Bloke and Coke

Man v. Food: the very best of America

2012-01-18T14:46:00.000Z

Over the last 15 years, the America ‘brand’ has been severely tarnished – sometimes as a result of the actions of its politicians and business leaders, but also by oh-so-superior Europeans who hate the fact that large parts of their own populations have the temerity to enjoy such gauche things as blockbuster movies and hamburgers. Residents of the old world who find it hard to reconcile their predictable dislike of the world’s biggest democracy with their love of minced beef discs in sesame seed buns neatly swerve this conundrum by spending 15 quid on burger and chips at middle-class fast food joints like Byron and GBK.

God knows then what they make of Man v. Food, the Travel Channel's homage to everything the uptight European hates about American cuisine. In it, the host – a jovial Brooklynite called Adam Richman – ventures to far-flung places around the country in search that town’s most famous dish or eating challenge. Every week it’s the same shtick:

“Hi, I’m Adam Richman. This week we're at Bobby's in Minneapolis-St Paul, home of the quadruple-chilli-Bobby-burger, and I’m on a mission to see if I can get my fill of the biggest meal in the twin cities.”

Richman, who eats like a bulimic in a toilet showroom, then a) meets the owner b) goes into the kitchen and gazes lovingly at the ribs or burgers/tastes the spice mix and c) chats to locals who are chowing down on slabs of dead animal which look like they’ve been scooped off the field at Agincourt.

Then, and this is the show’s money shot, he takes the restaurant's eating challenge – normally a vast sandwich crammed with incalculable amounts of meat, cheese, chilli… and more meat. With fries. Surrounded by cheering diners, he proceeds to eat it, quickly at first, then as the sheer enormity of the task hits him, with dogged resignation. This man never gives up. Think of Ali versus Foreman, the champ soaking up the punishment without a moan, and you’re somewhere in the right ball park. It is wonderful television.

Occasionally – very occasionally – Richman is defeated, usually by something containing gallons of coagulating cheese. And it hurts. But there are no excuses, just an admission he wasn’t up to the task. We're with him when he fails, we know he's given it all and we love him more for it.

America is a country built on hope and possibility – and Man v. Food is dripping with both. Not only do we learn about the food that feeds the country – and believe me, those pit masters at barbecue restaurants are every bit as skilled and passionate as the most do-gooding, organic cook over here – but we witness that joyful American spirit in action. What other country could invent something so delicious and utterly bonkers as ‘chicken-fried bacon’?

At a time when so many of us love nothing more than judging the eating habits of (white, working class) people who love mini-kievs and Findus crispy pancakes (both of which I utterly adore), it’s refreshing to find a programme that celebrates food for the joyful experience it should be. There is no guilt here, just dedication by restaurant owners and chefs to create food that tantalises every pleasure-sensitive bud on their diners' tongues.

If this programme was made here, the host would ironically eat the grub, while the director cut in shots of suitably ugly/old/pale people eating FOOD WHICH IS BAD FOR THEM AND WE PRETEND NOT TO LIKE, so the viewers can indulge in that favourite of British pastimes: laughing at the lower orders.

Richman is the polar opposite to that. A New Yorker with “years of experience in the restaurant trade”, he undoubtedly knows his 30-day aged ribeye from his artisanal-made loaf made by lesbian dwarves in Williamsburg. But on his odyssey, he never judges the food of Main Street America and more importantly, the people who enjoy eating it.

He loves it all, and I love Man v. Food.

Ten 2011 Fashion things

2011-12-31T11:47:00.000Z

The triumph of ‘heritage’ in menswear. Five years ago it was only Oi Polloi (see above) and End Clothing pushing the workwear-meets-preppy-meets-scally look. Now, everyone, from flash East London boys on the pull in Shoreditch to Mancunian rats hanging around the forecourt at Old Trafford, looks like they’ve walked off the pages of a J. Crew catalogue.

Girls suddenly styling their hair into bouncy, soft buns – and looking like Princess Anne circa 1974 in the process.

Collaborations which should tick all the right boxes actually ticking none. I’m thinking of you, Banana Republic vs Mad Men.

Blokes finally, finally ditching the Beckham '99 spiky mullet in favour of World War II side partings and mod crops. See Barton, J (above).

Moustaches everywhere. Movember has made a fair proportion of country’s males look like Tosh Lyons-style bent coppers from the early ’80s. See Barton, J (above).

The domination of The Only Way is Essex (above) played out every Saturday night as hordes of young men go out looking like a mix between Tarzan and Linda Lusardi.

Women’s magazines trying to pinpoint a ’90s revival – without actually being able to work out what a ’90s revival would look like.

Three-piece suits. Decently dressed chaps like Gary Barlow, Dermot O’Leary and Daniel Craig (above) may have donned them, but the fact remains that a one-colour, three-piece makes you look like a walking curtain – or a bourbon-addicted boss from some 1976 battle-of-the-sexes comedy.

Alarmingly shit hi-top trainers spreading from the gay community to fat lads who work in garages. Stop it, now.

T-shirts which reference the activities of young men of the late 1970s being worn by their sons. See brands like 80s Casuals (above) and Northern Boys Club for proof.

A Life in Liverpool Matches 10 Liverpool 2 Manchester United 1, 13 September 2008

2011-12-10T20:34:00.001Z

The walk to Anfield is a little different today. I step out of Kirkdale station, down the same streets and jiggers I've been using for years until the fortress at the top of hill appears, a lumbering giant asleep in a bed of Victorian terraced houses. Unusually, though, I'm early. The badge-sellers are silently setting up while unsmiling, fat men in catering caravans take out concertinas of frozen burgers for the last stage of their journey into the bellies of other, perhaps even fatter men. This though, does not concern me – for now, Anfield, and Liverpool's match against Manchester United, can wait.

For the first time ever, I continue down Walton Breck Road away from the ground and toward the Liverpool Supporters Club, an unremarkable building that’s barely registered in all my years following the Reds. This is where coaches from all over the UK (and beyond) often deposit their scarlet-clad cargo for an afternoon some of them have spent their whole lives dreaming about. Today, though, the clientele is different, more focused, determined. This is not a football crowd, it's a union mass meeting.

The Liverpool flags and banners being waved on the triangle of grass outside the club tell their own story. References to players and past glories are few and far between, except for one – and it is in his name that we are stood here today. His angry Scottish defiance, his determination to turn an ordinary north-western football club into not just the most successful team in England but a cultural force way beyond that of a mere sports team is at the heart of what is driving us to this unremarkable plot of land. This meeting, this protest and the march that will follow are done in his name. This is the Spirit of Shankly.

Recently, it has become clear that Liverpool's apparently moneybags owners, Tom Hicks and George Gillett are in fact skint, and using the club as collateral on a wild gamble which they hope will pay dividends when they re-sell it. So hard-up are they that every bit of money Liverpool FC earn is used to pay back interest on the the debt that the pair used to buy the club. This means no new players, no support for the manger (who Hicks calls “Roffa”) and certainly no new, 70,000-capacity Anfield, despite the Americans' claims that there’d be “a spade in the ground” within 60 days of them taking over in 2007. The fact that Hicks looks like an absolute twat in his scarf merely adds to my distaste of the man. These two are bleeding us dry.

Over the last few months the Spirit of Shankly, the country’s first football union, has come together to fight them as realisation has dawned that the club can only suffer while Hicks and Gillett (plus his despicable and badly-named son, Foster) are at the helm. The march has been organised to show Liverpool fans all over the world just what's being done to their team. Anyone who cares about the club is here, including some who’ve given up their favourite sport of hitting people from Salford just to march. Sacrifice comes in many guises.

Inside the club, which resembles one of those depressing windowless caverns where top flight darts matches are held, there's a table with a queue of people waiting to sign up for the SOS. I’m quickly accosted with a “fucking join, Teasdale, you mingebag, it’s a tenner,” and soon I’m a member too – though the SOS badge I'm given is bit big and dare I say, ‘wool’, for my tastes. No matter, such is my socialist fervour I’m one step way from buying that poster of the dead soldier with the word ‘Why?’ written underneath.

The crowds gather outside the club until the word is given and we make our way up toward the ground, a a 4,000 strong wave of defiance and targeted anger. I’ve been given the ‘Scouse Solidarnosc’ banner, which is both striking to look at and a pain in the arse to carry. As we walk up the hill to the ground, the pavements are crowded with people taking our pictures, some of them obviously unaware of what we're marching, others knowing full well what it's all about but suspicious of our motives and the fact they might to actually have to miss 15 minutes of valuable pre-match drinking time – and they're “not having that, lad”.

Being in a football crowd often makes you feel powerful. Anyone who's been to an away match will tell you about the primal thrill of walking with a large group of like-minded individuals on the way to a ground. This feels similar, but there's a purpose here, too – a positivity a world away from the thrill of just being part of a mob in search of conflict. It really is a union march, just without the scruffy bastards in PLO scarves.

One thing is undeniable: a point is very publicly being made today, and as the march turns into the car park behind the Main Stand, somewhere inside Anfield, Tom and George, here for the big Man United match, are just starting to get a sense that the fans of this particular “franchise” might not be so easily fooled after all. It’s the scarf, you see, Tom – you do look like a twat in it. We should have spotted you a mile off.

Originally published in Well Red, the brilliant Liverpool magazine

Ten pictures of phoney football fans pretending to watch football on TV in the name of selling beer, credit cards or tawdry, soon-to-be-outdated electronic devices

2011-11-25T16:16:00.001Z

It’s pleasing to know that talentless, unimaginative ad executives all around the world were paid hundreds of thousands of pounds – maybe more – for their efforts in putting together these these extremely realistic photo-scenarios. Well done, you bunch of pointy shoes-wearing, hair gel-overdosing, Charlotte Street-dwelling piss-soldiers. Now, can any of you tell us… a) Why anyone would bring a ball to watch a game on the telly?b) How many matches the granny with the feather cut in picture six has actually been to?andc) How does the picture of the bedsit sociopath in the socks in any way constitute a football fan?

How to launch an online magazine – and why you should do it

2011-11-11T11:30:00.001Z

The following is a speech I gave to students at City University’s MA Journalism course based around the launch of Umbrella.

What is it?
– Umbrella started with a question: “if I told you there was an abandoned Tube station on your road, would you be interested?” And every bloke – and indeed, most of the women – we asked said yes.

– So, Umbrella is an online men’s magazine dedicated to the pleasures of the everyday – AKA geeky things for cool blokes. It’s a mix of style, fashion, travel, photography, current affairs – and loads of really boring things most of us are too ashamed to admit we like.

Why?
– Firstly, I’d worked on various titles from ICE, a lads’ mag that I edited, to Arena, the original men’s style mag, which became so stylish it was of interest only to 13 wankers in Shoreditch.

Umbrella is my ideal men’s magazine – with all the inconsistencies/contradictions that entails. I like £500 jackets from Stone Island – I also like maps of underground railways.

Most of the men’s magazines I read were the same old diet of celebrities/half-arsed “humour” pieces and features like “The Ten best Gangster Movies of All Time” or “Why – insert name of film/gadget/brand of socks – is going to change your life – for ever”

– Secondly, it was about improving my – and this is obviously a despicable description – “brand”. I knew that Umbrella wouldn’t be able to pay me at first, so publishing it made me look more employable for a regular salaried job.

One thing you’ll find in this career is that the best people are often not in the best jobs – yet they have something that makes publishers want to pay them wads of cash. Umbrella is the best CV I could have, it proves I can publish, edit and sub-edit a magazine from scratch – which to possible employers means I can make them money or at least make them look good in the eyes of their boss.

How did it start?
– I put together a moodboard about two years ago, which is a scrapbook of things I liked from various mags and papers. Doing this is really useful because it gives you a visual idea of how a publication is going to flow.

– I took it to two publishers, IPC and Bauer Media. What with they current climate – and them having absolutely no imagination – they both expressed interest, but did nothing about it. So I took it to a mate of mine, Matt, who’s a designer – and is even more boring than me – and talked about doing it with him.

– We couldn’t afford to print it, but with a page-turning program called Issuu we were able to put the magazine online for zero cost. The first issue came out in Spring 2010. The print version/apps etc would come later, the most important thing was getting it out there.

How do we put it together for virtually no money?
– Ideas cost nothing. Then you use every method you can to get people to write for you, including bribery, extortion and the worst sort of sexual favours.

My day job, which I got partly because of Umbrella, is on a Mazda customer mag, so I give Umbrella contributors paid work on that. But you can do other things – giving young writers and illustrators exposure and putting them on the contributors’ page is really good – or alternatively just buy them crisps. All journos love crisps.

– Other techniques include approaching authors at the big publishing houses. Books come out all the time and people like Penguin and Random House really want publicity for them. You can run excerpts or even attempt to get the author to write something for you, giving you brilliant writing at zero cost.

– But the most important factor in keeping our costs down are the skills me and Matt, the Art Director have. I’ve worked for years as an Editor, Sub-Editor, Features Editor, Web Editor, photographer… you name it, I’ve done it.

And it’s by having these skills that we can put Umbrella out for virtually nothing. Learn everything you can. There are thousands of wannabee journalists out there – the more skills you have the more you stand out.

– In terms of increasing readers, we use Twitter a lot, regularly update the blog and get people to subscribe to a newsletter, the Brolly Brief, which we send out once a week. That means we can inform people who really are interested in what we’re doing when something comes along they might like.

Making money
– Stage one of Umbrella was just about getting it out there. Stage two is about establishing ourselves and starting to bring money in.

– The first way of doing that it through advertising. A mate of mine used to sell ads at Arena, so we approached him and asked him if he wanted to come on board – for a share of the company.

So if you know a loudmouth bullshitting cockney – he can be your ad executive if you decide to do your own thing.

We provide a service for brands that don’t get in the likes of Esquire/GQ, because we understand what they’re trying to do. So, as our readership increases we’re getting people to stump up for advertising space.

– Secondly, you can now buy the mag in paper from a website called Magcloud – so we make about a quid on every one sold. Our readers go to the Magcloud site and order it from there, meaning we don’t have to stump up for five grand to get a load printed.

– We’re also setting up affiliate deals with shops who sell the sort of things we feature in Umbrella. That way we get a percentage when something we’ve put on the mag is sold.

We’re not making lots of cash yet, but we are showing big publishing houses how to come out with a publication from scratch on a tiny budget. The execs at these companies think nothing of throwing several million at a website that no one will ever be interested in, so show them you can make their company money and you could be quids in.

Obviously, they’ll try and screw you and claim every good idea as their own, but if you’ve just sold Student Executions.com for several million, the acquisition of the Hampstead penthouse may soften the blow.

What now?
– We’re building readership and ad revenue so we’re in the position to go to investors with a finished product, and get them to help us make the magazine a profitable going concern.

Personally, I’m also on the lookout for jobs in editorial development – ie launching new mags/websites – using the skills I’ve garnered putting out Umbrella to use at a large publishing company – as well as carrying on doing Umbrella. There is no job for life in this industry, so juggling two or three occupations is the way it’s going to be for many of you.

Finally…
– With Umbrella we believed there was an audience for what we were trying to do. We were also hugely passionate about it – you can’t start a magazine or website unless you’re absolutely dedicated to it.

There’s lots of work for little reward, but if you get lucky and the right people see what you’re doing then you could end up getting paid for what you love – and that’s something we all want.

Shades, fades and funny colours

2011-11-08T18:53:00.000Z

Frankfurt

Liverpool

Buckinghamshire

Rye House Speedway

New River, Islington

2011-10-25T08:16:00.000+01:00

On turning 40

The early mornings are dark at this time of the year. I know this because I tend to wake up early on my birthday. One of my first memories is bombing through the dark of the landing to my parents’ room as very little lad, and finding lots of miniature toy aeroplanes for me to play with or, a few year later, waking up to a pair of new football boots, a sign that I was becoming a bigger boy, ready to start playing the game more seriously.

As I turn 40, today feels like one of those birthdays, rather than the nonchalant “It’s just another day” of my 20s and 30s. Waking up at 5:20am (exactly the same time as I was born), I reflected on those past four decades: from first days at school, to discovering clubs and acid house, to Hillsborough, Spike Island, Arsenal winning the League right in front of me, university, DJing, London, journalism, marriage and a thousand other places and people on the way. All of them to lead to this, to today. I’m surprised I’ve fitted it all in.

There’s no better – or more poignant – reminder of who really cares about you than the cards you get on your birthday, and there’s a fair few on the Habitat bookcase, including three from my mum, whose words make me well up every time I read them. More than money, more than success, the thing that matters most is love – the knowledge someone is actually interested in your welfare. And, as the sky lightens, and I wait for the calls from parents and friends, the accumulation of that emotion, whether it's in the form of kisses from my wife, words of encouragement from my parents or handshakes from my mates, is the best reward I can have from my time so far on this beautiful little planet.

I like the feel of this next decade already.

2011-10-09T22:12:00.002+01:00

The River Lea – from Stratford to Limehouse

What a wonderful river the Lea is. Running from the hills near Luton to the Thames at Limehouse, it’s supplied the capital with water for hundreds of years, as well as providing a navigable route from the interior to London when roads in this country were nothing more than tracks used by bog-eyed rustics in beige smocks.

Today, the Lea is for the most part a leisure river, its swampy hinterlands providing a visible green wedge that slices through east London and beyond, a reminder that this apparently permanent metropolis exists only because nature lets it.

Near the river’s exceedingly bendy delta – can I say that? – there are canals, islands, mills and bridges aplently, with the Limehouse Cut jetting off from the main river until it too ends, as you would expect, in Limehouse.

And here, where once there were opium dens and secret drinking dens, there are now gastropubs and tasteful apartments by the score, full of gastro-people and their gastro-kids. A microscosm of modern London and a fitting end to the Lea trail – a river that is both mysterious and visible, a river to be explored and enjoyed.

A Life in Liverpool Matches, FA Cup Final 2006, Liverpool 3 West Ham United 3, (Liverpool win 3-1 on penalties)

2011-09-26T08:13:00.002+01:00

“Football?”
“?”
“FA Cup Final, Liverpool v West Ham?”

“No,” says the barman.

“But you’re an Irish bar. You simply have to be showing the match – all Irish bars will be showing the game.”

He looks up at the flat-screen tellies. They’re blank.

“No.”

“Fuck, what are we going to do?” I ask my mate outside. “We can’t miss this.”

“Keep looking, keep looking.”

“OK, good idea, let’s not panic,” I say – panicking.

We run off to another one of Cadiz’s many bars, then another… each one filled with carefree locals eating plates of tapas, and supping glasses of beer and ice-cold sherry. Not one of them is showing the Cup Final. Christ.

Then we get a lead.

“That bloke over there reckons that an ex-Argentina player owns a sports bar by the beach – that’s bound to be showing it.”

“Yes!” I say, and shake my fist. “They’ll probably have the BBC commentary just to add to the atmosphere.”

Sports bars. Normally full of beauts in thick ties high-fiving each other in front of England rugby matches, but I’ll sell the owner my missus for the avvy if he has the game on.

We run back to our hotel, tired/irritated girlfriends in tow, and down into the underground car park where the hire car is. We get in. We are not going to miss this match, that simply cannot happen.

***

The seeds of this debacle had been sown months earlier. With a job paying me enough to afford a spring bank holiday, me and my West Ham mate, Justin, decide to take our girlfriends for a long weekend in Cadiz, that little-known, but ancient city stuck out on a spit of land in the deep south of Spain. A town that, my half-Spanish girlfriends assures me, never gets visited by the British. Great.

“When do you and your bird want to go?” I ask Justin.

“May?”

“Yeah, I’m up for that, be getting hot then, but not too hot.”

“We can maybe go and watch a match, too. Cadiz have got a team.”

Two months later, I get a call.
“You know that weekend we’ve booked.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s FA Cup Final weekend.”

“Is it? Bollocks. I love the FA Cup, I’d rather it watch at home… though I’m sure it’ll be nice to see it in some Irish bar with a mad Spanish commentary. Biggest game in the world, is the FA Cup Final, that’s what Des Lynam used to say.”

“Yeah, everywhere will be showing it.”

I put the phone down. I’m not worried, but in the back of my mind there’s a niggling thought: what if Liverpool get through? Before the appearance of master tactician Rafael Benitez there would have been scant chance of a Cup Final appearance, but last year’s Champions League campaign that ended with that glorious evening in Istanbul has changed everything. We’re already in the Quarter Finals, after beating Man United in round five – there’s a distinct possibility we’ll get to the Big One in Cardiff. And I won’t be able to go.

I pause, and start to entertain the possibility of Liverpool getting knocked out. Would I really sacrifice the glory of my football team and the happiness of hundreds of thousands of Reds fans all over the world, just so I can enjoy my holiday without wishing I was in Cardiff? You’re fucking right I would. It simply doesn’t count if I’m not there.

But Liverpool, with Steven Gerrard at its heart are not going to miss out on English football’s other great prize. They, inevitably get to the Final following a semi with Chelsea. but even more incredibly, West Ham are finalists, too. Well, at least that Cockney get Justin will be buying me drinks when Liverpool destroy them 5-0.

***

The “sports bar” is in fact a bar. A bar like any other in Cadiz, except with no visible televisions around. It’s also closed. There’s another bar nearby. It is crammed with Spanish men on a stag do, throwing gallons of ale down their collective necks and hitting each other with giant foam rubber hats. Ah, that’ll be the sophisticated Spanish cafe society I’ve heard so much about.

“What are we going to do?” I say, losing hope and starting to sulk a like a six-year-old who’s just has his Nintendo confiscated.

Justin looks at his watch.

“It’s ten to three, British time,” he says.

“Is it? Shit.” I say, glumly, then look up and spot a glam-looking hotel nearby. “Hang on a minute, let’s use the computer in that gaff and listen to the British commentary from Radio 5 online. It’ll be like listening to a match in the ’80s.”

We run over to the hotel. Sure enough, there are two big computers in the lobby. We’ll have them.

Justin pays the confused looking fella at the reception some money and we settle down for Alan Green’s biased commentary.

“I fucking hate Alan Green,” says Justin.

“Ha! He’s boss,” I say as I type the URL in.

Here we go. The BBC “player” thingy comes up and we settle back to enjoy the game.

“Tony, turn up the volume, I can’t hear anything.”

I put the mouse over the loudness graphic. Come on, Reds!

“…the programme you want to listen to is not available in your region, come back later…”

We look at each other. That’s it, over. We are broken men – like Scott at the South Pole or the Captain of the Titanic as the waves engulf his indestructable floating folly. Our fate has been decided by events outside of our control.

We walk slowly back to the car and drive to our hotel. The four of us go to the bar. Justin rings up a mate in London, who agrees to text us every time there’s a goal – and in this afternoon, that’s a lot of texts. We never see West Ham taking a a 2-0 lead, Liverpool’s fightback or Steven Gerrard’s last-gasp wonder strike to make it 3-3. The texts tell us that Liverpool finally win on penalties in what will be described as the best FA Cup Final since 1979. We see none of it.

I toast the Reds with a bottle of Cruzcampo, and think about all my mates having the time of their lives – in the truest sense – a thousand miles away in the Welsh capital. Bastards.

This article appears in Well Red, the Liverpool magazine written by fans for fans

Paddington Station vs Hipstamatic

2011-09-15T22:13:00.000+01:00

What a terminus Paddintgon is. From the street there’s none of the show of St Pancras or King’s Cross – instead it skulks moodily behind a nondescript hotel, waiting for the unwitting visitor to stumble on it. The main entrance is a little road which cabs drive down from time to time, and vans use as a drop-off point for deliveries. So you walk down and then suddenly it hit you: one of Britain’s most awe-inspiring structures: Isambard Kingdom-Brunel’s gigantic glass roof. Higher than it needs to be, and all the better for it, light floods down in sunbeams illuminating the highly polished floor with spots of sunshine.

Then there’s the station’s width, the vast expanse filled with platforms, each one the starting point for a journey to the deep south west on the line, that if Brunel had had his way, would have been smoother thanks to his wide-gauge track size. Sadly, that dream – and his idea for a rail link to America – was never fully realised, but his genius lives on in a station a thousand times more iconic than Heathrow Terminal 5 can ever be, even if the only country you can visit from it is Wales.

2011-09-01T17:04:00.000+01:00

How Edwin jeans are made – a rather splendid video

Factory from Edwin Europe on Vimeo.

2011-08-27T22:34:00.007+01:00

Things I like, late August 2011

2011-08-19T15:59:00.005+01:00

Ten tips for students by a media wanker who hasn’t been near a university since 1994

Above: Jilly and the gang prepare to get blitzed on crack and Veno’s at the college fucking “bop”

1) Get off with everybody. If you can't get off with anyone, get off with yourself

2) Beat up the resident goth – this will make you feel loads better. No one at “uni” is hard, so this is your chance to be the “cock”

3) In the first week, when everyone is dead nice to everyone else, make it your mission to be a sullen, introspective weirdo who Blu-Tacs cornflake boxes to his wall and tortures ants

4) Take Wet Wipes with you wherever you go - there is not situation on earth that cannot be improved with a weird soggy towel in a mad plastic bucket thing. Promiscuous people/those with digestive tract problems – this especially applies to you

5) Realise that all locals hate you and that your three-legged race pub crawl is an invitation for a person in a Mackenzie sweatshirt to kick fuck out of you. As is only right

6) Identify the swot in your class who asks loads of dead pointless questions in lectures – then push them off the top floor of the geography block. No-one makes you look like twat

7) Become the weird student who never goes to lectures, gets in with the local casino owner and leaves after eight weeks, never to be seen again. As in, “Er, whatever happened to to Julian?”

8) Middle-class northerners. Suddenly develop a Manc/Scouse persona somewhat at a odds with your upbringing in a big, mad tudor house with a moat round it and weekly trips to your old man’s golf club in Southport/Knutsford

9) Ask a passing female mature student to do your washing for you. Say, “I’m not being sexist, right, but you’re just like mum – and that’s a good thing”. Then ask her how she cooks fish fingers

10) Find someone with a load of ironic posters on their wall of Mr T/Knight Rider. Then set his bedroom on fire – ironically

2011-08-07T16:45:00.004+01:00

Anthony Gormley’s Another Place and Crosby beach

Back up in Liverpool last weekend, so took a meandering stroll at nearby Crosby beach, home to Anthony Gormley’s Another Place, his set of cast iron figures looking out to sea. On a sunny day, with Wales in the distance and the Liverpool waterfront down the coast, there are few locations I like more in the world. It really is another place.

2011-07-27T17:01:00.003+01:00

A life in Liverpool matches… AS Roma 0 Liverpool 2, 15 February 2001

In front of me, outside the Colosseum, is a Roman centurion smoking a cigarette. He’s not alone. There are a lot of them about, all of them puffing on fags then getting their pictures taken – for a small charge of course – with tourists, who find the juxtaposition between the ancient and modern endlessly amusing. The centurions have tough faces, gnarly like varnished wood, tough, unsmiling. One of them fingers his , the sword that conquered the known world 2,000 years ago. You get the feeling that he won’t be the only Roman with his hands on a blade this evening.

The eternal city has a magical place in the hearts of every Liverpool fan. It was here where the Reds won their first European Cup in 1977, the glorious romp against Borussia Mönchengladbach that cemented our reputation as a club with ambitions unconfined by national borders.

Seven years later, we were victorious once more, bringing the Cup back to Liverpool, defeating AS Roma in their own Stadio Olympico: a victory that saw Reds fans stabbed in serious numbers for having the temerity to support that ended the home sides apparently assured victory.

Tonight, our team, a side that’s rapidly growing in confidence under the educated eyes of Gerard Houllier has come once more to do business: to knock these self-important whoppers out of the UEFA Cup. And no blag centurion with lungs like the chimney of the Lobster Pot is going to stop us.

The city is crawling with Liverpool fans. Many are resisting the magnetism of the city’s Irish bars, and instead can be found around the sights, from the Colosseum – which a group of Lacoste-tracksuited youths successfully bunk into – to the Pantheon, the huge dome with the big hole in the top, built by the great General Agrippa over 2,000 years ago as a place of sacrifice. Our group, good(ish) Catholics to a man, even meet up with a couple of Rome based Scouse priests who show us the wonder of St Ignatious’ church and its cosmic 3D ceiling. Stoke City away this is not.

Late in the afternoon, as we get ready to leave our splendid spec near the Piazza Navone to go the game, we’re approached by some lads in Liverpool tops.

“Fucking Eyetie cowards,” shouts one, and his mates give us the Vs.

We look at around. Does he mean us, in our expensive knitwear, tasteful Roma scarves and Steve Wonder sunglasses? He does.

“Fucking come on then, Rome!”

Blimey. He is extremely agitated, and his mates, in a selection of British casual wear that could have come straight from Doncaster’s latest pound store are just as angry. The sensible thing to do here would be to explain – in the years-old tradition of the peace-making Liverpudlian abroad – that “we’re all Scousers, aren’t we.” Fuck that.

“Hey, Eeenglish, fuck your mother,” we shout, showing them the finger, aping the activities of every cliched, scooter-riding biff we’ve all encountered on school holidays abroad. The leader of Kwik Save Fashion Dept mob is not happy. Perhaps he’s scared of flick-combs he think we’re carrying.

He walks over in order to assert his masculinity and only then does he realise that we too, are not just Liverpool fans, but Liverpool fans with Liverpool accents. Something he’s not. Now he wants to be bezzie mates. Sorry, lad, but we’ve just spotted an extremely officious official from a well known Merseyside travel firm with the biggest hair/head combo we’ve ever seen. The opportunity for mirth is too good to resist.

“Can everyone on Coach A come this away,” he says.
“Hey you,” says a well known Liverpudlian from our crew.
“What?”
“You’ve got a massive swede. It’s mad. Your head is dead big.”

He doesn’t know what to say and walks off, clipboard in hand.

The night draws in, the warm February sunshine replaced by the chill of a winter’s night, and we’re all put on buses and shipped to the stadium. Reports come in – as they always do – of lads who’ve been stabbed or set upon by groups of Romans, confirming every stereotype the British football fan has about Ultras. But we get in unscathed and find our place near the back of the packed Liverpool end.

And packed it most certainly is. There are thousands of Liverpool fans here, a tough, loud and some would say mob, fired up in a way that only a game against serious opponents or hated rivals can make you. The Italian crew, sparse but determined, run up to our enclosure and lob plastic bottles of us, a never-ending shower of Evian and Vittel, unlikely to cause damage but irritating in the same way a fly buzzing round your head is. At the other end of the ground, the Ultras hold up a flag that says, ‘Fuck the Queen’ on it. At least there’s one thing we agree on.

Before the game I spot two banners that have gone down into Reds folklore, not just for their wit, but their sheer pointless abstraction.

a) THE NEVILLES ARE UGLY CUNTS

and even better,

b) FRANK BRUNO, YOU TORY PRICK

In the following years, Liverpool fans will outdo themselves in trying to come up with the most profound pieces of banner ‘poetry’, but these flags are what we’re really about: wit, surrealism and nasty, biting piss-taking. They will only be outdone by the legendary ‘I Hate Flags’ flag of a few years later.

The game begins, and Liverpool are superb, passing the ball like a proper European team – patient, but incisive, and over the course of 90 minutes provide a masterclass that eclipses – in playing terms at least – the efforts of the ’84 team. With Michael Owen at his absolute fearless best, Liverpool ride out winners 2-0. “In Rome,” we sing. “We always win in Rome.”

Unsurprisingly, we’re kept in the ground, not just for 30 minutes, but for a whole two hours. The stadium authorities put a recent Liverpool-Man United match on the big screen to keep us happy, but we’re more engrossed by the plastic bottle fight that’s developing among two groups of Liverpool fans near the pitch. The entertainment is enhanced by the sight of some lad covered in masking tape and passed above the crowd like a stage diver at a rock gig.

Finally, we’re let out, many of us ringing our mates back home on the mobiles that have gradually become part of the match-going experience. In the dark, we spot shadowy groups lurking in the distance, people we’ll later learn will be responsible for the stabbing – yet again – of Liverpool fans. But for those of us lucky enough to get back to our hotels unscathed, the party is only starting.

This article appears in the current issue of Well Red, the unmissable Liverpool magazine

2011-07-14T10:29:00.005+01:00

Griff Rhys Jones, CP Company and TV’s best ever city guides

One of the people who influenced us in the setting up of Umbrella was, somewhat surprisingly, TV comedian and presenter Griff Rhys Jones. Obviously he was known to us for his role as one of the Not The Nine O’ Clock News team, but eagle-eyed viewers of a certain age and disposition noticed something else: his predisposition for wearing CP Company and Stone Island jackets in his programmes.

This was no accident, Jones has a love of the works of Sportswear Company stretching back years, and his red Mille Miglia has followed him in his journeys around the world. As he tells the excellent Proper magazine:

“People are fascinated not so much by the goggles on the hood but by the window on the side of the sleeve and I've had a lot of questions about that and I've had to explain that I assume it’s so you can look at your watch. I wish the goggle was slightly smaller to be honest as it’s a bit too prominent on some of the things I wear.”

Of course, a liking for the works of Signore Osti doesn’t automatically qualify you as a good egg, as anyone who’s been to an away game in the Midlands can testify. Instead, it’s his constant inquisitiveness and the desire to uncover stories that makes his programmes essential viewing for those of with a liking for a secret passage or an underground river. His greatest triumph – and there have been many – is his Greatest Cities of The World series, where over the course of 24 hours, he immerses himself into the lives of citizens in places like London, Rome, Paris (below) and New York.

From exploring secret tunnels under Holborn to working with the graffiti removal team on the banks of the Seine, Griff and his team tell the sort of stories that all of us who are fascinated by big, urban centres love. Speaking of his time in Rome, he says:

“I take part in a ceremony that dates from the Renaissance and a church service that could have taken place in the middle ages. Everywhere I am taught the correct way of doing things – drinking coffee, eating a meal, directing the traffic, going for a walk, carving marble. The Romans love their customs and their city. It feels like a jumble but is in fact a melange of displays and ‘mostra’ or shows. This is the city as theatre. Everybody is playing a role and their life is partly about fulfilling their allotted place in and amongst the beautiful scenery and props, partly about showing that they are above it all and all that stuff is for other people.”

If you have time, take an hour or two out to watch these programmes, all of which are available to watch on YouTube. And next time you see him on the telly, check out his clobber: more than likely it’ll have come from a very reputable source, probably in Italy.

See the rest of the series, including the incredible Rome episode here.

2011-07-03T17:13:00.012+01:00

Seven championship-winning tennis shirts

This year’s Wimbledon saw the return of classic tenniswear to the All England Club, with Sergio Tacchini coming up with a beautifully simple range for men’s champion Novak Djokovic. Here’s my selection of the summer’s best polos – and they're all winners.

Yellow Lacoste Live

Robe di Kappa

Pretty Green

Ralph Lauren Polo

Fred Perry

Munsingwear

Brooks Brothers

2011-06-27T21:16:00.005+01:00

What happens when you leave Hipstamatic on when your iPhone’s in your pocket

Something I really didn’t expect. Something rather lovely.

2011-06-20T21:51:00.003+01:00

Camera+ versus Majorca

The island’s beauty amplified by the magnificence of what is currently the best iPhone photo app out there

2011-06-15T07:48:00.002+01:00

A Life in Liverpool Matches 8
Wimbledon 1 Liverpool 0, 13 December 1998

There’s something different about this Liverpool crowd. It’s not its vast size, though this is the biggest group of travelling Reds I’ve ever seen outside of a Wembley cup final. It’s not just that actual Liverpool accents are – seemingly – in the minority, it’s more that this gathering feels like less like one you’d see at football and more like one you’d find it at a stadium rock gig. Christ, there’s women here. And some of them – gasp – are good-looking. Fit birds at footy! When did this happen?

I lean over to my mate. This is the first match we’ve been to together since 1990. In between, he’s been living abroad, I’ve been to university and we’ve both now ended up in London.

“Seen her?”
He looks at a brunette sitting a few rows in front of us.
“Fucking hell, la.”
“I know. Fit.”
“There’s…” he splutters, looking around Selhurst Park, “loads of them.”

We shake our collective heads. This is weird. In the old days, the only women at matches were mad grannies who sat in the Paddock swathed in giant scarves with the players’ names sewn on them or daddy’s girls who somehow got the family’s football gene. But this, this… it’s like going to Cream.

Speaking of which, weekends home are rarely about Anfield any more. Instead, it’s to Cream if we’re in the mood to dance or a trawl around the new bars that have sprouted up around Bold Street if booze is on the agenda. As a city, Liverpool is changing, the mega-club next to the Conti acting as an irresistible magnet for visitors just as the other institution in Anfield has done for decades.

Mates are foregoing suburban semis in Formby, the Wirral or Ormskirk for one-bed flats on the Waterloo or King’s Docks. There are skyscrapers rising around the waterfront and talk of adding a Fourth Grace as councillors and developers seal planning applications over lengthy lunches at restaurants in Victoria Street. And Liverpool FC, as you’d expect, are at the very centre of this brave new Scouse world. People you meet keep telling you’re that they’re “brewstered” or well on the way to this near-mythical state. Is this really the city that elected Militant?

While the ’70s and ’80s had belonged football-wise to the men in red, Liverpool’s nightclubs, if they had any credibility, were home to a very different breed. The idea of Graeme Souness or Alan Kennedy turning up to catch Echo and The Bunnymen at punk venue Eric’s was as likely as Alan Hansen ditching his Birkdale mansion for a squat in Lark Lane.

But today, it’s different. Steve McManaman, Robbie Fowler and David James are regulars in the VIP room at (the) Cream, rubbing shoulders and sharing drinks with DJs, soap stars, singers and local, er… ‘businessmen’. Footballers, yes, are seemingly cool. Some of them don’t even play golf any more.

And today, watching Liverpool play Wimbledon in the Dons’ adopted (and hated) home of Selhurst Park the pull of the newly glamourous game and the young men who play it is all too evident. Not only are these players prodigiously talented (and Fowler is a force of nature), but some of them are not ugly. In fact, Jamie Redknapp looks more like the member of a boy band than an integral member of one world football’s most famous midfields, while Jason McAteer is advertising shampoo. Just over ten years previously our top striker was John Wark, a man who luxuriated in the nickname “Doghead”.

Yet, despite the glitter, Liverpool are not gold. The talent is there, but these players perform like individuals – all chiefs and very few indians, with the game seemingly a distraction to the other more fun aspects of being a professional footballer. A group of them have been labelled the ‘Spice Boys’, such is their reputation for partying with the great and good of the British music scene. What our new manager Gerard Houllier makes of it all is unclear, but I suspect it’s something he hasn’t encountered before.

So, today’s game passes, not like a football match but more like a concert, with highlights, uptempo bits and even a slice of well-timed dramatic tragedy in the shape of Michael Owen’s missed penalty. We politely clap, try to sing a bit and then get off early, something I’ve never done in all my years of following Liverpool Football Club. They’ve lost. I’m not bothered. They’re not bothered. We’re all just playing our parts in making the Premiership The Best League in The Word. No-one is waiting for me outside to beat me up and not once have I been called a Scouse bastard. The scrunched-up ticket in my jeans pocket has left little change out of 20 quid, double what it was just five years preciously. This is football as showbiz, the football that we warned them against. And the world loves it.

This article first appeared in Well Red, the essential Liverpool FC magazine

2011-05-29T10:08:00.000+01:00

Five things we’ve learnt this past football season…

1) In the old days, fans dreamed about getting just one minute on the pitch. This season, both Gary Neville and Steven Gerrard (above) fulfilled long-held ambitions to sit among the fans in the stands. What next? Players getting replica Mille Miglia jackets with the name of notorious thugs on the back?

2) Radio 5 now interviews fans if they’re actually part of their favoured club’s playing or managerial staff. “So, John – how are you going to approach the upcoming derby?” Er… by going to the pub and eating a pie at half time?

3) Danny Baker – apart from perhaps Stuart Hall – is the one presenter who reliases that the discussion of tactics should be of no interest to us. What do we care for four-four-two or defensive midfielders “playing in the pocket”? I’d rather listen to a Radio 4 discussion on local government reform. Football is about prejudice, hatred and the discussion of obscure oddities from the game’s past.

4) We are now in the era of “FIFA football”. Not the corrupt world soccer organization, but the video game that carries its initials. Barcelona now play football just like a PlayStation team, all tippy-tappy passes, no missed tackles and goals curved in from outer space. Even the players resemble avatars, apart from Puyol, who looks like a piece of Play Doh dipped in bucket of pubes.

5) Winning the Premier League isn’t actually that big a deal. When Manchester United finally put us out of our misery two weeks back, it merited about five minutes of discussion in the Sky studio and some footge of their players repeating that Champione* song on the pitch. After that, it was back to the “Race for Survival” and an examination of Charlie Adam’s lovemaking tips.

*It’s campione, not champione – ie: a song Liverpool fans brought back from Rome

2011-05-08T08:46:00.006+01:00

Nice things for May…

2011-05-02T20:09:00.006+01:00

The evening before the Royal Wedding…

Despite my predictable misgivings about William and Catherine’s do at Westmintser Abbey (I’m a left-leaning journalist from Merseyside who lives in north London), there was something irristable about the size of the event that drew me to it.

So, the night before, and armed with my “entry-level SLR”, I walked from work to St James’s Park and Westminster Abbey, looking for an opportunity to take the sort of sneering class-tourist photographs that Martin Parr has made a career out of.

Unsurpisingly, there were lots of red-faced ladies about – many, it has to be said, in pastel coloured fleeces, but there were also MILF-y women from America, stoic teenagers bedding down for the night and more foreign correspondents than at John Simpson’s retirement bash. This is what I saw.

2011-04-22T11:58:00.003+01:00

A Life in Liverpool Matches 7
Manchester United 1 Liverpool 2, March 18 1990

I thought I’d given all this up. The season ticket’s gone, given to someone else who presumably cares more than I do. Saturday afternoons are increasingly spent in Liverpool or - gasp - Manchester city centre, talking about records I’ve heard, raves that are happening or whether it’s acceptable to wear flares and flowery tops with Kickers. My view: it is. Everyone else: it isn’t.

I’ve started buying The Face magazine and thinking about what it’d be like to live in London and go to all these clubs I’ve been reading about. And there’s this band, The Stone Roses, who, along with 808 State and A Guy Called Gerald are leaving less space in my heart for football. At the end of 1989, I go to Manchester and buy Fools Gold by The Stone Roses, Hallelujah by the Happy Mondays and Young MC’s uptempo hip-house record Know How. I finish the day with a beer in Dry 201, Factory Records’ cool bar opposite Madchester’s version of Harrod’s, Affleck’s Palace. I am seriously thinking about buying a hooded top with the yin-yang symbol on it.

So why am I here on a cloudy Sunday in March 1990, waiting with my mates to get the train to Manchester for an occasion that epitomises the tribal, fuck-everyone else footy fan lifestyle I thought I’d left behind after Hillsborough? Why am I excited? Why can’t I stop thinking about the Mancunians I’ll be facing by the fence, ready to abuse or even get a dig in at if I can? People who I may well have danced with at the Hacienda or the brilliant Monday night house raves at Palm Court in Southport. Why? For the same reason I want The Farm to be better than the Roses or to come from the snazzy new studio at the Albert Dock. Because and when it comes to us versus them, no amount of overpriced Lucozade in the Hacienda is ever going to make me like Manchester that much. Top one, nice one, fuck off.

The train pulls into Oxford Road. We get off, hundreds of us, waiting for the local rattler to Old Trafford. On enemy territory now, we’re aware that it could kick off at any time. I’m a shitbag by nature, but the power of the mob is strong and I’m aching for some gang of one-eyed inbreds from Wythenshawe or Davyhulme to try their luck with this pumped-up Scouse mob. The train pulls in, it’s full of Mancs. One looks at me. “Scouse bastard,” he says, no doubt made up to be released from his 18-hour shift in the local cotton mill. “That’s right, knobhead.” Get me, I’m dead hard.

Off the platform, a denim-shirted Liverpudlian wave washes through the barriers, past the GMP, past all their fans, locals and day-trippers alike. “Olé, olé, olé!” we sing, “we are the champs!”. Ticket checked, we’re in and funnelled to a section by their supporters. The abuse is immediate. Some feller, no doubt a pillar of the Lowry-painting community he lives in, waves - that’s right, waves - his walking stick at me. “Scouse bastard!” he screeches. Jesus, some people are so touchy.

There’s an hour of this, and let’s be realistic here, it’s so supremely enjoyable I don’t really want the game to start. This is my third visit here and I’ve never seen us win. But, win we do with two goals from John Barnes, which sends our 12,000-strong enclave of Scouse nationalism into wild, mocking raptures. “We’re gonna win the league!” we sing, and we’re right, we are. Again. The Mancs are furious, now more with their useless Scottish manager than with us. “Fergie out!” they shout. “Fergie in!” we reply.

The game ends, and the fun begins once more. We’re let out late, but at either side of the police cordon there are pockets of United, looking like they want a go, but knowing truthfully, with our numbers, that they don’t. At times like this, it’s the away mob that holds all the cards. A serious-looking crew by Lou Macari’s chippy makes a sortie, but Liverpool are ready. “Fucking come on!” says one fella, leading a mini mob over to them, but the GMP step in and the moment passes.

The train takes us back to Oxford Road. Hundreds of us get off, jubilant at the result, but more pointedly, at ourselves, at our very Scouseness. This is local pride concentrated through the filter of football, alcohol and adrenaline. It is addictive. An announcement comes over the Tannoy: “Will supporters please note that the next train to Liverpool leaves from Victoria station.” With that, we’re off, down the stairs, onto Deansgate and a stroll across the city centre, a victorious invading army, untouchable, triumphant. For this half-hour window in time, Manchester belongs to us. We take it with both hands.

This article first appeared in the pages of Well Red, the essential Liverpool magazine

2011-04-12T21:50:00.003+01:00

Welcome to the Cockney California: Is The Only Way Is Essex dictating how British men are dressing?

The club could be in Alderley Edge, Southport or Wetherby. Anywhere, in fact, that there’s money and people who like to display it. Footballers, models, wannabee-footballers, part-time models, part-time, wannabee model footballers who want to be models. If there’s a recession going on you’d be hard-pushed to find it here.

But tonight we’re in that part of England where Essex merges into London, at a club called Sugar Hut. The soundtrack is R’n’B and funky house, and the crowd’s a blur of tanned skin and perfect bodies where every girl’s called “babe” and every bloke’s a geezer. Recognise them? You should do – your girlfriend’s been watching this lot (and let’s face it, so have you) for the last few months on ITV2. Welcome to The Only Way is Essex – a TV programme that not only demonstrates our attitude to celebrity, but more interestingly, defines perfectly the mainstream male look in 2011. Simply, if they’re wearing it, there’s a good chance that you are, too.

The Only Way is Essex is like a Cockney version of California and its male stars are preening peacocks whose dedication to looking as perfect as possible perfectly illustrates the Beckham-isation of Britain’s men over the last ten years. The show’s two main male stars, Mark Wright, a club promoter and Kirk Northcott, manager of Sugar Hut sport a look that mixes high end designer labels with tans, perfect hair and the sort of the bodies that demand daily workouts to keep them looking sculpted. Looking into the middle distance in publicity shots seems to be big, too.

Londoners have always been flash, always loved a bit of tom (-foolery = jewellery), and when families moved out of the East End into the Essex countryside after World War II they took that attitude with them. Is it any surprise that David Beckham, the man whose quest for physical perfection kick-started all this, comes from nearby Chingford? Mark and Kirk, and the countless men who dress like them, celebrate their bodies in a way that only gay men did up until recently. The clothes they wear, from their Vivienne Westwood shirts to their ready-ripped Diesel jeans are there only to accentuate what’s underneath. And the women – mostly models, beauty therapists and singers – lap it up.

This is the key about the Cockney Californian. Unlike other male looks, such as casual and mod (which are all about getting one up on other blokes), the whole ensemble is designed to make women fancy the wearer. Men like Mark Wright are fully aware of what girls think is sexy. They’ve seen the Armani ads with Beckham in his pants or the Italian rugby team, toned and glistening in a D&G campaign. They’re even happy to call gay co-stars like Harry Derbridge friends. It’s all very media-savvy and modern, yet traditional at the same time.

Mark’s clothes, from his bashed-up All Saints boots (tucked into jeans, naturally) to his chunky Zara cardigan, low-cut, v-neck T-shirt and “actually-I’m-deep” crucifix tell the ladies that he’s fit, healthy and even, if you get to know him, a bit spiritual. It is scientific in its execution. Mark may not be a footballer, but he dresses like one, and the more B-list parties he gets photographed at, the more his ever-increasing fame puts him on an equal social standing with the likes of Frank Lampard and John Terry. As he says, “When you think of Essex, and you think of of money, good looks and tanned people, and people who’ve got a good life, I can’t think of anyone who’s got a better life than me.”

In the past, East Londoners talked about going “up west” for a night out. The Only Way is Essex shows that these day the suburbs take pride over the of the city centre. While the Essex crew will happily pop into Mayfair to party at bars like Mahiki and Whisky Mist, they’re happiest at venues like Jack Tweed’s Deuces club in Chigwell or legendary footballers’ hangout, Faces in Gant’s Hill, a particularly unspectacular part of outer London. But it’s this suburban feel that makes the look so universal – that’s why bars in Cheshire, Merseyside and West Yorkshire are full of Mark clones all trying to impress. Buying their gear involves a quick trip to the local boutique for some key designer pieces (suit jackets/formal shirts are pretty much essential) before heading off to Liverpool 1, the Trafford Centre or Bluewater to stock up on tees, jeans and scuffed boots. Add a bit of jewellery (watch out if you fall in the canal with a jumbo crucifix on, lads) and they’re all set for the evening’s preening.

In the north west of England, they call this look “the funboy”. And that’s exactly what it’s all about: enjoying yourself as much as possible, no matter what the cost. It’s about being a dandy, but not standing out too much. It’s about making yourself look the best you can so you can pull the best-looking bird in the club. And most of all, it’s about putting on a show, because you never know when the TV producer who’s going to change your life will turn up. Now, where’s the spray tan?

This season’s other looks

Himalayan scally
Sturdy mountain-wear has always been a strong look among football fans, but the last few months has seen what’s become known as ‘Himalayan Scally’ take a strong… er, toehold. Think climbing boots by the likes of Diemme, Fracap and Adidas, then add thick coats from cold weather specialists Mountain Wear and Berghaus. Needless to say, none of these items ever come close to any actual mountains.

ASBO Ninja
Wander around the cities and towns of the north west and you’ll notice groups of snarling youths clad entirely in black. Not black in the goth way, though. Forget My Chemical Romance T-shirts – we’re talking black Adidas PT Training sport shoes, black tracksuit bottoms, black coat by The North Face and most importantly, an ear-covering black hat from Lowe Alpine (a “Lowey”). And of course, access to a range of offensive weapons (in black).

Heritage dad
Ten years ago, they were the country’s coolest clubbers, now these 30- and 40-somethings have been saddled with wife and kids. Their solution? Dress the kid in George at Asda, and spend the spare cash on £200 moccasins, Garbstore parkas and Swedish knitwear. Junior then gets strapped to dad’s chest and it’s off into Glasgow’s West End, Manchester’s Northern Quarter and London’s Islington for a Saturday afternoon shopping expedition.

The piece was originally in FHM

2011-04-03T22:06:00.004+01:00

The beauty of vintage Miele

In the new issue of Umbrella, we’ve done a lovely feature on a bloke called Andy, a washing machine engineer who’s devoted to the appliances made by the German brand, Miele. In the piece he talks about the washer he gave his dad, an early-’80s model that’s going as strong today as it was when it was bought nearly 30 years ago. His old man, he says, likes to leave the kitchen door open so he can just listen to it hum as it goes through its cycle.

For the piece, I took a lot of shots of Andy with the Mieles he’s currently got on sale at the store he works at in Islington. The machines, models from the 1990s are meant to be used in an industrial environment, hence their lack of domestic details, but its their utalitarian nature that gives them a timeless charm. They remind me of analgoue synthesisers from the ’70s and ’80s like the Juno 106 and the Jupiter 8 – all coloured buttons, sliders and switches to play with.

Like a lot of things in Umbrella, the feature on Miele is about finding beauty in the ordinary and the everyday. These pics demonstrate this philosophy perfectly.

2011-03-18T22:13:00.014Z

Ten picks for spring

Uniqlo J+ Twill Jacket

Folk shawl collar cardiagan

DNA Groove Aosta shirt

Norse Projects Ola Multi Stripe jumper

Carharrt Klondike jeans

Uniqlo slim-fit white shirt

CP Company Mille Miglia jacket

Evisu T-shirt

Carharrt Arctic waxed coat

Veja Lo Cut Ingenios trainers

2011-03-09T16:46:00.007Z

Invasion maps of Britain and the USA - successful and rebuffed

Maps have a special place in the hearts of men. Maybe I’m generalising here – actually, there’s no maybe about it – but maps do something that males appreciate: they take facts, fears and desires, and put them in an easily digestible – fuck it, I’m going to say “bite-size” – format. They’re the geopolitical equivalent of tidying your desk at work or putting your collection of football programmes in a chronological pile.

After a good look around the internet, I – OK, it was actually the people at this website – these brilliant invasion maps. The first two are focused on Britain. Map 1 (above) charts every place where foreign armies have landed in the British Isles since 1066, when Viking yob-turned-garlic-eating French nobleman pitched up at Hastings with his band of flick-comb-carrying psychopaths and gave King Harold the ultimate cataract operation. Not only have the likes of the Spanish, French and assorted Scandis had a go, but even pretender-to-the-throne Perkin Warbeck. Boss name, is Perkin, by the way – but no-one’s following you into battle with a tag like that.

The second map (above) is more recent, and it has to be pointed out, a little more serious. Originally published in the Illustrated London News of 1940, it shows just how vulnerable the country was from Germany at the the time of Dunkirk. People really believed that occupation was a mere formality, though it’s only because of the bravery and fortitude of the RAF that the enemy was kept back.

Finally, the last set of maps – a selection from Life magazine in 1942. Showing possible invasion routes into the USA, it’s certainly thorough in its anticipation of the coming apocalypse. And, though it no doubt frightened the life out of everyone who read it, you can bet your life the blokes who drew it were having the time of their lives. Every cloud and that.

More on these maps from this essential website

2011-03-05T10:14:00.007Z

Trains of Cologne… trees of the Rhine

2011-02-25T10:20:00.007Z

Don Draper sunglasses, Harris tweed overcoats and other things I like at the moment

The glasses are from a company called American Optical. You can get them on ebay for £20, though you’ll have to pay custom charges of about £15 on them. The jacket is John Rocha at Debenhams, and the other two bits speak for themselves.

2011-02-16T22:58:00.002Z

A Life In Liverpool Matches 6
Liverpool 0 Arsenal 2, May 26, 1989

The ball is bobbling around somewhere in the Liverpool half, but with other fans, goalposts and players in front of me, I can’t quite make it out. Then, suddenly, a figure – I’ll later learn it’s Michael Thomas – breaks free and bares down on goal with the ball at his feet. My heart should be in my mouth. I should be saying “No, no, no…” like I normally do when the Liverpool goal’s under threat, but instead I’m thinking that it would be mad if he did score, if Arsenal did win the League here. I don’t want it to happen, but the sheer drama if they did…

Thomas looks up, pulls his foot back and dinks the ball, almost gently, over the advancing Bruce Grobbelaar. The ball bounces into the net. To my left there’s an eruption. A sea of hands and faces (some with the St George Cross painted on, oddly) burst up from the confines of the away enclosure, a swaying mass of human joy – grabbing, punching, screaming. It’s a release of emotion like I’ve never seen before. The impossible has just happened.

The final whistle goes. My mate and I stay behind, along with, it seems, most of the Kop, to watch the celebrations and, once the shock has subsided, to applaud the new champions. Winning this means so much more to them than losing it does to us. I should be devastated. I’m not.

Because how can you be devastated when in the last few weeks you’ve seen your fellow fans die all around you on a football terrace in South Yorkshire? When you’ve stared at a crush barrier, torn in two by the sheer weight of people suffocated against it and placed your precious pin badge on the scarf that now decorates this piece of mangled cast iron? When you’ve queued up outside a funeral home just to make a call to tell your parents that you’re OK? When you’ve laid flowers in the back of the most famous goal in English football?

How can you get annoyed about Liverpool’s sudden defensive frailty when West Midlands police has been knocking on your door, all false smiles and burgundy shirts, asking you what you were doing in the lead up to the game, and how many people you saw that were drunk? What is the point of waiting around near the Arkles for Arsenal’s mob when you don’t really care whether Liverpool win or not? Does it really matter? ? No.

Though I don’t know it yet, they’ll talk about tonight’s match as the greatest climax to a League Championship ever. In the future, TV companies and football clubs will try and engineer similar occasions, skewing fixtures in a vain attempt at recreating this evening’s events. They will fail. The match tonight is a one-off, the final League game of the season played after Liverpool’s FA Cup Final victory because of the Hillsborough disaster. Usually, the Cup closes the curtain on the season. This evening, the League will take prominence – and from now on this will increasingly be the case. Something, perhaps everything, has changed.

We finally leave our seats and make our way to Kirkdale station as normal. I see a lad I run into at most away games.
“Fucking sickener, eh?” he says. “Gonna find the Arsenal now. Up for it?”
“Nah, just going to get off.”
“Alright, lad, sound. See you about.”

I nod, and start on the familiar walk back to the station. I should be thinking about renewing my season ticket – next year will be my last watching the Reds before I go to university. But my mind’s made up: I won’t be bothering with the game any more. It’s not just the disaster that’s changed me, it’s other things too: like women, like Saturday nights dancing to house music and the Stones at Macmillan’s off Bold Street or searching for raves around the industrial estates of Lancashire. There’s talk of a party coming up called ‘Biology’ in Essex. I want to go to it.

I don’t need football any more – not after Hillsborough. No more crowded terraces, no more long coach journeys for 90 minutes of watching other people perform while I just stand there and lap it up – a happy, clapping Scouser, all funny songs and ready wit. Someone else can have my season ticket. I have other plans.

This article appears in the brilliant Liverpool magazine, Well Red

2011-02-10T22:37:00.002Z

Secret passages of Covent Garden

Covent Garden’s a corner of the capital that everyone knows. If you’ve ever come down here for a booze-up you’ll have no doubt started your session at the Punch & Judy and ended it somewhere near the Strand in search of a post-11pm watering hole.

Londoners know it better, though like Oxford St, it’s one of those places which we tend to leave to the tourists – a shame because it’s actually one of the capital’s most mysteriously enticing quarters.

Up until the 1974, it was the site of London’s biggest fruit and veg market, a five-a-day version of the bloody, sickly-smelling killing fields of Smithfield, the latter the last remaining wholesale market in central London. When the veg market moved to south London, the place went into disrepair before it was restored in 1980 to a chi-chi version of its earlier Georgian glory.

It was also once the site of Lundenwic, the Anglo-Saxon settlement that sprouted a mile west of the original city of Londinium sometime around the fifth and sixth Centuries. Perhaps too scared to inhabit the overgrown Roman town, these immigrants from Saxony set up a village here until gradually they moved back into the city, prompted, it seems by their king, Alfred the Great.

Away from the main piazza, this bit of London WC2 starts getting really interesting, particularly around St Martin‘s Lane, New Row and the ancient-sounding Bedfordbury (the area was owned by the Duke of Bedford). Tucked away behind the book shops and restaurants of Charing Cross Road, the visitor will find a network of passages and alleys, a remnant of old London preserved for sharp-eyed travellers and knowing locals. A secret way into our past.

Behind the Marquis and Harp pubs, you’ll find Brydges Place, a winding passage that acts as an impromptu outdoor lounge, a shared space that respects neither the licensing laws nor the strict boundaries of the individual pubs. There are others, like Rose Lane, Lazenby Court and the best of all, Goodwin’s Court, a facsimile of the shopping street in the first Harry Potter film (without the wizards and stage school brats). Since 1690, people have been escaping the noise and bustle of the city by popping down this beautifully preserved short-cut on their way to somewhere else.

London never ceases to amaze and intrigue those of us who love to find the unexpected, and here in Covent Garden that’s most certainly the case. We may work in the modern world, but the alleys let us know that our stay here is temporary, whereas they are here for the long haul.

2011-02-05T23:16:00.005Z

The Alps, shot and processed in-flight on an iPhone

Well, there wasn’t much else to do…

And one of London too…

2011-01-29T13:49:00.008Z

Industrial Manchester meets Hipstamatic

Away from the scuffed trendiness of the Northern Quarter and the glitzy-but-temporary-looking Spinning Fields, Manchester’s still has the unmistakable feel of an industrial city from a bygone age. By Castlefields (Mancs seem to love adding the suffix “fields” to areas), the canals and railways that fed the “Cottonopolis” of the 19th Century still dominate the landscape, carving up the city with ribbons of iron, steel and water. It’s a bewitching place, especially on a cold, overcast day over Christmas – an impression helped helped by the appearance of a couple of barges piping steam into the foggy air.

With iPhone (Hipstamatic installed) in hand, my dad and I trudged up and over canal bridges and down dank passages, marvelling at the sheer audacity that was needed to create an industrial landscape seemingly unscathed by 150 years of constant use. They knew what they were doing when they built this stuff, did the Victorians – and people will be still using their railways and canals long after our Millennial music halls (such as the nearby Haçienda) are nothing but footnotes in something called pop culture history.

Click on the pictures to enlarge them

2011-01-08T10:29:00.004Z

Carhartt Klondike jeans

Japanese denim. Slim fit. Welcome to my world, my pretties.

2010-12-23T12:47:00.010Z

Chase and Status – and ten things they didn’t tell you about 1990s clubbing

You’ve probably seen the brlliant video for Chase and Status’ equally fantastic Blind Faith tune. A fake documentary/home movie set in rave’s golden era between 1988-92 (it looks like 1990 if we’re being specific), it shows the events leading up to – and including – a warehouse party in the north of England. It’s so accurate, it’s frightening and like the best pieces of nostalgia it makes the viewer feel very old and very young at the same time.

As I was lucky enough to go to some of these events (yeah, I’m cool) – and then make a paltry living out of the scene as it grew, I thought it prescient to highlight some of the things about the – ahem – movement that often get overlooked. Or put to put it more specifically, all the things that were crap about it…

1) Pulling was looked down upon. There you are, just old enough to start getting hold of drunk girls in nightclubs and then acid house gets invented and suddenly getting off with women “is for teds”. Unless you’re a drug dealer/rave organizer/member of the underworld, that is, in which case all that being-mates-with-a-bird is for everyone else, you’ve got a threesome sorted. Top one

2) The scene’s endemic, nauseating smugness

3) Ugly fellas with long perms being inexplicably popular with women. And owning keyboards at the same time

4) People trying to make a connection with a bunch of drug-addled townies in baggy Ben Sherman shirts and the indigenous peoples of South America and their use of peyote

5) The obsession with mixing (and I was boss at it, so I’ve got nothing to lose here), meaning the slew of UK house records between 1992 and 1996 consisted of endless bars of drums going boom-boom-boom just so pricks with cheapo Soundlab decks could mix them in their bedroom. And then sending off their same-as-everyone-else mix tapes off to Cream/Ministry/Back to Basics in the vain hope of getting a gig

6) Discos that had once been the preserve of maniacs fresh out of borstal putting nights on called things like “Taste” or “Elegance”, also full of maniacs fresh out of borstal, but this time in Nick Coleman/John Richmond T-shirts

7) The fashion around 1993-95 for fellas to “dress up“ in silly striped kecks, blag Patrick Cox shoes and massive, massive white shirts – all topped off with a Kangol cap, worn backwards

8) Bricklayers coming to terms with their latent homosexuality and “experimenting” with drag queens in the toilets of horrible clubs in the West Midlands – usually while wearing silver trousers

9) DJs all playing the same records, as they stopped actually buying tunes and just spun the ones they – and everyone else – had been sent by promotions companies that week. And getting huge amounts of wedge for the pleasure of doing so

10) Back-to-mine, after-club get-togethers, where nine people on bad drugs would talk about themselves and pretend to be more wasted than they actually were, while the flat’s resident amateur DJ tried to impress everyone by endless practicing Sasha’s Leftfield/Whitney Houston mix – the Stairway to Heaven of wannabe record-spinners

2010-12-10T08:38:00.002Z

Stone Island: a video tour with Carlo Rivetti

SI boss Carlo Rivetti presents a tour of the satisfyingly futuristic HQ of everyone’s favourite Italian sportswear brand.

Carlo Rivetti's Tour from Stone Island on Vimeo.

They say:

The journey inside Stone Island begins. Carlo Rivetti opens the doors of the headquarters of Sportswear Company in Ravarino, where his brand Stone Island is thought and takes life. A first general recognition where Carlo Rivetti reveals the philosophy of a company that has always been founded on research and experimentation. Where what is revealed is the passion and the deep know how that turn ideas and visions into garments and collections that are always innovative and in the vanguard. What follows is a serialised story, where an indiscreet camera records, without any secret, the testimonies of the people involved and all the places in which the product is created.

We say: Just give us 20 minutes in the factory shop, Carlo.

2010-12-03T08:03:00.002Z

A Life in Liverpool Matches:
May 14 1988, Wimbledon 1 Liverpool 0

Everyone loves the FA Cup. Shanks told us that the League was Liverpool’s bread and butter – necessary, satisfyingly, and after dominating the thing for the last 20 years, almost almost a little dull. We win the League every year – that’s a given. But the FA Cup’s a different matter.

Two years back we demolished Everton – Rush and co showing the pretenders to the throne just what it takes to win on the biggest stage, but that was only our third win in the competition.In truth, it’s the tournament we have the most trouble with, doing something Liverpool teams just don’t do: bottling it on the big stage.

This is why today is going to be so much fun. We’re playing Wimbledon – and acts of God aside, we’ll destroy them. The deadly finesse of Beardsley, Barnes and Aldridge pitched against a bunch of fellas who’d look more at home warming their hands round a brazier on a picket line than running about on the lush Wembley turf. Even their shitty, no-name kit looks like it was bought in a job lot from Ormskirk market. And that Vinny Jones is a bad, bad tit and not as hard as he thinks he is.

Getting to this stage has been interesting too. As season ticket holders, me and my mate have had tickets to every match, our parents pleased to get us out of the house at weekends. We opened with a grim 0-0 at Stoke’s Victoria Ground (my outfit of chinos and white Next coat maybe a bit impractical in the muddy, industrial wasteland of the coach park) then squeezed out a 1-0 win the replay.

A superb fourth round win at Villa Park followed, where a huge following of Reds – mostly wearing baggy jeans, sweatshirts and (cough) dungarees – were sent into raptures by a two-goal victory. Then there was a sweet 1-0 win over Everton at Goodison, which ended by me and my mate getting followed by a bunch of “we’re all Scousers together” blues, intent on sending us to the next round with a good-luck smack in the face.

The sixth round saw us humiliate Manchester City (who’ve started to become weirdly fashionable), before a semi-final at Hillsborough where Nottingham Forest were dispatched 3-1 in the glorious April sunshine. The latter was notable for the fact, that as at Villa Park earlier on in the competition, we’d been moved by police from the central terrace to a pen on the side because the crushing was so bad. Still, that’s football.

I love going to Wembley, the people on the telly call it “Anfield South” and there’s no doubt that it feels like a home from home. Today, we’re going by coach, the occasion of the tie slightly spoilt that by the time we reach Birmingham, the lads from Skem are rolling beer cans full of ‘recycled lager’ down the aisle. It is, as you can imagine, a glamourous and luxurious experience.

Four hours from our departure, we’re nearly there and now I start to get excited. The first thing I notice is the Tesco on the North Circular Road, which for some reason has a huge space-age tower in the car park displaying the time and temperature. You wouldn’t get that back home. And even though we’re nowhere near the West End, you can tell that London is more affluent, more connected, more at the centre of the things than Liverpool. It’s also warmer. I like it.

We pitch up in the seemingly endless Wembley car park – countless coaches from Liverpool and beyond here to dispatch the red-clad faithful. But there’s also some from Wimbledon, which strikes me as being odd. Can’t they just get the Tube? I thought they all lived on it, the lazy bastards. I catch one’s eye.

“Alright, Cockney,” I say in my scousiest Scouse accent.
“We’re not Cockneys.”
“Yeah you are. You’re from London. Cockney.”

Imagine the sound of Ricky Tomlinson mixed with Jennifer Ellison chocking on a chicken bone. That’s me now: King Scouse.

He shakes his head and moves off. Why would anyone support Wimbeldon? They only get gates of about 4,000. Mickey Mouse club. Liverpool will slaughter them today. I’m saying 4-0.

We hang about outside, have a quick moan about the price of drinks/hot dogs/the programme, then go in and find our place on the upper terracing – the best place to stand due to the considerable height of each step. Thanks to the dog track, we’re miles from the pitch (we could well be in another postcode), but still, what a sight. Wembley is beautiful, the quickly populating stands framing the greenest rectangle of turf in the world. And there are Liverpool fans . When I’ve been here before, the opposite end has felt like enemy territory, full of rival fans in other colours. Not today, the Wimbeldon end is chocker with Reds, too. There’s no-one to pit our (famous Scouse) wits against. For the FA Cup Final, it feels, well, a bit routine.

Then the teams come on the pitch and the game kicks off and we wait for us to score and then they get a free kick and it goes quiet and suddenly they’re 1-0 up.

And there’s this sound – a muted, distant cheer, as if those making the noise are underwater. And with the noise you can make out groups of people punching the air, jumping up and down, waving tiny blue and yellow flags. This wasn’t supposed to happen. But we’ll still win – Beardsley will score two and Aldridge will get one at the end and we’ll go home with another bit of silverware for the team to parade around the city. That’s what’s going to happen. That’s what to happen. Doesn’t it?

In the car park after the game, the Wimbledon fans coach by ours is full of gloating Cockneys (they’re still Cockneys to me, ) putting torn sports pages from this morning’s newspapers on the window, each one predicting an easy Liverpool win.

We move out of the car park – which, as it empties, starts to resemble the surface of Mars – and get back on to the North Circular. The Tesco tower tells us it’s 6.15pm and 23 degrees celsius. I’m not sure I want to go home.

From the brilliant Well Red magazine, the essential Liverpool publication – “by the fans, for the fans"

2010-11-28T11:42:00.003Z

Umbrella Issue Two out now!

If you haven’t read it yet, go and have a look. Sod false modesty, it’s great – an outward-looking, truly unique men’s magazine. As they used to say in TV TImes adverts: “I never knew there was so much in it.”

2010-11-21T20:26:00.004Z

New Seamaster jacket at ’80s Casuals

The transformation of ’80s Casuals from niche T-shirt brand to “proper” men’s clothier has been great to see. Starting off with polos and sweatshirts, it really came into its own with its superior range of jackets. The Seamaster is perhaps the label’s greatest achievement yet.

Part fisherman’s coat, part cycling jacket (note the natty peaked hood), I’d couple this with some quality jeans and a pair of Wallabees. Thick jumper underneath and you’re set. We’ll be covering it in detail in issue three of Umbrella (issue two out this week).

2010-11-15T21:50:00.006Z

Hipstamatic versus Liverpool

It’s only an iPhone app, but Hipstamatic is brilliant. Though it’s difficult to take a bad photo of Liverpool.

2010-11-11T22:20:00.008Z

Britain’s ten-minute monsoon

They told us that the weather was going to get a bit extreme – and for a little while today, it did. Luckily, I was a) dressed in Himalayan scally-wear so kept myself dry and b) was carrying my iPhone, so like the cliched media phoney I am, captured a few moments of the deluge.

2010-11-03T15:52:00.011Z

Seven essential bits of winter wear

There’s only three acceptable options for clothing once the nights start drawing in and the miserable weather makes your bones feel like they’re made of something you’d find in the freezer department at Sainsbury’s.

Option one is easy: old-school Crombie overcoats, tweed jackets, comfy knits and brogues. If that doesn’t tickle you, there’s the Italian casual ensemble, with thick funnel-neck cardies, dark denim and Aquascutum/Burberry scarves (yes they’re acceptable again at Bloke and Coke) worn to keep you nice and snug. The third option is a little more leftfield, but it’s a look that’s been popular with in-the-know Mancunians for 25 years. Part mountaineer, part – ahem – terrace casual – it’s a winning mix of hiking boots, tough jeans and huge, winter-defeating overcoats. I call it – because I like naming stuff – the Himalayan Scally. Here’s a few key pieces…

Mountain Equipment Greenland jacket

Adidas Super Trekking

Mountain Equipment Ogre jacket

Fjallraven Vintage 20L Rucksack

MA Strum Military Cardie

Berghaus ’85 T-shirt

Beretta button-down shirt

2010-10-25T17:09:00.005+01:00

How an internet mob works

Despite the glowing, rectangular devices we spend our days staring at and the ethically farmed food we eat in gastropubs, underneath, we humans are essentially the same pitchfork-wielding rustics we were a thousand years ago. And nowhere is this more apparent than on internet forums and chat rooms. Indeed, such is the anonymity that these supposedly 21st Century places provide, they become fertile breeding grounds for one-eyed medieval gobshitery of the worst kind. From rabble-rousing toerags to I’ll-say-anything-to-be-popular no-marks whose only goal is to fit in with a load of people they’ve never met, the cyber-mob displays all the characteristics of the actual mob, though with little chance of physical retribution to temper it, its behaviour is actually worse.

The success of the mob – and by that I mean the realisation of the will of a cohesive group – depends on the actions of certain individuals. Through looking at various football forums and the comments section of The Guardian – because, let’s face it, they’re all but burning people at the stake over there – these people are are easily identifiable. How and when they act sets the agenda in both cyberspace and increasingly – and worryingly – the real world.

Mr Popular
Through regular posting and the use of persuasive and cohesive ideas, Mr Popular is the forum’s most respected poster. Cloaking his (often extreme) views in reasonable language, he plays with the emotions of individual posters like some creepy puppet-master from a 1970s horror flick. With his endorsement, the internet mob has legitimacy.

The Agent-Provocateur
Possessing the sort of thick skin that would make a rhino grab for the moisturiser, AP spends his cyber-time putting up preposterous untruths and hate-fuelled allegations, usually roundly ignored and ridiculed by The Soldiers (see below). With no friends in the real world and still smarting from the time his soiled underpants were found on a school trip to the baths, AP dreams about just one of his pointless causes being taken up. When, for once, Mr Popular goes along with what he’s saying and acts as a catalyst to the mob, AP’s enemy suddenly becomes everyone else’s. Oh happy day!

The Wind Vane
The sort of boring, unobtrusive nonentity that makes up the majority of the population, Wind Vane is an irregular poster, happier to observe and follow those with more wit than he. Never willing to truly commit himself on any subject, WV’s ocassional posts are never, ever replied to. On one hand, this makes him feel sad and irrelevant, on the other the idea that he might just write something other people don’t like fills him with dread. When the mob is whipped up, WV observes from the sidelines, getting a vicarious thrill from both someone else’s suffering, and the fact that it’s not him who’s getting tarred and feathered.

The Soldiers
From Wat Tyler bringing cartloads of yokels to London to get slaughtered by Richard II to hordes of hygienically-challenged Parisians sticking Louis XVI on the Madame Guillotine’s bloody chopping board, the mob is only realised when masses join it. Once Mr Popular has endorsed Agent-Provocateur’s statement/observation, The Soldiers jump in like load of hoodies on Lancashire housing estate who’ve just found out that the awkward feller at the end of the road used to manage a kids’ football team. Nothing will satisfy them bar the ruination of the individual at the centre of their venom. Or a picture of Lucy Pinder’s tits.

The Dissenter
While the mob relentlessly kick lumps out of their target, one person steps into the breach and point out the stupidity and sheer futility of everyone else’s behaviour – think Henry Fonda in 12 Angry Men. He is always completely and utterly fucking ignored.

2010-10-10T13:41:00.007+01:00

Liverpool’s business district

From certain angles – well, quite a lot of them, actually – Liverpool looks American. The waterfront, especially around the ‘Three Graces’ is like a scaled down version of New York in its golden age of the early 1900s. Yet, just inland, things change. In and around Dale, Tithebarn and Old Hall streets, the area is more like the City of London, with grand banks, startling new office buildings and imposing Victorian halls (often exchanges for materials like cotton) reminding us of the mercantile past of the great Atlantic port. What’s encouraging is that this area is alive with new office blocks and luxury hotels, all sprouting inbetween the edifices of old – including the magnificent Exchange Station. As the phrase went: “The Manchester man, the Liverpool gentleman”. Indeed.

2010-10-04T19:30:00.003+01:00

London’s scary sunset
Very occasionally, London throws up a surprise. Tonight, the departing heavy rain clouds formed a pall over the emerging evening sunshine. The pictures were taken on a 3MP phone camera, but the effect is still there. Scary, but inspirational.

2010-09-30T22:28:00.003+01:00

A life in Liverpool matches, 1 November 1987
Liverpool 2 Everton 0

The ‘friendly derby’ isn’t feeling too friendly today. It’s not so much what I can see from my spec in the centre of the Kop, but more what I can hear. The game isn’t due to start for an hour, but already there are shouts, sways over to the left-hand side and the roar that only comes from men in casual wear about to start hitting each other. Everton, as tradition demands, have taken the left hand third of the Kop, but today, their presence feels like an invasion – an invasion led by fat men in bad leather jackets, but an invasion nonetheless. A year before I’d have gone with the many Evertonians from my school. Today, it’s just me and my Red mate. Go with Everton to the game? Not any more.

November 1987. With the clocks going back the week previously, at 4pm Anfield is already smothered in gloom. We’re playing – and it’s something we’re increasingly getting used to – on a Sunday afternoon as the derby is being televised. Our private argument is now on show for the whole country to observe – but make no mistake, this is Our Thing. And ever since we took the double from them the year before, this Thing has started to get nasty, especially off the pitch. There are many theories as to why it’s got like this, but the truth seems obvious (to me at least) – on both sides of the divide we got bored with being nice to each other.

As a Liverpudlian growing up in the ’80s, I never realized how much our success hurt Everton fans, until 1985 when they captured league completely out of the blue. And boy, did they let us know. So, when we got our mojo back the year after, they didn’t like it one bit. Maybe it was the humiliation of the joint homecoming, when Liverpool’s trophy-laden bus glinted in the Merseyside May sunshine, while they had to make do with Southall, Ratcliffe et al waving… well, that’s it, really, waving. They were dead good at waving, were Everton.

A year after, despite the fact that striker Gary Lineker had left to join Barcelona with that other scourge of the Reds, Mark Hughes, they won the League again. Our only solace was knocking them out of the Littlewood’s Cup in the semi-final, which turned the Park End into a sprawling, jumping mass of human joy.

So, today is a big deal. The Kop is in full voice early on – a rarity, because the old terrace hasn’t had much of an atmosphere since the late 1970s. Scarves are a thing of the past – when we sing You’ll Never Walk Alone, it’s now with our hands raised – and most of the ‘interesting’ characters are near the away fans in Kemlyn Road. What makes the Kop special is no longer us, but what takes place in front of it. We’re witnessing history every week as the Barnes-Beardsley-Aldridge combination takes apart defences from Highbury to Highfield Road and all parts in between. We should smash Everton this afternoon.

Outside the ground, the atmosphere is tense. We’ve all heard tales of lads getting smacked in the Gwladys Street or the ‘half-eaten pie shower’ which is a speciality at Goodison when Liverpool score, so there’s definitely something in the air. As we queue up to get in the ground, an Evertonian in a T-shirt with a cartoon of a drunken Everton fan on it who looks just like its wearer is led away by a copper, struggling to control his charge. “Gobshites,” the Blue spits at us, “fucking murderers.” Kick-off cannot come quick enough.

The game is as frenetic as you’d expect, with Liverpool a class apart from Everton, our manager’s tactical and purchasing nous putting Colin Harvey’s in the shade. Steve McMahon, he who crossed the park (via Aston Villa) not only controlling the midfield, but scoring our first. And then Peter Beardsley steps into the frame. Words cannot truly describe how good this footballer is. A magician with the ball, who combines vision with a knack for scoring beautifully crafted goals, when he puts Liverpool two-up, it’s like a great weight has been lifted off the collective shoulders of 40,000 Reds. If we can beat Everton like this, then they might as well give us the league now.

As the game ends and the Kop empties, the previously unseen Everton mob moves to the centre of the terrace. With the sound of Tequila coming from the tannoy, a group or 50 or so stand in the middle, surveying the enemy’s territory, a look of triumph on their faces – seemingly unmoved by the result of the match. I look at them, a 16-year-old boy with pretensions at manhood, wanting, willing for someone take them on and clear these intruders from our sacred space. But no-one does. I look around at my fellow Kopites. We’re kids – without the strength, without the belief to do anything. Instead, I nod to my mate and we leave in silence, out of the Kop, into the crowded streets of Liverpool 4 and deeper into the night.

This piece appears in this month’s Well Red magazine.

2010-09-21T21:39:00.001+01:00

Spitalfields, ephemeral and enduring

As we gear up for issue two of Umbrella’s production week, we thought we’d take a bit of time off to go and wonder at the awe-inspiring architecture of Christ Church, Spitalfieds in London’s East End. The area is now deluged by semi-irritating trendies (ie people like us who we pretend we’re not like), but still holds some of the mystery and even, malevolence from times past. Not for nothing was this where the Ripper struck.

If you want to know more about the Hawksmoor-designed Christ Church, we’d urge you to read Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell – the graphic novel crammed with folklore, psychogeography and more murder than is strictly good for your health. Until then, enjoy the pictures – we’ll be exploring more of Hawksmoor’s work in a future issue.

2010-09-17T20:25:00.005+01:00

Liverpool, Manchester United and sick songs

This was a post on the Liverpool supporters website, the Rattle. This weekend Liverpool play United in their first Premier League meeting of the season.

I used to sing Munich songs as a kid at Liverpool games, until, at the age of 16, I saw a programme on the disaster. Its impact was immediate. I started to wonder how the relations of those who’d died were feeling while I was jumping up and down singing about their demise with my mates in the Kop. What had they ever done to me? And yet, there I was laughing about the death of someone – a father, a son, a brother – close to them.

Then I found myself at Hillsborough on the Leppings Lane Terrace in April, 1989. The next time we went to Old Trafford for an away match the Munich stuff was nowhere to be heard. Death at football had come to us at Liverpool – how could we laugh at Munich now? They sang “Where’s your famous Munich song?” because it made us feel ashamed about what we’d said to them in the past.

Refusing to sing Munich songs isn’t about being “soft” on United fans. It’s about standards, but it’s also about Hillsborough. When you're battling for justice, you need to be whiter than white. Every time a Munich song is chanted by our fans and it goes online or is heard on telly, someone who may have had sympathy for us writes us off. It makes us easier to ignore.

Them singing “murderers” doesn’t hurt us, it makes us feel ashamed because of our part in the Heysel disaster. If they sing their Hillsborough chants, that destroys us, especially if you were on that terrace like so many of us were in ’89.

Whatever someone like me says online will have no affect on what either set of fans do on Sunday. But singing, celebrating even, the death of innocents, no matter who they are is wrong, and ultimately, indefensible.

2010-09-13T20:19:00.004+01:00

How to write a decent groom’s speech

Originally in You and Your Wedding. I do a speech writing service using these principles for Olivia Soleto Weddings.

DO start with a compliment
“Your wife is the star of the show today, so it’s right that you start by outlining just how wonderful she looks and how lucky you are to be her husband. Describing her as ‘my wife’ is an easy way to get a big round of applause. Describing in fine detail the actual cost of the wedding isn’t”

DON’T try to wing it.
“Some people can do an-off-the-cuff speech. These people are called stand-up comedians. Instead, you should type out your speech in full, then read, re-read and edit it until you’re happy with it. Forget memory cards, print the speech off and read directly from it – that’s what the pros do. A tip: Increase the font size and separate your paragraphs so the speech is easier to scan, and underline your gags so you know exactly what to emphasize.”

DO keep the bridesmaids onside
“While you and your idiot mates have been in the boozer since 11am, your wife’s been squeezing into The Dress, worrying over flowers and breaking down in tears for no apparent reason. It’s only her bridesmaids that have kept her going. Thank them, because let’s face it, after six pints of Stella you’ll be in no position to offer any sensible advice should she get weepy again.”

DON’T let sentiment turn into schmaltz
“Obviously you want to tell everyone how much you adore your wife, but if your speech starts resembling the inside of a cheap Valentine’s card, then it won’t just be the prawn starter that’s making everyone throw up. Rib her a bit, it’s fine – but be careful. Mention her driving: laughs. Mention her weight: instant divorce.”

DO name names
“Thank your parents, her parents, the venue and the guests for all their help in making the wedding special, but keep it brief. No one wants to hear you waxing on about how the day wouldn’t have been the same without the bloke who delivered the sausage rolls.”

DON’T repeat what her dad said
“Your father-in-law will be making the hardest speech of his life, finally letting go of His Little Girl. Him reminiscing about her falling off her bike or her seventh birthday is a way of reminding you that he’ll happily break your legs if you even look at another woman. If he cries, everyone will understand. If you cry, it’ll look as though you’re sleeping with someone else.”

DON’T bang on about the stag night
“Everyone knows you’ll have been a bit naughty, so keep it vague. A long treatise about the qualities of Tallinn’s brothels will mean your wedding night will be colder than an Estonian prison cell. Something you’re probably familiar with.”

DO make sure jokes are actually funny
“Jokes work by taking people down one road, then pulling them in another direction, so bear that in mind. If you’re really stuck, you can take gags off the internet, but tailor them to your circumstances, don’t just copy and paste, especially as often they’re written for an American audience. Finally, remember not to swear and don’t acutely embarrass anyone. Those wedding day cheques won’t have cleared yet.”

DON’T go on too long
“No matter how funny you think you are don’t let your speech go over eight minutes. You’re not Barack Obama. And if you are, why are you reading this? You married Michelle years ago.”

DO finish with a compliment
“It’s the one part of the speech where you’re expected to be romantic, so let your wife know how wonderful she is. But again, don’t go on for more than a couple of sentences – you don’t want to start sounding like Barbara Cartland.”

2010-09-04T18:53:00.005+01:00

Rally Driving in Gran Canaria with Kris Meeke

This piece was originally in Esquire.

So this is where I’m going to die.

It’s 9pm, somewhere off the GC 2 coastal road on Gran Canaria. This deathly quiet mountain pass, with a sheer drop of hundreds (and hundreds) of feet on one side, is the sort of road that can turn a coach-load of pensioners into a crumpled tin of corned beef with just one careless slip of the accelerator pedal.

And tomorrow, I’m going to be travelling around it at over 100mph.

The reason for this act of masochism is to profile rally driver Kris Meeke, the Ulsterman whose daredevil expertise in his Peugeout 207 S2000 has made him the current champion of the Intercontinental Rally Challenge. This week, the IRC is in Gran Canaria – and while we’re still days away from the rally itself, Kris and his Irish co-driver Paul Nagle will be testing the car to its absolute limits around this lonely stretch of road all day tomorrow. As a special treat – and remember I’m terrified of both speed heights – I’ll be accompanying the 30-year-old Ulsterman on one circuit.

“This would be a great place to shoot,” says Tom, Esquire’s photographer, clambering up the rocks and gazing into the void.

I peer over the edge. “Yeah, great,” I say, visualizing a shot of a souped-up Peugeot captured forever as it defies gravity for a second or two before plunging into the misty depths below. “Spectacular.”

There’s no alarm clock better than fear. At 5.30am, I’m awake, the warm, damp air of my ’70s-era hotel room adding to my discomfort.

I put away a huge breakfast/last meal of eggs, bacon, sausages and salty-potato-meat things, have a quick walk around the Gran Canaria’s Beirut-a-like capital Las Palmas, before being taken to the test track. In the makeshift ‘pits’, I’m introduced to Marc van Dalen, the head of Kronos Racing, who runs the team on behalf of Peugeot, then Kris’ co-driver Paul Nagle, all friendly handshakes, laughs and southern Irish charm. Finally, I meet Kris, who’s quieter and a little more serious than Paul, but just as friendly. The relationship between these two Irishmen is key to their success.

A few days before the stage, Paul and Kris drive around the course three times, making ‘pace notes’ on the speed and angle of every corner. In the race itself, it’s Paul who’ll be reading them out – and any mistake can lead to disaster. I ask Kris if this danger bothers him.

“No. I only think about the road. Nothing else matters.”

This morning, the duo have been around the test stage 10 times, so Kris knows the course well enough to go round it without his co-driver. In Paul’s place is someone with a brain that never gets out of first gear: me.

I’m given a slightly sweaty racing suit, before Paul’s helmet is placed on my head, complete with intercom. I get in the car, the bare interior of which is criss-crossed by a cage of protective tubing, and get strapped into the bucket seat.

“You OK?” says Kris.
“Fine,” I say. “Fine.”

Kris turns the motor on, a deep, growling roar emitting from underneath us and we creep onto a public road, which we’ll stay on until we reach the turning for the test stage. At 20mph, the effect is similar to keeping control of a rabid pitbull with a tissue paper leash.

We’re soon at the turn and drive past a particularly officious member of the local plod, obviously annoyed that he’s having to sit here all day when he could be handing out parking tickets in Las Palmas.

The moment we’re on the closed-off road and on our way to the start line, Kris increases the speed and throws the car from one side of the road to the other, warming the tyres up so they’re firmly “planted” onto the tarmac. Round a few corners – the Void of Death an ever-present on my right side – and we’re at the start. A marshal signals at Kris to stop the car, listens into his radio and then, after a minute nods at us. It’s time to go.

“Five, four, three, two, one,” intones Kris. We’re off.

The speed is immediate, every gear change hitting me like a punch in the stomach, but there’s no time to be scared. Kris, now silent, takes us through the first corner like it’s not there, while I grab glances at the cliffs to my left, the sea in the distance and the hundreds of fans who, bare-chested, are waving their T-shirts at us. “¡Vamos!” they yell. “¡Vamos!”

Before we set off, Kris had mentioned how the spectators can drive him to push his car ever faster. As I see them, I start waving back, shaking my fist, utterly alive with the sheer madness of it all. The screaming noise of the engine, the inches between spectator and speeding car, make this a sport that’s every bit as intense to watch as it is to take part in. As Kris had said before we got in the car, “For me, 50 per cent of the guy standing by the side’s experience watching is the sound.” And what a sound it is.

Every few seconds, the car snarls in anger and fear rises from my stomach, but I suppress it with both pure exhilaration and a concept that’s familiar to anyone who’s ever meditated – that of just living in the moment. Corners, which last night, had me thinking of a trip back to Britain in coffin class, are now effortlessly conquered. There’s nothing I can do but live this second, this turn, this straight. This now.

We scream through mountain passes tunnelled into the rock, sound bouncing off the cliffs and back into the car as Kris takes us way past 100mph. Before each corner, he reduces his speed, then accelerates out again as we power into the straights. The experience is halfway between rollercoaster and video game, but there’s always that punch in the stomach when the car accelerates again. Wommm!

Soon, all too soon, two laps are completed. It’s taken all of five minutes. Past the finish, we lose the speed and trundle back into the pits. I can’t see myself, but I know there’s a mile-wide grin splitting my face in two. As I get out, there’s handshakes, hugs, photos, “how-was-its?” and pats on back. Kris, meanwhile, is in discussion with the mechanics, already focused on the next outing.

I go up to him and shake his hand.

“I get it, now” I say, “I get what drives you.”
“To be honest,” he tells me, “I love the pure satisfaction that comes from making everything perfect and being quicker than anyone else. And when you do that you get a pure adrenaline buzz – and nothing, nothing, comes close.”

I know exactly what he means.

The Peugeot 207 Super 2000

The engine
The naturally aspirated 2.0 litre engine boasts an output of 280 brake horsepower at 8,500 rpm

Transmission
The Super 20000 has a sequential six-speed gearbox, with the gearstick located by the steering wheel. The clutch is only used to get out of first gear

Steering wheel
Hydraulically assisted steering wheel, used in conjunction with the four-wheel drive

Roll cage
The roll bars not only provide protection against crashes, but also strengthen the car against the strain that rallying puts it under. The S2000 has 47m of tubing

Suspension
The front and rear suspension consists of McPherson struts with coil springs controlled by adjustable Peugeot damper units

Weight
The car weighs 1200kg

2010-08-24T11:19:00.005+01:00

Antique Belstaff jackets

A weekend at home is always a good thing. Just two hours away from London is a place where everyone talks likes me, will happily exchange pleasantries on the underground and say "sorry" if they step on your foot. Or give you a sly dig if they’re wearing an all-black The North Face outfit.

Aside from the usual trips into Liverpool city centre and Southport, I discovered some treasures in my dad’s garage – namely two vintage motorcycle jackets from the 1960s. One‘s a Belstaff, the other is a ringer for a Barbour International, though whether it’s real or not, I’m not sure. One thing is certain, though, they look absolutely great.

2010-08-06T17:15:00.006+01:00

Stone Island 2006/7 catalogue

The whole thing about Umbrella is that we believe that there’s beauty in the everyday, in the objects we normally discard after a cursory glance. This catalogue from perhaps Stone Island’s best year of the decade is a fine example of this. Not only do the clothes looks great – especially the stand-up collar jumpers – but the way the catalogue is designed and printed also make it a very special object. Let’s hope they come out with something similar this season.

2010-08-02T17:18:00.004+01:00

Smart vintage models of London and its Underground

I know this is really, really nerdy, but I absolutely love these models of some of the capital’s best Tube stations, forever fixed in the 1950s/’60s. There’s even one of the Kingsway tunnel, now eerily gated up, never – it seems – to be opened again. The work of model-maker John Howe you can find out more at the great Londonist site.

2010-07-29T08:07:00.005+01:00

New Berghaus ’85 T-shirt

I’m about as likely to climb up a mountain as I am to take up freshwater welding, but I just couldn’t resist this smart T-shirt I found at the Berghaus shop in Covent Garden yesterday. For some reason – and I suspect a childhood spent on the outskirts of Liverpool is that reason – this simple tee really does it for me. Nicely fitted and with a fantastic design on the front, it’s just the thing for a leisurely stroll in the summer sun. And you just know you’ll get some approving nods from other, similarly clothes-obsessed chaps. Sod climbing up the Eiger though, that’s for people who are far braver than me.

2010-07-25T21:18:00.002+01:00

Umbrella magazine – download it for free, now!

Ten years after the dotcom boom, Umbrella is the first publication that reflects the topics that make post-internet men tick – the blogs they read, the cities they visit, the clothes they wear. Editor Anthony Teasdale says:

“Umbrella is aimed at the sort of man who delights in telling you about a disused Underground station or who’ll obsess about the new jacket he’s just bought. It’s about uncovering the hidden and examining the details – something that men have always done.

“A big influence on Umbrella has been the blogosphere. Blogs, whether they cover fashion or urbanism, present content in ways that make it exciting and relevant. So we’ve combined the best of old and new media to create Umbrella.

In issue one, the magazine looks at a variety of topics, from the long-lasting cultural impact of the year 1990 and the design of the London Overground network to the joys of Japanese katsu curry and the beauty of Ralph Lauren’s new cricket jumper. The presentation of this content reflects both recent trends and older traditions, as Art Director Matt Reynolds explains:

“The design of Umbrella is informed by online news channels and the blogosphere. Simple and consistent layouts are presented with concise, easy-to-read text, and brightly coloured headers and links. Sections are colour-coded for ease of navigation and functionality.

“The use of Victorian-era graphics in bright web colours underlines the concept of the traditional being presented in a playful, modern way – something which is reflected in the editorial content of the magazine.”

Finally, Anthony believes that Umbrella provides a much-needed shot in the arm to a forgotten sector of the market.

“From my experience, it seems that the major publishers have given up on men. Umbrella shows that they’re more actively involved with their media than ever before. It’s all a matter of giving them the right content.”

Key facts

Umbrella is edited by Anthony Teasdale, former Contributing Editor at Arena and Editor of ICE magazine. He is also a regular contributor to Esquire, Grazia and FHM.

Its Art Director is Matthew Reynolds, currently Art Director of Women’s Fitness.

The magazine is published quarterly and can be downloaded or read online for free at www.umbrellamagazine.co.uk. The next issue will be out late September.

For further information, hi-res images, quotes and interview opportunities contact:

tony@umbrellamagazine.co.uk
matt@umbrellamagazine.co.uk

2010-07-20T09:14:00.003+01:00

On Liverpool, London and Roy Hodgson

Supporting Liverpool has become so ingrained with hating the country, that much of the vitriol from our fans aimed at Hodgson is because he's English – itself a reaction to the supporters of other clubs and national team who'd rather have an Englishman over any other nationality. If we have an English manager it might make us less Scouse.

When Rafa got the boot, every prospective candidate was seen as nowhere near good enough, that there was no doubt that they'd oversee a “fire sale” and take us to relegation “or mid-table at best”. Apart from, however, Manuel Pellegrini, not just because of his record, but because he was Chilean, and we could pretend he was Spanish, and therefore further proof that Liverpool are different to other English clubs. (This applies to every other club apart from our friends down the Lancs, who share the same anti-English credo as we do. Though they like Argentina more than Spain.)

The Cole deal is another blow to perceived Scouse separateness, or the separateness that has seen the city by the Mersey become an outpost of Andalucia for the Red-supporting side of the town. But I don't see the problem with a “Cockney*” in charge or playing a key role in the team – it certainly doesn’t make Liverpool less Scouse. We’ve become so ingrained with the anti-English thing (while moaning about tickets, drinking pints, queuing up etc – all very English traits) that if Bob Paisley turned up at Anfield today there'd be threads on internet forums about “Wools taking over at Anfield” or "the state of his his zip-up cardie".

England is a tiny country with a huge population. Its capital has over 7m people in it – it's also two hours from Liverpool, something that in any mid-sized state would be considered local. So, of course we'll get Londoners playing for us, and out of the blue we’ve got one of the best. For the first time in months I’ll allow myself a little bit of optimism – not about the ownership – but that about the fact that we may, may just have a pretty useful side this year. It doesn't matter where are players are from – though it's sad that the last local to break through was Warnock – but that we have good players. That is all.

Liverpool is not Spain, in the way that it wasn't France, when we were under Gerard Houllier. It's time we defined ourselves by what we really are, rather than temporarily cherry-picking bits from other cultures when circumstances suit us. Then we wouldn't feel so weird about having a Londoner in charge. We could even have union jacks on the Kop like we did in the ’70s. Alright, maybe that’s taking it a bit too far.

* What actually constitutes a Cockney isn’t made clear, but there are very few of them in London these days and the accent has all but disappeared from the capital

2010-07-19T21:00:00.002+01:00

Catacombs in Paris

I like like nothing more than a good subterranean passageway. When the excellent Boing Boing pointed me to an article in Brick magazine about people who spend lots of their time exploring the Paris catacombs, I thought I’d better share it with you. Here's an excerpt.

Honeycombed across 1,900 acres of the city, the vast majority of the tunnels are not strictly speaking “catacombs.” They house no bones. Limestone (and, to the north of the city, gypsum) quarries, these are the mines that built Paris. The oldest date back two thousand years to Roman settlers, but most were excavated in the construction boom of the late Middle Ages, providing the stone that became Notre Dame Cathedral and the Louvre. Riddling the Left Bank, these tunnels were at first beyond the city’s southern limits. But as Paris’s population grew, so did the city—and soon whole neighbourhoods were built on this infirm ground.

The first major cave-in happened in 1774, when an entire street collapsed not far from where the Catacombs Museum stands today. After a similar incident three years later, King Louis XVI created the office of the Inspection Générale de Carrières (IGC, or General Inspection of the Quarries), designated with preventing further collapses. Officials went underground: inspecting, charting, filling chambers with concrete, digging a new labyrinth of maintenance tunnels.

Then came the dead.

Read the rest of it here, at Brick magazine.

Pic: National Geographic

2010-07-12T21:59:00.004+01:00

Twenty years of fanzines…

See more of this next week when we launch Umbrella, the new magazine for men.

2010-07-10T09:21:00.003+01:00

A Life in Liverpool Matches Part Three: Coventry City 1 Liverpool 4, August 1987

“Can I go?”
“Do Nicky’s mum and dad say it’s alright?”
“Yeah, yeah – ’course they do, they’ve said he can go to the aways on his own for the last year.”

The last year!

Mum pauses.

“I think it’ll be OK. I’ll talk to your dad.”

This is a big deal. Since their divorce five years ago in 1982, my folks have barely spoken a word to each other, apart from frosty debriefings after parents’ evenings.

But it’s 1987, now, early August and the start of the new football season. I’m 15, just the right age to begin those treks across the country to follow Liverpool. As it’s never more than a fiver to get in anywhere, I sell it as a relatively cheap way of getting rid of me for the day. In May , there was a trial run for the Littlewood’s Cup final (where we lost despite Rushie opening the scoring), but I want real away games now, where there’s a chance that things might get ‘interesting’ off the pitch too!

And if I was my folks, I’d want me to go too – all I talk about is football and clothes. Plus there’s my habit of storing copies of Knave, bought from ‘Mr News’ in Aughton, under my bottom drawer. Who needs someone like that hanging about on a Saturday afternoon? Not my dad, certainly. I’m given the all-clear.

The Liverpool side for the 1987/88 season that Kenny Dalglish has assembled is, to my eyes, about as perfect as a football team can be. In eight months he’s bought John Aldrige to replace Ian Rush (off to Juventus), Peter Beardsley and John Barnes – a trio I’m convinced will lay waste to the First Division. Throughout July, me, Nick and our Everton mate, Wayne go down to Anfield every day just to meet the three of them when they come back from training. Each time we’re there I ask Beardsley for his autograph, usually on behalf of my mum.

“Aye, what’s her name, son?”
“It’s Sheila, Peter.”
“Right. Here you go.”
“Thanks, Pete!”

And each time, he signs it ‘Sheba’.

Early August. I ring up Nicky.

“Right, it’s Coventry, second away of the season after Arsenal.”
“Sound. Not too far. Your mum and dad say it’s alright?”
“Yeah, they’re OK.”
“Boss.”
“Boss.”

Tickets for the game aren’t a problem, not now we also luxuriate in the title of Kop season ticket-holders (I have a mock-leather wallet with the club crest on it to hold the little book in). We’re on football’s Easy Street, able to pick and choose what games we go to, when we want to – as long as our pocket money covers it and the matches don’t interfere with our school attendance.

To facilitate our trip to Coventry, we’ve joined something called the Anfield Travel Club. In our earlier trial run to Wembley we’d used a coach laid on by Barnes Travel on County Road, perhaps the most chaotic travel agent in the world. Now, though, we’re official and we get the bus from Anfield. They might as well just be done with it and make us part of the playing staff.

The day of the game is hot. Not a surprise as the first six weeks of the season are always hot. The coach takes us down the M6 through Stoke, Wolverhampton, Birmingham. We pass other similar vehicles full of Reds making their way to the match, scarves flying out of windows, flags in the back of windows, centre-spreads from gentlemen’s magazine waved at more innocent motorists.

There’s none of this behaviour with the Anfield Travel Club though. Our steward – yellow bib with ‘LFC’ stamped on it – runs our coach like a personal fiefdom. “Don’t be fucking about on here, lads,” he warns us from his little throne next to the driver. Bet he has his own ale stash though, the twat.

And then we’re there. Off the motorway, into the city, past detached houses, then 1930s semis, until we get to the terraced streets, always a sign that we’re in footy ground territory. Outside a chip shop near Highfield Road, a big lad, the sort of fella who’d be useful in pub scrap, catches my eye and gives me the thumbs-up. He’s not alone. People are happy to see us. You start to realise that being a Liverpool fan gives you certain privileges in towns like Coventry. We’re like The Beatles, but with better trainers.

Inside, we’re all stuck on a terrace with a floodlight at the back, with hundreds of lads perched on fences and ledges around it. For some reason, the photos from this match are always used in books as evidence of Liverpool’s well-dressed ’80s support, though in truth, the golden age of scally has passed. Today, the likes of Tacchini and Ellesse have been superceded by baggier, 1950s-influenced items by Maccano and C17. Within three months people will be going on the Kop with cartoons of Fred Flintstone on their jeans.

But on the pitch we’re a revelation. Without Rush and with Dalglish looking to spend more time on the bench, the attacking slack is taken up by Beardsley, Aldridge and John Barnes. And from the off, they click. The trio’s understanding is telepathic, Beardsley feeding balls to Aldo from the right, while the left wing becomes nothing less than a pedestal for John Barnes to show off his breathtaking array of skills. He is, without a shadow of a doubt, the best player I’ve ever seen.

One more thing. Barnes, signed for £900,000 from Watford, is Liverpool’s first black player since Howard Gayle. There’s been occasional racist chanting on the Kop for years – though never sang with any great enthusiasm – but with Barnes it stops dead. Simply put, how can you be racist to other footballers when your best player is black? Instead, the song from the sun-baked terraces at Highfield Road is loud, happy and gloating. “Johnny Barnes!” we shout, “Johnny Barnes!”

He’s ours. And so’s the league.

From issue three of Well Red, undoubtedly the best Liverpool magazine out there

2010-06-27T10:05:00.005+01:00

Pet Shop Boys: Paninaro

They, ahem, rocked Glastonbury last night, so what better time to highlight perhaps the most stylish pop video ever – certainly from my point of view. Not only is the Paninaro promo full of immaculately dressed Milanese teens (all of whom will be about my age now), but Chris Lowe’s Massimo Osti-ish outfit is basically the template for the naval-influenced casual look that still predominates amongst those in the know today. Yet again, it proves the pre-acid house late ’80s was the coolest part of that most derided of decades. As Lowe intones: “I don’t like rock music… I don’t like much, but what I do like, I love with a passion.”. Absolutely spot on.

Tip: Justin Quirk

2010-06-25T22:57:00.005+01:00

Why the British are getting summer right…

Chinos with pumps*. Yay!

Men finally working out that a pair of nice shorts, a polo top and some sandals/boat shoes/pumps looks absolutely ace

Less blokes wearing brown. Did see one lad in town today, though, with muddy-grey jeans and a brown ill-fitting T-shirt on. But he was the exception, not the rule. The last people who pulled off brown were The Sweeney

The return of comabt shorts – but this time slimmer, with less sticky-out pockets. The scally take on preppy means a Stone Island/80s Casuals tee, combats and a pair of retro-looking Adidas. The wearing of black socks with white Stan Smiths is thankfully dying out (I’m looking at Liverpool’s youth, here)

Loads and loads of smashing women walking about in what can only be described as ‘pretty’ dresses. This makes me – and lots of other chaps – happy.

* Yeah, I’m aware they’re mine, but you know, still…

2010-06-19T13:14:00.005+01:00

Adidas Samba Casual versus Vans Vulcanized

Even though I’ve always liked trainers, I’ve never been an obsessive, especially as discovering someone with a cupboard full of reissued Forest Hills is about as difficult as finding an overweight midlander in the crowd at an England match. But yesterday… well, I actually needed some new pumps – and I mean simple plimsolls, not trainers. But Size?, that temptress of Carnaby Street, drew me in with her Adidas cleavage and kept me there with an array of beautifully simple Vans Vulcanized. I’m no skater, but nothing looks better with a pair of chinos than some fresh-from-the-box Vans pumps. The Adidas Samba Causals I bought were just an extravagance. And a most satisfactory one at that.

2010-06-16T09:01:00.003+01:00

The Nokia 8210, the most beautiful phone ever

Anyone who says they don’t drool over the iPhone4 is either a liar or er… someone who doesn’t drool over the iPhone4. Anyway, while Apple’s latest communicator pretty much defines what technology is about at the beginning of the 2010s (along with HTC’s Android-running ‘Desire’), we’re still in love with the phone that made mobiles not just functional, but actually objects of desire, Nokia’s 8210.

Weighing in at a tiny 79g with the battery in, and boasting dimensions of 101.5mmx44.5mmx17.4mm, the 8210 truly was the most mobile of mobile phones. Small enough to be slipped in the pocket of a pair of jeans, it would only alert its owner to call with a discreet vibration. Something, in those still mobile-phobic times, that non-attention seekers appreciated.

Today, it seems awfully basic – there’s no camera, internet or mobile film-editing function. And yet… truly, an 8210 is really all you need – especially if you favour form over function. So even though ’s is no longer in use, it sits on the shelf, ready to be used once more should Mr Jobs’ newest device have a terminal breakdown. “Connecting people,” that’s what they said – and that’s still ultimately what it’s all about.

This article will run in Umbrella, the new online magazine for men – out by the end of June 2010

2010-06-13T20:00:00.006+01:00

The evolution of the New York subway map since the 1970s

It may be one of the world’s most striking metropolises, but on the map at least, New York City is ugly. With Manhattan looking like a carpenter’s finger and Brooklyn a dead ringer for a burst colostomy bag, the city’s subway map has always had to work on a dirty canvas. Maybe that’s why the transit of this most iconic of towns doesn’t have anything like the brand identity of the London or Moscow undergrounds.

Despite this, I’m still fan of the system, largely because of its elevated sections – most notably shown in The Warriors, when the gang (leather waistcoats and all) have to find their way home via the subway and its most violent passengers. The reason I’m writing about it – though I don’t ever need an excuse to cover an underground railway – is because the local authority have redesigned the system’s map (above).

The New York Times says:

The new subway map makes Manhattan even bigger, reduces Staten Island and continues to buck the trend of the angular maps once used here and still preferred in many other major cities. Detailed information on bus connections that was added in 1998 has been considerably shortened.

Happily, the paper also showcases the different versions of the map that have been directing New Yorkers for the last 40 years. The different version are below:

1968

1972

1979

1998

2010-06-06T09:21:00.008+01:00

‘Tailored by Umbro – The Walls’

I’ve written recently – in Grazia no less – about how much I like the England kit (and I’m not going to into a boring discussion about whether Liverpudlians should support the national team). And the campaign to promote it, ‘England Walls’, which you can see here is excellent. It’s also good to see lots of Merseyside footballers (Rooney, Gerrard, Warnock, Carragher) represented.

Then there’s the actual kit itself (and related tracksuits too). The whole collection harks back to the simpler strips of the 1960s, yet brings in modern engineering and construction techniques. It’s fantastic.

Designed by CP Company’s Aitor Throup, the Tailored by Umbro top – with its dozens of interwoven panels – is a miracle of 21st Century design. See him talking about it here.

The Manchester firm, which has kitted out the England team since 1982, drafted in Throup to work on the new strip, who says: “We started working with rib, the most basic of fabrics that communicate stretch. Rib visually expands and grows, like the skin does on a joint, stretching and contracting with movement.” This approach has made the England kit the most advanced in the world. Happily, it’s also a hit with 20-stone van drivers who can drink their own weight in Stella Artois.

Having said all that, Umbro could always look to the past for its inspiration.

2010-06-03T14:49:00.002+01:00

The Spirit of Shankly – today more than ever

With the news that Rafa Benitez is on his way – after being offered a pay-off – a pay-off that LFC, coincidentally, can barely afford, this is the time for all Liverpool supporters to join the SOS, which has provided the only credible opposition to the moronic American owners since we first twigged their real intentions in 2008. Today is not about whether you rate Rafa or not, it’ s for sticking your colours to the mast and fightng ’til these – and other – leeches are out of our game. Yanks out!

2010-06-01T22:15:00.006+01:00

Whitstable… fishing boats and salty fingers on the Thames Estuary

2010-05-27T09:13:00.004+01:00

A Life in Liverpool Matches, December 26, 1981
Liverpool 1 Manchester City 3

The tickets are light blue in colour. They sit on top of the gas fire, wedged to the wall by the heavy slate ashtray – an ashtray deemed too posh to be used for my mum’s discarded Silk Cuts. It is, as my Nan would say, “for best”.

Football, at least in our house, is following a similar pattern.

Forget paying on the gate, the 1980s, that decade of aspiration, sees me and the old man going to the game with ‘proper’ tickets. No longer willing to put up even with the gentle conditions of the Paddock terrace, Dad ensures our match days at Anfield are now spent in the cramped confines of the Kemlyn Road stand.

And being in the stands (where you sit, confusingly) means getting organized and buying your tickets in the week leading up to the game. My dad, a gentle Yorkshireman, who moved to Liverpool to teach geography in the late ’60s, is a world leader at being organized. The tickets have been in the house for two weeks already.

Of course, it being Boxing Day, my parents’ friends, most of them with names like Val, Keith, Gail and Dave, pop around for Boxing Day sherry, to talk about The State of The Country and That Bitch Thatcher (mum is quieter than ‘Red Gail’ on this subject). I’d find their adult chat boring enough (I’m only ten), but ever since the tickets were unveiled yesterday, my only thought has been Liverpool’s match with the less glamourous of the Manchesters. Sod the rest of Christmas.

By 12:30, I can tell the arl feller is shaping up to make his move. He’s fiddling with his cheesecloth shirt, checking his watch and making it clear, by the finality with which he closes the drinks cupboard, that the sherry (which only comes out at Christmas) will not be further depleted. I take the plunge and pick up the tickets, feel them in my fingers, flip them over and examine the little diagram of the ground on the back. Kemlyn. Road. Stand.

As I put these passports-to-joy back behind the ashtray, I see the stamp of fixture again: Liverpool versus Manchester City, kick-off 12.00pm.

Kick-off 12.00pm.

The game has already been on 30 minutes.

No, this can’t be right. Tell me, Dad, that this isn’t happening, that I’ve read it wrong, that the game between Liverpool and City is starting at 3pm. I hand him the tickets.

“It says the game’s already begun,” I blurt out. I’d cry if I was a couple of years younger.

He looks at the ticket. The conversation stops.

He studies the front of one, then shakes his head and sucks in some air in the manner of a plumber about to deliver an exorbitant quote.

“Sorry, son.”

We can still get to the game, of course – on a good day it’s only a 15-minute drive to Anfield, we’d be there for the last half hour if we get a move on. But even when I’m thinking this, I know that we’re not going anywhere. I kid myself that Bob Paisley will get a call from my Dad, telling him to stop the game, until we’ve made our way to the ground. But, alas, no – and soon the conversation has moved on, and the drinks cabinet has been opened once more. This is really (not) happening.

I’ll get this feeling several times over the following years. When Sharpe put us to the sword with his wonder goal in 1984, I was listening to it in the living room, the voice of Radio Merseyside’s Graham Beecroft’s (s)creaming in delight as Everton threw off the shackles of decades-long mediocrity. I’d still loved to have been at that one, just to see the idiot in the glasses run on to the pitch to hug his hero.

Then there was the ‘Battle of Goodison’, the FA Cup semi of 1985 against Man United, a game remembered as much for the war on the terraces as for the heart-stopping action on the pitch. A match you just had to be at.

I listened to it in a country lane halfway between Bickerstaffe and Kirkby.

Once you actually start attending matches, you realise that there’s nothing like being there. You kid yourself that the game cannot exist without you. It’s only as you get older, as you start to focus on other things – and maybe realise that most players look on their profession as just a job – that these moments get rarer, until for some people, missing the game doesn’t feel like missing out at all.

The loss against City was a hiccup in what was a near-faultless Championship-winning season for Liverpool. In the end, I accepted what had happened and took my disappointment like a man: by putting on my Liverpool tracksuit (Umbro, flared bottoms) and going out for a ride on my Grifter. As the Reds let in a third, Bob Paisley was no doubt thinking that he should have given my Dad a call. Big mistake, Bob, big mistake.

Originally in Well Red magazine, issue two out now

2010-05-20T08:47:00.010+01:00

Lamb’s Conduit Street: the perfect London thoroughfare

With the Premier League over and a lack of live football on the television, I was forced to actually do something with my Sunday, rather than sit back, eat ham and drive myself mad listening to Richard Keys and Andy Gray talk about zonal marking on The Last Word.

That something was a brilliant, lazy walk around Bloomsbury and Holborn, the former known for being the home of London’s university, the latter a quiet central neighbourhood that still retains a flavour of its past as a working class residential area.

Holborn’s greatest triumph is the exquisite Lamb’s Conduit Street, a north-to-south, mostly pedestrianised road, that boasts an unrivalled selection of independent shops. And, when I say “independent”, I don't just mean organic yoghurt shops set up by well-heeled Islingtonites as something to do with all the money they earned before the crash. I mean proper stores that actually sell stuff you want to buy.

Lamb’s Conduit Street boasts, amongst other things, a great bike shop, an old fashioned tailor and outlets for Oliver Spencer, One True Saxon and Folk, the Scottish/moddish gents’ outfitter. It’s also home to A France, the undertakers that brought the body of Nelson back from Trafalgar. And don’t forget The Lamb, an absolute cracker of a boozer, perfect for post-work pint and packet of cheese ’n’ onion McCoy’s. The very thought of it is making me feel all thirsty…

Nearest tubes are Holborn and Russell Square.

2010-05-11T17:46:00.004+01:00

Like Banksy? Try Vhis

These brilliant bits of street art from all over Europe come courtesy of Alexandre Farto aka Vhis. Represented by Steve Lazirides – the gallery owner who hooked up with Banksy years ago when Shoreditch was basically the Bricklayers’ Arms and the Blue Note – you can buy his printed work at the ever-ace Pictures on Walls. One to invest in.

Tip: Space Invading

2010-05-05T16:13:00.002+01:00

It’s the match of the season! Sort of

Tonight, Manchester City take on Tottenham Hotspur in what’s been dubbed (by TV marketing men) The Battle For Fourth Place.

There’s a lot at stake. A lot. I know this, because the Daily Mirror and Sky and The Times tell me so. In fact there’s so much to play for that it threatens to engulf us all in a tsunami of football importance.

Except that there isn’t. Is there?

In the end, this is a match between two teams who weren’t good enough to maintain any sort of Premier League challenge. What exactly is there to celebrate? Entry to the qualification rounds of the Champions League? Big deal, City have more cash than any other club in the world, and with Harry and Daniel Levy in charge of the current account at White Hart Lane, Spurs are looking very healthy too. In fairness, Redknapp was gutted about missing out on the FA Cup – perhaps more than the bosses at the Premier League were altogether comfortable with.

What the hype surrounding this match demonstrates is that football celebrates failure. Or, more truthfully, it celebrates its continuing existence. The rewarding of baubles for “deferred success” keeps the fans of those clubs not good enough to do something as old fashioned as actually winning the league interested to the end.

It’s this thinking that has seen teams who’ll never claim the title resting players in competitions like the FA and UEFA Cups, because there’s a danger that actually winning something may spell the end of their precious tenure in Premier League. Bolton had a real chance to progress in the 2008 UEFA Cup, but were knocked out in the last 16 by Sporting Lisbon, because inspirational manager Gary Megson decided that Premier League survival was more important than capturing one of the world’s most prestigious trophies, and fielded a weakened side. They had to be ready for the next match, against Wigan, you see – a game they, er, lost 1-0.

It’s this lack of ambition that makes soccer so uninspiring. Football clubs are there to win things, not just to exist, hanging about, hoping they don’t get relegated. Do Bolton fans really care that they stayed up in 2008? It’s not as if getting promoted is a difficult task, as West Brom remind us every couple of years. But imagine if they’d won the UEFA Cup? Hell, The Reebok might have had an atmosphere for once.

So, tonight, when City kick-off against Spurs, excuse me if I’m not slavering with excitement. This is a match for the nearly-men of English football.

And remember this, if the Premier League programme is getting a bit hectic next season, whoever does qualify will only moan about playing too many games. They’ll no doubt field a weakened side – after all, it worked for Megson, didn’t it, Gary? Oh… hang on.

2010-05-03T11:44:00.006+01:00

Leg of lamb… recreating a ’70s roast

Ingredients
1 dead sheep
1 SLR camera
1 retro filter program

Et voila! All you need now is a prawn cocktail starter, black forest gateaux, Songs of Praise on the telly and the advancing dread of school tomorrow.

2010-05-02T11:42:00.004+01:00

John Squire’s covers for Penguin Decades

The Stone Roses’ guitarist always seemed more comfortable with his role as a designer than a rock’n’roll axeman. And with a Roses’ reunion about as likely as Ian Brown getting a British Airways frequent flyer card, Squire is busying himself on other projects, including the work he’s been doing for Penguin’s Decades series.

The company has asked four artists to design covers for landmark novels of the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, with Peter Blake, Allen Jones and Zandra Rhodes joining Squire on design duties. All five have produced highly collectible pieces, but for me, it’s the work of the mop-topped Mancunian that shines brightest.

Still doesn’t excuse The Seahorses though.

Find out more about project here.

Tip: Creative Review

2010-04-24T09:47:00.004+01:00

Ivy League in Islington

The sun’s out, temperatures are inching up to a level of acceptability and the stout boots, heavy denims and thick coats that have waged war against the recent Siberian winter have been given a well earned lie-down in the Bloke and Coke smoking room.

In the old days, despite my joy at the coming of summer, I’d be in a bit of a state about this. I luxuriated in the comfort of my Crombie, no matter how hot it was, and strode about in Adidas trainers, lightly steaming my feet in the process. Not now.

Forget Birkentsocks. Discard those combat shorts and anything that looks as though it’s come from an army surplus store. The only solution to looking good in summer is to go Ivy League – or at least a European approximation of it. Which is what I’ve done here.

At the core of the outfit is a blue and white-striped T-shirt from the brilliant Banana Republic on Regent Street. I’ve then coupled it with a chunky, cotton-knit cardie from CP Company, a pair of Gap ‘1969’ slim-fit chinos and some battered Sebago boat shoes. Think ‘nautical townie’ or ‘Don Draper watching Liverpool FC abroad in 1982’ and you’ll be close to the spirit of the look.

If you want to make it a little smarter, swap the T-shirt for a blue Oxford button-down shirt. The one pictured here is from Brooks Brothers – the firm who invented the button-down – but you can pick up an approximation from Gap, M&S or if you’re flush, the highly favoured Gitman Brothers.

All you need now it a boat. Or at least a friend who looks like they might own one. Happy sailing.