There weren't nothin' Calypso about this Cricket

I had the most amazing day on Monday.  I got myself down to the Curzon Cinema, Soho and bought a ticket to a screening of Fire in Babylon - a documentary chronicling the sensational history of West Indian cricket.  Now I'm a sucker for a sports doc, and am fairly easy to inspire, but seeing what this incredible team had to endure really was something else.

'It's a hard, tough, but beautiful sport'

I'm pretty inspired by most professional boxers.  Almost without exception they'll have had to overcome financial and/or personal adversity, demonstrate a level of discipline few of us can begin to understand, and I expect, have a million things tempting them to quit.  But they don't.  They get up at dawn and they work.  Relentlessly.  


One such boxer who epitomised this beautiful, all consuming scenario I've described, was Welsh legend, Howard Winstone.  Aside from possessing a remarkable skill for the sport, his tale is more interesting than most.  In a horrific factory accident, before his professional career had even begun, Winstone lost the tips of three fingers on his right hand.  Now I don't know about you, but losing any of my fingers would definitely stop me doing a fair few things.  Boxing being one of them.  Thankfully, Winstone did not share this mindset.  Undeterred by this seemingly disabling turn of events, Winstone went on to go pro and won 61 of his 67 professional boughts.  Truly epic.


Documenting a story this dramatic seems only fitting, so I'm thrilled that a film (Risen) has been made, capturing the life of this amazing man.  I was lucky enough to have a chat with Stuart Brennan, the actor who's performance as Howard Winstone has just earned him a Welsh Bafta.  Here's what the jammy so and so had to say...

Farcical Idiocy Fishy Antics

Have you heard the one about F.I.F.A?  That's it - that's the gag.  It's all a complete joke.  Blatter is apparently 'deeply moved' at being 'reelected' and the rest of the world (Benin included) thinks that England is nothing more than a pain in the bum.  I mean, really?

Now I'm not suggesting that David Bernstein should've kept his mouth shut and nodded with the men in suits, but I can't help but feel that his eleventh hour protest was a little ill conceived.  To assume that members of an organisation corrupt to the core, would adjust their plans merely since we say so, is a tad naive.