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Editorial team Nick Parnell Steve Parker Hannah Hadlington Jade Bisram Art Direction & Design Peter Stitson Laura Osborne Sarah Watson Contributors Simon MacKenzie Pete Van Lanschot Sunny Kumar James Woods Rob Forshaw Sarah Osborne Kat Weguelin Rowan Rosser Simon Woods Hannah Hadlington Marketa Weiglova Howard Stredwick Jade Bisram Jonny White Paul Robinson Phil Dowgierd James Armstrong Steve Parker Dave Isaacs Pete Munro Laura Osborne Grand Union Moray House 23-31 Great Titchfield Street London W1W 7PA t: +44(0)20 7908 0700 f: +44(0)20 7908 0701 info@thegrandunion.com www.thegrandunion.com

here are things that unite us as an Agency, our shared love of the house bar, an addiction to Jaffa Cakes and an untamed love for the early work of PJ and Duncan. However there is one categorical truth that brings us together. We have all been alive for the last decade. The same may true of the nineties but the grads are getting younger every year so weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re not entirely sure. As the decade draws to a close we wanted to get the reflections and opinions on the past ten years from as many people at the good ship Grand Union as possible. The events, people and moments that were important to them and that they remember (however hazily at times). This magazine is a collection of those as well as reflections on the issues that we feel define a decade whose name will forever be said with an odd knowingness of those who were there. Hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s to the noughties. Steve and Nick

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THE NOUGHTIES I find it hard to believe that 10 years have really passed since I laughed, talked and partied with friends, all filled with excitement and optimism, on the last day of the 20th century. I saw the day as the end of our parent’s and grandparent’s century of World Wars and dictatorial regimes and the beginning of one we would get to define ourselves. Growing up, The Year Two Thousand was a kind of idea to me and seemed like a logical hand-over point of some sort. I’d be 22 after all, education finished, work about to start; a proper grown up man and stuff! As a kid I watched the Berlin wall coming down, hostages being released, Apartheid ending, Europe opening up, Scotland qualifying for major tournaments; all these things were surely indicating a new era of peace and progress to come, weren’t they? That was before 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, earth threatening climate disaster, knife crime, bad TV, X-factor, The Premiership, Tony Bliar etc etc etc. Bit of a kick in the chops at points, but lets call it a hiccup and look forward to the next 90 years of truth, happiness and social justice for all, eh? Or perhaps we were just daft, happy kids all along… The 10 years that followed that night are ones of almost constant change for me, and are the years when I grew up. They are marked out year on year by big decisions which have changed my life completely each time, and these are my moments of the decade. By which I don’t mean the aftermath of them - the changes in location, direction and relationships - but the little, quiet moments where I have reflected on my life and chosen to take control and alter it. I suppose the Naughties was when I realised that though you may not be able to control what goes on around you in the world, if you’re brave and decisive and optimistic you can always get yourself closer to where you want to be. Or at least you can bloody try, which is a cause for celebration in itself. By Simon Mackenzie

WORLD ____ CLIMATE CHANGE NUDGE TERRORISM

limate change is nothing new. The fact is as changes go it is one of the most constant. But in the past ten years climate change has turned from scientific jargon into humanities greatest nemesis. Yes climate change changed. In 2001 this graph was presented in the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report. It visualised the temperature variation* over the past 1000 years and shocked the scientific community. The graph was duly given the nick name the hockey stick and was hailed as clear scientific proof of global warming and climate change. As with most points of view, when you put one out there, you get the inevitable camps, the believers and the non believers and the same was true for climate change. It is probably fair to say that the believers have had the biggest impact over the past ten years, hence the current cataclysmic perception of where earthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s climate is heading. However very recently the validity of the data used to draw the hockey stick has been dramatically questioned. Which ever camp you fall into the fact remains that this graph with its spectacular spike, starting around about the time we peeps were getting busy with steam in our industrial revolution, be that coincidence or a decimal in the wrong place, rang alarm bells around the world and helped bring climate change into the political and public arena. Another shot in the arm for climate change awareness came in 2006 at the Sundance Film Festival when a little known documentary was premiered, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;An Inconvenient Truthâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. This became one of the highest grossing documentaries of all time; wining two Academy Awards, and watched by an estimated 5 million people worldwide.

In the film Al Gore’s plain commentary not only bought home what climate change was doing to our planet but cried out that, ‘Future generations may well have occasion to ask themselves, “What were our parents thinking? Why didn’t they wake up when they had a chance?”’ the message was loud and clear, take action now or we are truly doomed. Even if the law makers and politicians were dragging their heals, one social commentator was certainly paying attention. Hollywood, always quick to know when it’s onto a good thing, has been adding to the urgency of climate change from well before 2000 in a glut of natural disaster movies. Hollywood’s role in transforming climate change into the nemesis we know today should not be overlooked. Hollywood has always been instrumental in defining the general perception of our common enemies. We have had west verses east, the nuclear age, post 9/11 terrorists, out of this world aliens and now natural disaster and climate change. Let’s not forget however, “Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life”** and during this time nature has been putting on its own show of ruin and destruction. Thanks to an ever connected planet dramatic images and videos from around the world of an apocalypse now are at our finger tips. We have glaciers that have stood strong for millions of years melting, sheets of ice braking off our poles with lonely polar bears on them drifting into the sea, huge storms, tsunami, floods and earth quakes, these things are real and in real time. We can see it happening all around us, are we too late? Have we really done this to ourselves? Or is there really a problem here? It would seem, ‘The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, o f

delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period WHAT WAS of consequences.’*** THE ODDEST GIFT Consequences we can all see from the comfort of the YOU’VE RECEIVED? office during a round up of the news in our lunch breaks. An egg timer, from So as we approach 2010, what of climate change? my Grandma. She said it Well climate change is here to stay, it is in our psyche, reminded her of me. now more than ever, no matter which camp you sit in Hannah Hadlington or trust. But unlike our previous common adversaries, climate change is not a big bang, movie sized, it’s all over folk’s disaster. It’s analogous to gum diseases, invisible, painless and can come without warning up until the point your teeth fall out. One thing is certain, it is an enemy that we will not have an opportunity to negotiate with and will remain unless we can negotiate amongst ourselves and collectively agree to change it. By Sunny Kumar ** Oscar Wilde *** Winston Churchill *If you want to know temperatures where reconstructed based on thermometer readings and HYPERLINK “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Dendroclimatology” \o “Dendroclimatology” width of tree rings, yep that’s what scientists do. ** Oscar Wilde. *** Winston Churchill.

Top eco-villains of the noughties (guardian.co.uk) –––––––– George Bush, for undoing decades of US progress on the environment Jeremy Clarkson, for encouraging car use and denying climate change Sarah Palin, for putting oil and gas exploration ahead of the polar bear James Inhofe, for labelling global warming a “hoax” Geoff Hoon, for pushing through Heathrow’s third runway Christoper Booker, for his columns of misinformation on climate change Donald Trump, for his controversial Scottish golf course Václav Klaus, for becoming Europe’s most high-profile climate denier Christopher Monckton, for prolific climate denial

____ HOW A NUDGE CAN CHANGE THE WORLD 14

hen Barack Obama was elected many within the marketing discipline were left awestruck by his innovative marketing approach. There wasn’t a new business pitch presentation given that didn’t feature his image. Clients cried, “Please can you do an Obama on our brand”. They commented on his use of Twitter and Facebook quite rightly as a break from the convention of broadcasting political messages to the masses. Obama’s team used grassroots initiatives to create a powerful bottom-up approach that drove out millions of messages via millions of fans. The effect was felt far and wide. In fact, even in some of the world’s most remote places such was the force of his message. However, what is less well known is that even before the Obama team set about planning his election campaign they engaged (somewhat covertly) a group of highly influential, behavioural economists. What they realised was that to fulfil Obama’s vision they would need to influence behaviour not just in the run up to the election but for the following 4 years. What they struck upon was a strand of economic theory that will go on to change the world. At the heart of behavioural economics is an important insight into human behaviour. And that is that most economic theory is built on the premise that people act in consistent ways in respect of the decisions they make around money or in fact any decision. However, what economists like Richard Thaler, author of Nudge, observed was that the context around a decision can affect behaviour. A good example of this comes surprisingly from the urinals in Schipol Airport in Amsterdam. What the airport planners realised was that most men act in a pretty consistent way when it comes to using a urinal especially when rushing to catch a plane i.e. they tend to deposit some in the urinal, some on the floor and some down the front of their trousers (although this deterrent is not sufficient to ensure most goes into the urinal). The impact of this behaviour on operations at the airport is that the toilets need to be cleaned regularly putting a strain on resources. Their solution was to etch the image of a small black fly at the base of the urinal (the eagleeyed amongst you will have noticed similar ones at the IPA). The effect of this simple intervention was that ‘simple-brained’ man thinks “let’s try and hit the fly”. This simple idea apparently reduced spillage by 80%. This intervention is called a ‘nudge’. Everyday all of us ‘nudge’ in lots of different ways to influence the behaviour of others. Sometimes we know when we are being nudged and sometimes we don’t. The Obama team nudged on a massive scale. For example, one key behavioral finding is that people often fail to set aside money for retirement even when their employers offer generous plans. If, on the other hand, you automatically enroll workers in the plans but allow them to opt out, most stick with it. Obama’s savings plan exploits this so-called “status quo” bias. In other words, nudge people in the direction that you want them to go in, exploiting a person’s natural inertia on issues such as pensions, and crucially give them 15

a choice to opt out. However, most do not opt out and everybody wins. Nudge theory is evident in Obama’s attitude towards everything from climate change to bringing together unity as this excerpt shows in a speech he gave in June 2009 demonstrates, “All of us share this world for but a brief moment in time. The question is whether we spend that time focused on what pushes us apart or whether we commit ourselves to an effort, a sustained effort to find common ground, to focus on the future we seek for our children and to respect the dignity of all human beings.” The nudge is that whatever our background or views, unity for the sake of our children is more likely to effect change than trying to change the planet for the benefit of people I have never met. Nudge theory has its detractors. However, I believe that the addition of human insight and cognitive psychology into the models we build around economics and even marketing will have a profound impact on how we approach problem solving. Think about how we approach user experience. We are always looking for nudges that can influence behaviour. We may not call them nudges but we are aware of the influence of certain features of a page. How do we know this? Well we can measure them. So imagine a medium that is infinitely measurable combined with the overlay of behavioural economic theory and you may well have the answer to marketing’s eternal problem which is, “I know marketing works but I’m not exactly sure how it works.” Nudge theory enables us to build in the nudges and measure the influence that they have. A good example of the theory is in Amazon’s use of aggregated ‘purchase intent’ where we are able to see what other customers bought when considering a certain product. This is based on the behavioural insight that, “People want to do what they think others will do”, which lies at the heart of Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion”. There is no silver bullet solution to the world’s problems whether they are financial or climatic. Look at the government’s recent WHAT WAS intervention in bank bonuses to understand that a bullet won’t THE ODDEST GIFT work. Government seeks to curb bonuses at RBS to appease YOU RECEIVED? the electorate, RBS investment bankers resign on mass. A book on grumpy old Here is a nudge having the opposite effect and making men… I didn’t RBS less competitive. Far better to have nudged the understand why? bankers into a voluntary scheme that benefits themselves Finbarr Notte and the electorate i.e. asking them to elect how they would like their ‘windfall tax spent’ either to charity or directly into a local scheme. Banker gets bonus and RBS remains competitive and the public get a sense of justice. So happy nudging & a happy new year. By Rob Forshaw 16

Top 10… Bush blunders –––––––– “There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.” — Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002

“You work three jobs? … Uniquely American, isn’t it? I mean, that is fantastic that you’re doing that.” —to a divorced mother of three, Omaha, Nebraska, Feb. 4, 2005 “I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.” —Saginaw, Mich., Sept. 29, 2000

“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” —Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004

“I hear there’s rumors on the Internets that we’re going to have a draft.” —second presidential debate, St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 8, 2004

“Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?” —Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000

“I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.” —Greater Nashua, N.H., Jan. 27, 2000

“They misunderestimated me.” — Bentonville, Ark., Nov. 6, 2000

“Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.” — LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000

“Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren’t able to practice their love with women all across this country.” — Poplar Bluff, Mo., Sept. 6, 2004

http://politicalhumor.about.com

TERROR ____ ISM

9/11

When I was 16 I visited the North East of the US with my parents and brother. Before embarking on a short tour of the great state of Massachusetts we spent three days in New York, staying in the Marriott World Trade Centre. As a I remember the hotel was lodged in between the two towers, and was so posh it had a running track upstairs in the gym. Across from the hotel was Century 21, New Yorkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leading bargain clothes store. Most of my memories of New York were of the square in between the two. Yes we went to Ellis Island and the Empire State Building, but when I think of New York my mind jumps to the twin towers. When sitting in a MS Basic tutorial on Middlesex Street, casually surfing around news sites rather than learning how to execute command lines, and the news flashed up on BBC, all the memories I had of New York went with the foundations of the towers.

By Steve Parker

7/7 21/7 The Ashes summer was almost upon us and having finished university was back at home, allegedly training for my impending attempt to scale Mount Kilimanjaro. The truth of the matter was slightly different as I spent my days watching Sky Sports and smoking tabs, interspersed with the occasional run around the block so I could carry on fooling myself that I was “in training”. When the bombs went off I was in the midst of this ciggie-sky-jog loop. The effect was numbing as I has one eye on moving to London in the Autumn to start work at Grand Union. The real effect was not to be felt until a fortnight later after the second wave of plotted bombings went awry. On the train down to London to catch my flight to Tanzania this was a palpable sense of unease and tension. People were checking their phones for updates, despite the iphone being three years away from release. Someone had been shot in Stockwell, allegedly a suspected suicide bomber. I got on the Victoria line at Euston to head to Clapham to meet a friend for some pre-plane pints. At Oxford Circus there were three people in my carriage – all 20 something men. I was wearing a large back pack and sporting three day growth on the cheeks and chin. One turned to me and without too much in the way on knowingness said, “It’s a good thing you’re not brown”.

Bali My gap year travels were fairly short compared to others. Three months squeezed in after eight longer ones spent slaving away for Accenture on the Sainsburys account. Two weeks of my fleeting trip were spent in Bali, and this included some serious drinking in the bars of Kuta. Chief amongst them was the Sari Club, which was my undisputed favourite for both its levels of Australian women as well as its patented “Jungle Juice”. Every night in Kuta we’d find ourselves propping up its poorly lit bar, dancing awkwardly to whatever was on. This was in June 2002. Four months later the club was blown apart by a remote controlled bomb planted in a Mitsubishi outside.

Mumbai I went to Goa in November 2008, going in and out of Mumbai, where three friends from university had recently moved to from London. My experience of Mumbai was undoubtedly similar to that experienced by many others who had visited the city, one of absolute chaos. The traffic and road etiquette makes South Italy look law abiding and pedestrian conscious. Hurtling down the motorways in a tuttut clinging on to my bag and the mainframe of the vehicle was a highlight, and I couldn’t imagine Mumbai without the thought of unfettered bedlam of its roads. It was hard to imagine the city that my friend James described when I phoned him on the morning of November 26th, four days after I had returned from the city. He was locked in his apartment as they had declared a curfew, with no people, cars or tut tuts allowed on the streets at all.

Time Person of the Year –––––––– 2000

George Bush

2001

Rudy Giuliani

2002

The Whilstleblowers

2003

The American Soldier

2004

George Bush

2005

“The Samaritans” – Bill & Melinda Gates, Bono

2006

You

2007

Vladimir Putin

2008

Barack Obama

2009

??? 21

CULTURE ____ REALITY TV MUSIC BRASS EYE BANKSY DAMIEN HIRST CELEBRITY 00

CELEBRITY __

Media is consumed by the latest drama in the Peter Andre and Katie Price saga and what Lady GaGa decided to wear on her X Factor performance.

hat a decade we have had. From the opening non-event in the Millennium Dome and the opening story, the Millennium Bug, it’s been 10 years of scares and scams. From jihad to Jedward, it has been a decade that effectively started with a bang – 9/11 - and ended with a twitter. In the midst of these events sits the indestructible celebrity culture, a phenomenon which continues to grow. The word ‘celebrity’ now signifies everything and nothing. Fame is the ultimate goal, but literally anyone can be famous if they are in the right place when the roving spotlight stops. The noughties saw the rise and rise of celebrity and gossip websites and lording over them is the self-dubbed King of Celebrity, Perez Hilton. He is the undisputed leader of gossip websites, his own, perezhilton.com reportedly receiving eight million hits a day from all over the world. The average celebrity follower now has a vast array of ways in which they can get their celebrity fix. Magazines are supported by their websites and readers can now feed their addiction without even having to leave the comfort of their desks. We have truly morphed into a celebrity watching nation. Media is consumed by the latest drama in the Peter Andre and Katie Price saga and what Lady GaGa decided to wear on her X Factor performance. Indeed, this past week even what should have been a serious event was overshadowed by the celebrity 25

media circus. When Gordon Brown hosted an anti-violence lunch at 10 Downing Street, he duly invited the Hollywood actress Reese Witherspoon and proceeded to mistake her for Renee Zellweger. Embarrasing perhaps, but did it really need to take centre stage. By focussing on Brown’s mistake, the main cause was immediately devalued. But isn’t this what celebrity in the noughties is all about? Nowadays the media seek to degrade celebrities by publishing photos of them looking fat, drugravaged or accidentally exposing themselves. We no longer celebrate celebrities, instead we look at their fashion faux–pas and awful haircuts in an empty bid to feel better about ourselves. Over the past decade celebrity became accessible to the masses in forms previously unseen – Reality TV. Let us not forget that at the turn of the Millennium 36 unknown individuals were left to fend for themselves on a remote Scottish island while being broadcast across the BBC. Before we knew it the nation was overcome by shows offering relative nobodies the chance to become extraordinary, even famous. We held aloft fish-and-chip owners and transvestites. We marveled at their ordinariness and then we got bored. Take Jade Goody, the UK’s reality princess. After her ‘success’ on Big Brother, she could do no wrong and earned a small fortune from being a Z-list celeb. Fast forward five years though and Goody was embroiled in a race row which threatened to destroy her celebrity empire. The magazine columns were gone and so was her income, only to be salvaged by the revelation that she had terminal cancer. Goody’s story WHAT WAS encapsulates the modern day sub-lebrity. Sex tapes became YOUR BIGGEST showreels, launching celebrities like the heiress Paris Hilton REGRET? and as the decade draws to a close, “celebrity” is a term Purchasing a brand new so elastic that is has come to include reality nobodies and quite posh car with a car even WAG’s. loan instead of selling stock So there we have it, the evolving world of celebrity 15 days before the tech crash. since 2000. Despite the ups and downs of the celebrity Robert Fein culture, one thing is for sure they are here to stay. And remember some of the biggest celebs lend their names to numerous charitable events year-on-year. Well, they would do anything to appear in next week’s glossy. By Kat Weguelin 26

Top 10…Best selling singles of the noughties (NME) –––––––– 1. Will Young - Evergreen 2. Gareth Gates - Unchained Melody 3. Shaggy - It Wasn’t Me 4. Tony Christie/Peter Kay - Is This The Way To Amarillo? 5. Band Aid 20 - Do They Know It’s Christmas? 6. Hear’Say - Pure And Simple 7. Shayne Ward - That’s My Goal 8. Kylie Minogue - Can’t Get You Out Of My Head 9. Bob The Builder - Can We Fix It 10. Atomic Kitten - Whole Again

n July 14th 2000 Big Brother landed in our living rooms, all lively and bubbling with self confidence. This summer, almost a decade later, Endemol announced that next year it is to be solemnly walked to the end of the garden, bopped on the head with the back of a spade and buried at the bottom of the compost heap. In doing so, Endemol have signalled the possible beginning of the end for the genre of TV that the passing decade came to be synonymous with; reality TV. At first the genre seemed to be informative programmes were often described as documentaries or experimental programming. Take the “televised social experiment” of Castaway, the programme that brought us the human equivalent of a golden retriever, Ben Fogle. With no winner or prize at the end, the contestants were all motivated by a seemingly genuine sense of adventure. Even the first series of BB had a psychologist that was wheeled out occasionally to gave the programme some credibility and create the feeling that we might actually learn something by watching it. However, over the course of this decade reality TV gradually changed. Its attempts at being informative have been replaced by a scrabble to broadcast the most weird and outrageous people, situations and confrontations. This has almost inevitably led to the ‘Britain is going to the dogs’ brigade latching on to it as yet more evidence of the moral decline of British society. Whether this really was a result of the downward spiral of our society is up for argument (check out Charlie Brooker’s awesome E4 series Dead Set for his massively entertaining point of view). But whilst it seems that plenty of people seem to think reality TV is another signpost pointing the way to the apocalypse, it sometimes feels like we can over examine popular ODDEST HAIRCUT fads and fashions. YOU’VE HAD? Reality TV is really just entertainment; it’s descent from A bowl-type bob, documentary to cheap voyeurism isn’t symptomatic of any generating the nickname wide spread cultural decline that happened over the past 10 years, just a reaction against increased competition as ‘Mushroom Head’. channels struggle to retain viewers after the introduction Sophie Lavender of digital TV. Sure it can be pretty brainless, but then who said that all TV had to feed your mind? I’m off to watch Ant and Dec apologise for allowing Gino D’Acamparo to kill, cook and eat a rat on live TV. By Simon Woods

REALITY ____ TV

By Marketa Weiglova

THE RED HOT CHILLI PEPPERS BECAME A GLOBAL SUPER BAND

uring the noughties Red Hot Chilly Peppers became a world wide super band, growing from a notorious funk band to a rock icon of the likes of U2 or REM. RHCP entered the noughties on a high following their extremely successful album Californication and maintained their momentum for most of the decade. With Californication the band started a move to songs dominated by harmonies and melodic guitar riffs and began a chain of world wide tours that kept them on tour for the best part of the noughties. The success of Californication was followed in 2002 by their eighth album ‘By The Way’ that produced a number of single hits including ‘Universally Speaking’ and ‘By The Way’. RHCP’s status as a global super band was sealed with their latest double album ‘Stadium Arcadium’ that entered album charts at number one in 27 countries including the US and the UK and won 5 Grammys including Best Rock Album and Best Rock Song. Having started the noughties as a reformed band with a promising album, Red Hot Chilli Peppers will end the decade with 3 world tours, 1 Best of album and 5 Grammys under their belt. The next decade should open with the release of their tenth album. 30

n pop music the noughties will among others be remembered as a decade that saw the decline and tragic end of a legend – the King of Pop, Michael Jackson. The noughties were to an extent a repetition of the nineties for Michael Jackson. As ten years earlier, Michael Jackson opened the decade with a new album release and soon after was embroiled in accusations of child abuse. In contrast to the nineties, the noughties saw a full trial at the end of which Michael Jackson was found not guilty. In the 90s MJ’s public image picked-up with his fatherhood and induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In the noughties, it was a series of 50 comeback concerts that were meant to improve the King of Pop’s fortunes – both with the public and the ever increasing number of creditors. In the end it was Michael Jackson’s death followed by a stream of tributes and retrospectives of his work that helped to improve the star’s public image. Throughout 2009 Michael Jackson continued to populate media headlines all around the globe. Whereas controversy, be it around his death, his reclusiveness or previous child abuse allegations, never abandoned him, he was posthumously given an opportunity to showcase his remarkable musical achievement and reiterate his contribution to contemporary music. While Michael Jackson certainly wasn’t a dominant force of the musical noughties, the media impact his death had in 2009 resonated with the impact his work had on popular culture in the four previous decades. The noughties are the decade in which this influence became final. 31

A LEGEND DIED

JEWELLERY? PROP FROM INDIANA JONES? CHRISTMAS DECORATION? MODERN ART? D

amien Hirst’s ‘For the Love of God’ is a life-size cast of a human skull in platinum, covered entirely by 8,601 VVS to flawless pavé-set diamonds, weighing a total of 1,106.18 carats. It is the most expensive piece of work produced by an artist, costing £14 million. The work sold for a staggering £50 million to an unnamed investment group, setting the record of the most expensive piece of work sold by a living artist, essentially tripling the value of the raw materials by adding Hirst’s name/fame to it. It later emerged that Hirst was part of the consortium group that bought the work, enabling him to retain some control over what happens to the work. “It will be sad if it ends up in a vault” he said. Rumors are that the work did not sell, as David Lee, editor of The Jackdaw, commented “Everyone in the art world knows Hirst hasn’t sold the skull. It’s clearly just an elaborate ruse to drum up publicity and rewrite the book value of all his other work.”* If we set aside the facts, figures, rumors and records what do we have left? An object that is a bit of fun, yet quite pretentious. “I spent five minutes with (Damian Hirst’s skull) and it HOW MUCH didn’t reward me very much.” Art critic Matthew Collings WEIGHT DID YOU PUT ON? wrote. 20lbs. Who says vegetarians It’s nice to look at because it’s shiny like a Christmas are skinny? decoration and well made. Yet it’s a cast of a real skull Andrew White so obviously about mortality like most of Hirst’s work. But it doesn’t really seem to offer much else, nothing profound, new, deep or meaningful. It is expensive and it is about death. By Paul Robinson *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_the_Love_of_God” \l “cite_note-mail-11

“Everyone in the art world knows Hirst hasn’t sold the skull. It’s clearly just an elaborate ruse to drum up publicity and rewrite the book value of all his other work.” 00

ARTIST PROFILE ____ D

uring the 90’s public attitudes towards graffiti were pretty much as they always had been, tending to fluctuate between indifference and intolerance. Council’s implemented militant clean up and prevention programmes, supported by the general public of which the majority believed it be mindless vandalism. A decade later and it’s fair to say there has been a shift in public opinion with one of the most well known street artists holding a retrospective of his work last year. This show exemplified street arts acceptance into the art establishment as well as it’s public affirmation. That artist was Banksy, the world renowned street artist who rose to fame at the beginning of the decade. He is now a household name which would have been inconceivable for a street artist ten years ago. Banksy started off as a freehand artist before switching to stencilling in 2000. He was drawn to this technique initially due to the speed in which he should create pieces in public spaces thereby reducing the risk of being caught. 34

Some people become cops because they want to make the world a better place. Some people become vandals because they want to make the world a better looking place Banksy

His subject matter is usually subversive with a satirical commentary on topics such as culture, ethics and politics. In 2005 Banksy created nine spray paintings on the controversial Barrier separating Israel from Palestine. One depicts a hole in the wall with an idyllic beach on the other side. Another painting shows a ladder going over the wall into Israel. Earlier in the year Banksy embarrassed the British Museum by placing a hoax cave painting of a man pushing a supermarket trolley in one the collections. He hung a sign by the cave art saying “early man venturing towards the out-of-town hunting grounds”. Apparently this went unnoticed for three days. In 2006, Banksy showed his work legitamilty by holding a show at Barely Legal in LA. He achieved stardom and his patrons were rumoured to include the likes of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Kate Moss and Christina Aguilera. His critics were keen to draw negativity from his financial success. To them ‘selling’ meant ‘selling out’. But Banksy shouldn’t be begrudged his financial success as his art retains its integrity. He doesn’t dumb down his art or commercialise 35

his style. He remains true to his original objective of offering a critique of the world around us and making it visually more interesting in the process. WHAT WAS YOUR MOST Bansky’s success represents another landmark for EMBARRASSING graffiti’s acceptance into popular culture. His work is world MOMENT OF THE renowned and he is even being accepted by public bodies, DECADE? traditionally opposed to graffiti on principle of it being

Getting very drunk and mindless vandalism. Future minded council’s such as pleading with bouncers to be Bristol and Manchester now campaign to keep Bansky and let back in the pub to hear other street artists works in public places. There is actually the clocks at midnight! a legal precedent, that painting over graffiti art can in itself (possibly begging) be criminal damage. Gemma Bailey The general acceptance of street art has been a phenomenon within the last decade with Banksy’s work acting as an entry point for many people. In coming years lets hope urban art continues to receive the attention and praise it deserves and more people discover it’s diverse mediums. By Jade Bisram 36

Conversation during painting the Palestinian wall Soldier: What the f*** are you doing? Banksy: You’ll have to wait until it’s finished. Soldier: (to colleagues): “Safety’s off”

BRASS ____EYE PAEDOPHILE SPECIAL CHANNEL 4 26TH JULY 2001 T

he sickest TV show ever, as the Daily Mail described it, or an outstanding example of satire used to provoke discussion about a difficult issue? Intelligent people would argue the second, but regardless Channel 4 was absolutely right to screen Chris Morris’ polemic programme. The debate that raged afterwards brought to the British public’s attention the treatment of free speech, political correctness and government meddling in the media. Especially with our undeclared War on Iraq and Global Terrorism. For those unaware the Brass Eye Special was a Crimewatch-style spoof, in which a nationwide appeal was launched to safeguard millions of children by cramming them into stadiums across Britain for their protection, owing to the due release of a notorious paedophile. To complete the strategy a mob was assembled to wait for the convict outside his prison, eventually capturing him and setting him on fire. Inter-spliced throughout the televised ‘campaign’ were sketches about an Eminem-style rapper called JLb-8 singing paedophile lyrics, a comedy bus tour given by a former sex offender and news flashes about a paedophile disguised as a school in Sheffield. The popular theme of celebrity endorsement was also artfully ridiculed with a host of credulous celebrities giving statements, supposedly in support of child protection charities, which highlighted their bandwagon tendencies and publicity-grabbing idiocy. You see Morris had been coldly angered at the time by the media deliberately stroking the 38

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pussy of fear, and she was really starting to purr - a media culture that unfortunately still continues today. Interestingly, in the paedophile special the media wasn’t his sole focus, as all Brass Eye episodes spoofed the media. First and foremost he wanted to make people laugh. After that he wanted them to question their own confused attitude to children. An adult design of deifying childhood, as parents perceive their kids growing up too quickly, reaching their teenage years and living in a drug intensified, extra salty episode of Skins. The response to the show was as expected. The tabloid press, whose own paedophile panics formed the butt of Brass Eye’s jokes, were loudly outraged; as were the tricked celebrities. Blonde TV presenter Kate Thornton, who along with others, had been duped into making statements about the dangers of a children’s video game in which paedophiles could touch children’s bodies pressed against the screen using special gloves, said she feared it would put celebrities off from speaking up for good causes. Shut up Kate. Perhaps most telling of all was the reaction of the government ministers. The then child protection minister Beverley Hughes called the show ‘unspeakably sick’, although admitted not having seen it when questioned, and WHAT WAS culture secretary Tessa Jowell began looking into increasing THE ODDEST the powers of the Independent Television Commission GIFT YOU’VE (ITC) to respond quickly to complaints, following Channel RECEIVED? 4’s decision to repeat the programme. A blow up sheep from an ex All in all, the response to Morris’ show demonstrated girlfriend quite neatly all the things he set out to satirise. It’s only a Paul Schneider shame his boot hasn’t been up the media’s arse recently, given that as the decade comes to a close we have to contend with the collapse of the UK economy, escalation of wars on Terror, climatic doom (currently isolated to Cumbria) and Simon Cowell owning music. By James Armstrong

Morris had been coldly angered at the time by the media deliberately stroking the pussy of fear, and she was really starting to purr - a media culture that unfortunately still continues today.

Top 10…Best music blogs of the noughties –––––––– Happy New Wave Jazz Funk Greats Beat Electric Keytars and Violins Derek’s Daily 45 Allez Allez Good Bad Music Lovefingers Donna Slut Dollar Bin Jams www.electronicbeats.net

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INNOVATION ____ CONCORDE DEATH OF THE CD MAKING STUFF FOR 56K IPOD SOCIAL MEDIA HYBRID CARS FREE NEWS 00

THE RISE OF FREE NEWS With Twitter, everyone can be a local correspondent. With Wikinews, anyone can be an editor. With Google, we all have this information at our fingertips, and no-one expects money to change hands during any part of the process. 00

ver the past decade, we have gradually come to expect more and more stuff for free. The growth of the internet has obviously enabled a mass proliferation of free content, not only by providing another channel through which media owners could publish their content and earn advertising revenue, but more fundamentally by empowering anyone with access to the internet to distribute their own content to a mass audience. As a result, people’s attitudes towards media consumption have shifted very quickly: after all, if you can get content for free from one source, why would you choose to pay for it from another? Moreover, if you have contributed to that content in some way, or have shared similar content for free, as is often the case with today’s increasingly interactive users, surely this gives you some entitlement to consume it without paying? Of course, there are moral questions raised when this involves intellectual property, but this does not seem to have discouraged the millions of people who are still illegally sharing music and movies every day. Because it’s online, where virtually everything can be free, it somehow seems to be more acceptable than buying and selling dodgy DVDs on the street corner. The culture of free that has developed with the internet, not only through peer-to-peer sharing of information and media, but through huge, profitable companies that provide products and services at no direct cost to the end user (Google being a prime example), has made people more and more reluctant to pay for anything online, or indeed offline. Almost every traditional industry model has been challenged by an online competitor that offers a much cheaper, or often entirely free, service to the consumer. Chris Anderson, of ‘The Long Tail’ fame, wrote a book on the subject, analysing the various business models based around the central proposition of ‘free’. It seems, however, as we approach the end of the decade, that we are reaching a turning point. The music industry, which appeared until recently to be fighting a losing battle against piracy, now seems to be showing some signs of recovery. The promising success of Spotify (and iTunes before it) has demonstrated that at least some people are again being persuaded that content is worth paying for, with some recent statistics showing music file sharing to be in decline. On the flipside, there are industries that can simply no longer afford to survive on advertising revenues alone. A number of already struggling newspapers, which during the dot com boom were falling over each other to provide free online content, and have suffered declining sales ever since, were recently dealt a near-fatal blow by the financial downturn. Indeed, the last few months has seen the (perhaps not so) tragic demise of both the London Lite and the London Paper. Rupert Murdoch took decisive action in May this year by announcing that News Corp would start charging for its online content within a year. It is a controversial move that has sparked widespread debate, but Murdoch is of course hoping that fellow newspaper owners will follow suit, and that by presenting a united front they will force readers into paying for their news 45

again. But even if all the major newspapers were to agree WHAT to begin charging for content, this wouldn’t guarantee the WAS YOUR MOST EMBARRASSING success of Murdoch’s optimistic plan. Aside from the fact MOMENT OF THE that there are sources like the BBC with other means of DECADE? funding, the collaborative and democratic nature of the Talking to Jeremy Beadle in a internet has spawned a number of credible alternatives to toga (yes toga’s me traditional news outlets, which in some ways make them as well as him) seem positively outmoded. Mo Prendergast The news of Michael Jackson’s death, for example, was first reported on an American celebrity gossip blog, and spread quickly through Twitter and Facebook - hours before it had made it even into the online versions of major British newspapers. The gathering, editing and propagation of news, at least on an immediate level, seems perfectly designed for Web 2.0. Google announced on 8th December that it was to begin incorporating real-time content such as Tweets and Facebook updates alongside edited news content in its search results – evidence, if ever we needed it, of social media’s growing credibility. The future of the news industry is surely an interesting one to watch, as unlike music and films, whose chief threat from the internet is simply piracy, newspapers have come up against a legitimate, and arguably equally viable, competitor in the form of the internet itself – a vast network of collaborators organised by powerful tools such as Google, Twitter and Wikipedia. Whereas, at least for the foreseeable future, bands will still make music and people will pay to enjoy it in one way or another; whereas demand for home-made videos on YouTube is unlikely to rival big budget Hollywood blockbusters any time soon, and it’s only a matter of time before the film industry works out a way to turn a satisfactory profit from paid online content (as the demand for their content is still there), the same is not true for news. It’s not the rules of supply and demand that have changed, but rather the market for news itself. With Twitter, everyone can be a local correspondent. With Wikinews, anyone can be an editor. With Google, we all have this information at our fingertips, and no-one expects money to change hands during any part of the process. With such an enormous network having already developed, with such a strongly ingrained culture of freely sharing information, it is hard to imagine how the 20th century offline model of paying directly for news content can ever be reinstated. Unfortunately for Murdoch and co, the answer probably isn’t quite as simple as trying to force people to pay for content. Newspapers need to fundamentally readdress their structures, not just their pricing, in order to survive. There are of course no easy solutions, but it seems inevitable that not all existing newspapers will still be here in another decade’s time, and it is likely to be those that address the fact that the media landscape has fundamentally changed, and reposition themselves accordingly, that ultimately survive. By Pete Munro 46

Top 10 internet moments –––––––– 1. Craiglist Expands Outside San Francisco (2000) 2. Google AdWords Launches (2000) 3. Wikipedia Launches (2001) 4. Napster Shutdown (2001) 5. Google’s IPO (2004) 6. Online Video Revolution (2006) 7. Facebook Opens to Noncollege Students and Twitter Takes Off (2006) 8. Apple’s iPhone Debuts (2007) 9. The U.S. Presidential Campaign (2008) 10. Iranian Election Protests (2009) Source: ABC News

THE RETIREMENT OF CONCORDE T

he retirement of Concorde – end of an icon, end of an era. On a grey, wet November’s day, 2003, Pilot Les Brodie took the pilots seat of Concorde G-BOAF. At 11am the world’s only passenger aircraft able to fly faster than sound burnt two tonnes of fuel as it taxied to Heathrow’s main runway, paused, and then accelerated for takeoff. Looking back from the cockpit, the copilot saw the fuselage flex and bend as it always did, and smiled at the 100 BA colleagues on board. At 250mph the aircraft lifts off the wet tarmac and into the sky, for the last time. This was Concorde’s final flight, a short, slow – for the machine couldn’t fly at super-sonic speeds above land - hop to Filton airport, Bristol, to be retired. Concorde was an enigma. Ultimately a child of the cold war and two competing economic systems she shares more from a historical perspective with the Space Shuttle than any passenger aircraft. A collaboration between state owned aircraft manufacturers of Britain and France, she embodied the big government mega-project –breathtaking in ambition, disregarding of economics, and ultimately flawed. The machine’s political beginnings we cemented not in a contract between companies, but 48

in 1962 as treaty between nations. The Concorde first prototype, Concorde 001, went supersonic on 1st October 1965. was the After a world sales tour, seventy technological machines were ordered, but the offspring of a past oil shock of 1973, the crash of era, where a war the Sovietâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s competing design, the Tupolev Tu-144 at the Paris between competing air show, and concerns over global orders was environmental impact meant only fought out not only 20 machines were delivered to the national airlines of on battlefields France and England. Development costs were six times that predicted. Technically the machine was an engineerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s dream. Taking a large airframe above the speed of sound challenged the brightest minds in the aircraft industry - a beautiful delta wing and drooping nose cone were paired up with highly advanced electronics and space-age materials. At Mach 2, 680 meters per second, the windows of the cockpit became too hot to touch. This design however required high takeoff speeds around 250 miles per hour, and it was this that killed her. Although Concorde had suffered tyre failure on previous take-offs, on 25th July 2000, Air France flight 4590 crashed killing all on board and four people on the ground when a tyre burst and crippled her on take-off. Measures were put in place to strengthen the machine, but the economic effects of the attacks on the World Trade Centre on September 11th 2001 finished her off. Near unprofitable in good times the attacks marked the beginning of an era where, cut free of state support, large, long haul airways struggled financially. Concorde was the first to go and the highest profile victim. Her last commercial flight was made from New York to Heathrow, 24th October 2003. WHAT WAS YOUR BIGGEST Like the Space Shuttle and moon landings, Concorde REGRET? was the technological offspring of a past era, where a Going into the water when war between competing global orders was fought out there were signs saying that not only on battlefields: blows were traded with each it was jellyfish season. technological leap, regardless of the economic cost. Now Paul Slee we live in a time where, perhaps rightly, the government mega project that ignores economic reality is exposed as the white elephant that it is. The ultimate effect of this is that we may never go back to the moon, fly to mars, or see a machine like Concorde in our skies again. By Howard Stredwick

Top 10 games of the decade –––––––– There a few “Gamers” at Grand Union. They’re slightly elitist, having their own email group simply called “Gamers”. We opened up the debate as to what their favourite game of the past decade was. It got a little heated. Here is the list in no particular order, as deciding that would have a got a little too heated…

Half life (Robert Moore) GTA4 (Ian Hart) Counter-strike: Source (Petr Krojzl) Team Fortress 2 (Dave Isaacs) Command & Conquer (Pete Van Lanschot) Civilisation 4 (Robert Fein) World of Warcraft (Andrew White) Pro Evolution Soccer 2 (Steve Parker) Battlefield 1942 (Paul Schneider) Tiger Woods Golf (Nick Parnell)

THE ____ HYBRID THE CAR OF THE FUTURE?

he car every caring, sharing politician and celeb wanted to be seen in throughout the naughties wasn’t a Merc, a BMW, or even a Rolls Royce. The hybrid suddenly became the only car to be snapped climbing out of. Because, nothing says I’m passionate about the environment, like a Toyota Prius. Or does it? It’s like having a million carbon credits – I’m guilt free about my holidays, patio heaters and enormous house, because I’m doing my bit for the planet. Bollocks. I know, because I considered buying one. When I actually looked into it, I realised it made no sense. In central London it runs on its battery – great, zero emissions. But, if you’re worried about the climate, why are you driving in an area with the best public transport in the country? What I needed it for was to escape to the country, where there is no public transport. But it’s no good for that. You’re dragging around that big heavy battery, which means despite Toyota’s 52

WHAT WAS YOUR WORST NIGHT OUT OF THE DECADE?

New Year’s Eve 2005, claims, nobody’s been able to average much more 11:45pm Old Street roundabout. than 42 MPG. I got caught by the cops for a Am I knocking the one company who are putting having a piss down an alley way, the most money and effort into getting to the answer? which resulted in a £80 fine. I Or have some savvy peopled realised that this is a then went home, and decided really smart piece of technology for avoiding road tax and the Congestion Charge? Either way, it seems to that it wasn’t a happy new continue our consumer obsession to look for more stuff year after all. to buy, instead of using things less, to tackle the problems Bob Lloyd caused by the things we produce. By James Woods 53

THE DEATH OF THE ____ CD

Read the music industry news today and the outlook for the future is grim. Music CD sales are plummeting. The growth in digital music sales aren’t even coming close to making up for the decline in sales of physical CDs. Record labels like EMI and Sony BMG are giving up on Digital Rights Management and copyright protection. Their stock prices are continually falling. However, look more closely and you’ll find that it’s not the music industry that’s dying: it’s the machinery of the CD business. In an era where audio and video content can be distributed worldwide by anyone at the click of a button, the major record labels that once controlled the distribution and marketing channels now offer little in the way of real value and are suffering as a result. The balance of power has shifted to be firmly in favour of the artist. I think the moment that I first became fully aware of this power shift was with the release of Radiohead’s In Rainbows in October 2007. For me, Radiohead’s move to release an album without label or price was not just an audacious experiment, but symbolic of change that had been steadily brewing for years before. It made sense: the artist no longer had any need for the major label so they got rid of them. It was something to smile about. But what’s really exciting about all this is not the rise of the ‘superstar free agent’ – like Radiohead, artists such as The Eagles, Madonna, Paul McCartney and Joni Mitchell all shunned their major labels in the course of the noughties - but the ability of lesser known artists to market themselves. The careers of these artists have been at the mercy of over-opinionated promoters and A& R reps for too long. With the rise of the internet and social networks, access to the consumer is no longer the preserve of a few. As a result proliferation of new music is at an all time high and it’s easier than ever before to get your music out into the world and heard. WHAT WAS Of course, there are still a myriad of issues for the music YOUR BIGGEST industry that remain unresolved. Not least, it remains to be ACHIEVEMENT? seen whether artists will be able to forge a sustainable career in music in an era where consumers take for granted free access to media. While there are no clear answers for this yet, I think we’re in the midst of an exciting time. The role of the ‘middle man’ has been diminished and the focus placed firmly on the two entities that really matter: musicians and fans. By Dave Isaacs

Meeting Mark & Gary from Take That, having banter with them and knowing that they found me hilarious. Alicjia Bakinowska

obile, Money, Make-up, Music. My four must-haves before I leave the house. For the music lovers out there your portable music player is a daily essential. I entered the noughties, aged twelve, with my travelling CD case crammed with as many albums as I could fit in and a Sony Walkman CD Player, which I vaguely recollect had a crappy anti-skipping function that could not withstand the slightest bump never mind our old juddering school buses. I bypassed the mini disc fad and grabbed the cheapest MP3 player I could get my hands on but all the while gazing longingly at the shiny, expensive MP3 players Apple had called the iPod with their otherworldly charm. The launch of Apple’s iPod is one of two of the biggest influences on British culture in the last decade. It has in fact become the best selling digital audio player series in history. So big in fact that people today even sport the iconic white iPod headphones connected, in secret, to their big and chunky or small and useless MP3s player to feel part of the crowd. The device has defined a new way of life: no more music skipping, no more leaving that album behind and no need to replace your batteries every couple of days. Apple was by no means the first to release music in an MP3 format but what the iPod had was style and an intuitive interface. With the iPod, human nature came first. My first iPod was the classic iPod Mini in pink. I could touch, stroke, press and poke its wheel of fortune-esque dial to my hearts content, to deliver an array of music from my whole music collection. One plug into your computer and the entire library is synced to one place! A music lover’s utopia now a reality. One of the iPod founders, Steven Jobs, sold the first 5GB iPod with the famous line: ”1,000 songs in your pocket.” Along with iTunes, the iPod has now revolutionised the whole music industry, WHAT’S particularly the way we now buy music online. THE WEIRDEST JOB YOU’VE HAD Finally a piece of awesome trivia: The name iPod (BESIDES THIS ONE)? was coined by a freelancer copy writer Vinne Chieco, Pitch Side Security at after the film 2001: Space Odyssey. He was called in Millwall and West Ham (and by Apple to help introduce the new iPod to the public. “As soon as I saw the white iPod, I thought 2001” being pelted in the head by said Chieco. “Open the pod bay door, Ha!” a wayward shot from Alan By Laura Osborne Shearer at Upton Park.) Tony Mohammed

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he Internet, like any fledging technology, promised a lot and offered little in the early days. At times it was hard to hold onto the vision of what the Internet could be and what it could do for us all when the experience was so poor. Looking back this seems bizarre but in the early days the barriers were significant. One of the defining reasons why the early days of digital marketing were so disappointing was that the user experience was just awful. “How come the Internet looks no better than Teletext? Not exactly a revolution is it?” were some of the more polite comments from friends in the traditional and cosy world of advertising. Ironically this poor experience that endured for much of the early part of the noughties served to protect the digital marketing industry as it resulted in unhealthy levels of scepticism amongst the traditionalists. The few agencies that provided services in these days were caught between showing their clients what the Internet “could do” experientially and being able to deliver something that was “usable” against their objectives. In the more probable middle ground agencies built both HTML and Flash versions of sites to appeal to both needs. This enabled agencies and their clients to operate at both ends of the spectrum, pushing the boundaries at one end and delivering something that worked at the other. This would not happen today. Today everything is procured and carefully managed. Then it was like the Wild West. Junior clients were left to do what they wanted and agencies indulged them in promises of a beautiful future that they would co-create together.

CITY ON 56K The truth was that most clients (there were some exceptions) were happy with the HTML version not least because it was the only version of the site that was visible to them internally where these mutually supportive relationships drove out some wonderful compromises. Many clients naturally felt that the Flash versions of the site were only for the agency’s benefit and they were right. However, very quickly the agency community bandied together to promote Flash and its creative benefits along with the adoption of broadband. Agency folk arrived at the clients armed with widely optimistic figures concerning the penetration of Flash. “It’s 85%, you goddamn moron”, came the belligerent cries from the Hoxton fin in the corner. Flash, as I say, was just one of the two large barriers that stood in the way of agencies in their quest to paint this vision of the One of the Internet as a rich, multi-faceted, empowering world. The defining reasons other, the more important one in holding back progress, was the adoption of 128k (albeit only a small improvement why the early days on the experience but a big psychological gulf to the of digital marketing agencies determined to push the boundaries). were so disappointing At the beginning of 2002 there were just 300,000 was that the user households in the UK with a broadband connection and experience was by the end of that year it had risen to just over 1 million.

just awful.

the UK agency community this was an important WHAT breakthrough. Pushing big ideas through tiny holes whilst WAS YOUR MOST EMBARRASSING challenging were equally fatiguing. Suddenly there was a MOMENT OF THE momentum in broadband adoption that enabled us to do DECADE? the work we had all wanted to do. Losing my virginity I now sometimes look back nostalgically on the Mard Guram 56k days. They seemed simple and straight-forward compared to the limitless opportunities presented by super-speed broadband and near 100% adoption. In this world the barriers are no longer with the technology and their adoption but with an agency’s ability to successfully exploit their potential. Many joining the industry today must be overwhelmed by its sheer speed. It can leave you feeling dizzy. However, for those of who started the journey at a snail’s pace we have become accustomed to the pace through the incremental increases in pace that have occurred every year. However, if there is a lesson to be learnt from the days of 56k it is this. With the Internet there is no status quo. Change The 56k days is a constant. Understanding this makes you better able to seemed simple cope. We should only be spending a third of our time on the and straight-forward “now”, a third on the lessons of the past and a third on “the compared to the future”. Those who spend too long thinking about “the limitless opportunities now” will soon be taken over by those who are thinking about “the future”. presented by By Rob Forshaw

super-speed broadband

Top Ten Gadgets Of The Noughites –––––––– Digital cameras Flat screens Gps devices Digital tv Wi-fi Netbooks Ipod/mp3 players Next gen games consoles Wii Iphone 61

SOCIAL ____ MEDIA

t was the start of 2007 and I had just moved to London to start my Masters in Interactive Media when I signed up to MySpace. I was a fairly late adopter of social media since I favoured (and still do) using the mobile phone when I want to speak to my friends. It immediately annoyed me that people stopped using their mobiles when they realised that they could message each other through MySpace for free. It got to a point where some friends would only contact me on MySpace and if I didn’t check it, I would miss things. For about five months, I enjoyed using MySpace and spent time crafting my page using html to make sure that I was completely happy with it. I quickly became aware of how important it is to edit your ‘details’ to ensure that you present yourself properly to your friends online. The popular thing to do was to fill in all sorts of ridiculous information about yourself such as your favourite bands and who were your ‘top friends’. This was awkward and put quite a lot of pressure on me and my friends to appear to be cool. A little too much concern was given to editing and re-editing this information, and it was great fun to edit someone else’s entire page when you discovered that they’d forgotten to sign themselves out. Then, one day I saw a friend logging out of his MySpace and then logging in to his Facebook account. I asked what it was all about and he said, “it’s like MySpace but better. Things don’t look as good, but it’s easier to use’. I doubted this, and was immediately against the idea of having to re-enter all of my carefully selected information about myself. My friend told me, “trust me, once you’re on Facebook, you’ll forget all about MySpace”. For another two months I resisted as more and more of my friends started signing up to Facebook. I even deleted my MySpace account as I was fed up with people relying on it to get in contact with me. Then, one Monday in July 2007 I crumbled and signed up to Facebook. Immediately, I wasn’t impressed. It was confusing and felt incredibly sterile; there were no custom pages, or music playing on people’s ‘walls’. However, after a month of using it, I had made ‘friends’ with almost everyone I have said more than five words to in the last twenty years. I then was shocked to discover that photos of me were popping up and that everyone could see them. Censoring myself became a daily chore as I untagged myself from entire albums of nights out that my I was a fairly late friends were enthusiastically uploading. adopter of social This is when I began to understand the allure of the site; it’s all about you, the user. You are encouraged to media since I favoured interact under the premise that the more you put in, the (and still do) using the more you get out of it. Logging in becomes an exciting mobile phone when I activity as you eagerly anticipate seeing just how many want to speak to people have interacted with you in some way (tagging, my friends. poking, sharing a link, sending you a message). Herein lies the problem – Facebook’s users become hooked on all the little features available to them and it soon becomes part of the 63

Recently I went on a Facebook friend ‘cull’ and decided that I’d had enough of people that I spoke to one afternoon when I was sixteen.

routine’ to check in on your account and see what’s new. This sucks as it is siphoning off the time that should be spent catching up with someone in real life. I would rather spend one evening a week catching up with an old friend than spending that time flipping through Facebook to see how many people have ‘liked’ my link of a dog running into a wall. Facebook has become a serious problem because too many people take it too seriously; for example, a friend of mine became incredibly agitated recently when I didn’t bother responding to their invitation to birthday drinks, I figured I would just turn up to WHAT it, and when I did, I was confronted with “I didn’t expect to see WERE YOUR you here because you didn’t reply to my event invitation on HOPES FOR THE old FaceyB”. Ridiculous. DECADE? HAVE THEY Recently I went on a Facebook friend ‘cull’ and BEEN MET? decided that I’d had enough of people that I spoke to A few were fulfilled – one afternoon when I was sixteen being able to track successfully ordered a my every movement through my wall. I now only have croissant in French. ‘friends’ on Facebook that I speak to regularly in the real - Ian Hart world, and am very careful to not add anyone I work with. I’ve worked it out: keep your friends on Facebook, and your colleagues on Linked In and everyone else (including family) can email me. By Pete Van Lanschot 64

Short-lived looks of the 00’s –––––––– 1. The Logo Bag, ‘00-’02 2. Saggy Jeans, ‘01-’07 3. All-Day Gymwear, ‘03-’0 4. Uggs, ‘03-’06 5. Louboutin Rises, ‘046. Crocs For All Ages, ‘05-’08 7. The Hipster Uniform, ‘068. Skinny Jeans ‘079. Size Zero, ‘0710. Face-Hiding Glasses, ‘0811. Thigh-High Boots, ‘09www.nymag.com

Lifestyle _____

Obesity Organic Food 24 Hour Drinking Smoking Ban

ince the turn of the millennium we have seen the size of Britain grow. Not only in population but in girth: we are getting fatter as a nation. One in four adults is now obese – a number which has nearly doubled in the past decade. The World Health Organization predicts there will be 2.3 billion overweight adults in the world by 2015 and more than 700 million of them will be obese. Does obesity matter? The medical profession is unanimous: yes it does. An obese person is likely to have difficulties in breathing, be more prone to diabetes, have high blood pressure and cholesterol to name only a few of the physical problems. “I have no fat, old patients” is a quote recently ascribed to a doctor. In addition obesity costs the nation money. The NHS has estimated that the costs for treating the overweight are projected to double to £10 billion a year by the middle of the century. Why are we so fat, and getting fatter? There does not appear to be a single cause. But simple maths would dictate that if you consume more calories than you burn, you will put on weight. Fast food and convenience food has been highlighted as one culprit. A study in the US of more than 3000 people showed that those who went to fast food restaurants more than twice a week weighed an average of 4.5 kg more than those who went less frequently. In his docufilm ‘Super Size Me’, Morgan Spurlock demonstrated how a relentless fast food diet can pile on the pounds: he put on nearly two stones in a month after living exclusively on McDonalds. The film appears to have played a part in the ‘fastfood backlash’ – with salad and fruit now appearing as pick of the day at the fast food chain. A more sedentary lifestyle would also appear to play a role. Children spend increasing amounts of time in front of the TV or computer screen. Waving a Wii might be the most exercise they get. Kids are driven to school more than in the past, with parents citing fear of abduction by strangers and the danger of road traffic for not letting their children WHAT WAS make their own way to the school gates - as they might have done THE ODDEST in previous years. GIFT YOU RECEIVED? But for all the demonising of obesity, the big people are A rather strange voodoo fighting back. In America the term ‘weight diversity’ has doll as a gift from a friend appeared as an alternative, non-discriminatory way to describe who came to supper the overweight. A ‘Fat Pride’ movement is beginning to stir, with - Sonali Fenner the aim of challenging the assumption that fat is a problem, and asserting that being heavy does not equate with being unhealthy. While such a movement may come as a welcome antidote to the hectoring health police, it seems unarguable that obesity has become one of the big health problems of the last decade and as a society we are in a fat lot of trouble. By Hannah Hadlington

FATTING ____ HELL

The World Health Organization predicts there will be 2.3 billion overweight adults in the world by 2015

have 4 memories that have shaped the way I think and feel about food. The first is when, as a kid of 6 or 7 at home, my dad made me stay at the supper table until I’d finished what was on my plate. (I still hate leaving food, no matter how full I am.) I can vividly remember poking and prodding food round and round my plate sullenly for hours, until either I gave in or he gave up. The food in this memory is always brown rice and vegetables, healthy but pretty unappealing to a 10 year old. My dad still eats it to this day. The second is a couple of years later, at school, where I was one of only two vegetarians. While the rest of the school tucked into steak and kidney pie, we walked past everyone to pick up our vegetarian ‘option’ that we had to collect after everyone had started eating, for some reason. The option was usually a bowl of grated cheese - not great. Walking up to the veggie trolley felt like some kind of inverted, middle class Oliver Twist moment as the eyes of the school followed me down the hall, incredulous. I was 10 years old in fairness, it felt worse that it was. The third is eating fresh tomatoes of all shapes, colours and size, straight from my granny’s garden. Tomatoes have never tasted as good as they did then. The fourth happened when I was 16 and still a fussy eater, unbelievably. I was suffering from a particularly vicious attack of the munchies late at night and persuaded my then girlfriend to make me some food; I just wanted toast or crisps, but she rustled up fresh pasta, bacon and home made pesto. I can still smell it – at that moment my eyes, mouth and nose woke up to real, good food. It was a road to Damascus style moment for my stomach. I’m still friends with her and haven’t looked back since – food is now one of my passions and it started right there. What’s all this got to do with organic food? Not a great deal, other than to say that the tomatoes that were the best I’ve ever tasted were organic, long before organic food was in Tescos, became fashionable and urban (ironically), and the 1st two memories were as a result of my organic, vegetarian upbringing that my folks believed in. They still believe in it, and look a lot fitter and healthier than most parents of their age do that haven’t eaten like they have. Coincidence? Maybe, but I doubt it. For me organic food is just common sense – something grown at home, in your own soil, tended for by you, and picked when it’s ripe, will be better quality, better looked after, probably better for you and will taste better than something that has been mass produced, picked while unripe and flown halfway round the world before it gets to you. (The same applies to meat, which I eat and love.) I’d never say eat only organic, but I’d always take it over non-organic. I like things of quality whatever they are, and organic food fits that bill for me. By Rowan Rosser

PLEASE ____ SIR

I WANT SOME MORE

Walking up to the veggie trolley felt like some kind of inverted, middle class Oliver Twist moment as the eyes of the school followed me down the hall, incredulous. 71

ooking around a pub now and saying “I wish you could still smoke here” will draw a number of different responses depending on your audience. I certainly didn’t embrace the ban when it came into effect on1st July 2007, which I must say was very cleverly timed. Overnight, outside smoking areas sprang up in the strangest places and since it was during the height of the summer, no one really minded going outside for a smoke. It was quite a novelty to discover just what kind of ridiculous fenced off smoking area you would be standing in when you went to a new pub. However, I recall as winter drew in people started to realise just how much of an arse the ban really was. The cost of going outside into freezing wind and rain was weighed up against the need to smoke and often people would convince each other that they still needed to do it. I am against the smoking ban because it has created a rift in groups of friends when they go out together. A large number of my friends still smoke, and there was often an awkward moment when one or two people would have to stay behind at the table on their own whilst everyone else went out and smoked. By the time they all came back in, the conversation would have moved on so much that the poor sods left waiting inside had no means of being involved in it. In the other extreme, I have seen the lone smoker being lashed by the rain as they huddled with strangers all watching their respective friends having a jolly old time inside. In my opinion, going to the pub should not be a healthy experience, and you should be reminded of this the next day when you smell last night’s clothes. If anything, pubs smell worse now that you can’t smoke in them as there is nothing to mask the ambient stink of stale beer soaked carpets and grease coming from the kitchen. Entering a pub no longer has that charm of a cloudy haze above each table as people openly engage in debauchery by smoking and drinking at the same time. By removing smoke from a pub, a quality of going to the pub has been lost. It’s like banning music in a pub. WHAT’S Since moving to London in January 2007, most of my trips to the THE WEIRDEST pub have involved standing outside for the entire evening where it JOB YOU’VE HAD doesn’t matter if you smoke or not. Going to festivals, warehouse (BESIDES THIS ONE)? parties, and house parties have not been affected at all since you Marrow picking can smoke inside at each of these, and none of the non-smokers Anna Watkins seem to mind this. I no longer smoke, and am happy to report that although I am against the ban for social reasons, I would not have been able to quit if you could still smoke inside pubs. That really is the bottom line; the ban may not be popular, but it has definitely improved my health, and now that I don’t smoke, the hangovers aren’t nearly as bad. By Pete van Lanschot

NO ____

SMOKING

I am against the smoking ban because it has created a rift in groups of friends when they go out together. 73

he youth of today, what can we do with them? They carry knives, beat up old ladies out shopping and drink until the cows come home, or at least until they are carried out on a stretcher. Where has it all gone wrong, I hear you cry? Maybe it was the parents - the media are always proclaiming parents can no longer look after their children and families everywhere are becoming ‘broken’ – or maybe it was the government - they did introduce the 24 hour drinking license after all – enabling young people everywhere to stumble from one bar to the next throughout the night. Or did it? We’ve always had places to go after the pubs close, they’re called clubs – slightly more upmarket establishments where they warm the metal detector before they probe you. We’ve always found ways and means to keep drinking after hours if a club is not what we fancy; lock-ins, dodgy kebab vans selling fire damaged cans of Stella or the old classic of a mates kitchen, using any ingredient faintly associated with alcohol to make a ‘cocktail’ that’s sure to repeat on you the next morning. Even with the 24 hour drinking license, we still do this, because things haven’t really changed that much. It wasn’t just frustration at the licensing laws that made people turn over kebab vans and push a tramp in the lake. Yes some pubs are open an extra hour or two, delaying the drunken idiots from all leaving the pubs at the same time, but one law is not going to change our culture – the fact is we like to get drunk! It is not in our nature to do what the French do and casually sit around all night drinking Bordeaux and talking about love and poetry, we’re just not ready. People don’t binge because somewhere is closing. Wherever young people are, there will be excess – it’s what we live by. We have never had to ration or save, so have never learnt to live in moderation. Young people have more disposable income than ever before so invariably they find irresponsible things to spend it on, like drugs. The use of illegal substances is apparently on the rise, but drugs have always been WHAT popular. They go through fashions and trends, like high-waisted shorts WAS and platform heels. LSD was popular in the Sixties; at the moment YOUR BIGGEST the trend is cocaine. This trend may be more visible than in the ACHIEVEMENT? past with more media sensationalism, easier globetrotting and The prank I played on the lower monetary cost of drugs but the attitude of young people last day of school. I set up a doesn’t change. They are bored and reckless and like to have remote controlled tape recorder a good time – not a good combination by anyone’s standards. inside the piano in the assembly Someone go confiscate their pocket money, before they do any hall, and switched it on during real damage! the headmaster’s speech so it Young people like to drink, they like to take drugs, and they sounded like someone was like to have a good time: they always have and probably always stuck inside it. will, unless Richard Littlejohn and the Daily Mail get their way and Pete Munro clap them all in irons, shoved in a deep, dark hole until they turn 18. By Sarah Watson

It wasn’t just frustration at the licensing laws that made people turn over kebab vans

SPORT ____ LONDON OLYMPIC BID WIN ASHES RUGBY WORLD CUP LE TOUR DE FRANCE

THE GREATEST DAY

ncredibly we didn’t have a lucky pub. We didn’t ever find a location where we returned to watch the nation’s progress. But the final was different. No-one really knew where or how to do it; we’d never seen a final before – at least not a World Cup Final in a sport that meant something to us. We turned up in a cab outside our school old boys rugby club. The driver was a woman who had gone on and on about how her son was at our old school and played rugby. He had an Italian surname she said he played for England school boys. Danny something. Whatever. Outside it was pouring with rain, skies greyer than Victorian slate rooves and Croydon’s mini Dallas skyline nestling somewhere over the golf course. There were very few cars in the car park. We feared we had got it wrong. But the door pushed open and inside was like a scene from some Arcadian dream. Front to back, side to side sat about 500 chaps with beers in hand and, for many, empty plates of bacon and eggs in front of them. It stunk of cigarettes and beer and sweat. People were hammered, and singing. It was 7:15am. It was perfect. In front of the entire mass of bodies were 2 massive plasmas with more bunting than you get for the Queen. We couldn’t quite believe it. The last time we had been here, was about 6 years before when we still trotted out for the 3XV and went to a disco or two. Heady days. The game of course came. I can’t remember how the score swung – and, for the purposes of this article, I haven’t looked. But I can remember images, moments and bits. I remember: Inside Dallalgio crying singing the national anthem was like a Dallaglio passing inside to Wilkinson who passed to scene from some Robinson for the try Mike Tindall dumping Gregan out of the ground Arcadian dream. Johnson looking like a man un-shackled from decorum Front to back, side to and concern. side sat about 500 The stadium being almost white with flags of St George. chaps with beers I remember the tension and the dis-belief. The thought in hand. we might get close and it won’t happen. Matt Dawson running down the park and the forwards piling over him to secure quick ball for Jonny. 79

For Jonny to kick the Aussies and kick us upward, skyward, past satellites and ozone, out above the November rains. Pity the I remember Catt coming on and shouting for the ball and ERFU and their spiralling it out into touch and the whistle going. shocking treatment No-one could quite believe it. of Woodward, their Cigars were bought and pints of Guinness mixed with isolation of Robinson Champagne. Songs were sung and, of course, everyone and their subsequent kept returning to the screen to watch it again. Slowly, people realised the celebrations were over appointment of there on the other side of the World and the rugby pitches Rob Andrew. outside didn’t look any different. Watches were checked and by 2pm, the whole place was outside in the rain playing rugby in jeans and free Guinness promotional hats. My England replica shirt got ripped and muddied and worn home at midnight by me carrying whatever grog I could find and shouting to anyone that would listen that we won the World Cup. 6 years on Johnson is in charge but it feels wrong to go there. The team has become stymied by what went before and the fact that the Manager is the icon who delivered 6 years ago. If he says it’s this way, it must be right. Right? Pity the ERFU and their shocking treatment of Woodward, their isolation of Robinson and their subsequent appointment of Rob Andrew. Remember how the team that won the World Cup were a team who had lost many times before, as a team. Tripped over expectation and lost Grand Slams and six nations, dropping balls and missing the moment. Remember how they learned to hate it and how they became bloody minded and obstinate. ‘We will not lose’ sounds trite written down, but they knew how painful the loss felt and didn’t want it again. ODDEST HAIRCUT Remember how they had a manager with vision, flair, YOU’VE HAD? emotion and individuality and a captain, in Johnson, who translated Clive’s ramblings into stuff the team could do. In there is the key to the current England woe’s. A manager who won the greatest cup competition in rugby, who reads the game like as a series of set-plays, without a captain to add the flair. But don’t forget the moment that Jonny kicked the ball. The greatest day, for me, of all. By Phil Dowgierd

Shaved head. I looked ridiculous, nose and ears stretching out like they were trying to escape my face. James Armstrong

Top 10… Football world cup moments of the noughties

––––––––

Diego Maradona’s Belly Slide – Out of nowhere Martin Palermo of Argentina scored to give a dramatic victory in the 93rd minute of the 2010 world cup qualifier match against Peru. Maradona’s celebration said it all. ‘El Pibe de Oro’ dived along the touchline despite the storm to celebrate one of the most important goals in Argentine football history

Zinedine Zidane’s Headbutt - 2006 World Cup final. With the score tied at 1-1 in extra time in Berlin, Zidane was infamously sent off after he head-butted the Inter hardman in the chest in extra time. Byron Moreno - Italy had a perfectly good golden goal disallowed by Ecuadorian referee Byron Moreno, had Francesco Totti sent-off for diving when replays showed that he had only lost his footing, while South Korea were awarded a dubious penalty and continually went unpunished for foul play.

Fabio Grosso’s Scream - Marco Tardelli’s scream after scoring Italy’s second goal in their 1982 World Cup final victory over West Germany The Good, Bad & The Ugly Of Argentina Argentina were the hot favourites for the World Cup as they moved into the knockouts, but then in their quarter final against hosts Germany they got nervous. Germany grabbed a late equaliser to force extra time and then penalties. The ice-cool Germans converted all their spot-kicks, which led to a riot after the game. There were flying-kicks and punches thrown as Argentina exited with their customary bang.

Hand Of Henry - Ireland’s World Cup playoff against France was delicately balanced as the tie moved into extra time in Paris, with the score 1-1 on aggregate then French striker Thierry Henry clearly handled the ball in the run-up to William Gallas’s decisive equaliser on the night, but it was not seen by the referee or his assistants. Ronaldinho’s Lob - The Brazilian magician settled the 2002 World Cup quarter final against England in Fukuroi with an outrageous 40-yard free kick that looped over veteran goalkeeper Seaman

Rivaldo’s Play-Acting - Hakan Unsal kicked a ball that struck Rivaldo’s thigh, but the Brazilian went down clutching his face. The Galatasaray defender was sent off for a second yellow card, while Rivaldo was branded a cheat after the game. His punishment was a fine of 11,670 Swiss Francs.

Senegal Shock France - the 2002 World Cup began with a shock victory for an African nation over the holders. France Graham Poll’s Three Yellow Cards – speaks for itself…

www.goal.com

“WHAT’S THE POINT OF ASHLEY GILES?” ____ THE ASHES 2005 00

ost English cricket fans under the age of 30 deserve a medal. I’m 28 and grew up on a diet of regular pastings at the hands of the brutal West Indies, ritual and entirely expected humiliations by the Aussies and a plain kicking from just about everyone else at one point or another. I’d spend whole summers subjecting myself to a ball by ball disintegration of hope and optimism as another series went down the pan, along with the Test careers of so many flannelled equivalents of Joe Dolce, watched and warbled on in mild bemusment by Tony Lewis and pals on the BBC. You didn’t need to miss a single ball in those days, and I didn’t. God it was painful. New Zealand at home in 1999 proved the nadir, and we were officially the worst in the world. By this point I’d started to drift away from cricket, partly due to the state of our team, partly because I’d stopped playing it myself, but mainly because of girls and booze if I’m honest. Anyway, it was at this point that we started to haul the carcass of English cricket into the 20th century, about 20 years too late. (I’m digressing here but it’s important to set the context for the 2005 Ashes: no-one really expected us to win it, defeat in the old contest being so ingrained and accepted by anyone not old enough to remember happier times - except maybe the coach and captain). So from 2000 on our fortunes rose, we found some snarl, some dog, got fitter, picked up a few world class players on the way and began to play like a professional cricket team. We beat South Africa away from home and a young mercenary from Pietermaritzburg made his debut in the one day series. (We lost the one dayers, but we always do and they don’t really count do they?) And so it came to 2005. The Aussies touched down at Heathrow with more legends in their team than we’d produced in decades: Warne, Mcgrath, Ponting, Gilchrist, Hayden and Langer all modern day greats, and all looking forward to their biennial Pom bashing. We had a useful team of course, but man for man we weren’t a match. Ian ‘the Sherminator’ Bell against Ponting. The ‘King of Spain’ against the greatest spinner ever, known simply as Shane. (Anyone known by just their 1st name in sport is a great who has transcended his own theatre of work – Ali, We had a Tiger, Roger, Pele, Lance). We did have a great team spirit thoroughly though, and a shrewd and thoroughly un-English coach un-English coach who planned and schemed and cajoled his men to heights who cajoled his men they didn’t really think they could reach - until they got there. to heights they didn’t Maybe the Aussie’s only real weakness was their own really think they hubris, engendered by years at the top of the world game could reach - until and relentlessly one sided series against us. they got there. Harmy set the tone for the contest when he steepled the shiny Dukes ball through Ponting’s helmet grille at 90mph on the 1st morning at Lord’s, drawing blood and an affected air of 83

unsympathetic disinterest from the England field. Game on, and we all knew it. The rest of the summer passed like a top quality heavyweight bout – we wanted it more I’d dare to say, but they were only ever 1 session away from stamping their class on us. The 5 tests saw the momentum swing backwards and forwards as the English public woke from a long and soporific dream of mediocrity, and we remembered why we love cricket again. Stunning catches, great innings from men under pressure, dodgy calls, Gary Pratt, rugby balls on the outfield and reverse swing all helped to create, in the great Richie’s view, “The best Test series I’ve ever seen” – and who are we to argue. But there was more than skill on the pitch – there was sportsmanship from great players to their opponents, mutual respect; for me, and I suspect a few others, this was very welcome after the diet of over-hyped crap we’ve become used to being served up by football and its paymasters at Sky. This was sport as sport is supposed to be played – hard, fair (mostly), with skill, passion and real respect. The sun shone, the beer flowed (on and off the pitch) and tickets were rarer and more cherished than an innings of authority from Ian Bell. Channel 4 brought the action to the whole country in the way that is only ever possible on the free to air channels, and there were reports of traffic jams on the M1 at 6am as fans headed up to Old Trafford for another epic contest. Unbelievable scenes, as Parnell would say. And the most unbelievable thing of all – we actually won it. Even on the final afternoon at the Oval when the Shane had dropped the Ashes and it was in the bag, we still didn’t dare believe. For so long English cricket fans had lived by the adage that “It’s not the despair. I can take the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand” that our minds had been WHAT programmed to believe that we don’t, we can’t, we shouldn’t win WAS THE Ashes series against the Aussies. To lose that one would have WEIRDEST JOB been too much. YOU HAD (BESIDES What a summer. I still followed it ball by ball, online this THIS ONE)? time, and my productivity at work hit an all time low; I Driving an opera soon found out my boss was doing exactly the same singer to Zurich thing though when we both cheered whenever a airport. I’m still not sure wicket fell or a catch stuck. Eventually we gave up why I ended up being the pretence of working and watched in the pub. her driver that day. That’s the great thing about sport, it can inspire and Marketa Weiglova unite this most cynical of countries like nothing else. (And you get to leave the office to go the pub). Roll on 2010 and Brisbane. By Rowan Rosser

Top 10… most searched for sportsmenof the noughties –––––––– David Beckham Cristiano Ronaldo Tiger Woods Oscar de la Hoya Joe Calzaghe Andrew Flintoff Amir Kahn Steven Gerrard Mark Ramprakash Ronaldinho msn.co.uk

LE TOUR DE F R T

ANCE

hese days cycling is, seemingly, everywhere. Everyone loves cycling, even if, mostly, everyone still hates cyclists. Evans Cycles are springing up everywhere (the Starbucks of the cycling world), cycling has its own designer brand (Rapha) and for the second year running we could have a Sports Personality of the Year from a ‘minor’ sport (Cavendish). Coverage is getting larger – it’s above Motor Sport on the BBC website navigation (the only true indication of a sports’ importance), papers now actually report from races and Sky are backing a major pro team. Does anyone remember the Tour de France on Channel 4 though? It was on from 1986, just after C4 launched, with a highlights show on every night. It was presented by Richard Keys – yes he of little mouth and hairy hands – and introduced cycling fans to the dulcet tones of Paul Sherwen and Phil Liggett, unquestionably the greatest commentary duo in the sport. I remember it because I got completely and utterly hooked. My Dad is part-French and I can remember him buying me a racing bike when I was about 9. We lived on an unmade road and when I questioned his bicycle choice – a racer seemed an odd thing for a road with more pits and holes than Southern Wales – he told me that they ride over

RE-FINDING

ITS CERTAIN

JE NE SAIS Q UOI

cobbles in the Tour de France and other races in France. It seemed miles away to me, and I can remember thinking how continental and suave it all sounded, even if it did mean I had to pit my brown metallic racer with Adam Child’s Grifter on the jumps. So when I caught the Tour on Channel 4 it was a meeting that was destined to have some resonance. I found it absolutely captivating. I was 13 at the time and loved this idiosyncratic sport that noone else that I knew was interested in. It was in France – which I loved – and looked amazing on screen. Seeing these whippets on bicycles climbing up mountains and racing down tree lined D roads was a thing of beauty. Over the years, and a serious investment in books by my parents at every Christmas or birthday, I came to understand the tactics of the sport: the chicanery, the strategies, the rivalry based on continental borders and lines. Occasionally a plucky Englishman popped up in amongst the Hinault’s, the Bernards and the LeMonds. But somewhere along the line I fell out with the Tour. It was just before this centenary began. In about 1996. It became metronomic, rigid and robotic. The riders no longer looked like they were flailing themselves on a mountain but just

From 1999 to 2005 Lance took over. The race had a new hero and the ground zero of 1998 was forgotten.

pedalled and stared ahead. First came Riis, then Ullrich, and then, of course, the farce of 1998. Drugs had taken hold and, most importantly, race radios had been introduced allowing the team managers to speak to their riders and tell them what to do. Speed up, slow down, attack, sit in. Yawn. By 1999 the Tour needed a life line; so when a ballsy Texan who had survived cancer told a press conference he was going to win the Tour, the French designed a race for him. The rest of course is history: 1999 to 2005 Lance took over. The race had a new hero and the ground zero of 1998 was forgotten. The roots of this are, of course, Lance but also the Tour organisers. They designed races for him and his team: wanting and needing him to win to create a new spectacle, some new coverage and, most importantly create a new chapter in their race. He was an able champion and had a story to tell. He also rejected cycling tradition and went to win one race a year; the greatest one of all. The result of this over the majority of the Noughties has been a changed Tour. It is no longer the parochial, continental event that it was, ‘back in the day’. The organisers complicity and Lance’s talent changed that. They took it global, made it easy to understand and brought in a new generation of viewers. This was the vision of one man, Jean-Marie Leblanc, a man who was employed to preserve the Tour’s status and take it beyond its traditional European heartland. Of course when Lance retired the French put the boot in and said it was good to see the back of him; a new era could begin (partly the reason why Lance has come back from retirement). But, truthfully that hasn’t happened till last year. And it’s not the drugs (or lack of them these days) but the race organisers. There is a new man at the helm and he is taking the Tour back to its roots. Christian Prudhomme. An amateur cyclist by heritage and journalist by trade, he was the man who you might have

seen hob-nobbing with Ken when the Tour started in London in 2007. He’s younger than Leblanc, in love with the sport and very French. He’s blown the Lance format apart and has taken the Tour back along back roads, removed and then un-removed time trials and team time trials, put penultimate stages over the Ventoux and stuck little stick-insect climbers over cobbles and though the cross-winds of the Camargue. He’s made it unpredictable again. And it’s working. Time differences are getting smaller, the race is harder to control and you no longer see 1 team on the front ripping the whole thing to shreds. Well, actually, you do, but the difference is they look knackered doing it. And now Monsieur Prudhomme has started the chain reaction that everyone who fell in love with the Tour on C4 has craved (knowingly or otherwise). He has pitched, petitioned, argued and wrangled and someone at the Union Cycliste International has listened. They are going to ban race radios. No more riders being told what to do, when to speed up or slow down. Just paid athletes making the decisions for themselves in the heat of Provence and the rainy swirls of Normandy, whilst hurtling down a small road that no-one has ever seen before, to a provincial town that most people jump round. As it used to be WHAT WAS So, we enter the next decade with a refreshed Tour: YOUR MOST a returning champion with a new team (Armstrong & EMBARRASSING Radio Shack), a new star (Contador), new rivals (les MOMENT OF THE DECADE? freres Schleck ), a British Pro-Tour team from the most unlikely sponsor (Sky), British stars popping out all over the place (Cavendish, Wiggins, Swift) and a Tour de France that has pulled in the viewers and now goes back to its heart. Allez le Tour. (Wiggins for 3rd in 2010 by the way). By Phil Dowgierd

Getting very drunk at a house party, getting in the bath, and then walking about nude in front of work colleagues. This was embarrassing the next time I went into work, but not at the time. Paul Robinson

2012 ____

‘The International Olympic Committee has the honour of announcing that the games of the 30th Olympiad in 2012 are awarded to the city of…. LONDON’.

here is nothing us Brits enjoy more than getting one over on the French. Thus the jubilation was nationwide when on July 6th 2005 in Singapore those immortal words were read out by Jacques Rogues confirming London had been chosen to host the world’s biggest sporting event over Paris. Even the TV cameras were caught by surprise with all the media attention focused on the French delegation in expectation of their victory. Instead it was Sebastian Coe and his team who lead the nation in a party which lasted a mere 24 hours before Britain suddenly began to realise the enormity of the challenge which we had been handed. Almost 20,000 athletes from over 200 countries descending on the capital expecting 25 world class stadia including the centrepiece 80,000 seat stadium with an estimated 4 billion people watching worldwide… no pressure then! Immediately the country was divided in two and remained this way for the second half of the decade. On one side there has been excitement amongst millions who view the games as an incredible opportunity for the UK financially, socially and for sport in general. On the other hand there are those who view the spending of billions of pounds on 16 days of entertainment, while the country is in economic meltdown, as neither a wise nor worthwhile investment. This nationwide debate has been fed by a frenzy of media attention as London 2012 has not been able to keep out of the headlines, mostly for the wrong reasons. There have been the numerous political gaffs, continuous soaring costs, fears over security and even sponsors pulling out. Furthermore who can forget the unveiling of the luminous pink logo which was met with a nationwide groan WHAT WAS of disappointment and a 45,000 strong petition calling for it to THE WEIRDEST be scrapped. JOB YOU HAD London 2012 brought us one of the most surreal few (BESIDES THIS ONE)? minutes of the entire decade when the world was treated to “Working at Subway. I only Boris Johnson, Leona Lewis and David Beckham emerging lasted a couple of weeks, and from a futuristic London bus in the Beijing Olympic stadium. really couldn’t get a handle Overall the victorious London Olympic and Paralympic on making the foot longs.” bid has been one of the key moments of this decade and I Steven Parker am sure the games themselves will leave an even greater legacy in the next ten years. By Jonny White

OLYMPICS