care about politics. With any luck, this will manage to shock a few people out of their apathy.

Wednesday 29th May

Evening

BBC 2

Today’s Highlights

Daytime

BBC 1

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Television

15

30 May

Daytime

BBC 2

HTV

S4C

CHANNEL 5

6.00 Breakfast 9.00 Kilroy 10.00 Ruby 11.00 Big Strong Boys 11.30 Bargain Hunt 12.00 No Win No Fee 12.30 Call My Bluff 1.00 BBC News; Weather 1.30 Regional News and Weather 1.45 Neighbours 2.10 Diagnosis Murder 2.55 The Bench 3.25 CBeebies: Tweenies Songtime; Tweenies 3.45 CBBC: Dennis the Menace 4.10 The Cramp Twins 4.20 There's a Viking in My Bed 4.35 Jackie Chan Adventures 5.00 Short Change 5.25 Newsround 5.35 Neighbours

6.30 Water Is for Fighting Over 7.00 Arthur 7.25 Smurfs' Adventures 7.45 Blue Peter 8.15 CBeebies: Andy Pandy 8.25 The Story Makers 8.40 Clifford the Big Red Dog 9.00 Teletubbies 9.50 Playdays 10.10 Tweenies 10.50 Hotch Potch House 11.10 Look and Read 11.30 Music Makers 11.50 Landmarks 12.10 Tales of Europe 12.30 Working Lunch 1.00 Andy Pandy 1.10 FILM: Whistle Down the Wind 2.45 Assembly Live 3.20 BBC News 3.25 Regional News and Weather 3.30 Flog It! 4.30 Ready Steady Cook 5.15 Weakest Link

6.00 GMTV 9.25 Trisha 10.30 This Morning 12.00 This Morning: Inside the Royal Family 12.30 ITV News 1.10 Shortland Street 1.40 Crossroads 2.10 Heartbeat 3.10 ITV News 3.15 HTV News and Weather 3.20 Tiny Planets 3.25 Tiny Planets 3.35 The Angry Beavers Famous feminist’s snatches.

This week: Germaine Greer.

4.05 The Angry Beavers Emily Pankhurst.

4.35 The Angry Beavers I’ve met a few let me tell you.

5.05 Crossroads If a jokes worth doing once, etc. I hate the word ‘snatch’, sorry ladies.

6.05 The Hoobs 6.30 The Hoobs 6.55 RI:SE 9.00 Bewitched 9.30 I Dream of Jeannie 10.00 FILM: In the Doghouse 11.40 Suddenly Susan 12.05 Friends 12.30 Planed Plant 12.45 Planed Plant: Sgerbyde 12.50 Planed Plant: Miffi 1.00 Planed Plant: Y Blobs 1.15 Pet Rescue 1.45 Tales from the Grave 2.15 So You Think You Want... A Dog 2.45 Fifteen to One 3.15 Countdown 4.00 Peintio'r Byd yn Well 4.20 Cnafon Coed 4.50 Ffeil 5.00 Richard and Judy 6.00 Newyddion 6 News.

6.05 Wedi 6 6.30 Mae'r Byd yn Grwn

6.00 Home and Away 6.30 Beachcomber Bay 6.55 Nosey 7.00 Happy Monsters 7.15 Little Antics 7.20 Mr Men and Little Miss 7.30 Rolie Polie Olie 7.55 Bear in the Big Blue House 8.30 Barney 8.55 Jay Jay the Jet Plane 9.25 The Dog Listener 10.00 The Wright Stuff 1.00 T J Hooker 12.00 5 News at Noon 12.30 Home and Away 1.00 Family Affairs 1.30 Oprah 2.20 Open House with Gloria Hunniford 3.45 FILM: Lost Treasure of Dos Santos 5.30 5 News

6.00 BBC News News.

6.30 Wales Today 7.00 A Question of Sport Guests are Kenny Dalglish (tit), Norman Whiteside (legend), Ray Houghton (legend) and Peter Reid (monkey face).

7.30 EastEnders Tension grows between Donna and Trevor. Trevor? I have only met one person called Trevor, and he informed me that my train was late due to signal failure.

8.00 FILM: Deep Impact Adult thriller starring Will Carling and Shannon Tweed.

Whoomph!

9.50 World Cup Preview 2002 Come on Brazil! I’ve got a pound riding on you in my family sweepstake. Dad got Costa Rica, the loser.

10.00 BBC News 10.25 Regional News and Weather 10.35 Question Time 11.35 Dragon's Eye 12.05 FILM: The Defenders: Taking the First 1.45 Sign Zone: UK's Worst... Rail Operators?Featuring Trevor from Southwest trains.

2.15 Tomorrow's World 2.45 Joins BBC News 24 Note to self: use the word skunkpussy this week.

Check.

6.00 The Simpsons 6.20 The Fresh Prince of Bel Air America finds the concept of upper-class black people funny.

6.45 Buffy the Vampire Slayer Why does Spike have a cockney accent but support Man U? Hang about, that makes perfect sense.

7.30 The People Meet the Queen 8.00 Dragon's Eye 8.30 Panic Mechanics 9.00 A Journeys to the Bottom of the Sea Special: D-Day: The Untold Story 10.00 Porridge Classic old lags tales. Crackin’ stuff.

10.30 Newsnight 11.20 Storyville: The Unquiet Peace 12.30 BBC Learning Zone: Open Science: Cell City: Inter-City 1.00 The Next Big Thing 1.35 Background Brief 1.50 What Have the 80s Ever Done for Us? 2.00 Apples, Risks and Recriminations 2.50 Ever Wondered? 3.00 The Challenge 3.30 Curriculum Development: Literacy: the Write Way 4.00 Languages: Discovering Portuguese 56/French on a Plate - Lyon and Savoie 5.00 Working in Travel and Tourism: Computer Skills

6.00 HTV News 6.30 ITV Evening News 7.00 Emmerdale 7.30 Wales This Week 8.00 The Bill 9.00 Bad Girls Unrealistic and stupid drama for Sun readers. Not enough lesbians.

10.00 ITV News at Ten 10.30 Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned Funny when your stoned, but then most things are...

11.00 Tonight with Trevor McDonald Trevor (the only famous one): “Tonight, we examine the link between sensationalism and crap journalism. And kebabs, are they really made from dogs?

We go undercover to discover the truth.”

11.30 Night and Day 12.40 Westlife in Profile Better the seeing their fat, smug faces from the front.

1.05 Riders and Rich Kids 1.30 CD:UK 1.55 Cybernet 2.25 Motorsport UK 2.50 2002 FIFA World Cup 3.15 2002 FIFA World Cup 3.40 Tonight with Trevor McDonald 4.10 ITV Nightscreen 5.30 ITV Early Morning News Neeeargh!!! must get to bed early to watch World Cup games...

7.00 Pobol y Cwm 7.30 Newyddion News.

8.00 Profiad Series 8.30 Cofio'r Comin 9.30 Brookside 10.00 Big Brother 10.35 Procar Poeth 11.05 V Graham Norton 11.35 Daisy Daisy 12.05 Today at the Test: England v Sri Lanka 12.50 Strippers 1.20 Cutting Edge 2.20 FILM: Space Master X-7 3.30 Third Watch CH4. As S4C except: 6.00 Ivor the Engine 11.40 Encounters 11.45 Jesse 12.10 Suddenly Susan 12.35 ER 1.30 Ed 2.20 Ally McBeal 3.15 Pet Rescue 3.45 Fifteen to One 4.15 Countdown 5.00 Richard and Judy 6.00 Friends 6.30 Friends 7.00 Channel 4 News 7.40 The Political Slot 7.45 Today at the Test: England v Sri Lanka 8.30 Brookside 9.00 Cutting Edge: Boys Alone 10.00 Big Brother 10.35 V Graham Norton 11.05 Daisy Daisy 11.40 South Park 12.05 Big Brother 12.40 Dogma TV: Posh Boy 1.15 ICC Cricket World International 1.40 Speedway Grand Prix 2.35 Trans World Sport 3.30 Today at the Test: England v Sri Lanka

6.30 Family Affairs Charlotte urges a reluctant Cat to let Pete see more of Davie. More gay subtext, it isn’t me!

7.00 The Pepsi Chart 7.30 5 News 8.00 School Reunion 9.00 FILM: A Mind to Kill 10.55 Sex and Shopping “Take me up the aisle, now big boy!” shouts Tanya to the shock of Marks and Sparks’ food hall.

11.30 Sex and Shopping “I use a winklepusher...now I only do floppy sex.”

12.00 Channel 5 Football: European Under-21s Championship Report 1.30 Argentinian Football 3.00 Major League Soccer: Dallas Burn v Colorado Rapids 4.30 Channel 5 Football Classic: England v Albania Err, classic? Whatever Mr Channel 5 man, you wankblinded soccer hooligan.

Here’s my poem: TV Desk are great, cos I said so/ Sports are nice too, Except for Pearlo/ News are very friendly, and Bladon supports City/ Features are lovely, Arts are quite bubbly/ Sarah is the boss, she often gets cross/ And Games are a bunch of twunts. Ta-da!

CHOICE Porridge BBC2, 9.00pm Ahh yes, the word classic is often missused (note to Channel 5: England v. Albania is not a football classic) but here it applies with gusto. Ronnie Barker’s finest hour as the

dodgy but loveable geezer, Fletch. I always thought that the little twunt Corbett was holding ‘big Ron’ back, and this proved it. The guy who played Mr. MacKay should have been given an Oscar for his performance.

Wicked stuff....

The Bill ITV, 8.00pm

Deep Impact BBC1 8.00pm

Panic Mechanics BBC2 8.30pm

Emmerdale ITV1 7.00pm

Cutting Edge C4 9.00pm

Thursday 30th May

Evening

BBC 1

Today’s Highlights

Thursday

Is this good anymore? It kinda went ok, good, bad, dire, good, ok, and then I stopped watching. Last time I watched it had a bloke who was in Brookside in it! Brookside?! The Bill should be the Man U of soaps, why is it poaching actors from the lower leagues? TV ain’t what it used to be...In my day we had real men in our soaps like the sweaty Burnside, now he could wield a truncheon...

Television

16

31 May

Daytime Evening

BBC 2

HTV

S4C

CHANNEL 5

6.00 Breakfast 9.00 Kilroy 10.00 Ruby 11.00 Big Strong Boys 11.30 Bargain Hunt 12.00 No Win No Fee 12.30 Call My Bluff 1.00 BBC News 1.30 Regional News 1.45 Neighbours 2.10 Diagnosis Murder 2.55 The Bench 3.25 Tweenies 3.45 Dennis the Menace 4.10 The Woody Woodpecker Show 4.35 S Club 7: Don't Stop Movin' 5.00 Really Wild Show 5.25 Newsround 5.35 Neighbours The Hancocks are dealt another blow. Pisspoor Fnarr to start the day with. Gutted.

6.00 OU 6.30 Open Advice: A Different Way of Learning 7.00 ShortChange 7.25 Smurfs' Adventures 7.45 Blue Peter Unleashed 8.15 Pablo 8.25 The Story Makers 8.40 Clifford the Dog 9.00 Teletubbies 9.50 Playdays 10.10 Tweenies 10.50 Storytime 11.05 Numbertime 11.20 Tales of Europe 11.35 Watch 11.50 Zig Zag 12.10 Landmarks 12.30 Working Lunch 1.00 Pablo 1.10 Pingu 1.15 FILM: Odd Man Out 3.10 Afoot Again in the Past 3.20 News 3.25 Regional News 3.30 Flog It! 4.30 Ready Steady Cook 5.15 Weakest Link

6.00 GMTV 9.25 Trisha 10.45 ITV News 10.55 HTV News and Weather 11.00 World Cup 2002 Live 3.00 ITV News 3.05 HTV News and Weather 3.15 Tiny Planets 3.20 Tiny Planets 3.30 The Worst Witch 4.00 The Worst Witch 4.25 The Worst Witch 5.00 World Cup 2002 Highlights of the opening ceremony, plus the first game of the tournament as France take on Senegal.How am I sposed to write TV when I’ve just bought some Simpsons

6.05 The Hoobs 6.30 The Hoobs 6.55 RI:SE 9.00 Bewitched 9.30 I Dream of Jeannie 10.00 FILM: The Constant Husband 11.35 Suddenly Susan 12.05 Friends 12.30 Pot Mel 1.00 Clwc 1.15 Pet Rescue 1.45 Dreaming on Desolation Island 2.45 Fifteen to One 3.15 Countdown 4.00 Uned 5 4.50 Ffeil 5.00 Richard and Judy “Why go out for hamburger when you can have steak at home, Dave?” “Yeah, but have you ever seen a drive-

6.00 Sunrise 6.30 Beachcomber Bay 6.55 Nosey 7.00 Happy Monsters 7.15 Little Antics 7.20 Mr Men and Little Miss 7.30 Rolie Polie Olie 7.55 Bear in the Big Blue House 8.30 Barney 8.55 Jay Jay the Jet Plane 9.25 The Dog Listener 10.00 The Wright Stuff 11.00 T J Hooker 12.00 5 News at Noon 12.30 Home and Away 1.00 Family Affairs 1.30 Oprah 2.20 Open House with Gloria Hunniford 3.40 FILM: Caravan to Vaccares 5.30 5 News

6.00 BBC News 6.30 Wales Today 7.00 Match of the Day: World Cup 2002 Highlights of the opening game between France and Senegal.

8.00 EastEnders World Cup fever hits the Square.

8.30 Alistair McGowan's Big World Cup Impersonations to celebrate the World Cup. Looks like blanket football coverage has started. Bear with us laydeez.

9.00 Have I Got News for You Angus Deayton good humouredly reviews the week’s news. About er, himself. Especially the bit where he shouted “BECKS!” when he came. With David Dickinson. Fnarr!

9.30 Blackadder II 10.00 BBC News 10.25 Regional News and Weather 10.35 Friday Night with Jonathan Ross 11.20 Johnny Vaughan's World Cup Extra Roy Keane takes an opportunity to offer warm wishes to Mick MCarthy. Through gritted teeth. Maybe.

11.50 FILM: The Jerk With pre- career dive Steve Martin. Recommended.

1.20 Re:covered 1.50 FILM: The Cisco Kid 3.25 Joins BBC News 24

6.00 The Simpsons 6.20 The Fresh Prince of Bel Air 6.45 Robot Wars: The Fifth Wars 7.30 Top of the Pops 8.00 The Curious Gardeners 8.30 Gardeners' World 9.00 Wellington: The Iron Duke: The Making of a Man “Good beans, Wellington” “By God Sir! I believe you’ve lost your leg!”

9.50 Jeremy Clarkson Meets the Neighbours: Belgium and Holland Clarkson does porno. Gutted.

10.30 Newsnight With Jeremy Vine.

11.00 Newsnight Review Mark Lawson is joined by special guests to mark the launch of the Hay Festival of Literature. Get the engine running, Gates!

11.35 Buffy the Vampire Slayer 12.20 Robot Wars: The Fifth Wars 1.05 FILM: A Business Affair With Christopher Walken and Carole Bouquet.

Awesome! The only Chris Walken film I haven’t seen.

Walken, you can have my babies. But they’d have terrible hair. 3.00 BBC Learning Zone: Secondary Schools: Languages:

Top Trumps? Ah, brings back memories of the special bus.

6.00 HTV News and Weather 6.30 ITV Evening News 7.00 Emmerdale As planning for the Jubilee celebrations grows intense, village princess Katie is alarmed to think she may be pregnant.

7.30 Coronation Street 8.00 Confessions of... the Restaurant Trade 8.30 Inspector Morse 10.30 World Cup 2002 11.15 ITV Weekend News 11.35 HTV News and Weather 11.45 High Performance Nicola Heywood-Thomas looks at the arts in Wales.

Hmm, incidentally, get down to Howard Gardens for the degree show on June 8th.

There’s films of me if nothing else.

12.15 Veronica's Closet Frankly, I’d rather phone up that guy who’s flogging washing powder tablets in the Classifieds section. Is that for real or what?

12.45 Dial-a-Date 1.20 Dare to Believe 1.45 Veronica's Closet 2.10 Box Office America 2.35 World Cup 20024.20 World Football 4.45 ITV Nightscreen 5.30 ITV News

thru steak joint?”

6.00 Newyddion 6 News.

6.05 Wedi 6 6.30 C'Mon Midffild 7.00 Pobol y Cwm 7.30 Newyddion News.

8.00 Tic Toc 8.30 Pawb a'i Farn 9.30 Big Brother 10.00 Big Brother 10.35 V Graham Norton 11.05 Big Brother 1.15 Today at the Test: England v Sri Lanka 2.15 ICC Cricket World 2.45 FILM: The Big Heat Directed by Fritz Lang.

CH4. As S4C except: 11.35 Encounters 11.45 Jesse 12.10 Suddenly Susan 12.35 ER 1.30 Ed 2.20 Ally McBeal 3.15 Pet Rescue 3.45 Fifteen to One 4.15 Countdown 5.00 Richard and Judy 6.00 Friends 6.30 Big Brother's Little Brother 7.00 Channel 4 News 7.30 Today at the Test: England v Sri Lanka 8.30 Big Brother 9.00 Friends 9.30 Will and Grace 10.00 Big Brother 11.05 Big Brother Live 1.15 Daisy Daisy 1.45 Onedottv 2.10 Third Watch 3.00 FILM: The Beast Must Die With Peter Cushing.

4.30 Today at the Test: England v Sri Lanka 5.20 Countdown

6.00 Home and Away 6.30 Family Affairs 7.00 Tim Marlow on Tate Modern 7.30 5 News 8.00 Cambrai: The Story of the Tank C5 balance porn with some weaponary.

9.00 FILM: It Was Him or Us Drama about a battered wife's bid to prevent her daughter from falling into the same trap. But the girl's exboyfriend holds the family hostage, and in desperation the mother shoots him. Give the ending away. Fuckers.

10.50 FILM: Drawn to the Flame Adult drama about a beautiful woman who returns to the country town she left years before and finds the lover who abandoned her.

Yeah, but what would Jesus do?

12.40 FILM: The Scout More against the odds, baseball shite. Stars Brendan Fraser.

2.25 FILM: One on One Against the odds, basketball shite. May feature Emilio Estevez.Who’s the crappest Hollywood Legend you can think of? Whole minutes of fun.

4.00 Monsters 4.25 Two 5.10 Sons and Daughters 5.35 Sons and Daughters

CHOICE World Cup 2002 HTV, 11.00 am Yeah, obviously I know but it’s the World Cup! Opening ceremony and France v Senegal. Should be a goody. Especially ‘cos I’ve finished all my work now and can go to the pub for breakfast. My money’s on

Scotland . C’mon lads, ‘er the Tartan Army and all that. Even if you couldn’t give a flump about football, it’s probably worth watching even to see England get crushingly humiliated. Metatursal, schmetatursal.

Film: A Business Affair BBC 2, 1.05 am Bit of a poor day with football crushing all

before it so let’s have a tribute to Chris Walken. Haven’t seen this but it doesn’t really matter cos generally, the worse the film is, the more Walken hams it up. Which is always to be recommended.

Expect no scenery to be left unchewed and an inexplicable blowdry haircut.

Interestingly, he’s trying to become a TV Chef. Drop dead, Oliver.

Big World Cup BBC1 8.30pm

Wellington: The Iron Duke BBC2 9.00pm

Confessions of: Restaurants ITV1 8.00pm

V Graham Norton C4 10.35pm

Friday 31st May

BBC 1

Today’s Highlights

Friday

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62 CRWYS ROAD, CARDIFF

Television

17

1 June

Saturday HTV

S4C

CHANNEL 5

7.15 Match of the Day Live: World Cup 2002: Republic of Ireland v Cameroon 9.45 Perry Mason 11.15 Quincy Awesome!

Watch this!

Also check out www.pillowmail.com. It’s dirty but fun.

12.00 BBC News; Weather 12.15 Match of the Day Live: World Cup 2002: Germany v Saudi Arabia 5-0 to Saudi according to Alex. IQ of 176 my arse.

2.30 Grandstand 2.35 Tennis 5.10 BBC News; Weather 5.25 Wales Today Regional news.

5.30 Friends Like These

7.00 Weekend 24 8.15 See Hear on Saturday 9.00 Weekend 24 9.30 The Saturday Show 12.05 Trade Secrets 12.15 Saturday Kitchen 2.15 The Sky at Night 2.35 Afoot Again in the Past 2.50 Malcolm in the Middle 3.15 FILM: A Night to Remember The Titanic. It sinks.5.15 Hi-de-Hi! Awesome! Nah, not really.

It’s shite. Does anyone have a tape of Arriverderci Rhondda? Worst sitcom evverr. I’ll pay good money: GRTVDESK@hotmail.com 5.45 FILM: A Man Alone Directed by and starring Ray Milland.

6.00 GMTV 9.25 ITV News 9.30 World Cup 2002 Live: Uruguay v Denmark 12.15 ITV News 12.25 HTV News 12.30 International Motor Racing 1.00 Carry On Laughing 1.30 Stuff 2.00 CD:UK 3.00 Rugby World Sevens 3.50 Big Cats with Nigel Marven 4.50 HTV News 5.00 ITV News 5.10 World Cup 2002 Gabby Logan presents highlights of Republic of Ireland v Cameroon, Germany v Saudi Arabia, and Uruguay v Denmark. Plus a preview of tomorrow's match between England and Sweden.

6.05 The Hoobs 6.30 The Hoobs 7.00 FILM: Space Camp 9.00 The Morning Line 10.00 Cricket Roadshow 11.00 Smallville: Superman the Early Years 11.45 Smallville: Superman the Early Years 12.30 Stargate SG-1 1.15 Stargate SG-1 2.05 The British Rally Peugeot 206 Supercup 2.30 Channel 4 attheraces from Kempton Park and Doncaster 5.00 Jennifer Lopez: Live in Concert 6.00 Newyddion a Chwaraeon 6.15 Eldra

6.00 Russell Grant's Postcards 6.10 WideWorld 6.35 WideWorld 7.00 Sunrise 8.00 Klootz 8.05 Fat Dog Mendoza 8.30 Mega Babies 8.55 The Powerpuff Girls 9.20 Xcalibur 9.50 Max Steel 10.20 Animal Xtremes 10.35 Hercules: The Legendary Journeys 11.30 Zoe 12.00 5 News Saturday 12.40 The Pepsi Chart 1.10 Popular 2.05 The Tribe 3.05 Home and Away Omnibus 5.10 FILM: A Goofy Movie

6.25 The Waiting Game 7.05 Jubilee 2002: The Weekend Party Starts Here David Dimbleby reports live on tonight's Prom at the Palace. Dimbleby’s take nepotism to the most boring extreme.

7.25 The National Lottery: In It to Win It 8.10 Jubilee 2002: Prom at the Palace Michael Parkinson introduces a live public concert of popular classics.

10.15 BBC News; Weather 10.35 Match of the Day: World Cup 2002 Highlights from the Republic of Ireland's group A match against Cameroon; the Group E match involving Germany and Saudi Arabia; and the Group A match between Denmark and Uruguay. In absence of Scotland, c’mon the Irish!

11.35 FILM: Harrison: Cry of the City With Edward Woodward and Elizabeth Hurley. Oh my gawd! Can’t we have a repeat of the Jubilee Concert or something? Hurley before she started plucking her eyebrows.

1.05 Friday Night with Jonathan Ross 1.55 Top of the Pops 2.25 Joins BBC News 24

7.20 Omnibus: Murder in the Forest You ever seen a murder in a forest, Dave?

“Does being in one count?”

Moving on....

8.10 Three Lions Clarence, the cross-eyed lion, Simba from The Lion King and er, Aslan.

10.10 Have I Got News for You 10.40 24 Fancy version of Bugs.

11.20 24 Ditto 12.05 24 Er, all I know is that Dennis Hopper’s signed up for the last five episodes.

I’ll watch it then.

12.45 FILM: The Last Tycoon With Robert De Niro and Tony Curtis. Based on F Scott Fitzgerald's unfinished novel. The youthful head of a major film studio guides the careers of matinee idols and budding starlets. But as he fulfills his dreams on the big screen, he gets caught up in painful relationships and power struggles within the industry. Scripted by Harold Pinter. Directed by Elia Kazan. Sounds wicked, anyone seen it? Gutted.

Viewers, do yer own fuggin work for a change.

3.00 BBC Learning Zone: Exam Revision: GCSE Bitesize Revision: Design and Technology 2

6.40 Blind Date Live from A Touch of Class.

7.40 You've Been Framed!

Lisa Riley presents edited Highlights of DC Gates dancing in the Welsh Club on a Wednesday.

8.10 The Vault 9.00 The Brian Conley Show 10.00 2DTV 10.10 ITV Weekend News 10.30 FILM: The Birdcage With Robin Williams and Gene Hackman. Comedy about a gay couple forced to pretend they are straight when their son brings his future parents-in-law for a visit. The flamboyant owner of a Miami nightclub and his drag-queen partner attempt to tone down their extravagant lifestyle before the ultraconservative Senator and his wife arrive -– with (ahem) hilarious consequences.

Directed by Mike Nichols.

Not quite as bad as it sounds.

12.40 Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned 1.10 World Cup 2002: Republic of Ireland v Cameroon 2.50 Dial-a-Date 3.15 CD:UK 4.05 Cybernet 4.35 Box Office America 5.00 ITV Nightscreen 5.30 ITV Early Morning

8.00 Noson Lawen I'w Chofio 9.00 When Freddie Mercury Met Kenny Everett 10.00 Big Brother 10.35 Killer Queen! Next week, The Carnies: The Musical!

12.10 Big Brother Live 1.15 Today at the Test: England v Sri Lanka 2.00 Speedway Grand Prix 3.00 FILM: Vault of Horror

6.40 5 News and Sport 7.10 From Turnip to Swede: England's Football Managers No cliche left unexausted.

8.10 Charmed 9.00 CSI: Crime Scene Investigation 9.55 Law and Order McCoy is determined to bring a convicted serial rapist to justice. Yeah, do yer fuppin job McCoy. Christ.

10.55 Murder Detectives: Crime Seen Ten years ago a couple on holiday were subjected to a terrifying attack by the so-called `Blue Ridge Rapist' – Edward Honacker. C5 get uncomfortable about the possible link between their extensive porn coverage and rape attacks. Discuss.

11.30 The Jerry Atrick Show 12.00 FILM: American Flyers Touching drama about two brothers – one of whom is terminally ill – who enter America's toughest cycling race ...Wish I hadn’t eaten all that pizza.

2.00 FILM: The Bad Seed Film about TV writer who’s far too obsessed with Nick Cave. Guilty as charged.

4.05 Hercules 4.50 Hercules 5.35 Sons and Daughters

CH4. As S4C except: 7.00 FILM: My Sister Eileen 11.00 Speedway Grand Prix 12.00 Vee-TV 12.30 Little House on the Prairie 1.30 Gifted 5.05 Brookside 6.25 Channel 4 News 6.45 Great Civilisations: China 7.15 Today at the Test: England v Sri Lanka 8.00 Tek Sing - China's Titanic 10.00 Big Brother Live 1.15 Best Friends: Ian, Chris and Jane 1.45 FILM: The Blob With Steve McQueen.Awesome!

3.10 Dark Skies 4.50 Today at the Test: England v Sri Lanka 5.20 Countdown

The National Lottery BBC1 7.25pm

24 BBC2 12.05pm

The Vault ITV1 8.10pm

CSI C5 9.00pm

CHOICE Quincy BBC 1, 11.15 am Damn it, Sam! There’s something not quite right! Aww, c’mon Quinc’, it’s an open and shut case. The guy was murdered by his business partner. C’mon, let’s go to Danny’s.

Y’know, Sam, I think it’s suicide. Moyder!

Suicide! Moyder! Suicide! Moyder! Suicide! (etc). Aston, give me 24 hours! QUINCY! You’ll be the death of me! Thanks Aston, I’ll make it up to you! Sam get these tests down the lab!

Later...Aston, when are you gonna get some decent coffee? When you start clearing some cases! Quinc’, I got the results! Seems

Saturday 1st June

Evening

BBC 2

Today’s Highlights

Daytime

BBC 1

you might have something! I knew it all along!

Aston, get the police on the phone! You better be right on this one, Quinc’!

Later, in Danny’s...Ah! Ha! Haha! Ha! Gotta hand it to you, Quinc’. I should’ve listened to you from the start. Aww forget about it Aston. Quinc’? What is it, Danny?

There’s a blonde, says you’ve booked a table for two! Quincyyyyyy! Ha! Ha! Hehe! Ha!

Television

18

2 June

Sunday

Evening

HTV

S4C

CHANNEL 5

6.15 Match of the Day Live: World Cup 2002: Argentina v Nigeria 8.30 Call My Bluff 9.00 Breakfast with Frost 0.00 Animal Park 11.00 The Cruise 11.30 Countryfile 12.00 Parkinson 12.15 Match of the Day Live: World Cup 2002: Spain v Slovenia 2.30 EastEnders 4.20 Points of View 4.35 Jubilee 2002: Jubilee Sunday 4.45 Jubilee 2002: All the Queen's Horses 5.45 Jubilee 2002: 6.35 BBC News; Weather En-ger-land, En-ger-land...

6.00 Breakfast 9.00 Yvon of the Yukon 9.25 Super Duper Sumos 9.45 Rugrats 10.00 S Club 7: Don't Stop Movin' 10.25 Even Stevens 10.50 Baker in the Oven 11.15 Due South 12.00 On the Record 1.00 To Be Announced 1.30 Rugby Union 3.45 Tennis 4.00 Racing from Longchamp 4.45 Tennis Oh crap, I know nothing about tennis. What tournament is this? It doesn’t say, bugger. Will just to have to keep waffling to fill this space...and do dots.........

6.00 GMTV 8.25 World Cup 2002 Live: Paraguay v South Africa Hmm...could be goals in this.

3-2 Paraguay I reckon.

Roque Santa Cruz brace.

Run to the bookies...

9.30 World Cup 2002 Live: England v Sweden Has got a draw written all over it but anyhow: C’MON ENGLAND!!!

12.55 HTV News 1.00 Jonathan Dimbleby 1.55 My Favourite Hymns 2.55 Rugby World Sevens 2002 4.00 Deadly Crocodiles 5.00 Waterfront 5.30 HTV News 5.45 Grass Roots

6.15 The Hoobs 6.40 The Hoobs 7.05 The Players 7.30 The Players 8.00 Taina 8.30 Vee-TV 9.00 As If 9.30 Hollyoaks Omnibus 11.30 4trac 12.00 Andromeda 12.50 FILM: 3 Ninjas Kick Back 2.30 Yr Wythnos 3.00 Brookside 4.25 Maniffesto 4.55 Newyddion 5.05 Pobol y Cwm Omnibws 7.00 Caewch y Drysau, Mae'r Urdd yn 75 Oed 8.30 Dechrau Canu Dechrau Canmol 9.00 Pen Tennyn 9.30 Newyddion News

6.00 Russell Grant's Postcards 6.05 WideWorld 6.30 It's Your Funeral 7.00 Beachcomber Bay 7.30 Tickle, Patch and Friends 8.05 Adventures from the Book of Virtues 8.35 Babar 9.05 Wishbone 9.35 Redwall 10.05 Tiger, Tiger 10.35 The New Adventures of Robin Hood 11.30 Date That 12.00 You Know What I'm Saying 12.30 5 News Update 12.40 Moto GP: Italy 2.15 FILM: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance 4.30 A Queen is Crowned 5.25 5 News 5.35 FILM: Hercules in the Underworld

6.55 Regional News and Weather 7.00 Match of the Day: World Cup 2002 Highlights of the Group F matches between England and Sweden, and Argentina and Nigeria; and the Group B matches between Paraguay and South Africa, and Spain and Slovenia. C’mon England! Sorry Welsh fans, but when you qualify for a World Cup, you too can get all nationalist. Not that you need a excuse...

8.00 Changing Rooms 8.30 Alistair McGowan's Big Jubilee Unfunny twunt attempts to cash-in on pointless event. Robbing the British taxpayer for fifty years, thank you ma’am.

9.00 Auf Wiedersehen, Pet 10.00 There's Only One Paul McCartney 11.00 BBC News; Weather 11.15 Johnny Vaughan's With celebrity guests and regulars Ian Wright, David Ginola and Jimmy Greaves.

Over excitable bloke, talented if a bit poofy Frenchman, and harddrinking Spurs legend. Could be good...

11.45 FILM: North Dallas Forty 1.45 Joins BBC News 24

6.15 Steptoe and Son “Harold!”, “You dirty old man” etc...

6.45 Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em “Betty!”, “Frank!” etc.

They knew how to write catchphrases back in the day didn’t they?

7.15 Correspondent: Minister of Rage Sadly not about either Rage Against the Machine, or prize twunt Ian Paisley, but Louis Farrakhan who is figurehead of the Nation of Islam. Like most nutters, he hates Jews, hmm...

8.00 Ray Mears's Extreme Survival 8.30 Three Lions This programme follows the fortunes of such England stars as Paul Gascoigne, Gary Lineker and David Beckham between 1990 and the approach of the 2002 World Cup. I feel the need to sing “Love’s got the World in Motion” by New Order.

Imagine if Gazza had done the rap rather than John Barnes?

10.00 24 10.45 The EMMAs 2002 11.50 FILM: Cry, the Beloved Country 2.00 BBC Learning Zone: Exam Revision 5.00 Working in Travel and Tourism

6.15 ITV News 6.30 The Queen's Story: Princess in an Ivory Tower Pay that inheretance tax, and I might take part in your silly celebration. No actually, pay back all the money you and your family have squandered from the civil list to the taxpayer. Honestly, she thinks she can buy us off with free concert, cough up the dough or we’ll sort you out Russian style Lizzie!

7.30 Coronation Street Mike sets off on holiday, leaving Joe in charge. Cack of the highest order.

8.00 Where the Heart Is Drama 9.00 Agatha Christie's Poirot “Ahh Monsieur Poirot, again you are stringing out ze process rather than telling us who ze killer is. I’m starting to think you are indeed a “petit merde.”

11.05 ITV Weekend News 11.20 World Cup 2002 England's opening Group F game against Sweden from Saitama.

12.20 Ultimate Questions 1.05 World Cup 2002: England v Sweden 2.50 Motorsport UK 3.15 My Favourite Hymns 4.10 ITV Nightscreen 5.30 ITV Early Morning News

9.45 Frasier 10.15 Big Brother 11.20 Bremner, Bird and Fortune - At Her Majesty's Pleasure 12.20 Today at the Test: England v Sri Lanka 1.05 The Last Nazi Secret 2.05 FILM: The Night of the Hunter 3.40 Secrets of the Dead

7.10 Martial Law Did a Tekken joke here last week, no-one got it. This week, just quiet reflection about this failure on my part..

8.00 Ultimate Land Speed Records I’ve been told I have quick hands: “Not too fast grasshopper, work up to speed steadily.”

9.00 FILM: Blade Runner 11.15 Hard B-----ds: In this edition she talks to Gaffer, who spent seven years in prison, mostly for violent crime, as he does a spot of business in Sloane Square.

Did his mum christen him that? No wonder the poor bastard had to lash out at the world. Bet he’s a chunker too...

11.50 Law and Order McCoy is determined to bring a convicted serial rapist to justice. But first he founds his own crisp company...oh fuck. Look it’s nearly 1am, I just wannna go to bed.

12.50 Major League Baseball Live: San Francisco Giants v Colorado Rockies 4.00 Major League Baseball Replay Ooh, the World Cup is here, I feel five again – the day before Christmas, except drunk and more hairy. Much more hairy. Not more than Amy....

CH4. As S4C except: 6.05 The Clangers 7.05 Blue's Clues 7.35 Angela Anaconda 8.00 T4 8.30 T4: Malibu 9.00 T4: Taina 9.25 T4: Popworld Pop news 10.25 T4: Hollyoaks Omnibus 12.30 Big Brother 1.05 Big Brother 1.35 Big Brother's Little Brother 2.40 FILM: Dinosaurus!

4.10 Andromeda 5.00 Double Act 7.00 Channel 4 News 7.15 Today at the Test: England v Sri Lanka 8.00 Bremner, Bird and Fortune - At Her Majesty's Pleasure 9.00 The West Wing 10.00 Big Brother 11.05 Banzai Jubilee Special 11.35 Sex Tips for Girls 12.05 The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert 1.10 Big Brother 2.10 Baby 2.20 Hardcorps in the Civil War 2.50 Liberty! - the American War of Independence

Auf Wierdershen, Pet BBC1 9.00pm

24 BBC2 10.00pm

Coronation Street ITV1 7.30pm

Big Brother C4 Various

CHOICE The World Cup BBC 1and ITV, All the time, baby!

It’s here. It’s now. It’s the World Cup. And the games are sodding early. Nevermind, I am not one to spurn an offering from the table from the Gods of football. Games will be won, drawn and lost. Names and

reputations will grow and fade, dreams will be broken, underdogs will rise from obscurity. England will probably go out early, and Rigobert Song will get sent off.

Beckham will have silly hair, the cameras will centre on Ronaldo’s girlfriend’s chest at every Brazil game. Men will attempt to consume alcohol at an un-godly hour and may well see their cornflakes again.

Welshmen will boo England in jealousy, knowing secretly that they too would love

to be apart of this. Englishmen will become Irish during the course of Ireland v. Germany. And perhaps Costa Rican or Japanese too.

Football is wonderful thing. It’s art, passion and poetry all at once. You show me a painting by Matisse and say “this is art”, and I’ll show you a Beckham free-kick. Passion, fever, excitement, drama, football. Ladies and gents, the World Cup.

Sunday 1st June

BBC 2

Today’s Highlights

Daytime

BBC 1

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62 CRWYS ROAD, CARDIFF

27.05.02

Focus

The Gair Rhydd Features Section Free Word 723

Poison letters Not long after the September 11th attacks, letters containing anthrax were mailed to some of the most influential people in America. Since then, we have heard little about it, so what happened to the anthrax investigation? Charlie Jeynes investigates

AN ANTHRACIS COLONY: a deadly weapon

I

t was almost to much to bear. With the horrific images of September 11th still vivid in America’s memory, the nation was sent into panic as a postal worker died after contracting anthrax. With biological

weapons at its disposal, AlQaeda could inflict damage infinitely more widespread than flying a plane into a building.

However, this threat never materialised. No-one has been charged for the attack and a

prime suspect not even identified for this most heinous of crimes.

At first glance, perhaps we could forgive the FBI for failing as yet to give us our terrorist. But if we look a little more closely at the facts, it is hard not to become suspicious.

To make ‘weaponised’ anthrax certain specialised equipment and expertise are needed. Indeed, in 1995 the AUM sect in Japan became infamous as it resorted to a chemical attack after unsuccessfully infecting anyone with anthrax which they had been releasing for three days.

The difficulties posed by weaponising anthrax are so great that it seems highly improbable that the culprit is some amateur microbiologist with a few test tubes in his garage. Reluctantly, two months after the first attack, the FBI announced that it was expanding its investigations to focus in on US laboratories.

In view of the evidence this seems a logical step to make.

After all, the four letters that were found contained the Ames strain of Anthrax. This strain was

isolated in America in the early 60’s and was worked with extensively in the Army’s biodefence laboratory at Fort Dendrik. But since then the strain has been sent to a number of research institutions including Porton Down in the U.K. However, many experts have stated that it was only sent to about 15 laboratories all but two in the U.S, with only about 5 of these having the capabilities to produce weaponised anthrax.

Surely such a prestigious institution as the FBI could have followed this up sooner.

Professor Barbara Rosenberg of New York State University, a microbiologist and leading expert on bioterrorism, suspects that the Ames strain is a relic from a bioweapons project in the 60’s, and that the attacker is a person disenchanted with the government’s biodefence program. She says the killer is “an American microbiologist who had, or once had, access to weaponised anthrax in a U.S government lab, or had been taught by a U.S defence expert how to make it. Perhaps he had a vial or two in his basement as a keepsake.”

But Rosenberg also proposes that the killer took the opportunity that September 11th presented to hammer home America’s vulnerability to bioterrorism. She says, “There have been a number of occasions when we’ve said in frustration that what we need is a biological weapons attack to wake the country up.” If this was the culprits intention then he certainly achieved his aim by targeting the editor of the New York Post and the director of NBC television. The letters sent to Senators Daschle and Leary were probably meant as a direct attack on the government who the offender is so angry with.

Rosenberg says, “I think its someone who’s got a screw loose, and the existence of the U.S [biodefence program] made the attack possible.”

What cast further suspicions on the US government has been its recent rejection of a UN resolution on routine inspection of biodefence programmes. If the

US is so adamant that it is not developing biological weapons why would it be so cagey?

Officially the government’s biodefence programme is developing vaccines for various diseases which could be used as biological weapons such as camelpox, anthrax and bubonic plague. However, many conspiracist insist that this is just a front for a biological weapons programme which is being secretly developed.

If this were the case, it would be perfectly plausible to believe that the FBI have already got the attacker but are unable to bring them to justice in the fear that they would ‘spill the beans’ on government military secrets.

After all, what more publicity could a crusader hope for than a court case that would probably take more viewers than OJ Simpson’s. But even if there was no secret project it would still be embarrassing for the government to admit that security at its top Army research base is so lax as to give marauding terrorists free reign.

Of course many believe that Rosenberg and other would be detectives have been watching to much episodes of the X-files.

Colonel Friedlander, the senior research scientist at Fort Dendrik says, “to make the leap that this came out of a government lab is somewhat large...We haven’t had an offensive programme for some time. Nobody at the Army’s laboratory has that kind of expertise.” Richard H. Ebright a microbiologist at Rutgers University also disagrees with Rosenberg. He says, “This is one extreme of theorising...I’m confident that she started with

the insider theory and then selected the facts.”

However it is hard to see how the FBI with all its considerable resources and expertise has failed to deliver when all the evidence points to about five labs which are capable of producing such a deadly package.

Either way, the fact remains that six months after the attack the FBI apparently have no leads.

Is this because the perpetrator is so cunning as to avoid detection or could it be that with the nations attention focused on far away wars on terrorism, the government is sweeping the embarrassing anthrax saga under the carpet?

President Bush has seen his popularity soar as America has united to fight Osama Bin Laden, Al-Qaeda and the axis of evil. It would be ironic if for America’s war on terrorism were to succeed, it had to set its sights on its own administration.

“If the US government is so adamant that it is not developing biological weapons why would it be so cagey?”

Anthrax Facts • 100g of anthrax spores is enough to kill 3 million people.

• The overall number of anthrax letters sent is unknown but four have been found. They were sent between 19th September and October 9th.

• All the notes inside the letters ended with “Death to America, Death to Israel, Allah is great.”

• Five people died after contracting the bacteria through contamination with the letters.

• 16 people were infected but later recovered.

FocusFocusFocus INSIDE FOCUS THIS WEEK: More conspiracy theories – was 9/11 just a government cover-up? • All the gossip from the World Cup

10 • Focus

The truth is out there...

Gair Rhydd Monday 27 May 2002

Who shot JFK? Were the moon landings faked? Was Princess Diana murdered? What really went on at Area 51? And now, who was really responsible for the Twin Towers attacks?

Conspiracy Theories – we read them, we have an opinion on them, we love them. In the week that a French book about what ‘really’ went on on September 11th tops the French best seller list for a sixth week, Jonathan Steven examines the conspiracy theories around the day that rocked the world

T

hierry Meyssan is like a living, breathing Fox Mulder. "The truth is out there" will be engraved on his tomb stone. And like Fox Mulder his conspiracy theories stem around a cover-up in the US Government, going to its highest levels. However, unlike Fox Mulder he does not believe that aliens are trying to take over the world, he believes that the terrorist attacks of September 11th were carried out by none other than US government officials as part of a complicated economic and military plot.

Preposterous you may say, but this Frenchman is causing a stir at home and abroad. His book, L’Effroyable Imposture (The Horrifying Fraud) has been at the top of their national best seller list for six out of the seven weeks since it was published and has been said to be ‘flying off the shelves’ by the French bookshop chain Fnac. Indeed the original print run of 20,000 copies sold out within two hours of going on sale.

It seems that Meyssan has got a few peoples backs up with the book. Rather than simply ignoring it as a horrifying fraud in itself, the Pentagon, who the book centres around, issued a statement describing the book as, “a slap in the face”, and a “real offence to the American people, particularly to the memory of victims of the attacks.” Just what has he said that has got the normally quiet Pentagon firing off statements rather than missiles?

The basic premise is that the attacks were orchestrated and carried out by officials of the US government and military. The motive? An excuse to launch a war on Afghanistan and Iraq. “If the energy lobby was the main beneficiary of the war in Afghanistan”, Meyssan writes, “the biggest victor of September 11th was the militaryindustrial lobby. Its wildest dreams have now been fulfilled.” He describes the universally accepted version of events as “a loony fable.”

When it comes down to the actual execution of the events, he believes that the Pentagon attacked themselves. Neither American Airlines Flight 77 nor any other plane crashed into the building, according to Meyssan. In fact, he claims, it was a truck bomb, placed by government agents.

The evidence behind this centres around the fact that the crash site does not look like a plane crash site. There is no evidence of the plane on the ground and, unlike in New York, no pictures exist of the crash. Official expert explanations for this state that the extreme violence of the impact and the heat of the explosion caused virtual atomisation of the jet.

Meyssan states that the eyewitness accounts are

confused and contradictory. On his website he has the picture below of the crash site with a Boeing 757-200 superimposed over it.

From the picture it does seem odd that the wings of the aircraft made no damage to the sides of the building around the nose impact area. I would have thought that that amount of metal flying at up to 600 MPH would cause more damage. But then, that’s what we’re meant to think.

That is what the theory is based around. They find a small scrap of evidence that appears to show something and build a theory around it.

Meyssan’s theories on what actually happened in New York is even more outlandish. He claims unnamed professional pilots have told him that the World Trade Centre attacks could not have been carried out by learner fliers. He also cites local amateur radio operators who say that they picked up signals of navigation beacons within the towers guiding unmanned planes to their targets. So, remote controlled planes were responsible, not crazy suicide pilots. However, he does not state what actually happened to the people on board the planes.

As ridiculous as these theories are, people are buying the books. Conspiracy theories do sell. We all seemed to be hooked on these kinds of theories.

The X-Files has been a hit show for years and statistics show that people do believe a lot of these theories. More than three-quarters of Americans don’t believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing JFK. Two-thirds believe that the government is withholding information about its contact with aliens from other planets. One in ten Americans think that the 1969 moon landing never occurred. These statistics speak for themselves – conspiracy theories are here to stay, and we’re just as bad this side of the pond. 3,600 web sites have cropped up offering alternative versions of Princess Diana’s death.

Psychologists have a theory of their own. We humans need to think that the world is not as bad a place as we see it. We like to think that it is not possible a lone gunman could have killed the US President, that a drunk driver could have killed a Princess, or that a small group of crazies could have brought down the heart of America. We need these theories to tell ourselves that this planet we inhabit is not such a bad place.

Well, it’s all a bit of fun, isn’t it? We don’t really believe it. However George W Bush takes it all a little more seriously. “We must speak the truth about terror”, he told the UN General Assembly last November. “Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September 11th, malicious lies that attempt to shift

MADNESS: Meyssan and his Number One Best Seller, L’Effroyable Imposture

the blame away from the terrorists themselves, away from the guilty.” Maybe it’s the fact that he is implicated in half the theories that has got his goat.

Even people in the US government are antiBush on this issue. Rep. Cynthia McKinney is calling for an investigation into Bush’s connection to the events of September 11th, saying, “an administration of questionable legitimacy has been given unprecedented power.” Just last week it came out that the FBI had known about the attacks, but George W Bush quickly denied this, saying, “Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people.”

There are quite a few more theories being touted on the internet, which has become the natural home of aspiring Fox Mulders. These range from an Israeli plot to a Russian KGB plot.

I have two personal favourites. The first is about a massive robbery cover-up. It is estimated that $160bn in gold bullion was stored in various vaults in the WTC complex as well as other valuables. The web site which propagates this myth is quite detailed and cites the plane attacks as a cover-up for quite literally the biggest robbery of all time. Some of this gold has since been recovered but it was found in a delivery tunnel, not a vault. Odd. There seems to be an FBI cover-up and nobody is talking about the gold, not the banks, not the insurance companies, not the feds, not the construction workers, and most importantly not the media (I’m going to watching my back after printing this story). This one puts even Goldfinger to shame.

A quote from another loon is all I need to explain my other favourite. “It is the latest and most dramatic attempt to move the world towards a state of fear, so that the people who control the globe – called by many ‘the illuminati’ – can speed up their agenda for a One World Government, a One World Currency, One World Bank and total control of the masses”.

Whatever the world throws at us, there will always be conspiracy theories. They’re here to stay, and we love them. They give us something to laugh at around the dinner table, and something to think about when we can’t sleep. However, as crazy as these theories are, no matter how stupid they sound, they’ll always be a niggling thought at the back of your mind – what if?

Alternative Theories – Gold Finger: The planes crashing into the Twin Towers were simply a cover up for the theft of $160bn in Gold Bullion. Nobody will notice the missing gold when they’re thinking about terrorists. But why crash a plane into the Pentagon too?

– One World, No Towers: It is the latest and most dramatic attempt to move the world towards a state of fear, so that the people who control the globe – called by many ‘the illuminati’ – can speed up their agenda for a One World Government, a One World Currency, One World Bank and total control of the masses. How does it help you control the globe though?

– Money, Money, Money: The CIA are always moaning that their multi-billion dollar funding is not enough, so they do these bombings and hey presto, they get extra money. But why would they pick such highly populated targets?

– Fantasy Film: There are a few theories that a film company did it, either to be able to make the real life film at some point or to force the hit film Spiderman to be reshot, thus bringing back its release date. But it was released anyway, so why delay it?

– Up with the Reds: The KGB are still at large and with typical American paranoia they think that it was the reds that bombed their towers and the heart of their defence.

But do the Russians really still want a global war?

– Pipe Dreams: The US Government needed to build a secret oil pipeline through Afghanistan and to do so they need control of the country. By bombing their own country they had an excuse to take control of the country and are now building the pipeline. But why do they really need this pipeline?

Gair Rhydd Monday 27 May 2002

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Focus • 11

World Cup idols?

Concerned that football is too executive for the BBC, Abbi Shaw looks at why the beautiful game might go all Channel 4

I

n the short space of time I have been concerning myself with the beautiful game that is football, and its even more beautiful players, as opposed to the glittering, shining world of pop, a thought has been taking shape in my mind, namely that the two are exactly the same. Football is the new pop music.

There are a number of reasons for this, the most obvious being that most players, like most popstars, are pretty famous, if you like that sort of thing; and both also have that hierarchy whereby at least ten in each field are household names. But for years, I’m sure that’s where the similarity has ended. But now we have successfully coupled the two in the form of the marriage of our most executive popstar, Miss Victoria Adams, and our finest footballer, Mr David Beckham. And with the marriage of the two, comes the marriage of football to an entirely new way of life.

Footballers are no longer simply revered sportsmen, admirable athletes, or

even fodder for the gossip columns as a result of their ‘incidents’ with Page 3 girls and off-standard ‘laddish’ behaviour. Now, they are style icons who regularly cleanse, tone and moisturise, pay to have image consultants, and compare notes on this season’s most fashionable coats, colours and cuts.

Some of this is an exaggeration. I can’t quite see David Seaman or Robbie Fowler reaching for the Nivea, for example, but even so, they wouldn’t been seen dead in corduroy. As Features have been finding in recent weeks, football has suddenly got extremely sexy, and when people are sexy, they generally have style. Thus the knock-on effect has been felt throughout the major clubs, and this whole World Cup thing has been very preoccupied by the designers of the team suits, and speculation on new haircuts players may or may not be sporting.

I think (though someone’s bound to disagree, but frankly I don’t have time to accommodate everyone’s ideas) that

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Beckham is entirely responsible for this.

Posh Spice aside, when he shaved off those stupid blonde curtains, stopped looking quite so gay and innocent, and wore that sarong, a revolution occurred.

Gay footballers are something that have never really happened, and accordingly, we don’t really imagine such a thing exists (more about that later), so he might actually be the first man in the world to be allowed to wear such a thing, and still be respectable. This gives other footballers the freedom to express themselves via the medium of fashion, safe in the knowledge that, unless they wear a skirt, they’re not going to look as crazy as him. We don’t bat an eyelid now, when he appears naked, except for some or more oil, a fake dead tiger round his neck, and a rather fetching shade of nail varnish. That photoshoot, incidentally, cost GQ £30,000, and as Page Editor has rightly pointed out to me, the reason that we will, sadly, never get to see Beckham being quite as naked as he should be, is that no-one can afford to pay him quite enough.

I’ve changed my mind about Beckham, by the way. I’ve noticed him, in a footballing sense, since he played for Man. U as a lanky teenager, through the whole France ’98 affair, and in the glossy pages of Hello! and OK!, and never, never found him attractive. Beautiful, yes, attractive no. Unfortunately Page Editor sat me down in front of the ITV coverage of that party last night…the black kimono, those sandals, complete with dashing red obi – well, I give in.

He’s gorgeous. Very sexy. Wow. However, back to the issue at hand: gay footballers, and why we might start to see more of them. At the moment, there aren’t too many about, which makes sense when we consider that it doesn’t work too well being ridiculously in love with your team mates, when most of them have that Page Three girl thing going on, and when you have to spend considerable amounts of time near each other in a very naked sense of shorts, changing rooms, and showers. And show me a gay man who doesn’t fancy

Beckham. But again, as with style, things change. There’s always that period in fashions where everything leaps to the left of Piccadilly Circus. It’s a bit like sixth form college. The part when everyone starts dressing like Bjork, and consumes stupid quantities of even stupider narcotics in the name of research. The part where – and this is the crucial thing – everyone has a fashionably gay crisis.

Footballers are looking a bit more organised, a bit more gay, and, after a lot of gin and several hours of conversation on the topic, Page Editor and I decided that sexy Freddie Ljungberg (pronounced ‘yung-berg’ you know) must actually be gay, on the acquisition of three vital pieces of evidence. One is that he posed, looking wonderful, in an enormous full-length furry coat that was worth over £1500, and the other is that the musical he regularly attended in Sweden (‘to support a male actor friend’, we’re told) was West Side Story.

Enough said. Or if you’re not sufficiently versed in such things to find this conclusive, all the tabloids are making much of the fact that he doesn’t take up any of the thousands of offers he has from sensible females. In Sweden, he was well-known for hiding from the attention of appreciative women, and thus his explanation for not having found himself a girlfriend in London (“London girls are just nowhere near as attractive as those in Sweden”) (as a London girl myself, I’m claiming this comment is simply as he hasn’t met me, as I’ve been hidden away in darkest Wales) doesn’t really work.

Anyway, because Page Editor was denied his expose on Will Young’s tendency to visit the Astoria on Saturday nights, as a result of the fact that the stupid boy came out before the paper did, I’m taking my chance to announce that in our collective expert opinion, Page Editor has more chance with the sexy Swedish boy than I ever will.

So, generally speaking, what with its best-looking player becoming more obviously gay with every season, I think football could be on the brink of a fantastically gay moment of selfdiscovery and postmodern liberalism, and maybe, just maybe, next time the World Cup comes around, it could all be a bit more West End than we ever imagined.

Have I Got News for Big Brother Following Angus Deayton’s disgraceful behaviour, Daniel Barnes considers why the cleanest man in TV has been implicated in such a scandal

S

afely tucked away on holiday in Italy with his family, Angus Deayton may well be missing the most exciting scandal the tabloids have had since Jamie Theakston or Jeffrey Archer.

Known for his acidic satire with Ian Hislop and Paul Merton on Have I Got News For You, Deayton has now almost over night become the very model of ‘indiscretion’ that that he so wildly mocks on television.

It was only a couple of weeks ago that the 45-yearold star checked into London’s Park Lane Hilton with 29 year old prostitute Caroline Martin. Not only are there allegations of sexual relations for him to contend with, but there are also claims – made by Martin in a Sunday newspaper – that Deayton also snorted cocaine through a twenty pound note.

When a similar thing happened to Hugh Grant a few years ago, we almost expected it, what with him being a movie star living in LA and all that. But not sweet, old, BBC Angus, surely not. The people we have to feel for most is his girlfriend, Lise Meyer, and their one-year-old son. What does this say to her about the way he views their relationship? Whatever

conclusion you can draw here, it can’t be good. He can’t be happy with the way things are going, so he looks for excitement elsewhere. It is only for the sake of a holiday that she has agreed to leave their £2 million Islington home and go to Italy to ‘save the relationship’.

On the whole, I think Angus has had the right idea, going on holiday to avoid the explosion of press interest, but what is further interesting is the conspiracy to be uncovered here. Channel 4’s Big Brother 3 begins at 9pm on Friday, which happens to be the same time at which Have I Got News For You is screened on BBC1. What has happened here is that, suddenly struck by fear of Channel 4’s Trojan horse smashing ratings barriers once again, the BBC has paid a classy London whore to kiss and tell about the most unlikely man in the British media, then sent him and his family on a jaunt around Italy so that no-one can question him on the matter. Meanwhile, back in London, newspapers are churning out stories of how Merton and Hislop are going to eat Deayton alive on the show, just like they all did to Archer, the Hamiltons, Mandelson and anyone else who for one

second forgot their place.

Of course, though, there was no encounter with a prostitute in the Hilton, no cocaine and no rift in Meyer’s and Deayton’s relationship but just a quiet exchange of notes, an additional bonus to Deayton’s £500,000 salary and a phone call to the Mail on Sunday (naturally). And with that, as if by magic, the entire nation is going to watch Have I Got News For You instead of the all-important first episode of Big Brother 3. Cunning as foxes and sly as snakes, aren’t the BBC clever boys and girls?

Well, actually, no they’re not. If they think we are stupid enough to fall for this grand play of lies, then they are so out of touch with their supposed viewers its untrue. The clever ones will watch Big Brother on the Friday and the repeat of Have I Got News For You on Sunday, if only idly just to see what happens.

By the time you read this, though, it will all be over, and we would have seen whether the BBC’s efforts were in vain. I think they might be, but it just goes to show that there’s life in the old dog yet, but it’s just a shame the life support machine keeping the old dog alive is the Daily Mail.

email grsport@hotmail.com

Monday 29th April / Sport Page12

GR SPORT TEAM FOCUS: Cardiff Cheerleading

Cont. from Back Page millionaire businessman.

Todays hooligan is not recognised by a football shirt but by his designer wear such as Burberry, Lacoste and Stone Island.

It has become a fight of fashion as each firm attempts to out-dress the other.

To assume that football violence is simply spontaneous is another misconception of the past – hooligan firms are constantly in contact with each other to outwit the police and arrange a confrontation.

Some even travel on reconnaissance missions to away grounds weeks before matches.

The coming tournament looks like becoming another volatile cauldron for passion and inevitably, violence.

For months the Japanese media have whipped the

After only a year in existence, perhaps some students are unaware that Cardiff University has a cheerleading squad.

The captains, Helen Marcheselli, Laura Dommet and Nat Thomas set up the team, and have been successfully running the squad since September 2001, with events such as the ruby Varsity contest already proving a great success.

March 2002 saw the Cardiff cheerleaders attending the Varsity game.

Bad weather made the routine difficult, leaving the ‘flyers’ to put immense levels of trust in their teammates. Against all odds, the cheerleaders upstaged the rugby

unreservedly.

Training is held for two hours once a week with additional practice for those who attend the American Football Games.

The cheerleaders work closely with American Football squad, The Cobras, cheering at their games and holding joint social events.

With socials held most weeks and a ball held annually, being a member of the squad is a great way to increase your social circle, and meet new people.

The aim now is to have a team in addition to a squad; the idea being to open up cheerleading to everyone that

wants to join, even if they don’t want to compete.

The Committee is in the process of gaining more sponsors and the hope is that by the end of the year the team will be competing in events such as the BCA (British Cheerleading Association) competition at Loughborough.

There is also talk of a possible tour of the US in 2003.

If you are interested in becoming a member of the Cheerleading squad then come along to our stand at the Sports Fair held in September or contact us via our web address, cobrascheerleaders@hotmail.com.

Report by Emma James Cardiff University Swimming and Waterpolo club recently held a sponsored charity event for Ty Hafen, the Welsh children’s hospice, and Cancer and Leukaemia in Children (CLIC).

Members ran in pairs or cycled a distance of 22 miles.

The event was supported by Talybont Gym who allowed use

Do I not like that...

Something on your chest? Riled by our report? email grsport@hotmail.com

Letter of the Week Dear Gair Rhydd, Roy Keane is like a kid throwing his toys out of the pram when things don’t go his way. Criticism will undoubtedly fall upon McCarthy, but I would suggest that Sir Alex is the only manager in the Premiership who can control his tantrums. An Irish friend of mine claims that Keane has been banned from every pub in Cork, and there’s no forgetting that he used to be a boxer, and that mentality seems to be coming to the fore. Do Ireland want this man to represent their country? To captain their nation? He’s better off at home.

Daniel Bland, Creative Writing

Threw his toys out the pram

GR Sport: Very true, bad news for Ireland though. Sports desk believed Ireland has a reasonable chance of progressing, but not now. And what was his reasoning? The showers weren’t warm enough or something.

La Liga versus Premiership debate Dear GR Sport, Manchester United are in demise. And I love it.

Ferguson’s decisions have been laughable, the French c**t Blanc turned into the biggest joke of the season and there were many. Arsenal may have won the title, but their tactics won no praise from me; despite the orgy of media praise which rained down on Highbury, their performances were based largely on pace and stamina. As for Liverpool... sorry, oh did I fall asleep?

England will be on the plane back from Japan by the end of

the f irst phase. Sorry to be so negative, but football in this country is boring. In Spain, chairmen have f ights, Canizares had his drinks bottle f illed with piss by Betis fans, Figo was amusingly poor. We need to stop concentrating on our own league and look abroad. Viera should have flown South, as should every self respecting pro.

Badger Atkins, angry Bristol City Fan GR Sport: I enjoy Spanish football, but it has its problems. Real Madrid buy success, with the money coming directly from the Spanish Government. Personally, I think any competition based on this premise is not enjoyable, it is more tedious than the technically inferior Premiership

GR Sport will almost certainly print your letter, so get writing and get your views read by fourteen thousand people. The views expressed in these letters are not necessarily those of the newspaper or the editor.

nation into a frenzy over the arrival of England hooligans whose reputation for disruption precedes them.

The levels of security at this World Cup are unheard of in football.

Japan have assembled the largest police force in the tournaments history to fight hooliganism and they are very well prepared – armed with chemical sprays to disable, and leg braces and net-guns to ensnare any troublemakers.

Shops and schools near England matches will be closed so that hooligans will find it harder to repeat the destructive scenes of Euro 2000.

Despite stringent passport checks and life-bans for many known troublemakers, there are so many pathways into Japan or South Korea that the authorities could be fighting a losing battle.

Black market tickets will mean that crowds will not always be segregated and outside grounds many hooligans will relish the challenge of a military style police force.

Given the pretext of trouble at Euro 2000 and France 1998 it seems highly likely that the prominent images of World Cup 2002 will not be of a purely footballing nature.

of their treadmills and bikes, as well as the pub the end who were granted a late license and allowed door money to be collected for the charities.

A total of £500 was raised in all. Anyone wishing to make donations or find out more about these charities should look at their websites: http:/www.clic.uk.com and h t t p : / / w w w . t y h a f a n . o rg / where full contact details are available.

The Month In Sport Second Test Edgbaston, 30th June, Channel 4 World Cup May 31st – June 30th, Japan and South Korea U21 Euro Championship final, 28th May, Channel 5 NBA Basketball finals June 2 – 19th, From the US Third Test Old Trafford, 13 – 17th June, Channel 4 Benson & Hedges Trophy Final 22nd June, From Lords US Open Golf June 13th – 16th, Sky Television Wimbledon Tennis June 24th – July 7th, BBC Croquet World Championships June 13th 16th Budleigh Salterton, F1 Grand Prix’s June 9th and 23rd on ITV Judo World Masters Londonderry, June 20th-23rd Hockey County championships finals, June 1st Royal Ascot June 18th – 20th

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Monday 27th May / Sport Page 13

Underachievers have Raul chance HIGH TIME: With a relatively easy group, many believe that it is high time for the Spanish to make their mark on the greatest stage of all, where they seem to always under-perform. Daniel Evans examines the chances of Spain Words by Daniel Evans IT IS a mystery that bewilders football pundits and fans alike – the perennial under achievement of Spain in the World Cup. They are a side of undoubted flair and talent, whose domestic sides have dominated the Champions League in recent years, yet they continue to falter on the greatest stage of all.

In the last World Cup they were highly fancied but crashed out at the group stages, then were dispatched by France in the quarter finals of Euro 2000.

Surely now it is time for Jose Camacho’s side to deliver to their success starved fans.

Spain qualified for the finals with ease and the draw for the Finals have been very favourable.

Spain have been pitted against Slovenia, Paraguay and South Africa in Group B. “I do not want to look beyond those games as we have to beat those teams

and that will not be easy,” said Camacho, but his side are overwhelming favourites to top the group.

Spain’s main strengths undoubtedly lie going forward.

Midfielder Gaizca Mendieta will be looking to regain the excellent form of his Valencia days after a poor season at Lazio and Barcelona’s versatile Luis Enrique will assist him in serving a potent attack.

Camacho is spoilt for choice in this department.

He must decide whether to pair the deadly Raul with his club-mate at Real Madrid Fernando Morientes, or partner him with Mancheser United’s tormentor this season, Diego Tristan.

Spain’s vulnerability surprisingly lies with two of their most experienced players.

Central defenders Fernando Hierro and Miguel Nadal are now 34 and 35 years old respectively and are likely

to struggle against pace, which fortunately none of their group B opponents possess in abundance.

Another unfortunate blow to the squad is the loss of first choice goalkeeper Santiago Canizares.

In a freak accident, he dropped an after-shave bottle on his foot, severing a tendon and ending his World Cup chances.

The players themselves are confident after their disappointment four years ago: “This year we have another great opportunity, and we intend to give it our all. We certainly have the self-belief to succeed,” said Raul.

Once again, it will be interesting to see which Spanish side turn up to play in Japan and South Korea.

Will their highly talented players buckle under the pressure of top-class competition once again or will they become Spanish heroes in finally capturing a major title?

DAYS UNTIL THE WORLD CUP

FOUR!

Captain Keano Alvaro set to shine in given heave-ho Japan for Uruguay

Words by Michael Pearlman, GR Sports Editor REPUBLIC OF Ireland skipper Roy Keane has been sent home from the World Cup following his outspoken criticism of the FAI’s preparations for the tournament in South Korea and Japan.

Republic of Ireland manager Mick McCarthy revealed the decision was taken after a clear-the-air meeting developed into a “slanging match” between the pair.

McCarthy said Keane was “a disruptive influence,” adding: “I cannot and will not tolerate being spoken to with that level of abuse being thrown at me, so I sent him home.”

The Republic and Manchester United skipper pulled out of the squad last Tuesday only to have a change of heart, however, after another outburst he was sent home.

Keane criticised McCarthy’s decision to bring his 23-man squad to the Western Pacific island of Saipan to acclimatise ahead of the tournament in Korea and Japan.

The 30-year-old midfielder attacked the 17-hour flight to get to Saipan and blasted the training conditions.

He told The Irish Times: “I spoke to the manager and I’ll stick it out till after the World Cup and that will be it for me.

Without a doubt.”

The blow to Ireland’s hopes is compounded by the fact that they cannot call up a replacement, as Keane is not injured.

Republic of Ireland star Niall Quinn, backed boss Mick McCarthy and condemned Roy Keane after the midfielder was sent home.

He said, “I’ve known Roy a long time and this is astonishing – there is no doubt about that. I’ve been around a long time and seen various things and there is only one way forward. I’ll say goodbye to Roy and wish him well for the rest of his career but my priority now is to show complete allegiance to Mick and the squad.”

The impact of the incredible showdown with Keane was not lost on Irish manager McCarthy who said: “I know this is one of the biggest stories of the World Cup and it is my decision and I stand by it 100%.”

McCarthy continued: “As a player, a coach, and a person I will not tolerate the things he said to me. This is a huge decision but I am happy to go to the World Cup one man down rather than with a man who shows utter disregard and disrespect for me.”

For distraught Ireland fans the departure of Keane is a massive blow.

Keane was outstanding in the qualifying games and epitomised the battling Irish spirit.

University President and Ireland fan Tom McGarry said jokingly, “Roy Keane is now banned from the Union”.

However, sadly come the World Cup, the joke may now be on the Irish.

Words by Matt Greenhill ALVARO RECOBA is a major component of the Uruguayan national team and will hold most of the responsibility of trying to convert Uruguay from also-rans to serious competitors in Korea and Japan.

At the age of twenty-six it will be Recoba’s first World Cup finals, and his attacking flair and clinical finishing will be instrumental in Uruguay’s attempt to progress beyond the group stages for the first time since Mexico in 1970 where the ‘Celestes’ finished third.

At the tender age of just 17 Recoba stormed into the world of professional football after incredibly impressive performances for his local side Danubio.

Although Danubio were at the time a Uruguayan First Division side, they were still a relatively small club and it wasn’t long before Recoba was establishing himself as one of the country’s top attacking players.

Indeed his youthful enthusiasm and seemingly gifted ability led to Nacional, one of Uruguay’s major club sides, signing him just before he turned 18.

Recoba enjoyed a hugely successful period at Nacional scoring a prolific 57 goals in 51 games which led him to be compared with arguably Uruguay’s greatest player of the 1980s, Francescoli.

As with the setback of his As with Francescoli, lucrative bids from some of surprise loan move to the world’s most prestigious Venezia, Recoba remained clubs came flooding in for dignified and honourable in Recoba and it was eventually accepting the suspension but the Milanese giants of maintained his innocence.

While unable to play for Internazionale in 1997 who lured him away from South his club, the Uruguayan America to the European national side however was not robbed of their pivotal game of Italy’s Serie A. Like so many other players player as Recoba was still who have made the bold allowed to compete on the move across continents, international stage due to Recoba initially enjoyed a FIFA legislation.

The result was that Recoba honeymoon period at Inter becoming a first choice could still play in all of World Cup member at International level, Uruguay’s and was scoring frequently and qualifiers mesmerising Italian defences inspirational in their surprise with great ball skills and movement.

However, it was not to last as a dip in form and fall-outs with management resulted in a loan move to lowly AC Venezia.

To Recoba’s credit, he dealt with the disappointment in the right manner by re-finding his true form which led to him returning back to the Inter line-up who had appeared to miss his attacking prowess.

However, further tremors were to strike as two years ago he was suspended by the Italian league for his alleged involvement in the false passport scandal that was rocking the world of football.

Recoba was deemed to have illegal passport documentation and Italian papers and was initially suspended for a year but after an appeal his ban was cut to just four months.

RECOBA: Time may be right for

playoff victory over Australia, which booked their place in Korea and Japan.

Recoba has since reinforced himself in Inter’s first team and will be hoping to erase the pain of losing the Italian league on the final day of the season three weeks ago by striving for glory in the World Cup with Uruguay.

While admitting that winning the tournament is beyond them, Uruguay are hoping to re-establish themselves as a powerful force on the global stage.

With Recoba leading the way, that wish may just come true.

him to light up world stage

“In La Liga, two chairmen had a fight, and Canizares had his drinks bottle filled with piss by a Betis fan” page 12

World Cup

Do I not like that...

Perennial underachievers Spain, the Keane rebellion, and overrated Recoba

The letters page returns with some passionate responses about Keane

Sport gair rhydd

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Monday 27th May / Free Word 723

On target Report by Geraint Rowlands

THE CU Rifle Team came back after Easter to achieve unprecedented success.

The club has six members in the Welsh university’s squad: Jon Buggings, Jake Hartford Beynon, Owen Rogers and Andy Mitchell, with Bob Riddett and Geraint Rowlands, also making the Senior Welsh squad after trials at Bisley.

Cardiff Rifle A were unlucky to finish just outside the medals this season. They finished in fourth place, in the BUSA team of four Championships, having had some astounding results during the year in beating Edinburgh, Cambridge and Manchester.

The club took a strong team to two local shoots – The Swansea Open and The Tondu Dragon Open.

The results spoke for themselves with CU cleaning up at both events with a total

of 12 trophies coming back to Cardiff between the two Championships.

The club went to Appleton for the BUSA outdoor championship and came home with more medals as Bob Riddett once again turned on the magic to claim second in the individual rankings.

"The conditions were just right for me, and I finished the day strongly to put myself in contention," says Bob. "The team will benefit from gaining experience at this level and should be right up there next year."

CU Rifle A came in a disappointing 5th after starting the day with a promising shoot but narrowly missed out on the top three.

This has been one of the most successful seasons for the club and with the development of some first year stars coming through the ranks, it looks set to be an exiting team for next season.

Swansea Open: Bob Riddett: 2nd in Class 1.

Andy Mitchell: 1st in Class 4 & 1st in Under 21’s Jen Mclaren:2nd in Class 4 & 2nd in Under 21’s Owen Rogers: 3rd in Class 4 & 3rd in Under 21’s Tondu Dragon Open: Geraint Rowlands: 1st in Class 4 Kieron Clarke: 2nd in Class 4 & 1st in Under 21’s Owen Rogers: 2nd in Under 21’s Andy Mitchell: 3rd in Under 21’s

Owen Rogers, after his first year of shooting looks set for team A next year

PHOTO: KIERON CLARKE

CU student on brink of county debut

Report by David Williams WITH A Hampshire contract and a University bursary already to his name, first year education student James Tomlinson looks to be on the way up in the world of cricket.

Originally from Ragged Appleshaw near Andover, Tomlinson has come through the ranks at Hampshire and is on the brink of making his first-class debut.

However, it had seemed that county cricket would be a distant dream for the left arm fast bowler, who currently plays for the University Cricket Centre of Excellence.

"I decided to have a year out and I bowled at all the first team in the nets which was good experience. Then I was told that I shouldn't expect getting a contract and was told to sign for a minor county."

After impressing for Wiltshire, the boy nicknamed 'killer' in his school days was to receive a change in fortunes. " I played a couple of games for them and I kept bowling at Hampshire in the nets and by

the end of the year I was given a contract."

With the current Hampshire squad depleted, Tomlinson, who has taken 24 wickets and

So England need a fresh fast bowler?

has a batting average of 30 this year, feels he is capable of making his debut.

"At the start of the year I would have said no but at the moment they are struggling with injuries. But I think I'm performing well enough to play a first team game."

Following a successful summer last year in which he was a member of the championship-winning Hampshire Second X1, and consistent performances for the UCCE, Tomlinson was called up to the British Universities side for the biggest game of his life and opened the bowling against the Sri Lankans.

For Tomlinson, Cardiff University, which has attracted many of the country’s promising cricketers, was the natural choice.

"I thought I'd go somewhere new and where there wouldn't be that many players and I could have a good go at playing at a high level."

Tomlinson though has mixed feelings about the bursary scheme, which was offered to him on his arrival.

"I think giving support to sports people is very important. It didn't help that the person looking after it was changed halfway through."

The former Cricklade College student, who is one of only a handful of people to be given a bursary this year is a keen believer in setting targets and is realistic about what the future may hold.

"If you work hard you're going to get somewhere in life. In 10 years’ time I would like to think I will be at my peak, and obviously I would like to play for England. The only way it's going to come is if I work hard."

The Hampshire man now hopes to follow in the footsteps of his heroes Ian Botham, Allan Donald and Wasim Akram as he looks to make a career for himself in the sport he loves.

"Life is all about enjoying yourself, but enjoying yourself for the right reasons."

With his repertoire of cliches seemingly already stoked, a future in first class cricket looks a certainty for this talented cricketer.

The first rule of fight club is: find a footy match Report by Daniel Evans To many the World Cup lights up the sporting calendar, a totally engrossing event of passion, drama and skill.

But for a small sector of society, Korea and Japan 2002 provides the perfect stage for xenophobia and violence.

The government and FA elites would have us believe that football hooliganism is just a dark chapter of the game, closed since the 1980s, nowadays only surfacing in sporadic incidents with England fans abroad.

Anyone who has been

watching the Hooligans documentary on BBC2 will realise that violence is still a permanent fixture at many grounds across the country.

Almost every club in Britain has a 'firm' of hooligans, from Cardiff's 'Soul Crew' to the 'Bushwackers' at Millwall.

Even though there have been scores of violent incidents this season, only a few have been reported in detail by the mass media.

The stereotype of the young, lower-class 'skinhead' has been replaced by a hybrid that can emerge from any class, from the unemployed to the

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