Many a mickle maks a muckle

There's a very silly advert for the "The Italian Job" DVD on TV at the moment - you know, the classic gold heist film, Michael Caine, "You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off" and all that. (IMDB suggests that they're remaking it next year... mmmmurrh.) The gag is that, in the voiceover at the end of the advert, they say "Buy it or nick it now!" - with a big graphic on the screen saying "DON'T NICK IT". A silly gag, but it amused me.

Why is there a depressingly accurate generalisation that the better an advert is, the less frequently it will be broadcast?

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Well, it ain't Slamball - nobody's talking about it. I don't know who the "usual suspects" are with regard to minority sports, but I don't perceive any sort of excitement, of public interest. No buzz, no second season, no chance. So long.

The BBC's flagship weekly sports magazine, Grandstand, has rebranded itself "Extreme Grandstand" for one day. There is always great debate about how much of what is effectively public money (as funded by the TV licence) the BBC should spend on sport; consequently, many of the prestige sporting events have gone to other channels.

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Last call for the vocabulary game. Deadline is the end of the month, judged by my local time, so no tricks with the system clock!

The great Chris-o-vocab-o-predict-o-game for September is about to get started. Here are the runners, riders and profile.

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