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The Guardian
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Brian Glanville was fearless, witty and hovered in the press box like Banquo's ghost
Brian Glanville, who has died aged 93, was what Groucho Marx might have been had the old master of the one-liner shown any interest in football. I doubt if the greatest soccer scribbler of them all – the London-born son of a Dublin dentist and an Old Carthusian expensively educated in literature and song – met Groucho (Brian knew a host of famous people), but their exchanges would surely have blistered the paint off the walls. Nobody swore so elegantly as Glanville, who hovered in the press box like Banquo's ghost, the gathering's invisible conscience, ready to deliver a scathing observation, relayed, sotto voce, to a nearby colleague like a chorus baritone in one of his favourite operas. Sitting behind me in the Tottenham press box during one match, he leaned forward to remark – apropos bugger all – on the future of the then struggling young Sunday Correspondent: 'It has the smell of death about it.' Garth Crooks, who was sitting next to him, was as bemused as he was amused. The joy of Glanville was, perversely, best experienced when he was at his most vitriolic. He loved football as few others could ever do, but he detested many things about the modern game, most vehemently commercialism and corruption, and let the world know it at every available opportunity. For most of his working life, those opportunities came around every Saturday afternoon for the Sunday Times in a golden age of football commentary as he went joke for pithy joke with the Observer's Hugh McIlvanney, Jim Lawton of the Express, and any other of the frontline heavyweights. Glanville, like many of his contemporaries, did not often bother with quotes from the principals, but he littered his work with references that showed the depth of his cultural interests. When he derided the efforts of a lazy full-back caught napping on the goalline as, 'alone and palely loitering' he was briefly impressed that I recognised it as a line from Keats's La Belle Dame sans Merci – followed by the inevitable put-down: 'Did poetry in your school, did they?' No pity there, then. It was part of what made up the Glanville we knew and loved. He was fearless – and feared. If that implies arrogance, so be it. But it was a price worth paying to hear and read the string of witticisms that lit up his work. He would pursue a story or an opinion to the end of its useful life, such as in the Lobo-Solti match-fixing scandal of 1972-73, when he wrote a series of stories under the banner of The Year Of The Golden Fix. When colleague and longtime friend Michael Collett said to him: 'Brian, I reckon you've made more from the scandal than they did from the fix itself,' he replied: 'You're too facking right I have.' He did not let many earning opportunities pass him by and hoovered up all sorts of stories for Gazzetta dello Sport (he lived in Italy for many years) while simultaneously reporting on a match, major or minor. I recall one international at Wembley when he interrupted the chatter to inquire: 'Anyone hear the results of the rowing from Nottingham?' There was an Italian competing. He wrote and spoke across several mediums – books, plays, occasional commentary, film and radio scripts – upsetting listeners in a 1950s BBC play about Hendon's Jewish community in north London, where he had grown up. It did not seem to bother him. Brian was at his happiest when looking in from the outside. As a scriptwriter, Glanville left us with many pearls in the incomparable film of the 1966 World Cup, Goal! When his beloved Italy went out to North Korea – a shock on a par with Vesuvius, in his opinion – he put in the narrator's mouth the memorable aside: 'So Italy go home to their tomatoes.' He also wrote, acidly, of the North Koreans: 'So little known, they might be flying in from outer space.' The film, matchless for its sense of drama and sun-drenched nostalgia, gripped an audience that would celebrate England's lone success at the highest level in the final. The campaign reached an ugly crescendo, however, in the foul-filled quarter-final win over Argentina. Glanville's contribution was that 'it is famous not just for Geoff Hurst's controversial offside goal but the Argentines' dirty tactics, which included spitting and kicking'. That unvarnished assessment came from Glanville's rock-solid confidence in his own judgment. He would listen to an argument, but not often back down. His then sports editor, the late Chris Nawrat, once insisted he finally go and talk to the England manager Bobby Robson (after years of roasting him in print without a single quote). Brian reluctantly trudged off with the paper's peerless photographer, Chris Smith, who would also operate the reel-to-reel tape recorder for the historic showdown. When they returned to the office, Glanville – technically illiterate – said it had gone so well they nearly ran out of tape, adding: 'What the bloody hell am I supposed to do with it now?' 'Transcribe it, Brian,' Nawrat said, surreptitiously tying some twine from the nearby art desk around Glanville's ankle until he pressed all the right knobs and the job was done several hours later. If Glanville listened to anyone, it was his enduring muse. Groucho Marx's wit was never far from his lips or his pen and Brian delighted in borrowing from the great man's litany of smartarsedness in conversation. One of my favourites, and his, was Groucho's quip after suffering some fools not-so-gladly: 'I've had a particularly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it.' But any evening with Brian was unfailingly entertaining, a gift even. Another one gone, then, 'home to his tomatoes'. Kevin Mitchell was the Guardian's award-winning former tennis and boxing correspondent
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Liquid Mike Announce New Album Hell Is an Airport, Share 'Groucho Marx' and 'Selling Swords': Stream
The post Liquid Mike Announce New Album Hell Is an Airport, Share 'Groucho Marx' and 'Selling Swords': Stream appeared first on Consequence. Michigan rockers Liquid Mike have announced their new album, Hell Is an Airport. The sixth studio effort is out in full on September 12th, but you can hear the lead singles, 'Groucho Marx' and 'Selling Swords,' below. Vocalist and guitarist Mike Maple revealed that the album's title originated from the idea of airports as liminal spaces. 'Airports are these weird, intermediary spaces that have always made me feel like I'm stuck in limbo. This album deals a lot with themes surrounding feeling stuck and unable to crawl out,' he said in a press statement. 'Airports are stressful and congested and bureaucratic and never sleep; I imagine hell operates very much like an airport.' In a couple of days, Liquid Mike are kicking off their tour of North America. The first seven-date leg is alongside band Drug Church, and starts on May 17th in Ottawa. The second leg is in support of Descendents, with their first performance on July 29th in Charleston. They'll play concerts along the East Coast with the final show set for August 9th in New Haven. See the full schedule below, and get tickets here. Liquid Mike's latest album, Paul Bunyan's Slingshot, was released last February. Artwork: Tracklist: 01. Instantly Wasted 02. Lit From the Wrong End 03. Crop Circles 04. Double Dutch 05. AT&T 06. Selling Swords 07. Meteor Hammer 08. Grand Am 09. Groucho Marx 10. '99 11. Claws 12. Bad Lung 13. Liam Gallagher 14. Hell Is an Airport Liquid Mike 2025 Tour Dates: 05/17 — Ottawa, ON @ 27 Club # 05/18 — Hamilton, ON @ Bridgeworks # 05/20 — Des Moines, IA @ Wooly's # 05/21 — Madison, WI @ High Noon Saloon # 05/23 — Indianapolis, IN @ Turntable # 05/24 — Grand Rapids, MI @ Pyramid Scheme # 05/25 — Covington, KY @ Madison Live # 07/29 — Charleston, SC @ Music Farm + 07/30 — Charlotte, NC @ The Underground + 07/31 — Norfolk, VA @ The NorVa + 08/02 — Montclair, NJ @ Wellmont Theater + 08/03 — Wilmington, DE @ The Queen + 08/05 — Burlington, VT @ Higher Ground Ballroom + 08/07 — Albany, NY @ Empire Live + 08/08 — Allentown, PA @ Archer Music Hall + 08/09 — New Haven, CT @ College St. Music Hall + # = w/ Drug Church + = w/ Descendents and Teen Mortgage Popular Posts First Look at Nicolas Cage and Christian Bale in Madden Movie Drummer Chris Adler Opens Up on What Led to Firing from Lamb of God Morris, Alligator in Happy Gilmore, Dead at Over 80 Years Old Jazz Pianist Matthew Shipp Derides André 3000's New Piano Project: "Complete and Utter Crap" Stephen King's The Long Walk Movie Gets Long-Awaited Trailer: Watch Say It in Ghor: How Andor Brought a Brand New Language to Star Wars Subscribe to Consequence's email digest and get the latest breaking news in music, film, and television, tour updates, access to exclusive giveaways, and more straight to your inbox.
Telegraph
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Big noses are back. Now I'm trying to learn to love mine
Mine is a face that never really stood a chance. My elder brother has a big nose, which he inherited from my father. My grandfather on my mother's side and my grandmother on my father's side both had big noses too. In old family photos, some of my bigger-nosed and bespectacled ancestors look like they are wearing those Groucho Marx fake-nose-and-glasses masks. Yes, I come from a long line of long noses, so guess what? I also got a large, straight and right-angular hooter, the size and proportions of a traffic cone. Don't stand too close to me, because if I turn around quickly, it may knock you over. Mine is an annoyingly regular design, undistinguished by any proper, noble nasal code; it isn't Nubian or Roman, or aquiline. It isn't broken in some heroic and interesting way (a la Jason Statham). Instead, its bluff and steep architecture, wide and blowsy and inelegant, just sits on my face like a fleshy Toblerone. And I hate it. But maybe I shouldn't. Perhaps I should learn to love it, 'own' it and use my defect, because right now, big noses are having a moment. Actor Paul Mescal recently claimed that his large nose was a key factor in helping him win the starring role of Lucius in Ridley Scott's recent Gladiator sequel. 'The nose that I absolutely hated when I was in secondary school – and used to get ribbed for,' Mescal told an interviewer, 'became very useful when Ridley needed somebody to be in Gladiator II.' The money-making Roman snout follows in the aquiline slipstream of other bankable, big-nosed actors: Steve Carell, Bradley Cooper, Matthew Macfadyen, Jeff Goldblum, Andy Samberg, Liam Neeson, Adam Driver, Ryan Gosling, Owen Wilson, F Murray Abraham. Currently sniffing around the album charts are veteran goths the Horrors, their front man, Faris Badwan, the proud owner of a magnificent gothic bugle worthy of a Disney vulture. Then there is King Konk: Adrien Brody, the owner of a nose so large, busted and skew-whiff that his make-up artist on The Brutalist once tried to remove it believing the Oscar-winning proboscis to be a prosthetic. Big noses are big news. Medical records acknowledge the fashion – the United States in particular is no longer obsessed with fixing its noses, and the number of rhinoplasties conducted by surgeons has gone down 43 per cent since 2000. Ten years ago, nearly 400,000 Americans were having their noses made smaller, slimmer, straighter and cuter. Now the annual figure is only about 225,000. And if you have had a nose job, shaving your Roman down to a ski jump, it is possible to reverse it. Augmentation procedures break the nose bone and redeploy grafts of extra cartilage taken from the ears and bone from the hips, elbow or skull, remodelling and building it up to enlarge and widen the nose. These operations are particularly popular in China, where prominent, straight 'Western' noses with a strong bridge and wide nostrils are considered attractive and a sign of wealth and success. ('The big nose,' F Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, 'always means brainy and well-educated'.) Los Angeles-based cosmetic surgeon Dr Alexander Rivkin says he's seen a definite increase in patients wanting their natural look back. 'Some feel like they no longer look like they are part of their family,' says Rivkin, whose 'reverse rhinoplasty' technique restores bumps and curves into his patients' noses via a course of injectable fillers. 'Some feel like they don't look like their ethnicity. They feel like their previous imperfections made their nose and their face look more natural and they want that back.' Would I ever consider rhinoplasty myself? Not really – my big farmer's nose is, at least, in some sort of proportion to my big, agricultural face – but my tortured, nose-ist inner voice did consider his children for a while. Remember that episode of Frasier, ' Roz and the Schnoz '? The one where radio producer Roz gets pregnant and has to meet the grandparents of the expected child? And when those grandparents arrive at Frasier Crane's apartment they both have huge noses. Sample dialogue: (Niles to the parents) 'You're going to a dog show?' 'Yes, We have two giant schnauzers'. And later, Roz, clearly distressed: 'I'm just sitting here thinking, what if my kid gets Rick's nose…?' This masterclass of silliness, slapstick and otorhinolaryngology first aired in 1998, four years after my first daughter was born, a year before my second, and it remains my favourite ever episode of Frasier, but also one that gave me pause for thought. Would my beautiful children both be cursed with my family snout? I didn't want them to suffer like I had – school mates calling me hilarious names such as 'Concorde' and making reference to Monty Pythons' Life of Brian ('Blessed are the big noses…'). As they grew older, I wanted them to be able to kiss with confidence, too. When I was in my teens, a button-nosed girlfriend used to perform a goofy dodging motion with her head before she leant in for passion. 'It's difficult with you,' she'd say, grabbing the end of my schnoz and tweaking it. 'You're so… nosey.' Praise the lord – and Saint Blaise (AKA the Patron Saint of noses) – neither daughter has inherited the Mills muzzle. A culture of front-facing imagery helps the big-nosed man get by. The actual owner of a schnozzle doesn't know his own nose too well, or get to see its full extension, side-on that much. We live in a flattering, photogenic, straight-on world, where smartphone camera and Zoom lens shoot in portrait mode and no one – except the King, while on postage-stamp duty or the 'heads' side of the coin, or a crim posing for a mug shot in the cop shop after an arrest – ever needs to be seen in profile. And that means, unless we encounter them in real life, we don't get to know their nose size either. So it comes as a shock to clock it in off-guard photos and video conferences. If your nose is big enough (like mine), you can actually see it though, with one eye closed, without a mirror, on your own face; a pinky pyramid, poking into your field of vision and blocking out any detail on the other side. When I'm lying down, my nose doubles as a sun dial. Small-nosed people do not have this advantage. Sunglasses and spectacles won't create much of a diversion; the polished architecture of my bold tortoiseshell frames may attempt an illusion of snout reduction but, actually, the shades only make things worse, providing a sort of launch pad for the missile's nose cone, my nose sticking out from the bridge like a plastic fake. Paul Mescal
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Unless Labour acts fast, Britain's growth mission is doomed to fail
The great philosopher Groucho Marx once said: 'There are only two things you can start without a plan: a riot and a family. For everything else, you need a plan.' These words came to mind while listening to the Chancellor during her Spring Statement last week. The Chancellor has acknowledged the reality of the UK's challenges and just how hard it will be to stimulate growth. However, nine months since coming to power, I'm not clear on the Government's detailed plan for achieving growth. We understand and support their objectives and want to play our part to deliver on them. But to do so, we need a plan. The Government is rightly ambitious for the UK and has started to show a willingness to make tough choices. That must continue if we are to succeed. A plan involves making specific choices, creating trade-offs, and prioritising certain actions over others, rather than attempting to achieve everything, everywhere, all at once. I wanted to set out some specific actions that will move us more quickly towards growth in the areas of regulation, infrastructure, and skills. On regulation, the Prime Minister has stated that politicians have delegated too many decisions to regulators rather than politicians taking decisions for which they are elected. I agree. The Government has begun to work with regulators to make them more supportive of growth but this approach may take a while to bear results. A regulator's instinct tends towards preserving regulation rather than removing it. I'm keen to see more direct intervention from the Government to evaluate which regulations support economic growth, which are unnecessary, and which can be adjusted. A smarter approach to regulation, if you will. An interesting case study from the real estate sector is the Building Safety Regulator (BSR), which was established with good intentions following the Grenfell tragedy. Instead of trying to improve the existing building safety regime, the previous Conservative government created an entirely new process with a scope that was too broad and inadequate resourcing. The result is that major housing schemes face delays of anything up to 18 months before they can even get on site. The Chancellor was clear that planning reform is something that will drive growth in this parliament. However, the delays caused by the BSR risk undermining that outcome and require urgent government intervention. And while significant progress has been made, there is more to be done within planning reform, especially as documents such as the London Plan expand and address topics far beyond their intended scope. This policy creep increases costs, drives delays, and reduces benefits to the local community. Real estate is an example of a sector heavily impacted by extensive, conflicting regulation with no single body having oversight of the totality. A 'smarter regulation tsar' for real estate could be tasked to oversee and streamline these regulations with a specific remit to unlock growth and help the Government hit its targets. Turning to infrastructure, the Government has sought to tackle the UK's less-than-stellar track record, bringing strategy and delivery closer together with the new National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority. This is welcome, but it's important that we place urgency and speed at the heart of delivery. This needs to come from the Government providing strong political direction to ensure that it prioritises fewer projects and explicitly focusses on accelerating their delivery. To build confidence, the Government could provide planning permission in principle for key shortlisted projects, avoiding lengthy processes without guaranteed consent. This approach can help foster trust and encourage investment by demonstrating the UK's commitment to delivering infrastructure, and is consistent with the direction of the Government's planning reforms. Examining skills, there is a long way to go. Private sector businesses haven't consistently invested enough in their workforce – a challenge made more difficult for many businesses given the National Insurance and minimum wage increases. While successive governments have changed their approach to education and skills training and further education has been squeezed. We have two issues to resolve: equipping our workforce for now and for the future. The 'now' problem involves addressing the significant skills gap. For example, the Construction Industry Training Board estimates that the UK will need 250,000 extra construction workers by 2028. The Government has recently announced £600m of investment to train 60,000 more skilled construction workers, which is welcome. These entry-level apprenticeships are important, but we should also be thinking about how this funding could be used as mid-career apprenticeships to support people to re-train. The 'next' problem focusses on future skills. The Industrial Strategy should guide this by identifying sectors and sub-sectors that will secure the UK's competitive advantage and developing training that aligns. Combined authority mayors could also play a greater role in tackling future skills, aligning local skills agendas with the Industrial Strategy. An excellent prototype is Andy Burnham's M-Bacc in Greater Manchester, which is an alternative qualification for pupils who don't go to university. Directing funding and powers to forge links between education, skills providers, employers, and regional leaders seems the best way to ensure our workforces are fit for the future. As the Chancellor made clear, the world has changed. We can't just will growth into being and instead need to adapt to the realities we face. The UK's businesses are prepared to play their part but need to understand the gameplan to do so. Mark Allan is the chief executive of Landsec Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
03-04-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Unless Labour acts fast, Britain's growth mission is doomed to fail
The great philosopher Groucho Marx once said: 'There are only two things you can start without a plan: a riot and a family. For everything else, you need a plan.' These words came to mind while listening to the Chancellor during her Spring Statement last week. The Chancellor has acknowledged the reality of the UK's challenges and just how hard it will be to stimulate growth. However, nine months since coming to power, I'm not clear on the Government's detailed plan for achieving growth. We understand and support their objectives and want to play our part to deliver on them. But to do so, we need a plan. The Government is rightly ambitious for the UK and has started to show a willingness to make tough choices. That must continue if we are to succeed. A plan involves making specific choices, creating trade-offs, and prioritising certain actions over others, rather than attempting to achieve everything, everywhere, all at once. I wanted to set out some specific actions that will move us more quickly towards growth in the areas of regulation, infrastructure, and skills. On regulation, the Prime Minister has stated that politicians have delegated too many decisions to regulators rather than politicians taking decisions for which they are elected. I agree. The Government has begun to work with regulators to make them more supportive of growth but this approach may take a while to bear results. A regulator's instinct tends towards preserving regulation rather than removing it. I'm keen to see more direct intervention from the Government to evaluate which regulations support economic growth, which are unnecessary, and which can be adjusted. A smarter approach to regulation, if you will. An interesting case study from the real estate sector is the Building Safety Regulator (BSR), which was established with good intentions following the Grenfell tragedy. Instead of trying to improve the existing building safety regime, the previous Conservative government created an entirely new process with a scope that was too broad and inadequate resourcing. The result is that major housing schemes face delays of anything up to 18 months before they can even get on site. The Chancellor was clear that planning reform is something that will drive growth in this parliament. However, the delays caused by the BSR risk undermining that outcome and require urgent government intervention. And while significant progress has been made, there is more to be done within planning reform, especially as documents such as the London Plan expand and address topics far beyond their intended scope. This policy creep increases costs, drives delays, and reduces benefits to the local community. Real estate is an example of a sector heavily impacted by extensive, conflicting regulation with no single body having oversight of the totality. A 'smarter regulation tsar' for real estate could be tasked to oversee and streamline these regulations with a specific remit to unlock growth and help the Government hit its targets. Turning to infrastructure, the Government has sought to tackle the UK's less-than-stellar track record, bringing strategy and delivery closer together with the new National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority. This is welcome, but it's important that we place urgency and speed at the heart of delivery. This needs to come from the Government providing strong political direction to ensure that it prioritises fewer projects and explicitly focusses on accelerating their delivery. To build confidence, the Government could provide planning permission in principle for key shortlisted projects, avoiding lengthy processes without guaranteed consent. This approach can help foster trust and encourage investment by demonstrating the UK's commitment to delivering infrastructure, and is consistent with the direction of the Government's planning reforms. Examining skills, there is a long way to go. Private sector businesses haven't consistently invested enough in their workforce – a challenge made more difficult for many businesses given the National Insurance and minimum wage increases. While successive governments have changed their approach to education and skills training and further education has been squeezed. We have two issues to resolve: equipping our workforce for now and for the future. The 'now' problem involves addressing the significant skills gap. For example, the Construction Industry Training Board estimates that the UK will need 250,000 extra construction workers by 2028. The Government has recently announced £600m of investment to train 60,000 more skilled construction workers, which is welcome. These entry-level apprenticeships are important, but we should also be thinking about how this funding could be used as mid-career apprenticeships to support people to re-train. The 'next' problem focusses on future skills. The Industrial Strategy should guide this by identifying sectors and sub-sectors that will secure the UK's competitive advantage and developing training that aligns. Combined authority mayors could also play a greater role in tackling future skills, aligning local skills agendas with the Industrial Strategy. An excellent prototype is Andy Burnham's M-Bacc in Greater Manchester, which is an alternative qualification for pupils who don't go to university. Directing funding and powers to forge links between education, skills providers, employers, and regional leaders seems the best way to ensure our workforces are fit for the future. As the Chancellor made clear, the world has changed. We can't just will growth into being and instead need to adapt to the realities we face. The UK's businesses are prepared to play their part but need to understand the gameplan to do so. Mark Allan is the chief executive of Landsec
