Charles Bannerman

For a start, do too many people give a hoot about the men's BV? There are already lots of stories about the bars being packed when the men's events are on but emptying spontaneously as people (well mainly blokes) flood back for the women's. On which subject - sport or gratuitous titilliation? The stuff of Grandstand or Towie? Should the venue be Horseguards... or would Basildon, Braintree or Harlow be more appropriate? I was less than surprised that The Sun contrivied to publish a substantially enlarged rear view of the more "svelte" looking of the British duo this morning. Two of the more interesting rules of women's BV (and I kid you not!) are that the bikini bottoms must have no more than 6cm width of fabric at the hip and can only be dispensed with in favour of shorts if the temperature drops to 16C or below! It's interesting also that Prince Harry seems to have grabbed a job as some kind of Royal Ambassador to the BV. I suppose his excuse is that the venue is quite handy since his granny has got a place just up the road. I have to say, even though I found myself a bit irritated by the spontaneous outbursts of raucous music, hand slapping and hugging every time a point is scored, that as a sporting spectacle I found it quite entertaining to watch.

Did you get your "coupon" at the same time? And did to have a very long wait while Diggar went out on to Grieg Street to shout good natured abuse at John Brooman or any other unsuspecting passer by before returning to complete your short back and sides?

The Stanning family have got strong Lossiemouth links originating I think from the father's military posting there. So, although born in Yeovil (her Wikipedia entry wrongly states that it was Lossie), I understand that Heather was also a Lossie resident for a number of years so maybe even a local day pupil at Gordonstoun. I also think the parents still live in Lossie. The subject of Zara Phillips reminds me of a classic Colin Baillie anecdote. Colin was refereeing a rugby match between Millburn and Gordonstoun of which Zara's brother Peter Phillips was team captain, so at the start of the game, Baillie flips the coin and says "Right son - tails or granny?!"

There are still quite a few copies in circulation although it's not been on sale for very many years now. I managed to get my hands on one when I was adding the preliminary chapter to Against All Odds when it was put on this site last year and it was absoultely vital. "Caley All The Way" is an excellent book, as you would fully expect from Alex Main, despite the fundamental disadvantage of a lack of archive material since Caley's records unfortunately went up in smoke when the old Telford Street grandstand burned down in 1950 - the first of a series of such conflagrations which affected the three Inverness Highland League grounds (Caley 1950, Clach 1988, Thistle 1995).

One of the two, Heather Stanning, is a former pupil of Gordonstoun and has connections with Lossiemouth where her parents still live. That was a great performance! And of course the other big local interest is our own Mhairi Spence, Inverness Royal Academy FP (I think a couple of years ahead of Doofer) and world Modern Pentathlon champion. That on the last day of the Games, August 12th.

Are you quoting from the menu in a North Korean restaurant there?

BUY the Sun??!! "Yerjokeenmun!" as we say in these parts. I wouldn't BUY the Sun.... I merely caught sight of the front page of a copy wedged in the dashboard of a White Van in the car park at the new Asda store Seriously though I do tend to take a read.... well OK, a look since there's nothing much to read apart from Bill Leckie.... through a copy if there's one lying about in Cobbs excellent cafe at Highland Industrial Supplies to whose bacon rolls I am especially partial. But there's a job for you Norma... headline writer for The Sun. I already have my application in to them to become one of these people who seem to spend their entire existence hanging about in bedrooms in their underwear in Deidre's Photo Casebook. Or alternatively they could let me write the "Dear Deirdre" letters from people claiming to be the likes of benefit cheats having sex with their wives' best friends while their wives are out at work etc etc.... Got to say.... I'm fed up with the Olympic football already. The only interesting bit has been and that was the Korean flag gaffe.

SUNREADER!!!! :lol: That was their front page headline today!

What we have to remember is that North Korea is basically an ultra Stalinist Lunatic Dictatorship where 60 years of oppressive brainwashing of the population means that there's effectively nobody left who has any experience of what "normality" is. Unlike other (former) Communist states, North Korea has managed to be so isolationist (at the expense of the welfare and human rights of its population) that it has not been subject to many of the internal and external pressures which led to the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and to its significant modification in China when China began to give GDP priority over the principles of the Red Book. The North Korean brainwashing machine also possibly needs a natural enemy in order to focus loyalty to its regime of a succession of strangely geeky looking overweight, but nonetheless inherently vicious individuals with hilarious hairstyles which make me wonder whether Shane MacGowan of the Pogues' dentist is still alive and well working as a barber in North Korea!

In fact a state of war still technically exists between North and South Korea even though the Korean War ended in 1953, because a treaty has never been signed. I also heard the theory on the radio this morning that the North Korean team were obliged to react very strongly for fear of repecussions from the "Little Fat Leader with the Very Silly Haircut" when they weny home. I really don't think the SFA would have had a great deal to do with this game at all. Apparently the crowd was something of the order of 19,000. They had sold about 7000 tickets and given away over 30,000 but even dishing out freebies doesn't seem to make people want to watch football at the Olympics. Interestingly, someone was also saying that in the immediate Olympic environment, people will only be able to eat and drink McDonalds and Coke (and pay by Visa). Can you imagine a fortnight of packing that disgusting transatlantic muck down your throat!?

http://www.bbc.co.uk...otland-18991619 You could not make this up! Very first day of Games competition too, but the error seems to have originated with the London organisers. It's a wee bit like Celtic walking out on to the pitch at a Champions' League match to the strains of The Sash or the printers accidentally placing the image of Bendict XVI on Ibrox season tickets! On the question of the Scottish flag, if there's resentment at that then I'm beginning to wonder if Mr Salmond's policy of picking fights with London/ Westminster/ England IS actually having the infectious effect he wants. This is an Olympic Games and the member entity of the IOC is the Great Britain and even though London is the host city, its application was made through GB's membership of the IOC. Scotland is NOT an Olympic nation per se, but in this situation is a region of one. End of. I can't, for instance,imagine that Barcelona in 1992 was festooned with Catalonian flags either. In an environment where "brand police" have even been employed obsessively to protect the image of Ronald McDonald, Coca Cola, the Five Rings etc etc, a blue and white flag at Hampden Park really does seem like a side issue. Agreed, though, that football at the Olympics (and tennis for that matter) is a waste of time!

What mess was that... We don't seem to have an answer to Les's question yet.

Hang on a minute... let's get this straight. Back in 1994 poor old Buenos Hadji, due to scruples regarding the loss of his Highland League team, "declines" to associate himself with a new club which then progressed to the SPL in a decade. Instead he decides to become a lifelong supporter of another club which now finds itself in the Third Division, from which the club he declined to back moved on as champions all of 15 years ago. Talk about a magnet for lost causes! I really hope he doesn't bet on the horses!! :lol:

In today's Courier, they publish a rather sad wee online comment on earlier comments by fans on the new strip, and it reads - "ICT history? All 18 years of it? ICT fans? All three of them?" It's signed "Hadji Douglas". Looks to me as if, 18 years on, Chick Allan's biggest fan is still "spitting mad" at the merger! :lol: :lol:

2012 - Global Construction do the upgrading work in Dingwall within a tight timescale in an era of significant financial input to the club from the Global Energy chairman so Ross County call it the Global Energy Stadium. 2005 - Tulloch Construction do the upgradiing work in Inverness within a tight timescale in an era of significant financial input to the club from the Tulloch Group through its chairman so Caley Thistle call it the Tulloch Caledonian Stadium. So what's your point, caller.....????? Or are you just trying to highlight the significant difference, which is that "Tulloch Caledonian Stadium" has two more syllables?

Folks... I'm not going to say much since I prefer not to comment here on running stories, but I think I should clarify this. Ross County's policy is not to reveal how many season tickets they've sold but they do confirm that so far this season it's double last season. What they did give me was a figure of 3000 which, as I said in my report, is the number of STs sold + seat debentures held + expected uptake for corporate hospitality, which in County's case has been historically large. So one way or another all but 1000 of the 4000 in the home end are already spoken for. They want to retain a fair number for what they know is quite a large occasional support - a consequence of their fan base being so geographically dispersed - but are also quite up front in saying that selling single tickets takes in more cash than discounted STs. What they said yesterday (Tue) was that they may have to call a halt on ST sales by the end of this month. This has now been slightly refined to a guarantee that they will continue to sell STs "at least until July 27th".

But I'm not suggesting that anyone should DVD drinking activities in the Social Club!

Seriously, I think there's a lot of scope for more fans to use the Social Club since the profits go back to the football club. I just don't understand Inverness at the moment. The Portland Club has gone bust, the Leejun is struggling and the Caley Club certainly doesn't look as busy as it has done in recent years. But yet, compared with pubs over town, prices at the Leejun and the Caley Club are absolutely rock bottom - sometimes almost half what you would pay in Inverness's more expensive establishments. Now I do realise that a lot of people are taking the even cheaper option of buying supermarket drink and staying at home to watch inane talent shows on the telly or getting tanked up before abusing each other on Facebook or Twitter. But maybe it's time folk started getting a life again and began socialising with real people in a pub which seriously undercuts the rest of the market rather than getting tanked up at home. Maybe if more fans would use the Social Club they might also enhance their own corporate identity as supporters and also, through the Social Club, strengthen their sense of identity with the Football Club.

Given ICT's current pursuit of alternative sources of income, this is definitely a very good shout. In fact if these boys, as they suggest, are intending getting hammered, the Social Club after the game is probably as good a place as any to do that as well. And they'll get a very pleasant surprise, since compared with prices up town, buying drink will feel like BOGOF!! The classic symbiotic relationship - the Coventry fans get a cheap drink and ICT gets their custom.

I was just scanning through the various sections and when I saw that Doogie was the last poster on this particular thread I just had to read what he said - merely to confirm that I had predicted the nature of the response completely accurately! I think we can say that Dougal's response, coming as it does on the 12th of July, epitomises the true spirit of the "tolerance " towards Celtic fans and their likes that you would expect on such a day.

Thank you IBM! That has rung a long distant bell! The father was indeed a prison officer and this must indeed be the family I was thinking of.

Must be a different family because the daughters I remember (one at least of whom I still see about the place) will be early/ mid 50s and the mother, whom they looked very like, would certainly not have been old enough to have had a son who is now 67.

The difference on this occasion being that you are right One of the GREAT things about arguing with Donald on here is that, however intense previous confrontations have been... he never holds it against you!! :love02: :lol:

Round about the junction with St Valery Avenue? The daughters were red haired girls - I think with glasses and looked quite like the mother? Or is that a different Ross family?

Maybe this is degenerating into the kind of nitpicking semantic argument I sometimes find myself having with Caley D but to have "British" and "FA Cup" in the same phrase is a contradiction in terms... especially when it's stated in the order "British FA Cup". However I think what you mean is that FA Cup final score has never been surpassed in any of the finals of any of the Home Nations. So it might have been better stated that "the 1903 FA Cup Final scoreline remains unsurpassed in any national cup final within the United Kingdom". (If that's what you meant.)