JUNE 29: IT'S 4.11am
JUST finished Tana French's The Likeness in a four-hour, 250-page marathon session. I didn't mean to keep reading it way into the wee hours, I just couldn't bloody put it down. It's easily better than French's previous book, In The Woods, which is a feat in itself as that novel is pretty much flawless. But The Likeness is a step above in terms of characterisation, pacing and emotional investment. Without wishing to give too much away, when the ending comes you actually feel sorry for the killer. Anyway, after all that I need something light so I'm giving PG Wodehouse a try. I loved the TV series with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry so hopefully the books will be as welcome.
JUNE 28: AAAAAARRRRRRRRRRR!!
CHRIST, has it been a year already? It's Pirate Day on the pier again and this year's event has attracted a load more people than the last one. So I'll shut up and let you get to the photos...
EV: "Look at the size of that stein!"
ME: "What stein?"
And finally...
...dress your age, love, not your IQ.
JUNE 28
I PICKED up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in Target last night. I've heard several good things about it and as it was only a tenner I thought I'd give it a go. I don't think I've read any Jane Austen before, but then again there's a nagging feeling in my mind that we might have done one of her books for A-level English. But as I've managed to erase that experience from my mind I'm not too sure. I do remember doing lots of Orwell... oh no, that's right, with a feminist teacher and 19 girls in the class we ended up doing that block of shit Tess of the Durbevilles instead. Why yes, I am still bitter. Is it that noticeable?
JUNE 27
YOU have to give that Republican governor some credit. At least he was shagging an adult female and not, say, underage male interns or gay prostitutes as is usual for Republicans. And he found her in Argentina, not an airport toilet. As far as GOP scandals go he should get a promotion.
JUNE 26: THE BEST BURGER IN THE WORLD
MEET Billy's bacon-avocado cheeseburger. Isn't it beautiful? My esteemed colleague and friend Mike talked me into getting one of these for lunch today instead of my usual Subway. Well, when I say he talked me into it I mean he said something along the lines of "Billy's?" and I simply drooled in response.
What appears to be the arm of a small child raising its hand in a desperate cry for help is just a slice of extra-crispy bacon. Billy's has several things going for it. On Fridays its huge burgers cost only $7. They're cooked to order (mine's done medium rare) and come with masses of proper chips instead of those nasty French fry things, about a pound of veggies, enough tomato sauce to cover Wisconsin and a couple of pickles. In short you get a meal that in any other country could comfortably serve four adults for less than the cost of a starter at most chain restaurants.
The other thing Billy's has is Evelyn. Evelyn is one of the waitresses. At least I assume she's a waitress; for all I know she could just be some random homeless nutter who wandered in one day, cleared a couple of tables and was given a job in return for keeping the mice down. Evelyn is only about four foot two but is from New York, meaning she has an attitude that could outmatch a very annoyed gorilla. (When I found out Evelyn's name is Evelyn I was slightly disappointed. I've always thought that Evelyn is a gentle name. I was hoping she'd be called something like Davros Fleshripper III. It's like finding out Stalin's real name was Pink Fluffy Unicorn Dreams). The best thing about Evelyn is that she makes it very clear what she thinks about things.
Very clear.
The first time Mike and I met Evelyn she saw our ID badges hanging around our necks and asked if we worked for the paper. Upon receiving an affirmative response she went off on one about Glendale's police force. In fact, she went off on one over the cops in much the same way as Fat Man went off on one over Nagasaki. If her sudden tirade didn't surprise us her choice of words did. Evelyn's favourite word is one that I can't repeat here as it's a family website — in other words, about 90% of the readers are members of my family — but suffice to say that her favourite word starts with "f" and rhymes with "duck". And Evelyn uses it a lot. Especially when it comes to the Glendale Police Department.
I'm not entirely sure what Evelyn's problem with the GPD is because within 10 seconds I was no longer capable of rational thought. All that went through my mind was, "SWEET ZOMBIE JESUS SHE'S USING THE F-WORD IN FRONT OF CUSTOMERS AT ABOUT 250 DECIBELS!!" Within 20 seconds my efforts to stop myself bursting out laughing overrode any other bodily function. The one thing I remember is Evelyn saying how she told a couple of cops they could "go [starts-with-f-and-rhymes-with-duck] themselves". Evelyn, you have to get a blog. Shit, I'll pay for your hosting and domain charges. We could call it "[bleep] you, you [bleeping] [bleep]" and I can guarantee it'll make Twitter about as popular as, say... Planet Mut. What do you say?
JUNE 25: FECK TICKETMASTER
TONIGHT, EV managed to get tickets to the LA Galaxy v FC Barcelona match at the Rose Bowl on August 1. Unfortunately she had to go through Ticketmaster to get them and in doing so our credit card was thoroughly raped.
Price of ticket: $25. Plus a service charge of $4.75. And a "one-off" charge of $5.95 for handling. (As she did all this online, who, may I ask, is "handling" our tickets?) And then, the pičce de résistance, the cream on the cake, the crowing turd in the water closet, a $2.95 charge to print the fecking tickets out. We were charged three dollars for the privilege of printing our own tickets using our own ink, paper, electricity and CTRL-P keys. Shit, for an extra seven dollars per ticket Ev could have insured them. Against what I'm not sure — perhaps the chance that they wouldn't come out of the printer?
Dear congressmen: This is what pisses people off. This is what people want you to fix. Ticketmaster has a monopoly on selling access to events and venues and they're abusing it for every penny they can. So step in, ban these obscene and ridiculous charges — three dollars to print your own tickets springs to mind — and watch your popularity ratings rocket.
JUNE 25: SOME PEOPLE JUST DON'T DESERVE FREEDOM
NOT because they haven't done anything to deserve it, but because they're too bloody stupid to appreciate it. But first, a bit of backstory: Armenian-Iranians in Glendale have been protesting the election results and the state-sponsored terrorism that followed. We reported it and a couple of days later this comment appeared on the website:
Why can't the Glendale police department do something about this riot? Residents have been forced to deal with the noise and congestion of this illegal gathering for the last few days, and complaints to the police department have gone unhandled.
Kids, get a clue: Protesting here isn't going to change things in Iran. All you are doing is annoying your neighbors, and ruining what was a nice quiet neighborhood.
My God, sir, you're right! Why should these people be allowed to exercise their First Amendment rights? After all you do live in such a nice quiet neighbourhood and we all know how badly freedom affects property prices. As you seem to prefer living in places where citizens aren't allowed to protest injustices, may I suggest you move to, say, Saudi Arabia? At least there you won't be bothered by any nasty demonstrators. And I'm sure you'll be allowed to watch American Idol in peace. Oh wait... you won't.
JUNE 24
MY MINI stinks. I don't know what's died in there (I could have sworn I got that hooker out of the boot) but it's really whiffy. And after two days of driving it while trying not to breathe I'm finally going to have to do something about it. So tomorrow I'm going to tackle the problem armed only with a bottle of Febreze (to cover the smell), a gasmask (to allow me to breathe) and and a torch (to help me find errant body parts). If you don't hear from me again I've either been overcome by the stench and collapsed, or I'm helping police with their enquiries.
SOME of the more observant out of the five of you may notice a new section to the left right. There's now links to Planet Mut's Facebook and Twitter pages. Whether I remember these exist and actually update them is another matter, but if you click the links you can see whatever jolly thoughts are crossing my mind at any given time.
JUNE 20: NAZI ZOMBIES??? SIGN ME UP!
I MEAN come on, what more do you want? This looks even better than that movie about the shark and the octopus! It's taken the perfect ingredients for a film — zombies — and made them Nazi zombies! The only way this film could be better would be if the zombie Nazis were battling zombie Soviets while both sides were being attacked by zombie sharks and octopuses octopusses octopi and then they were all swarmed by zombie Aliens who were then taken out by zombie Predators! I think I need to lie down.
Oh, and the cute Norwegian girl gets her top off.
JUNE 18: THE 2.15AM UPDATE
I'VE just finished Markus Zusak's The Book Thief. What a fantastic novel, a coming-of-age story that's also about the power of words to do good and create and maintain evil, and the escape from reality which stories provide. The brutality and senselessness of war are prevalent throughout the book but then Zusak lets the beauty of the human spirit shine through. This was a page-turner of the best kind, where you're reading it in 200-page chunks late into the night because the author's woven such a wonderful and believable tale that you simply cannot put it down. Profoundly moving, it is easily the best book I've read this year.
JUNE 17: PANORAMA 2 — ELECTRIC BOOGALOO
CAMERA and tripod in hand, I headed to the roof of our office building during a quiet spot this afternoon to try to get another panorama. I have absolutely no idea if I'm actually allowed on the roof but it's not like it's difficult to get up there. I set my gear up, dialled in the exposure and aperture (1/100s at ƒ8) and started shooting. I ran the final photos through Autostitch and it came out pretty well — click the pic to see the 1/10th size version (the original is about 300" wide). I want to do one of Long Beach Harbour next.
JUNE 17: WHITE DRAGON? BUNCH OF ARSE
A WHILE back I discovered that there is such a thing as an English dragon flag. One word went through my mind: "What?"
I did an entry back in August about the red dragon of Wales and how it ended up being the Welsh national emblem. For those of you who can't be arsed to click the link, one of the legends behind the flag is that a red dragon (representing the native Celts) fought a white dragon (representing the invading Saxons) and won.
Which is why the first word through my mind was, "What?" Let me get this straight — your dragon gets the shit kicked out of it and so you decide to slap it on a flag? This is much like post-World War II Poland saying, "You know what our flag needs? A Panzer!"
So I decided to look up the white dragon of England, and d'you know what? It's bollocks.
Just Google "english white dragon" and click the first site in the list, whitedragonflagofengland.com. Please tell me this is a parody. For Christ's sake, it refers to William I — the guy who beat King Harold at the battle of Hastings in 1066 — as "the Usurper". In other words, the people who do this site are pissed off over a battle that happened almost a thousand years ago. Bitter much? Besides, the Normans were assimilated into British society within a few generations — it's not like we all turned French, for Christ's sake.
But then I re-read this crap and I'm left even more confused. This is the first paragraph:
About 450AD. came the landing in Celtic Britain of two warrior traders, Hengest and Horsa who, together with their Saxon, Angle and Jutish followers are traditionally regarded as the founders of England. History records that the White Dragon was their emblem. During the next four centuries, the Saxon, Angle and Jutish settlers; originally from North Germany, Denmark, Jutland and Norway, who, together with the Northmen or Vikings, would become known collectively as the English, advanced from East to West through Celtic Britain.
For a long time it was believed that the Celtic nations — Wales, Ireland, Scotland and Cornwall — were the real British, and that they were pushed back to the west and north of the country by the invading Danes, Saxons, Jutes and Angles, who went on to become the English. Trouble is, DNA testing has proved that's pretty much bollocks; we're all basically descended from the same stock.
The other reason why this paragraph is a load of cobblers is because the author says that the warrior traders arrived in Celtic Britain in AD450 and basically nicked the country from the Celts... and then has the bloody audacity to refer to William the Conqueror as a usurper!
Then there's the dodgy historic provenance of the emblem itself. One of my earliest memories of school is learning the four different flags of the United Kingdom — Y Ddraig Goch (the red dragon) of Wales and the crosses of St Andrew (Scotland), St George (England) and St Patrick (Ireland). At no point did anyone mention the white dragon of England. And, having lived in Britain for 32 years (24 in Wales, eight in England) I never once heard of an English dragon, not even from my English friends. The site is very vague about the historical evidence. For example, there's this line:
History records that the White Dragon was their emblem.
Does it? From Wikipedia:
A metaphorical reference to the 'White Dragon', was made by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 'Ancient Prophecies of Merlin' and Historia Regum Britanniae ... Apart from the Monmouth reference, no other evidence can be found to support the existence of the white dragon as an emblem of England. Varying accounts exist of Dragons being used by the English however, but none specifically white. A Dragon Standard is seen on the Bayeux Tapestry and accounts of Dragons being used as standards continue to exist after the Norman Conquest. However, none of these were white.
Here's another meaningless piece of "evidence":
Had not the last panels been lost, it is likely that the White Dragon Flag would have been seen displayed on that same Tapestry featuring a scene at Westminster Abbey during a ceremony for the Usurper, William of Normandy.
Yes, and had not my grandmother had boobs, it is likely she would have been a bloke.
Unlike St George's Cross, The White Dragon has no dubious religious connections or background unrelated to fact.
Apart from the fact that there is no historical evidence for it. But then you keep reading the site and the reason for the sudden emergence of the white dragon becomes clear:
In a world with few certainties, the White Dragon Flag of the English people underlines our kinship with the past. It tells us from where we came and who we are. It imparts a sense of permanence and continuity. It is defining ... All the ethnic English who support the White Dragon Flag have declared themselves for their Anglo Saxon Jutish origins and drawn an invisible but unbreakable thread to the beginning of the English Nation in Celtic Britain.
OK... so further up he's saying the English are descended from Jutes, Angles and Saxons but now he's talking about some "thread to the beginning of the English Nation in Celtic Britain"? Make your bloody mind up!
Quite apart from the fact that probably 0.5% of the English know about the white dragon whereas 100% of them know about the Welsh dragon, the use of words like "kinship with the past", "ethnic English" and "English Nation" single this out as the load of right-wing jingoistic shite I thought it was, and lumps it in with the fascist thugs in the BNP and other nationalistic groups. Just take a look at the links page for proof of this. And on top of all that, it's not like the white dragon is all that spectacular:
One last thing. Reading what this guy has to say about the English being descended from Jutes, Danes and Saxons, has he spotted the irony that he himself is descended from immigrants? I doubt very much that he has.
JUNE 15
I DON'T know why there's a car wrapped in clingfilm on Bayshore and I don't really want to know why there's a car wrapped in clingfilm on Bayshore. But there is a car wrapped in clingfilm on Bayshore so naturally I had to get the camera and drive back to take pics to prove it. And while we're on the subject, get a load of those wheels. They truly are amazing. Someone thought, "Hey, what my mediocre mass-produced American car really needs is a set of fake chrome rims so hideous that not even the Garden Grove Wal-Mart would stock them." All I can think is that Bayshore must be the centre of car wheel theft in Long Beach. Why else would you put wheels like this on your car? It's a big f-you to the wheel thieves. You're basically saying, "Go on. Take them. You know you won't be able to give them away, let along trade 'em in for meth". And for that, hideously-wheeled clingfilmed-car bloke, I commend you.
PLANET MUT now has a Facebook page. I've been putting off doing one for ages, mainly 'cos I'm a curmudgeonly old bastard (even at 37) and the idea of joining some social network thingy is against my nature. But I finally gave in and set one up. Because I can't set up a normal profile under the name Planet Mut I've had to create it as a business. So now you can become a fan of Planet Mut and be informed of when the site's updated*, and I can post bollocks to it during the day.
*When I remember to inform you, that is.
A few weeks ago, in another desperate effort to get people to notice the site, I set up a Twitter account. Then I decided that Twitter (or "Twatter" as I like to call it) is an utter waste of time thanks to the stream of trivial crap posted on it every day so I deleted my account. But now I want my account back but for the life of me I cannot understand where I'm going wrong. In short, here's what's happening:
I go to the Restore My Account page.
I enter my email address and click "restore".
I get an email with a link to click to restore my account.
I click the link and am taken to the Twitter login page.
I enter my email address, or username, and password.
I'm sent to the Restore My Account page.
I enter my email address and click "restore".
I get an email with a link to click to restore my account.
I click the link and am taken to the Twitter login page.
I enter my email address, or username, and password.
I'm sent to the Restore My Account page.
And so on, ad infinitum.
Help?
JUNE 14: RANDOM BUG PICTURE
JUNE 13: TASTE TEST — HOF'S HUT CHOCOLATE WIPEOUT CAKE
I'M SORRY, I'm far too busy stuffing my face with this deliciously rich, moist and fantastic chocolate cake to do a taste test.
JUNE 13: PANORAMA TIME
AFTER much arsing about and Googling advice I tried my hand at a panoramic photo this afternoon. And I'll be buggered if it worked pretty well. I set up the camera and tripod on the pier, put it on manual mode (f9, 1/400s) and used the remote so I wouldn't disturb the XT's position on the tripod. After each shot I rotated the camera to the right, leaving about 20% of the previous photo in the frame. After making a full circle (which took about 28 shots) I came home and put them on the PC.
To stitch the images together I used a program called Autostitch, which is not only free but also stupidly easy to use. Just open all the images with it, select how big you want the panorama to be (I chose 100%, meaning the final image is 101 inches wide and eight inches high) and click OK. It took about 10 minutes to render the panorama. There's a half-size version here and the full size 30,500-pixel-wide one is here. (Caution: the full-size version can cause your PC to lock up as it renders it. You're better off downloading it to your computer and then viewing it). I'm definitely up for doing more of these as the Autostitch software makes it a doddle.
JUNE 12: WELCOME TO ERFF
GOOGLE EARTH is one of those things that, once you've played around with it for a while, you wonder how you ever managed without it and realise that you're going to dedicate hours to trying to spot your car exploring the world around us. Using a website called Panoramio it's also possible to upload your own photos to be displayed in the program. I've put a load up from our trips to the UK and some I've taken around here in Long Beach and if you'd like to see them you can download this file which will load them into GE. (If you need to get Google Earth it's here.)
The other fun thing about Panoramio is trying to place the photos at the right spot on Google Earth, especially after forgetting where you took them (or, in the case of the ruined church above, not having a clue in the first place). After 30 minutes of following the road from Aberystwyth to Builth Wells I finally found where I'd taken it — only to discover that five other people had already put photos of it up. Bugger.
SPARE a thought for my old man — today the soccer club he's supported all his life was put into administration with debts of £315,000. It looks like the end for Merthyr Tydfil FC (aka The Mighty Martyrs) as even the electricity at their ground, Penydarren Park, has been shut off. I've been to several games there and always had a good time whether the Martyrs won or lost and I've worn my replica shirt with pride in the US. It's a shame that after 64 years the club could go under for the sake of three hundred grand which is what, about two weeks' wages to your average Premiership player. Hopefully someone somewhere will come up with the cash and save it.
JUNE 10
BY USING a large piece of paper, different coloured crayons and words of less than three syllables, Ev has managed to explain the ending of Life of Pi to me. It turns out that Bruce Willis's character is a ghost. How I didn't spot that is beyond me, but I guess that's what I get for doing a degree in American Studies.
JUNE 10
LAST night I finished reading Yann Martel's Life of Pi. I have to admit to liking it a lot more than I thought I would — to be honest it's bloody fantastic and at one point I read 120 pages in one go as I couldn't put it down — but one thing's nagging me: the ending. It's not crap or anything, it's just that I have a horrible feeling I'm missing something. I mean I think I know what happened, I'm just not 100% sure. I bought Ev the audiobook last year and she really enjoyed it but warned me about the ending. Looks like I'm going to have to head to Google for this one.
Oh, and speaking of books, my self-imposed ban on buying them is up in four days. Although this has filled me with joy it's had the opposite effect on Ev, who is now wondering where I'm going to put the new ones. (Ev is one of those odd people who thinks I should give away or sell books after I read them. She's obviously mad. Then again, if I had my way I'd get rid of the tellys and put bookcases in their place so she probably thinks the same of me.) So I've decided on something: I'm going to buy An Unexpected Light, Jason Elliot's book about his travels through Afghanistan, then I'm going to — get this — wait until I've read it before buying another. I know, it's an insane plan but it might just work.
JUNE 8: BLOODY CATS
JUST what the hell is going on with Iestyn's nipples? Get a load of those things — they look like two holes burnt in a blanket. Here's a close-up:
I mean, Jesus, what is going on there? They look like they should be adorning a teenager's face.
As for Emric... well, I wanted to shut the door but Ev wouldn't let me. She spoils all my fun.
JUNE 8: LAUGH? I NEARLY BOUGHT A ROUND
TAKE one (1) irrelevant wanker, one (1) hair band that should have been strangled at birth, one (1) piece of moving scenery, mix them together, sit back and enjoy.
JUNE 6: STUFFED
SERIOUSLY. We just got back from the Indian on Second Street and are stuffed. Well, I say "got back" but "waddled back" would be a more accurate description. Ev kindly got me a cupcake on the way home and had it personalised for me:
Bless her.
IFINISHED Tom Rob Smith's Child 44 earlier this afternoon. For some reason I'm a sucker for thrillers set in the Soviet Union so I snapped this one up at Troutmark Books in Cardiff when I discovered it's set in Stalinist Russia. This is one of those books that starts with four pages of quotes from various mags and newspapers as to how good it is and then proceeds to only just about live up to the praise. Although the background to the novel is done really well — the state of perpetual fear the citizens live in and the knowledge that one day "they" might come for you is palpable throughout — the actual story of an MGB officer's attempts to discover who's responsible for murdering 44 children across the USSR falls apart once you work out who the killer is, and his motivation for killing is, frankly, ridiculous. Most of the book is great but once it turns into an elongated chase scene it just goes downhill. It looks like Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko novels are still at the top of the Soviet thriller pile.
JUNE 6
FINALLY some good news: someone has decided that the idea of Maggie Thatcher getting a state funeral when she eventually (and mercifully) shuffles off this mortal coil is a tad distasteful, given that she did more damage to British society and manufacturing than Hitler ever dreamed of, and is organising a campaign to persuade the government to deny the old bat such an honour.
The person with the most say on state funerals is a lady known as Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second. So if you'd like to express your disgust as such a prospect go here, download the pre-addressed postcard, and send it to Her Maj. There's also a petition at No.10.gov.uk that you can sign. You have to be a British citizen to do so but no check is made so you could always tell a small porkie for a good cause. Go on, you know it makes sense!
AND making this Saturday morning even better, ESPNC are showing a rugby friendly between Wales and the USA. It's the second half and we're winning. I mean, let's face it if we were losing I'd be burning my collection of red dragons right about now. Listening to the American commentators is pretty interesting; Gareth Cooper apparently plays for somewhere called "Glowster" and Ryan Jones is a member of the "Osprees". Although I'll give them credit for pronouncing "Llanelli" right. The Yanks get their second try, miss the conversion and the whistle goes. 48-15 to Wales; that'll do nicely. And to think I almost ended up watching an Iron Maiden concert.
JUNE 4
FIVE things I'd forgotten I hated about driving in California:
1: Elderly female Asian drivers.
2: Good ol' boys driving their good ol' trucks up the arse of my Mini and getting on my good ol' tits in the process.
3: These arseholes:
4: Mister "I need 250 gigawatts of lights to be able to drive safely".
5: Those bloody little Mercedes SUVs, you know the ones that invariably have a blonde woman driving them who's holding a latte in one hand a mobile in the other and has only the vaguest idea that she's SUPPOSED TO BE DRIVING A FECKING CAR and God they piss me off.
I'M STILL sick. I knew I shouldn't have gone into work yesterday but stupidly thought I'd be OK. Nope. Driving wasn't fun at all (hence the above list) and by about 5pm I just wanted to go to sleep. Ev's picking up some antibiotics today so with any luck they'll finally kill this bug off.
JUNE 1: STILL ILL
OOOH, I've been wanting to use a Smiths' song title in a headline for ages. Anyway, the dreaded lurgi has kept me away from work today. Far from improving yesterday as I'd hoped it might it just got worse; according to Ev I spent the best part of Sunday asleep, and that came on top of a massive 15-hour snooze session from Saturday afternoon to Sunday morning. I don't know how or why I caught this but it's bloody annoying. Every four hours I shove another knock-off Sudafed down my throat and wash it down with Lemsip or Theraflu; I've now drunk so many steaming mugs of the stuff that my pee could be used to dye high-visibility jackets. Every couple of hours I eat another Hall's in a desperate attempt to unblock my nose and/or soothe my throat. And every hour or so I doze off only to wake up with another headache. I'd actually forgotten how bloody awful being this ill is.
At least it's given me a chance to catch up on some of my reading; after all, I have sod all else to do. I demolished Tim Moore's Do Not Pass Go: From The Old Kent Road To Mayfair in a feverish few hours spread between the flight home and about 5.30 to eight this morning. On a tour of London based on the Monopoly board, among other adventures Moore plays Monopoly with a Brazilian transvestite prostitute, gets a guided tour of Pentonville prison and a sewage works and attempts to find some — any — free parking in London, all the while pondering just how and why the streets that make up the board were chosen.
Do Not Pass Go is the kind of book about London that I love — full of trivia about little details that go unnoticed by the majority of people. Moore does a good job of cataloguing these idiosyncrasies and oddities as well as the blandness that is the new City. It's good that someone got them on record before they're swept away in the mind-numbing conformity which property developers term "progress" and people like me call "cultural vandalism". It's also a good potted history of the game itself and how it became such a world-beater.
I'm currently reading John Sergeant's autobiography Give Me Another Ten Seconds about his career as a BBC reporter and chief political correspondent for ITN. So far it's a good read — before ending up at Westminster, Sergeant covered the Vietnam War, Cyprus, Lebanon, Israel and Northern Ireland for the Beeb. He's probably best known for his gaffe when, standing outside the British Embassy in Paris, he repeatedly assured viewers that Margaret Thatcher wasn't in the building even as Thatch was walking down the steps behind him and insisted on this claim even as she virtually took the microphone out of her hands. By the way, when is she going to pop her clogs? It's one of the few things I have to look forward to.
