Shaksey

Damn shame. And that's coming from a Ford man. GM sold it's European brands, Opel and Vauxhall, to Peugeot a couple of years ago as well. Sad times.

Caroline wasn't a "reality" show celebrity. She was an actress, a presenter but most of all and what she enjoyed most was being a dancer, anyone who knew her was not surprised at all when she won Strictly Come Dancing. I wasn't mates with her, I didn't 'know' her but I did meet and chat with her a number of times. The first was about 2001/2 when she was in a so so movie set in Ibiza. I did know a lot of folks in Ibiza back then and mates of mine were used as extras in the shoot for that and a few others and so I met her through though them. I bumped into her again every now and again on the London scene over the next few years. If she hadn't subsequently become successful I would have forgotten she even existed tbh, one of literally hundreds of faces at clubs and parties over the years I talked to and had a laugh with. I could name about a dozen other people who "made it" to some extent that I met and partied with from that era. But Caroline was a grafter. She didn't in any way get instant fame. It took years of effort, countless rejections and f**k knows how much self determination for her to become "successful". If you were out and around back in the day you'd hear how he/she/whoever had "sealed the deal" so to speak (Billie's Bar, anyone?). I never heard anything like that about Caroline. One time I remember chatting with her and I said something banal and drunk and stupid about was she still dressing up as a raccoon or something (I'd seen her doing that a few months ago on TV). I wasn't trying to be a dick, I wasn't trying to put her down, I was talking to her like I talked and still to this day talk to most of my girl-mates. To put that in perspective I'll say that all my girl-mates and I enjoy nothing more than a good bit of sharp-edged drunken debate. One of them said 'f**k' 16 times (yes I was counting) in two minutes the other night; while smoking a Gitanes and drinking a coffee cup of Pol Roger with ice cubes in. When I told her she was a foul-mouthed climber she laughed and called me a c**t. That's an extreme but that's the general kind of girl I can have an amusing night arguing with. Caroline wasn't that kind of girl. Her reaction to my stupid raccoon question was proof of that. Hurt and doubt. No bravado. I apologised straight way. I felt like an arsehole. She laughed it off. I'd been a twat but she could see, and this is why I can have conversations as per above with girls, because I'm not trying to shag them, or use them or whatever they can see/percept that and it means they'll allow you a f**k up or two. I think that was about 2007 and I saw her a couple of times after that, then I was abroad mostly and left the London scene. It was after that her career ramped up and I think the next time I saw her on TV was when she was presenting The X-Factor or one of it's spin-off's. One last thing, Caroline was tiny. Everyone who ever meets Katie Price (Jordan) will always say how small she is. Caroline was smaller than Katie by a few inches and a lot less confident and self-assured. The phrase 'pick on someone your own size' sticks in my mind.

There was no EU rule that the UK or any EU member had to use/issue red passports. The UK could have carried on using or switched back to using Blue at any time.

The first A380 has already been scrapped now, unbelievable, less than 10 years old, ex. SQ I think.

It's good. But it's not two hours, 52 minutes, and 59 seconds good 😁😉😁 "On 7 February 1996, this modern engineering marvel enjoyed a moment of record-breaking history. For that day, Captain Leslie Scott, Senior First Officer Tim Orchard and Senior Engineering Officer Rick Eades flew British Airways Concorde G-BOAD between New York City, USA, and London, UK, in a world-beating time of 2 hr 52 min 59 sec. The plane covered the 6,035 km (3,750 miles) at an astonishing average speed of 2,010 km/h (1,250 mph). Quite a bit of thought had to go into breaking this record. For optimum upper-air temperature, and ‘low level’ wind velocity, February was deemed the best month to make the attempt. Scott, Orchard and Eades knew they could take advantage of the ‘jet stream’ – the narrow band of westerly winds that blow 9–16 km (5.5–10 mi) above the Earth’s surface – on ascent and descent. And it would be important to accelerate to Mach 2 quickly after take-off, and decelerate at the other end as late as possible. Moreover, Orchard would have to liaise, off the record, with US and UK air traffic control (ATC) personnel in order to minimise any hold-ups at take-off or landing. And, of course, to record the departure and arrival times precisely. The trio made the decision not to tell the hundred-or-so passengers, or even the five-person cabin crew, about the record attempt – just in case they were unsuccessful. And, of course, they weren’t going to risk the safety of anyone on board just to set a new world record. If anything went wrong, for whatever reason, they would abandon the attempt. In the event, everything went just about as smoothly as it could have. Well, nearly. Approaching Heathrow, the Concorde G-BOAD would be landing facing east; unfortunately, all the other air traffic using that particular runway would be landing facing west. For obvious reasons, ATC at Heathrow was uneasy about the Concorde landing in the opposite direction to all other aircraft – unless they could be sure that they were actually going to break the world record! Messrs Scott, Orchard and Eades assured them that they would. They were true to their word." …... They could have done it quicker but they had to stick to noise abatement after takeoff from JFK. Without noise abatement procedures but still following standard operational (limiting) procedures for supersonic acceleration, Concorde could go from zero to Mach.2 in 12 minutes.

Absolute fucking legend. Simply superb producer. I think he left about 10 seconds of original track when he remixed one of Primal's songs on the second attempt after being told his first go was a bit light 😄

And so to sleep....

One of my best mates managed the project to turn that place into a designer shopping mall 🙄

Delboy is a damn beast now. Seriously impressed.

Home safe and sound and for the first tine in a long time typing one handed with t'other in jug of ice water. I am glad I am not a young man going out every week nowadays is probably the best thing I can say right now!

I'm listening to this to relax and chill. It's about God. I don't believe in God but I believe in this song.

They could have fooked this up. I thought they would fook this up. But this looks absolutely amazing 😁 You can be my wingman.

12/20 Prem clubs now have betting platforms as their shirt sponsor 🙄 https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/49032116 Some don't even bother to use English words or names.

Singapore is one of the Grands Prix I want to attend soon. Doing Budapest in a couple of weeks to tick off another one.

Silverstone pretty much overlooked this weekend cause of the cricket and tennis. Great win by Lewis, he would have taken Bottas on track if he hadn't got the luck in the pits or could have just and waited for him to do his second stop anyway. Setting the fastest lap at the end on 32 lap old hard tyres just shows how much they were all pacing and driving to target times though and also that Bottas wouldn't have been able to catch let alone pass him in fresher rubber. The Max and Leclerc battle was awesome from what I saw of it, hard, fair and right on the edge. Vettel. Finished, done, as a top F1 driver now.

Rumours of Coutinho back to LFC still going around, bloody hope not, don't think he'd fit into or improve the first team at all now.

They're so good now that pretty much any interior/confined spaces or action shots on full scale TV productions are done with them.

You beat me to it, I was about to post a pic of that I took from the DT in the cricket thread 😁

This is good and very accurate, true to life. It's about a Thai girl who moves to London and gets drawn into the game. It's by Stephen Leather. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8267847-diary-of-a-thai-escort

Yeah CAA, Rolls (who still supported the Olympus's), and BAE (who held the type certificate) all got very worried after the Shoreham disaster and called time on it. The people running 558 (the management, not the flight crew or spanners guys) were rather inept you might say and did not inspire confidence and i'm sure this played a big part in the support being withdrawn. Most complex aircraft restoration to flight ever attempted and achieved though and I used to go to see her as often as possible very year from 2008 - 2015. A LOT of people used to just go to shows to see 558, there would be hundreds (thousands?) of us there with no interest in pretty much anything else flying on the day at the smaller shows sometimes. I remember the Reds doing a display at one smaller show and at least half the visitors not looking up once during their display 😄 I luvs me sumz hooooooowwwwwwwwwllllllllllzzzzzzzzzzzz 🤗 Wooooooooo - Play from to 0:36 - Just play 😁 -

Awesome stuff, quality of video from GoPro's and the like is fantastic now, especially compared to the grainy low def footage (if there is any footage at all) of aircraft like this from years gone by.

Crouchy is a top geezer, in the real old school sense. The fact that on the BBC article about his retirement, there was about 500 user comments and pretty much not one bad one says a lot about him, because the BBC Have Your Say users, especially on football articles are some of the most vitriolic nasty trolling chumps o the web. His book is well worth a read and his podcast a good listen. He also wins best answer to the question every footballer gets asked - Journo: What would you have been if you weren't a footballer? Crouchy: A virgin. Legend 😃

Floods of memories of Ibiza sunsets as soon as I hear this.

Cool af old bike. Chap in my folks village has a mint one he takes out when it's sunny that's nice to see/hear/smell.