Andy Murray - US Open Grand Slam Champion!

It's 3am and I stayed up to watch it. Andy Murray gave us tension and anxiety in the bucket load as has become his way but it was worth it.

In fact, it has all been worth it. The long journey to watch that prodigious young talent from Dunblane in Scotland make his way to Olympic glory and now to this, the first British man to win a Grand Slam since Fred Perry himself lifted the US Open title back in 1936, is over.

Andy Murray - 2012 US Open Champion

It's been a rollercoaster ride but Andy Murray can now rightly claim to be a truly world class tennis player.

This of course is hopefully only the beginning. His coach Ivan Lendl went on to win a hat-full of majors after his first on his 5th final attempt - just as it was with Murray today.

The future now is looking bright. With the confidence of knowing that he is good enough to win a major, anything is now possible.

Well done Andy, a truly memorable way to bring down the curtain on a truly memorable British summer of sport!

Oh and my tip for British Sports Personality of the Year!

"What The World Needs Now"...is Hal David

Everyone knows the name Burt Bacharach. Or at least they should do. Yet does everyone know the name Hal David? To my eternal shame I must admit that I didn't until I read about his death this morning aged 91.

Hal David was as American lyricist who was famed for his musical collaborations with Burt Bacharach. David won two Oscars for his work on the soundtrack for the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - one for best music, and the other for the song Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head. Both awards were shared with Burt Bacharach.

Many of their greatest collaborations were with Dionne Warwick but there were so many more. Here are only a handful of timeless hits which I have adored since childhood and which I had not realised, until now, were all influenced by the great Hal David...































Popular culture know-it-all and all-round good-egg Paul Gambaccini called him "..one of the giants of all-time of popular music songwriting". I can't really top that.

RIP Hal David (1921-2012)

Amsterdam's Finest Tulips for Max Bygraves

Life can be very peculiar sometimes and so it has turned out once more.

I must admit that I have never considered myself a great Max Bygraves fan. It's nothing to do with his era or his genre - indeed, I am as much a fan of 1950s and 1960s music as I am of any other decade. My father's influences have clearly resonated with me throughout the years.

Indeed, I can add that his comic hit 'You're a Pink Toothbrush' really grated with me and didn't endear the man to me.



Yet despite this, I have happened in recent weeks to have fallen upon another favourite of his which I have taken too. 'Tulips from Amsterdam' is a beautiful, melodic song which I adore. As it happens, Alyson and I have spoken about our thoughts of travelling for a short break in Holland and this musical revelation has added an orange colour to my summer. I was only listening to the song and singing along to its simple but happy lyrics yesterday morning.

So it was with great sadness that I heard yesterday that Max had passed away in Australia at the grand old age of 89.

He can forget his toothbrush, be it blue or pink, but let there be tulips awaiting him as he moves along to a quieter and more peaceful place.

RIP Max Bygraves

Turning 30...

I couldn't really stop the passage of time and so it was that I decided many months ago that if I must turn 30 then I may as well do so with good company and in happy surroundings.

So last weekend, a group of over 30 of my friends from across the UK (including Glasgow!) got together for a Bank Holiday weekend by the sea in Tenby. As a born and bred south Pembrokeshire boy, I could think of nowhere better to stay than in Tenby and with better than forecast weather, we make the most of Tenby South and North Beaches during our stay.

With the many good friends who spent their weekend with
me, celebrating my 30th birthday in Tenby!

On the big day itself, Bank Holiday Sunday 26th August, we had a lovely meal at the Ocean Restaurant overlooking the harbour and it was great that my close family were able to make it to bring us up to a total of 46 there on the day.

It wasn't a matter of looking back forlornly at time lost and looking ahead concerningly at a new decade. Anyone who thought that that was the mentality in which I approached the celebrations, mistook my sense of self and indeed, my sense of humour entirely.

For I can easily describe the past 10 years as being the best decade of my life. I've been very fortunate to have had good health and to have made such good friends and to have lived and enjoyed so many unique moments in that time. This then for me personally, was an opportunity to give thanks to what has been a splendid period of my life.

Looking ahead, I do so with great enthusiasm and with that 'glass half-full' mentality of which I am very proud. Many friends joked during the weekend that they couldn't believe that I was 30 - they thought that I must've been 40 such is my 'old head on young shoulders' persona!

It doesn't bother me one jot. I've always taken life with a slight pinch of salt and a great dose of irony. We don't know what's around the corner and so we must embrace life with a zestful love and thanks for being so fortunate when others in the world are markedly less so.

So if anyone did mistake my self-depracating ironic humour for that of someone lamenting the passing of time, you couldn't have been further from the truth. My 20s were indeed a wonderful time but that is now in the past and I wouldn't wish to re-live it. Life is for the here and now.

So, 30s? Bring it on!

The Greatest Olympic Controversy of All-Time? USA vs USSR - Munich, 1972

It's a wonderful, unprecedented Olympic fortnight for Team GB. But more of that at the close of the Games in a few days time.

What it has done has reminded me of the of the greatest controversies in the history of the Summer Games. It's odd, because whilst I have attended a live Basketball game in my life and enjoyed the frenetic nature of the chase, it is not a sport that I have necessarily warmed too.

Perhaps the American domination of the game that in fairness, they invented in the 1890s, plays a part in my relative ambivalence towards it.

But as a child, I vividly recall watching (time and again I may add) a 'Sporting Disasters' video hosted by if I remember correctly Nick Hancock (yes, it was the 1990s). I am therefore a conoisseur of the heartache and the misery in sport.

Doug Sanders missing a 3ft putt to win the Open in 1970? Gordon Smith missing a guilt edged 1-on-1 with Manchester United Goalkeeper Gary Bailey to win the FA Cup for Brighton? Don Fox's last-gasp missed conversion in the 1968 challenge cup final for Wakefield against Leeds? Yes, I've seen them all and many more. I'm not a sporting nut for nothing you know.

USA vs USSR
But the 1972 Olympic Basketball Final in Munich? It was an incredible drama that ended in the Americans losing their 63-game winning streak that stretched back to the first medalled Basketball competition at the Olympics in Berlin, 1936.

This Wikipedia article states in cold black and white the unravelling drama as the USSR scored a highly dubious last second basket to beat their Cold War foes 51-50. It resulted in the American team contesting the result but to no avail and as a result, they became the first ever Olympians to refuse to collect their medals.

As a result, their Silver medals have apparently to this day been in the possession of the IOC, waiting to be collected - or at least that's what I thought until I watched this fascinating American documentary that marked the 20th anniversary during the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.



It is a biased piece that only speaks to the American side of the debate and not their Russian counterparts but taking that away, it nevertheless told an incredible moment of sporting drama, sporting theatre that when mixed into the political tensions of the age, surely made it one of the, if not the greatest Olympic controversy of all-time.

We've not seen anything near that kind of anger in London 2012 and that is to be welcomed but still, looking back, it was a British man, the Secretary-General of FIBA William Jones who played a central role in the unfolding drama by coming out of the stands and ordering the officials to put 3 seconds back on the clock even though he later conceded that he had no authority to make such a ruling during a game.

You really couldn't have made it up!