Day 3 - damage assessment

One by one we woke. Mugs of tea and hobnobs were handed round as the damage assessment began. To no-one's surprise, the Black Rat had taken the greatest toll on Nigel and Soapy.

While Nigel was doing an impression of Ian without the tablecloth, Soapy had clearly found succour in the arms of Brian, the pair sharing a blow-up bed like a modern day Morecambe and Wise. Actually, it was more John Inman and Michael Barrymore (should have checked Pete's swimming pool before we left...).

Ablutions duly dealt with, we headed off to our favoured service station on the M4 for a final breakfast before saying our final goodbyes. Even the closure of Northwood tube station couldn't dampen the spirits, as captain fantastic made an unplanned and selfless 45 minute detour to take Soapy and me to South Ruislip.

In the annals of Casuals history this will go down as one of the special tours. And last night was without doubt one of the most memorable of all Casuals nights.

As for Pete and his beaten Welsh team? Well, they just can't help believing...

Day 2 - Football comes home and Elvis has left the building

We woke up around 8.30 after a good sleep; wandered into town for breakfast at Annette's and to buy supplies of sports drinks. Then it was back to Pete's house, where we sat in the sun until Graham, Brian, John, Klaus and Nigel arrived.

The warm-up sporting event was the South Africa v Lions 2nd test which, agonisingly, the Lions lost with the last kick of the ball. Gouging is bad by the way, except in the right circumstances.

Then, the big game. Pete's team was ready and waiting when we arrived at the sports hall. It was clearly a younger, fitter team, assembled with one purpose - to win the trophy back for Wales.

It was a quiet and focused Casuals dressing room, some players geeing up their comrades while others prepared within their own private zones. But we were ready.

The home team started brightly, with the Casuals struggling to impose their style of play and Aber looking the most likely to score first. And score they did. Powering from the back, Greg cut inside and lashed an unstoppable shot into the top corner. Aber continued to dominate for most of the first half, with some excellent interplay from defence causing problems for the Casuals midfield. The defence, however, held fast.

Then, with barely two minutes to go, Graham spotted a Melv v Woolley mismatch and played a measured ball over the top. Simpson duly delivered a clinical finish to take the game to half time all square.

With the sun beating down mercilessly, the Casuals regrouped at half time and came out determined to impose their own style of play. The second half was more evenly matched, but still it was Aber who drew first blood. Graham, who had been faultless, had a Petr Cech moment and spilled a corner to Elliot, who couldn't believe his luck as he slid the ball home for a 2-1 lead.

The Casuals pressed for an equaliser, and it came in the shape of an Alan Dovey strike that would grace any game. Collecting the ball with his back to goal, Alan spun and hit a beauty that goalkeeper Mark Tovey could only admire. 2-2. There were half chances at either end, but no more goals by the time referee Nigel brought the game to an end.

Then it was all down to penalties - the ultimate test of nerve. Woolley set the trend with a poor attempt, easily saved by Graham. Melvin, Ian and Brian all missed, as did all but one of the home team. So at 4-5 Alan had to score to keep Casuals' hopes alive. Score he did, taking the contest into sudden death.

A brilliant save from Graham, truly earning the Petr Cech mantle, saw the hopes and dreams of three nations rest upon Captain Courageous, Simon Jobling. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Jobbo calmly slotted the ball into the bottom corner to send one half of Abergavenny into raptures while the other half looked for a scapegoat.

Football came home.

After the match, and a detour to the local cricket club, both teams enjoyed Sharon's legendary hospitality and a few beers at Chateau Woolley, where we accepted the trophy from a clearly shaken Peter.

There followed a trip to the Kings Arms that developed into an epic Karaoke session led by - who else - The Welsh Mouth (TM).

Unbelievably, Elvis Presley happened to be in the bar and he treated us to an impromptu greatest hits performance, culminating in a moving performance of 'In the Ghetto'. Even more unbelievably, he was later joined by a second Elvis for 'Return to Sender', although if truth be told it was probably one classic too far.

There was one other, special moment, that none of us who were there will ever forget. Elvis left the building, but was brought back by popular demand for one last song: a mesmerising 'I Just Can't Help Believing'. Even more special, he then morphed into Meatloaf for an inspired 'Two out of Three Ain't Bad'.

One of the all-time Casuals nights came to an end and, unable to get into Abergavenny's only nightclub, we retired to Pete's for a nightcap, and for a hard core few, a final hot tub session, under a crescent moon and a starlit sky...

Chiswick Casuals on tour. Day 1 - arrival

Forget the FA Cup or Champions League finals. The big event in the football calendar is the annual Chiswick Casuals trip down to Abergavenny to take on the Valleys' finest.   This is the story of this year's tour...

With the sun beating down and the M4 ahead of us, it was an optimistic Jobbo, Soapy and me who spearheaded this year's advance party on Friday afternoon. A couple of ibuprofen tablets for the road, a 'Music for Middle Aged Men' playlist courtesy of Jobbo, and off we set. An 80's A&R man's dream, that boy - a random selection included AHA, Simple Minds, Phil Collins, Anastacia... you get the picture.  

Sadly, when his iPod ran out of power his adaptor wouldn't fit mine, so we had to rely on Radio 2, which incidentally is about 20 years more up to date that Jobbo, for the rest of the journey.
Predictably, if a little stereotypically, it started raining as soon as we crossed the Severn bridge, but thankfully the rain didn't last long and the sun was soon out again.

When we arrived in Abergavenny, we went straight to Pete's house, where Alan and Ian had already arrived. There began an unseemly rush for the comfortable bedding, which left us all relatively happy with our lot.

We walked into town for beers, and Soapy made an early bid for one-liner of the tour.  While enjoying a hotdog at the pub, I had a little ketchup around my mouth.  Soapy: "Bloody hell, Melv. You look like you've just given a blowjob to some roadkill."

After a short stop in another bar we we went for a curry, and were in the restaurant when Pete arrived.  We all finished up and moved on to Wetherspoons.

Now one of the themes of the weekend - perhaps inspired by this very blog - was positivity. Soapy in particular is prone to morphing into Victor Meldrew very easily.  We tried to put a fine system in place but to be honest it didn't work.  By the time we reached Wetherspoons who had run out of ice for Soapy's gin and tonic, he had reverted to type: "That's the problem with the world - it's all gone to shit".

Back to Pete's for some hot tub action followed by the blissful sleep of the righteous.

His Royal Highness

I love this. While doing some research I checked out the Harrods website. When you register for most websites, you're asked to select from a drop-down list of Mr, Mrs, Ms and maybe one or two others.

Not so with The World's Greatest Department Store. Showing an impressive appreciati0n of their customer base in an otherwise unimpressive website, Harrods pushes the drop-down envelope...

Should gypsies be allowed to jump NHS queues?

Ask Daily Mail readers whether gypsies should be allowed to jump NHS queues and you'd think the answer would be a foregone conclusion.  But that was before Twitter.

On Friday I witnessed for myself just how powerful Twitter is becoming, and more important, how it has the power to harness and mobilise public opinion to create action.

There's a lot of talk right now about how this is happening in Iran - opposition supporters using Twitter to bypass the ban on media reporting from the country and get pictures and information to the outside world.  

In fact, as I write, I'm looking at Twitscoop, a website that tracks in real time the current hot topics on Twitter, and I can see that people are appealing for blood donors to address a shortage in hospitals.  More chilling, I can see trending topics 'rumors', 'clashes' and 'tanks', all clicking through to reports of clashes between police and protesters - being called terrorists by the Iranian government - in Tehran. 

Back to my original story.  On Friday, I was looking at Tweetdeck  - an application that sites on your desktop and allows you to see and post Twitter and Facebook updates - and I saw the word 'Skew' as one of the big trending topics.

Wondering what people would be writing about that included the word 'Skew', I clicked through to Twitscoop where I saw that it was all about the Daily Mail poll on gypsies.  Some of the comments were just about how low The Daily Mail had stooped, but many were taking it further, posting a link to the poll and encouraging people to register a Yes vote to skew the poll.   Because Twitter users can 're-tweet', this particular message was being duplicated and resent around the community, gaining momentum all the time.

So I clicked through to the poll, registered my Yes vote, and looked at the results.  How many Daily Mail readers think that gypsies should be able to jump NHS queues?  As of yesterday 

afternoon, 93% of them do, apparently.  I can't see the result today because funnily enough the poll has been removed.

Twitter helped to get Barack Obama elected; it's helping to highlight injustices in oppressed countries; it's helping the mass of the people and interest groups to spread their messages faster than ever.  Yes, you can probably still find out what Britney's eating for breakfast, but if you dismiss Twitter as just a frivolous fad you do so at your peril.

So I'm watching Andy Murray playing in the final at Queens.  Unlike most of the media, I'm of the opinion that he's Scottish all of the time - not just when he wins.  I expect him to nail James Blake but, hey, it's a final - anything can happen.

It could be an interesting week.  When I arrived at Ministry of Sound, I had a Plan B in mind, and last week brought that a little closer.  If things go the way I'm hoping this week I could get closer still.

If it does, as is the way of modern media, followers of Melvtopia will find out first...  Media exclusives, that's got to be the way to go.

A Hed of the game

We finally launched the all-new www.hedkandi.com on Thursday.  Just as with the Ministry of Sound relaunch in April, this was a race against time, and it was a relief to get it launched with no significant problems.

I remember when I used to work in live events, there was so much adrenaline involved that when each event was finally over we used to need a period of cooling down before we moved on to the next project.

That's what it's been since Thursday - a bit flat. Not helped, of course, by an epic celebration with the team on Thursday night which ended with me falling asleep on the Piccadilly Line and ending up in Southate at around 1.00 am.  Friday was a day of recovery.

The weekend was pretty sh#t.  I had an injury that prevented me playing football on Saturday, so after a double session with my osteopath, Wenge and I drove out to Abingdon.  Not much there, although we did see Helena Bonham Carter shopping.  Yesterday was just a day of doing nothing, and getting frustrated by not doing what I had planned to do.  One highlight, though, was watching 'The Butterfly Effect' on Friday night.  A very clever film - the first time I've seen Ashton Kutcher acting - that keeps you on edge right to the end.  And I finished Season 3 of The Wire.

This week I have a couple of meetings with recruiters, and a proper interview, so along with planning a development schedule for Ministry of Sound I should be pretty busy. My challenge, though, is to break the in-early, leave-late cycle that I've fallen into while working on Hed Kandi. 

Oh, and it would be nice to see some sun again...