Brief 47: Best footballers I've seen

In the prolonged absence of live sport, I've been thinking about the best footballers I've seen in the flesh. I've never been a prolific football match attender. Being taken by one's father is a common way into that, and my dad was a rugby man, so we spent many afternoons at Sunbury watching London Irish, but not football. I also supported Spurs and lived in Ealing which was a pretty forbidding journey, did not have vast amounts of spare cash, and was playing sport myself most Saturday afternoons growing up.

I did manage a nice smattering of games as a kid, going to Plough Lane, Craven Cottage, White Hart Lane once or twice, Loftus Road. and Griffin Park. At school, though of course you had your Liverpool and Man Utd supporters, in terms of regular attendance, the main pockets of people I was friends with were for Wimbledon, Brentford and QPR (later Fulham). I don't recall that many regularly going to Highbury or White Hart Lane, and very few kids supported Chelsea full-stop. It just wasn't really done.

I could/should certainly have gone to more Brentford games - i had friends who went and it was within walking distance and hardly prohibitively expensive.

I've kept a lot of the programmes and have been able to go through some of the line-ups of games I went to. More by luck than judgement, I've happened to see several of my all-time favourite footballers, and a really good collection of world-class talent.

In terms of performance on the day, I remember Cesc Fabregas being brilliant when I watched Arsenal play Blackburn in around 2009, really liking the Bulgarian Martin Petrov when he was playing for Man City against Fulham, and have never forgotten Lee Clark captaining and scoring a hat-trick for England U15s in 1988. Clark would go on to be a good but not great footballer, probably one of the best of his generation not to play for the full England side.

I'm struck, looking back, at how many fine players QPR and Notts Forest had in the late 80s. I also noticed that when I watched some Olympic football in 2012, not only did Team GB have Bellamy, Ramsey and Giggs (who I mainly went for) but it was a double-header on the day, and we were able to watch Senegal-Uruguay before the GB game, and that meant Sadio Mane, Luis Suarez and Edinson Cavani.

I'm going to pick one XI (for balance), then add to the squad:

G David Seaman

RB Paul Parker 

CB Des Walker

CB Thomas Vermaelen

LB Stuart Pearce

RM Gareth Bale

CM Paul Gascoigne

CM Luka Modric

LM Ryan Giggs

Striker Matt Le Tissier

Striker Gary Lineker

Also saw, Suarez, Cavani, Mane, Fabregas, Van Persie, Anelka, Ray Wilkins, Les Ferdinand, Kenny Sansom, Chris Waddle, Rosicky, Walcott, Arshavin, Petrov, Nzonzi, Chris Hughton, Jimmy Case, three Wallaces, Gary Mabbutt, Shaka Hislop, Chris Coleman, Roy Wegerle, Alan MacDonald, Clive Allen, Steve Hodge, Neil Webb, Nigel Clough, Vinnie Jones, Dennis Wise, Fashanu, David Healy, Aaron Ramsey, Craig Bellamy, Kaspar Schmeichel, Gary Speed, El Hadji, Gael Clichy, William Gallas, Abou Diaby amongst several others

Pretty good bunch.

Song 91: Why Worry

Of all the bands stuck on the wrong side of the cool line, Dire Straits are the one for whom I always maintained a sneaking affection.

Like all super-hip teenagers, I listened to Dire Straits quite a lot when I was 14/15/16. Their tapes were around the house. When I started reading the music press, I was taken aback by the extent to which one was simply not allowed to like them. The NME review of 'Brothers in Arms' had been brutal. Seems funny to me that. It's not like there was loads of great music in 1985. 'Brothers in Arms' hardly came out in the Summer of Love or the Golden Age of Punk or whatever.

But, anyway, Knopfler and his gang sat alongside the likes of Sting and Phil Collins as persona non grata from the MOR era.

But I never really stopped liking them. There were always a nice handful of their songs that, if I should happen to hear them out and about, I'd stop for and enjoy.

Here's an example. A day in 1997 we'd been in Nairobi to renew our visa but somehow ended up being threatened with jail by an immigration official, so our time was being cut short and we only had a couple more weeks before our flights back to England, and there was a lot to get straight, we took the train back from Nairobi to Voi, which is the largest town on the main road from Nairobi to Mombasa, and was an evocative, wild west frontier town-like place, and we got back to Voi in the early hours and would have to catch a bus to Wundanyi (our nearest small town) which wasn't til the early morning, so we had a few hours at Voi bus station, and I remember we bought some sausage and chips with watery ketchup and prepared to try and get some kip on a bench and contemplate the vastness of the sudden switch in plans, weighing up the fact I was secretly relieved to be going home with the brief blast of adrenalised fear Mr Kirui had, for his own amusement, given us that afternoon, and the disappointment at not being able to complete what we'd intended, and, anyway, complete incongruously, 'Why Worry' by Dire Straits came quietly out of the speaker hung on a post, and it was a moment in time.

'Why Worry' has that trite sentiment - "hey, things are bad now, but they'll be better in the future" which can be terribly grating at times, but also sustains some of the most perfect and beautiful songs ever written, from 'Be Not So Fearful' to 'From the Morning' to 'Over the Rainbow' to 'Hey Jude', and sometimes that trite sentiment is all we want and need. More than we'd care to admit.

That night in Voi, that song had been sent by my god to calm, reassure and amuse me, and even in these particular awful, endlessly hopeless time, it does the job as well as anything else.

I found myself watching a documentary of a Dire Straits concert a few weeks ago. If I tell you Knopfler, mullet and headband and all, was the least uncool man on display, you get the idea. But, boy, could he play guitar.

I've loved the theme from 'Local Hero' most of my life though mostly I didn't even know what it was, I love 'Blind Willie McTell' more than almost any other Dylan song, and it's Knopfler's guitar accompaniment that adds so much to it, I still find 'Sultans of Swing' thrilling and 'Romeo and Juliet' delightful.

I get some of the negativity but Knopfler never erred in the taste stakes anywhere near as much as Collins or Sting or countles others, he always kept on making music which seemed relatively true to himself and didn't put himself about that much.

I'm quite sure he's spectacularly rich and doesn't care much about any of it, but I think he's as due a critical reappraisal as anyone.

Brief 46: Gareth Bale

Gareth Bale is an interesting case in my theories of what it means to be a great footballer. In his early years with Spurs, I was obsessed with the fact they never won when he was playing - it was (not sure if it still is) the longest stretch for a player not to win a game in Premier League history. 

When he suddenly got brilliant, that all seemed like a particularly funny coincidence. But if i'm to be consistent to my own idea of what makes a footballer, none of it is coincidence.

That thought came back to me when Bale re-signed for Spurs this year, and, with the team 3-0 up, came on for his first appearance as a substitute against West Ham with about 20 minutes to go, only for it all to go awry, resulting in a 3-3 draw.

I've also been thinking, separately, about the greatest footballers I've ever seen in the flesh. For a Spurs fan, I haven't watched them all that many times. The last time was an FA Cup match vs Fulham in 2010. I sat with the Fulham fans. Spurs won. I remembered the game dimly, that Fulham were better in the first half, but Spurs came back strongly and won 3-1 and I had to pretend indifference.

I looked the game up online - pleasingly, both Bale and Luka Modric, two of the great footballers of the last decade, were playing. I then had a memory (perhaps false) of thinking at the game, "Aah, finally Bale is good". Closer inspection reveals that game indeed took place just at the pivot point when Bale became brilliant, and then became a superstar. For the next three years, he was sensational for Spurs, earning his record transfer to Madrid, where his legacy is soured and up for grabs, but the successes should be indisputable.

Yet Zinedine Zidane, when he came in as manager, didn't want to play him. And is it possible he was right? Is Bale one of those players who, unless magnificent, is bad. Is that the way the start and end of his career will be defined?

He was magnificent for Spurs for three years, and undoubtedly made an ok team a lot better, including reaching the quarter-finals of the Champions League. He was also magnificent for Wales for several years, inspiring an ok team to the heights of the semi-finals of the European Championships. This proves that, at his best, he could be a team's Number 1 star (though it is to be noted that Spurs' best recent years have been since he left the club).

At Madrid, he went in as "second superstar", behind Ronaldo but not a standard team player either, expected to do incredible, stunning, unique things, but also defer to his more consistent and productive team-mate.

This set-up worked. He produced many extraordinary moments. https://www.youtube.com/watchv=yWVrolNQ4RU&ab_channel=RealMadrid This goal in the 2014 Copa de Rey was a preposterous combination of power, speed and skill. He was a bit like football's Jonah Lomu for a while.

Madrid won the Champions League four times when he was at he club, and he was integral to at least two of those. However, Barcelona remained, mainly, the dominant team in the league - Bale, with his injuries, his inconsistencies and highly specific set of skills, didn't quite bring the all-round dominance Madrid might have hoped for.

Maybe he's like an uber-Gerrard, a cup specialist, a master of moments rather than the man you can build your team on (that's the player Gerrard should have been, Liverpool made the mistake of building their team on him).

So, for me, that's the fascinating thing with Bale back at Spurs. Will it be a disaster? Will he be, past his best, an active negative for the team, like he was before his best, or will Mourinho deploy him wisely such that he brings real added value to a squad already full of attacking talent. Maybe he'll end up where he began, as the reserve left-back.

Brief 45: Et tu, bono et cetera

I've been thinking for a long, long time about compiling a list of the worst songs ever. It's harder than you'd think. It's not that much fun being mean, especially as I don't actually know a single thing about music and, deep down, admire anyone who manages to get a single song written and listend to, and also, most songs that are bad are not bad in an interesting way, or a way I can bring any insight to.

The kind of bad I'm interested in, of which there is less than you'd think,  is when something tries too hard to be good, or when pomposity and bad faith takes overwhelms everything.

Anyway, U2 ... 

Sometimes, with U2, I'm not entirely sure what my problem is, and I recognise the solid, anthemic rock band with good tunes which millions around the world have loved for years. You don't have to hate anything, David, and are you really sure this is something to hate? Poor Edge. Edge seems nice.

Really, they all seem nice, in their way. 

But, on other days, when I really notice how much U2 (let's say Bono, cos it's Bono that people mean when they don't like U2) have always been trying so hard to be some-thing, to do some-thing, that I understand fully why they inspire such loathing, in me and in others.

Trying so hard to be sincere and meaningful in the 80s, then trying so hard to be ironic and funny in the early 90s, then trying so hard to be modern and hip in the mid-90s, then trying so hard to sound like Gay Dad's 'To Earth With Love' in the early 2000s. There's something about a massive band copying a song by a smaller band and having massive success with it which is pretty annoying.

Anyway, I'm not really explaining this well, I guess it's just that every song by U2 is either 'Student Demonstration Time' by The Beach Boys, 'SYMM' by the Manic Street Preachers, 'Closing Time' by Semisonic, or 'Crazy Beat' by Blur.

That's the thing.

Brief 44: The moral leaders of Britain are young black people

I've been thinking this for a while, but it seems timely to say it now. I hope this doesn't seem a fatuous or gratuitous point. 

Apart from the unavoidable Marcus Rashford, I won't be giving a list of names and actions. Suffice to say, I've seen countless examples in the last few years where the most (indeed, only times) I've felt a sense of pride, affection for country, hope and, dare I say it, moral order, has been in the achievements, initiatives and words of young black people.

I think there are various reasons for this. Clearly it is not that they are the only people doing noteworthy good deeds.

There's a reason why it is Rashford, in his early 20s, and 100 year old WW2 veteran Tom Moore, whose stories resonated this year. Moore belongs to the last generation whose actions are entirely accepted and celebrated - the generation below his are broadly despised by their juniors and seen to have abdicated moral responsibility, while mine, the next one down, looks at itself now as not having done enough positive with the knowledge and understanding it has - it looks admiringly and apologetically at its youngers, a generation of activists out of necessity (or else, it collaborates with the one above ... Matt Hancock is younger than me, people like him in charge ...).

And where the British black pioneers of previous years were publicly pilloried as much as they were celebrated, there is, at least now, more of a critical mass that looks for and finds greatness in the actions of Rashford and his peers.

I grew up in a Britain where the black youth was the bogeyman, the demon. At school, on the news, on the sports field. That hasn't changed entirely, let's not kid ourselves, but when the tabloids went after Raheem Sterling, there was far more of a mainstream biteback than there'd have been in the past.

The black youth of Britain are a living contradiction of the myths of empire, yet also the embodiment of a dream that feels a bit like it's died, of a Britain that might have been, that maybe was close, if it had fully accepted its colonial legacy and the glorious impetus of its large immigrant communities.

Look, there's a degree of personal confirmation bias in this. When I attempted my PGCE in 2005, I floundered in my final placement in a school in Peckham with a high proportion of black kids. As much as the truth was simply that I was unsuited to teaching, I felt like I'd failed to get to grips with these children's realities, their identities, their hopes and dreams.

In the following years, I worked from home near Clapham South and would hear and see the kids from St Francis Xavier 6th Form College going into and out of school on week days. And gradually I gained a sense, a belief, that this was the hope and glory of Britain. I know it sounds crass and cliched, but it was all so contrary to the racist stereotypes I knew still flourished across England.

I know there are dangers to this perspective - firstly, that it buys into the myth of the "good immigrant", that young black people need to be of outstanding character, rather than just run-of-the-mill, to be accepted. Secondly, that such a glowing, rose-tinted view ignores the deprivation, prejudice and danger that young black people still face.

All that is true. I can only say that, overwhelmingly, this is where I am taking my lessons about values, kinship, aspiration, nuance and fairness these days. Others exist, but modern Britain is set up, for better or worse, for these lessons to have the greatest impact.

Brief 43: Being wrong about a big thing

It's ok to be wrong about big things sometimes. Some people are paid good money to be wrong about big things three times a day, after all. Considering how much time I spend online, I've managed not to make a fool of myself tooooo much, by strongly stating big important opinions that would go on to be completely wrong.

I tend to be able to hedge, or to stay silent on things even if my head is burning to submit a big important, heartfelt opinion to the world. I'm glad social media came along when I was just about old enough to mainly know how not to be an overt mega-twat all the time.

I comfortably get along by getting things wildly wrong about sport sometimes, which is fine and less embarrassing, but still a little bit embarrassing.

But I did give one terrible twitter take this year, which I'm happy to admit was a terrible take (whatever should happen in the next few weeks).

I tweeted in early March: 

"The way the Democrats have suddenly closed ranks to shut out Sanders would be impressive if it wasn’t so depressing. One would almost think they could organise to win. But Biden will lose in November. Without a fight"

Whatever happens, this is clearly a bad take. It felt to me, at the time, when South Carolina congressman James Clyburn led the closing of the ranks by Democrat leaders in support of Biden just when it looked like Sanders was going to be the nomination, that it was not only a poisonous conspiracy, but an unwise one.

Wrong on both counts - swayed I suppose, by leftist online fervour, which I am usually only slightly partial to. Biden has been an excellent candidate, his best qualities have shown, and the doddering, compromised fool the Sanders left was painting  has not been seen.

The key thing is, and this is an indictment but it's true, he was always going to be the guy most likely, when some were finally too sickened by Trump to stick with him, that they'd look to and be ok with what they saw. That's not a good thing, but it's true. That's what was needed in this election, and I guess O'Rourke, Buttigieg etc, even Warren when she didn't explicitly back Sanders, saw that.

God knows what's going to happen, but Biden's been the right candidate for 2020, and I'm glad to have owned up to my terrible take.

Brief 42: What was the best thing of the 1990s?

It was not lumberjack shirts. It was not Expecting to Fly by the Bluetones. It was not Just a Gigolo starring Tony Slattery, or Caffrey's.

It was Italian football on Channel 4.

When live top flight football left terrestrial TV at the start of the Premier League in 1992 (and no one had Sky back then), when Paul Gascoigne was playing for Lazio, when Serie A was the best league in the world, Channel 4 had a brilliant idea, a brilliant idea which worked.

We were always told that Italian football was technically excellent but dull and defensive. I still remember watching the first live match in September 1992 (at a family friend's house in Gloucestershire), a 3-3 thriller between Lazio and Sampdoria, two goals for Beppe Signori.

There were many memorable games and memorable players - a 3-2 victory for Sampdoria over Milan where Ruud Gullit, for Sampdoria, avenged his jettisoning by Milan with a stunning winner ... not just the superstars like Baggio and Gullit, the likes of Diego Fuser, Abel Balbo, Daniel Fonseca, Pietro Vierchowod.

Gascoigne was a bit of a side issue - he was meant to present the Saturday morning show Gazzetta Football Italia, but was completely unreliable, so the job, serendipitously, went to producer James Richardson, who turned out to be one of the great sports broadcasters of all time. Gascoigne was meant to be Lazio's star, but he was mainly disappointing there. Not just that he was injured a lot, he just rarely played particularly well when he did.

Paul Ince and David Platt, on the other hand, were excellent in their stints at a variety of Italian clubs. So much of 90s football is forgotten, I find - a story narrowed down to Gascoigne, Shearer, Cantona, Beckham, Bergkamp. Ince and Platt were England's two world class players in the first half of the decade, trying to hold an average team together while Gascoigne wasted his talent away.

The commentary on the live games was magnificent - Peter Brackley is, for me, one of the three greatest British football commentators, and he'd be joined, mainly, by Ray Wilkins, Paul Elliott, Luther Blissett or Joe Jordan, all of whom were super-knowledgeable, and with all of whom Brackley had a great rapport.

When there was so little football on TV, it was such a steady and reliable joy - I, and millions of others, watched it regularly for most of that decade, saw the coming of Boban and Savicevic, Asprilla and Zidane, Seedorf and Henry.

It's time came and went - more bought Sky, or went to the pub on a Sunday to watch the Premier League, La Liga began to dominate more, something like that. It finished in the early 2000s, I think. I remember I was disappointed, but had not been watching regularly for a while. Such a place and time it was, though.

Brief 41: Rushed Strokes

 I quite like The Strokes' 2020 album 'The New Abnormal'. It's really a good listen.

Which got me thinking that, up until that point, every single piece of new music The Strokes had put out since their first release I'd enjoyed less than the previous one. Every single one.

That's pretty unusual and disappointing over a 20 year period but, I guess, well done to them for halting the decline.

But really, the remarkable thing about The Strokes is that the decline includes their much-acclaimed first album. I mean, that album was a disappointment, even though it was very good.

Their first EP and then their first CD single, both of which I'd already bought and enjoyed, contained arguably their seven best songs - Last Night, Barely Legal, The Modern Age, Hard to Explain, New York City Cops, Take It or Leave It, Trying Your Luck.

So the only songs not on those first two releases, which were widely available in the summer of 2001 before the album's release, were Is This It, Soma, Someday and Alone, Together. So, some might like one or two of those songs the most, but they're not palpably and clearly better than the previous seven.

Like, I can't think of any other band that did that - that put out all their great songs before they'd even released their debut album, as if they correctly gambled that they could create 20 years of hype out of quite how brilliant they seemed like they were going to be.

Anyway, this seems very negative. Their second album is also a very good album. But they could have held something back for it and it would have been even better. Ah well, it all worked, I guess.

Brief 40: Ford v Ferrari

 It's been bracing to watch a film and not like it one little bit.

It's not, objectively, a bad film.

It's directed by James Mangold, who generally directs pretty good films, it stars Christian Bale and Matt Damon, who are both good screen actors I tend to like a lot.

I hated the title - 'Ford vs Ferrari', and the alternative title 'Le Mans 66' and, let me tell you, I hate motor racing, but, what with it being Oscar-nominated and all, I thought the credentials and the notion of it being good old-fashioned solid entertainment would carry it through.

But what I did is underestimate how much I hated motor racing, how much I rejected the idea of motor racing as a film subject, an arena for nuance and for heroism, for humour, for idiosyncracies and for moving loves and friendship.

So, for every deftly plotted turn, ever well-written line, every well shot thrill, I went "yeah, so what", "who cares" "knobs" over and over again, like a small, small boy watching a romance.

And so I had a bit more sympathy for people who flat-out hate films which seem to be to have little wrong with them. There is not that much wrong with 'Ford V Ferrari' - I mean, all the accents are slightly wrong, all the banter is slightly off, all the historical detail doesn't quite ring quite true, but I'd definitely be able to put up with that if it was about cricket, basketball, or indeed boxing.

Though one of the reasons I hate motor racing is why many people hate boxing - it ain't worth it for all the deaths. But, at least, surely, people watching boxing films or reading boxing stories can believe that it has real value and meaning in people's lives, that the jeopardy is real? But here? These car pricks want to be faster than these car pricks, and this car prick wants this slightly more nuanced car prick to help him do that, but, really, it's all just nothing.

Anyway, it's quite a good film. You should see it.

Brief 39 - Interim Pop

 This is a playlist of the stuff I thought I was trying to avoid.

It's the pop charts, 1998 to 2006. These were my CD-buying years - voraciously chasing the heritage of rockular music, as well as buying everything vaguely indie that half-interested me - 1000+ CD albums I bought in those years, hardly any featured here.

This is the pop stuff, the stuff I was mainly turning up my nose at. Yet, of course, I still heard it. I still watched 'Top of the Pops' and 'The Chart Show' then 'CDUK', listened to Radio 1 sometimes, watched 'Popstars' and 'The X Factor' etc.

These are, mostly, the songs which I liked begrudgingly, or thought at the time I didn't like but it turns out I did.

It was still pretty much acceptable to be snobby about pop music in 1998 - I genuinely did think that what I was in to was "better". That changed over the course of this playlist - pop started to win critical acclaim, to be enjoyed and judged on its own merits.

I've finished at 2006, not just because that's when I started downloading music, so everything opened up choicewise, but because, by then, most of barriers were down. I didn't like something like 'Biology' begrudgingly, I loved it and knew it was good. I've chosen 'Patience' by Take That as the last song, just because I hated Take That in their first incarnation, and yet when they came back a decade later, with a solidly pleasing middle-aged pop ballad, I lapped it up.

So, this is that stuff. Of course, I wasn't a complete closed book at the time - some of it, like 'Doo Wop (That Thing)' and 'Get Your Freak On' was recognisably great, even to me.

And, of course, I wasn't entirely wrong. A lot of the stuff of that era was bobbins. Still, here are my favourites, my pleasant memories, of the interim pop.

[usually only one track per artist, though sometimes have allowed an artist twice in different guises].

INTERIM POP - PLAYLIST 98-06

1. Doo Wop (That Thing) - Lauryn Hill
2. Family Affair - Mary J Blige
3. Complicated - Avril Lavigne
4. All The Things She Said - Tatu
5. Move Your Feet - Junior Senior
6. 1 Thing - Amerie
7. Biology - Girls Aloud
8. Irreplaceable - Beyonce
9. We Are Your Friends - Justice vs Simian
10. Toxic - Britney Spears
11. Shackles - Mary Mary
12. Getting' Jiggy With It - Will Smith
13. Chewing Gum - Annie
14. Show Me Love - Robyn
15. I Try - Macy Gray
16. My Love is Your Love - Whitney Houston
17. Milkshake - Kelis
18. It Feels So Good - Sonique
19. Try Again - Aaliyah
20. Genie in a Bottle - Christina Aguilera
21. See it in a Boy's Eyes - Jamelia
22. Leave Right Now - Will Young
23. I'm Like a Bird - Nelly Furtado
24. Get Ur Freak On - Missy Elliott
25. Who's That Girl - Eve
26. Fallin'  - Alicia Keys
27. Lose Yourself - Eminem
28. Cry Me a River - Justin Timberlake
29. If There's Any Justice - Lemar
30. Some Girls - Rachel Stevens
31. Obviously - McFly
32. Shiver - Natalie Imbruglia
33. Hollaback Girl - Gwen Stefani
34. No Worries - Simon Webbe
35. Hung Up - Madonna
36. Pure Shores - All Saints
37. Independent Women Pt 1 - Destiny's Child
38. 911 - Wyclef Jean
39. What Took You So Long - Emma Bunton
40. Honey to the Bee - Billie
41. Keep on Movin' - 5ive
42. Most Girls - Pink
43. In Demand - Texas
44. Ms Jackson - OutKast
45. Groovejet (If This Ain't Love) - Spiller ft Sophie Ellis Bextor
46. It Wasn't Me - Shaggy ft RikRok
47. Chase the Sun - Planet Funk
48. Lovin' Each Day - Ronan Keating
49. Flyby - Blue
50. Can't Get You Out of My Head - Kylie Minogue
51. If You're Not the One - Daniel Bedingfield
52. It's OK - Atomic Kitten
53. Dy-Na-Mi-Tee - Ms Dynamite
54. Dilemma - Nelly ft Kelly Rowland
55. Breathe - Blu Cantrell ft Sean Paul
56. Come As You Are - Beverley Knight
57. Pon de Replay - Rihanna
58. Push the Button - Sugababes
59. End of the Line - The Honeyz
60. Patience - Take That

Brief 38: Cyrano de Bergerac

When we were 14 or 15, Rory Kinnear, who was in my year, played the lead role in a school production of 'Cyrano de Bergerac'.

I'd seen plenty of classical concerts by then, I'd seen amateur and professional stage productions, I'd seen live sport and sport on TV, but that was the first time I experienced a performance that was transcendent.

I saw an interview with Kinnear a few years ago when he was publicising Hamlet or Othello,  for one of those professional roles for which he was heavily acclaimed, and he joked that friends and family still said his best performance was Cyrano de Bergerac, at school, aged 15.

I'm sure, in real terms, it wasn't. I'm sure he's honed his craft an awful lot since then. I've seen him put on several outstanding performances on stage and screen.

But, honestly, that Cyrano. 

We knew Rory was talented, he'd stolen the show the previous year with a comic supporting role in whatever that play was. By that age, there'd been lots of school productions, I'd even been in a few myself, they were fun, everyone took it oh so seriously, occasionally someone was actually pretty good (many still talk about the gravitas I gave my 5 lines as Metellus in 'Androcles and the Lion'. As for Nick Symons as the lion ...)

But when I, and everyone else, watched Kinnear playing Cyrano, the air in the room changed. It was like that. 

Everyone felt it. The school buzzed with it in the next few days. It was hard to know what to say to him about it. From that point, the notion that he'd become an award-winning, scene-stealing, generational stage actor seemed inevitable. I'm sure he wouldn't see it as inevitable, and I'm sure it hasn't been that way in the slightest, but if you'd asked most of us who watched those three nights whether there was anyone in Britain better at acting at that point, and whether in time everyone would come to know it, we'd have said no.

I don't really know what my point is. Probably just that it really, probably was, even with the benefit of hindsight, as good as I think it was. That we were lucky to see it. 

I've had that feeling a few times since, not that many, but quite a few. At sport, at music, at the theatre ... something which feels genuinely special, not just interesting or exciting or good. It's rare.

Brief 37: Choose the Twos!

OK, this is a playlist of the Greatest UK Number 2 singles of all time. I tried to get it down to 60, but couldn't get it lower than 66 songs. Lots of great songs here, and if they're not great, they're at least quite fun.

No one artist is permitted more than one song. Every song has to have reached Number 2, no higher. If I wasn't sure what to include, I went with songs whose presence near the top of the charts was odd or interesting. Sometimes, similarly, I've chosen songs whose Number 2 status is famous in and of itself, like 'Vienna' and 'Sit Down'.

My favourite, in a way ... 24 years later, I still have not got my head round the fact that 'Slight Return', a pleasingly jangly modest shrug of a song by a diffidently pleasant band, entered the pop charts at Number 2. Those were funny times.

My actual favourite ... Penny Lane, I guess. That's a good one. Aah, another note - where's it a double-a side, I've only included one song ... so no Strawberry Fields.

There are, you'll notice, some of the greatest pop songs of all time in the list. The Number 2s in the late 60s were just incredible.

Whether something got to Number 2 or Number 1 used to really, really matter. Perhaps it still does to some people, but it doesn't feel like it.

Final note - this is a playlist, not an order. God Save the Queen is not my favourite, but it seems a fun place to start.

https://music.apple.com/gb/playlist/choose-the-twos/pl.u-d29p0tAZrR6

1. God Save the Queen      The Sex Pistols
2. Sir Duke              Stevie Wonder
3. I Want You Back              The Jackson 5
4. Penny Lane        The Beatles
5. One Day I’ll Fly Away      Randy Crawford
6. Absolute Beginners        David Bowie
7. Sometimes         Erasure
8. Wonderwall      Oasis
9. Shake it Off        Taylor Swift
10. Love Machine    Girls Aloud
11. Some Girls          Rachel Stevens
12. Get the Party Started     Pink
13. Pump Up the Jam           Technotronic ft. Felly
14. Groove is in the Heart    Deee-Lite
15. Take On Me       A-ha
16. My Generation The Who
17. Gimme Some Lovin’       Spencer Davis Group
18. Suspicious Minds            Elvis Presley
19. Ain’t Got No - I Got Life  Nina Simone
20. Lovin’ You          Minnie Riperton
21. Dreaming           Blondie
22. Zoom    Fat Larry’s Band
23. That’s the Way Love Goes           Janet Jackson
24. Confide in Me    Kylie Minogue
25. A Design for Life              Manic Street Preachers
26. Rocket Man       Elton John
27. I Believe in a Thing Called Love   Darkness
28. My Name Is       Eminem
29. Bitter Sweet Symphony Verve
30. Common People             Pulp
31. Wind of Change The Scorpions
32. Sit Down            James
33. Axel F    Harold Faltermeyer
34. Downtown         Petula Clark
35. This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us            Sparks
36. Born Slippy        Underworld
37. Ms. Jackson       Outkast
38. Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of              U2
39. God Only Knows              The Beach Boys
40. Waterloo Sunset             The Kinks
41. Yesterday Once More    The Carpenters
42. In the Air Tonight            Phil Collins
43. Vienna  Ultravox
44. Oliver’s Army     Elvis Costello & The Attractions
45. Push It  Salt-N-Pepa
46. I’m Too Sexy      Right Said Fred
47. Don’t Upset the Rhythm (Go Baby Go)    Noisettes
48. I Need a Dollar  Aloe Blacc
49. Empire State of Mind     Jay-Z ft. Alicia Keys
50. Danger High Voltage      Electric Six
51. My Love is Your Love      Whitney Houston
52. Torn      Natalie Imbruglia
53. Up the Junction Squeeze
54. Kids in America Kim Wilde
55. Golden Brown   The Stranglers
56. Fairytale of New York     The Pogues ft Kirsty MacColl
57. Electric Avenue Eddy Grant
58. Ain’t No Pleasing You     Chas and Dave
59. Justified and Ancient      KLF ft. Tammy Wynette
60. On a Ragga Tip  SL2
61. Song 2  Blur
62. Slight Return     Bluetones
63. Cry Me a River   Justin Timberlake
64. Milkshake          Kelis
65. Pompeii              Bastille
66. American Pie     Don McLean

Brief 36: Herol Graham and Andy Lee

Two of my favourite all-time boxers are Herol Graham and Andy Lee. Both fought around the middleweight division, Graham in the 80s and 90s, Lee in the 2000s and 2010s. Graham is called the Best British Boxer never to win a World Title. Lee was the first Irish traveller (though he spent much of his childhood in London) to win a World Title (a couple of years ahead of his cousin Tyson Fury).

Graham was so good, Chris Eubank openly admitted he didn't want to fight him lest he was embarrassed. He was the first great product of Brendan Ingle's gym in Sheffield. He was brilliant, elegant and could be unhittable.

Lee was also a skilled boxer but in the end it was not his skill that took him to the heights Graham never achieved, it was that undefinable one punch power.

There was a remarkable symmetry in their two stories.

The tragedy (the word is, sadly, probably correctly used here) of Graham's career is defined by his loss in 1990 to one of the most famous punches in boxing history. Fighting for the WBC middleweight title, Graham was dominating a clueless Julian Jackson to the extent the referee was considering stopping the fight when was knocked out cold by one counterpunch by Jackson. The end.

Graham never won that world title.

It was looking the same way for Lee more than 20 years later. His early promise had slowed, he'd lost a couple of fights, his trainer and mentor Emanuel Steward had died, he was trying to kickstart his career, but being dominated for the first five rounds by none other than Julian Jackson's son John Jackson.

Then, this ...

The similarity is remarkable, chilling. Lee, with a similar though slightly less spectacular one-punch turnaround, became world champion in his next fight against Matt Korobov.

As for John Jackson, he hasn't followed his father in being world champion. One punch is sometimes all it takes.