Bill McLaren, 1923 - 2010: Rugby Lion

Bill McLaren who died on Tuesday, aged 86, was the BBC voice of Rugby for fifty years. For those of us born just after the war, Bill, like other BBC great sports commentators, Peter O'Sullevan of horse racing, John Arlott of cricket and boxing's Harry Carpenter, was a part of our lives.
In our house, first through the radio in the late fifties and then on TV from the sixties onwards, a five [now six] nations Saturday afternoon was a special winter event.  The curtains would be closed fifteen minutes before kick off, my brother David and I would settle down with Dad to watch the game and listen to Bill McLaren's rich Scottish Border burr describe the action as only he could. His great secret was, although meticulously prepared and completely professional, he seemed so relaxed and anecdotal he could have been sitting in your living room watching the game with you. He also had that magical turn of phrase that could only come from a deep knowledge and love of rugby. It was his great natural talent to find the phrase you wished you had thought of.

He never ctiticized a ref, resisted big money offers from other broadcasters,staying loyal to the BBC all his working life. He never pontificated on tactics like some of today's big commentating names who could learn more than a thing or two from Bill. He loved his family, his rugby, his golf and the Scottish Borders....what more needs to be said!
There will be no dancing in the streets of Hawick this week, but many a smile will cross folks' faces in memory of the fair and proud Scot with a life so well lived. We were lucky to share it a little. Here a few of Bill's great quotes,

On David Duckham: "He could sidestep three men in a telephone box"

On Jonah Lomu: " I'm no hod carrier, but I'd be laying bricks if he was running at me"

On Scott Quinnell:  "There goes 18 stones of prime Welsh beef on the hoof."

On  the All Blacks:  "They look like great prophets of doom today"

On Simon Geoghahan: "He's all arms and legs like some mad rampaging octopus"

On Scott Gibbs: " When he hits you, you think the roof just fell in"

and finally my favourite..........

" He's a slippery as a baggie up a Borders burn"

No more trout will slip by you now, Bill McLaren. Rest in Peace. I will raise a glass to you tonight.

Clarkson's Frustration Censored

Below is a copy of Jeremy Clarkson's recent column for the Sunday Times which was pulled after feet went suddenly cold at the prospect of several influential political personages throwing a tantrum or two. It might also be considered moderately insulting to a broad range of countries, but what would anyone expect from an article by Senor Clarkson? 

Jeremy Clarkson who writes a regular and often tellingly funny column in the Sunday Times also hosts Top Gear a popular BBC motoring programme in the UK. This article reflects the thoughts of many British citizens in one way or another   

“Get me a rope before Mandelson wipes us all out”

Jeremy Clarkson for the Sunday Times

I've given the matter a great deal of thought all week, and I'm afraid I've decided that it's no good putting Peter Mandelson in a prison. I'm afraid he will have to be tied to the front of a van and driven round the country until he isn't alive any more.

He announced last week that middle-class children will simply not be allowed into the country's top universities even if they have 4,000 A-levels, because all the places will be taken by Albanians and guillemots and whatever other stupid bandwagon the conniving idiot has leapt on.

I hate Peter Mandelson. I hate his fondness for extremely pale blue jeans and I hate that preposterous moustache he used to sport in the days when he didn't bother trying to cover up his left-wing fanaticism. I hate the way he quite literally lords it over us even though he's resigned in disgrace twice, and now holds an important decision-making job for which he was not elected. Mostly, though, I hate him because his one-man war on the bright and the witty and the successful means that half my friends now seem to be taking leave of their senses.

There's talk of emigration in the air. It's everywhere I go. Parties. Work. In the supermarket. My daughter is working herself half to death to get good grades at GSCE and can't see the point because she won't be going to university, because she doesn't have a beak or flippers or a qualification in washing windscreens at the lights. She wonders, often, why we don't live in America.

Then you have the chaps and chapesses who can't stand the constant raids on their wallets and their privacy. They can't understand why they are taxed at 50% on their income and then taxed again for driving into the nation's capital. They can't understand what happened to the hunt for the weapons of mass destruction. They can't understand anything. They see the Highway Wombles in those brand new 4x4s that they paid for, and they see the M4 bus lane and they see the speed cameras and the Community Support Officers and they see the Albanians stealing their wheelbarrows and nothing can be done because it's racist.

And they see Alistair Darling handing over £4,350 of their money to not sort out the banking crisis that he doesn't understand because he's a small-town solicitor, and they see the stupid war on drugs and the war on drink and the war on smoking and the war on hunting and the war on fun and the war on scientists and the obsession with the climate and the price of train fares soaring past £1,000 and the Guardian power-brokers getting uppity about one shot baboon and not uppity at all about all the dead soldiers in Afghanistan, and how they got rid of Blair only to find the lying twerp is now going to come back even more powerful than ever, and they think, "I've had enough of this. I'm off."

It's a lovely idea, to get out of this stupid, Fairtrade, Brown-stained, Mandelson-skewed, equal-opportunities, multicultural, carbon-neutral, trendily left, regionally assembled, big-government, trilingual, mosque-drenched, all-the-pigs-are-equal, property-is-theft hellhole and set up shop somewhere else. But where?

You can't go to France because you need to complete 17 forms in triplicate every time you want to build a greenhouse, and you can't go to Switzerland because you will be reported to your neighbours by the police and subsequently shot in the head if you don't sweep your lawn properly, and you can't go to Italy because you'll soon tire of waking up in the morning to find a horse's head in your bed because you forgot to give a man called Don a bundle of used notes for "organising" a plumber.

You can't go to Australia because it's full of things that will eat you, you can't go to New Zealand because they don't accept anyone who is more than 40 and you can't go to Monte Carlo because they don't accept anyone who has less than 40 mill. And you can't go to Spain because you're not called Del and you weren't involved in the Walthamstow blag. And you can't go to Germany ... because you just can't.

The Caribbean sounds tempting, but there is no work, which means that one day, whether you like it or not, you'll end up like all the other expats, with a nose like a burst beetroot, wondering if it's okay to have a small sharpener at 10 in the morning. And, as I keep explaining to my daughter, we can't go to America because if you catch a cold over there, the health system is designed in such a way that you end up without a house. Or dead.

Canada's full of people pretending to be French, South Africa's too risky, Russia's worse and everywhere else is too full of snow, too full of flies or too full of people who want to cut your head off on the internet. So you can dream all you like about upping sticks and moving to a country that doesn't help itself to half of everything you earn and then spend the money it gets on bus lanes and advertisements about the dangers of salt. But wherever you go you'll wind up an alcoholic or dead or bored or in a cellar, in an orange jumpsuit, gently wetting yourself on the web. All of these things are worse than being persecuted for eating a sandwich at the wheel.

I see no reason to be miserable. Yes, Britain now is worse than it's been for decades, but the lunatics who've made it so ghastly are on their way out. Soon, they will be back in Hackney with their South African nuclear-free peace polenta. And instead the show will be run by a bloke whose dad has a wallpaper shop and possibly, terrifyingly, a twerp in Belgium whose fruitless game of hunt-the-WMD has netted him £15m on the lecture circuit.

So actually I do see a reason to be miserable. Which is why I think it's a good idea to tie Peter Mandelson to a van. Such an act would be cruel and barbaric and inhuman. But it would at least cheer everyone up a bit in the meantime.

Blog Isn't The Only New Word

At the moment technology is responsible for generating lots interesting new words, adding to the richness of the English language; blog being a classic. Some people are a bit sniffy about this, but it has been going on for centuries.

There is an old hostelry near Marble Arch in London which used to have a gallows adjacent to it. Prisoners were taken to the gallows, after a fair trial of course, to be hanged. The horse drawn dray carting the prisoner was accompanied by an armed guard, who would stop the dray outside the pub and ask the prisoner if he would like one last drink. If he said yes, it was referred to as one for the road; if he declined, that prisoner was said to be on the wagon. So there you go.
More history.
Urine was used to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot and then once a day it was taken and sold to the tannery. If you had to do this to survive you were, piss poor, but even more unfortunate were the really poor folk, who couldn’t even afford to buy a pot, they didn’t have a pot to piss in and considered were the lowest of the low.
The next time you are washing your hands and complain, because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, just think about how things used to be.

Here are a few more facts about life in the sixteenth century:

Most people got married in June, because they took their yearly bath in May and they still smelled pretty good by June. However, since they were starting to smell, brides carried a bouquet of flowers, to hide body odour. Hence the custom today, of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all were the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could almost lose someone in it: hence the saying: don't throw the baby out with the bath water!

Houses had thatched roofs with thick straw piled high, with no wood underneath. This was the only place for animals to keep warm, so all the cats, dogs and other small animals such as mice lived in the roof. When it rained the roof became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. This was how the saying, it's raining cats and dogs came into our language

Dirt floors were the norm; only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, dirt poor. The wealthy had slate floors, that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As winter wore on, more thresh would be added, until, when you opened the door, the thresh would start spilling outside. So, a piece of wood was placed in the entrance way, hence: a threshhold became part of the English language

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle, that always hung over the fire. Every day, they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight, then start over the next day.

Sometimes families could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon, to show it off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could bring home the bacon. Families would cut off a little, to share with guests and would all sit around talking and chew the fat.

Bread was divided, according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.


Lead cups were commonly used to drink ale or whisky. The delightful combination of lead and alcohol would sometimes knock out imbibers for a couple of days. Pedestrians walking along the road would take these poisoned imbibers for dead and prepare them for burial. They would be laid out on the kitchen table and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if the dead one would wake up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.

Burial grounds were scarce in England people often ran out of places to bury people. So, it became common practice to dig up coffins and the bones and sell them to a bone-house then re-use the grave. When reopening these coffins, about one in twenty were found to have scratch marks on the inside and citizens realized they had been burying people alive. So, it became a custom to tie a string to the wrist of the corpse, thread it through the coffin, up through the ground and tie it to a bell.
Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night, the graveyard shift, to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer
And that's the truth.

Or is it all in the bear's imagination?