Tuesday 20th November 2007

This week has kind of crept up on me, almost out of nowhere. I know I should write the standard affair, of really looking forward to Friday and Saturday evening but I have to be honest and I am quite apprehensive.

On Friday, I watched Children In Need telethon on BBC1, all the way from 7pm until 2am. In a rare case of multitasking, I was reading a thread on the charity fundraising event over on Digital Spy and watching as people slated Terry Wogan’s presentation style and the Spice Girls for not singing live from LA. My favourite moment from the evening was Terrance Wogan introducing the Sugababes. Post #833 describes events, just before 11pm. I responded with a comment in reply. Basically introducing the girl group playing the song, “Now About You”. I thought for a split second that I had not come across the song on the album, Change. The usual highlight for me during these shows is the BBC News team but I felt rather left down this year, in comparison to some of the big numbers performed in the past.

Did not really do much this weekend, which will explain the lack of updates on the site. My site was also down from sometime on Friday evening, until Sunday morning due to a problem with DNS server over at my host, 123-Reg. In researching this problem on Saturday evening, I discovered the site Avoid 123-Reg. Long term readers of this blog, will know how much I struggled over two years to move from hopeless UK2.Net to my current provider. While I know 123-Reg are not perfect, they are a million times better than UK2. However, as I have now purchased so many domains through the site, there is little need for me to transfer unless there is a complete disaster. My experience of the service has been relatively good. Plus if I need to move across elsewhere in the future, I will do so.

There was a great debate on FiveLive last night regarding Michael Jackson. It felt a bit strange to be listening to something overall positive and focusing generally on the music. I would listen to FiveLive reguarly during the trial, two years ago, with weekly updates from Peter Bowes (he has a blog but it only started in July.) Here we were with a rather skeptical host asking the question, “Is Michael Jackson the greatest pop icon of all time?”. Overall the debate was well run and many fans called in to give their views. I was extremely disappointed with Ash Atalla, producer of The Office and The IT Crowd for refering to MJ fans as “nut jobs”. In the end, Richard was rather shocked for the positive light in which Michael is regarded, not just by fans but by the everyday public. His music is played at clubs every weekend, across the country. Plus, there is the fact that this debate is premature. We are talking as if the man had left this mortal coil. He has not. He has so much more to give. The new album may have been put back to an early 2008 release but there is nothing stopping the MJ publicity drive. He may not be appearing on The X Factor a week on Saturday (confirmed as false by his publicist Raymone Bain) but there appears to be a 25th anniversary edition of Thriller to be released featuring covers. One such song which has leaked onto the web is by Akon.

Off to my first proper England match tomorrow. Thankfully unlike my last two visits to Wembley (in June and August respectively) for friendlies, this time it really matters. Even though, it could have been very different depending on results from Saturday in the group. While a draw would be enough and fantastic (I remember watching the nil-nil draw in Turin back in 1997 on television) I think we need a convincing performance to prove that England are more than just a wannabe international side of millionnaire playboys.

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