Big Brother...admit it...it was bloody good way back when, wasn't it?

Ah my little blog...how I have horrendously neglected you recently...I do apologise.

What's more I come back only briefly - flying back in for a mere second, a couple of glasses of wine to the unsteady yet with the most thrilling sort of sensation...that of lost love rekindled.

Yes. It's true. I love Big Brother again. For after ten years it is finishing with a flourish - a star-studded show of former personalities from the regular and celebrity versions for two weeks.

And sure, I've missed a week courtesy of being on my hols, but hey...it has everything. Victor - officially my all time favourite contestant (the Milkman...he always delivers...glorious)...Nasty Nick (the man who got me into the show all those years ago with his under hand tactics)....Brian Dowling (apparently being amusing for the first time since he won the show way back when) and that girl who said 'who is she anyway???' in an amusing voice albeit in the series I lost interest and never returned to it.

But Ultimate Big Brother is a glorious reminder of why this franchise was worth it, why it did make my summer for four years. Why when they kept things simple it was at its very best, with people vaguely likeable.

It'll be gone soon, of course...or, at least, I guess until Channel Five revive it. But it will not be forgotten. Because for a few years and with Celebrity versions constantly delivering, it was perhaps one of the finest reality shows ever.

Big Brother. You are evicted. But we will always love you (just not remember anything of those last five or six series...).

Review - 20Ten Prince

The manner in which I approach a new Prince album has changed over the years.

Once upon a time it was a somewhat momentous occasion. A time of practically sleepless night and intense anticipation.

But then that was back in the days when things were different.

Back in what are now rapidly becoming the 'olden days' the process was thus:

About two weeks before its release Radio 1 would get hold of the new Prince single and play it. I'd have got wind of it and be sat there with my fingers poised over the tape recorder....I'd tape it and play it death.

Then it would hit the shops. So I'd trot along and buy it in as many different formats as my limited financial resources would allow. Picture discs a particular highly prized addition to the collection.

And more often than not there would be a special treat - a b-side. An unreleased new song. Two for the price of one. Magical.

It would fly into the charts - almost always straight into the top ten (when going straight into the top ten was still an achievement not the norm) - and I'd nervously sit there on a Sunday night for the chart rundown wondering how high.

Depending on the plans there would either be another single release or, a couple of weeks later the album would drop....prompting a scramble back to Our Price to bag the vinyl. Back home, scouring the artwork, reading the lyrics, putting everything else on hold to absorb it. Happy days. Simple days, really.

And then, of course, there would be a tour that summer...the crowning glory...the pinnacle of all entertainment forms in my mind...sheer, undiluted joy.

But, of course, things change. Even myself and Prince.

Which brings us to today. Today Prince albums still trigger an excitement, an anticipation. But rather than thinking 'will this be is best yet' my mind is set on a 'will this be complete shit' or, more to the point, 'please don't let this be complete shit'.

Which is a bit unfair, because I've never really thought any of his albums are, indeed, 'shit', but they have declined dramatically since his hey-day.

Rather than products which I would play for weeks on end, if not months on end, modern efforts are rather more shortlived affairs. Hit and miss episodes. I really enjoyed the likes of 3121, Musicology and Planet Earth, but as a complete product they seemed to be lacking a certain something. There would be standout tracks, just not enough of them.

Which brings us to 20Ten. His latest release. And his second consecutive album in the UK to be given away free via a newspaper.

Now, I appreciate it makes sound financial sense for him to do this (he picks up £250,000 and doesn't have to fret about whether people will buy it, whether radio stations will give it airplay, to do the whole promotional circuit. In short, he doesn't need to gauge just how popular he actually is to the wider market) but, in my mind, an album you get free is immediately devalued.

Unfair, yes, but it is devalued as no value to the consumer has been put upon it. It is dished out to anyone and everyone without consideration. There is, in short, no bond between consumer and artist. No effort to acquire it.

And granted, if Prince were to somehow read this he'd say 'well 300,000 extra copies were sold of the Daily Mirror on the day the album was included' and, yes, he'd probably have a point. But I might even consider buying the Mirror if there was a free album in it - even if of an artist I didn't much care for. Well, you would, wouldn't you?

All of which rather sets me off on the wrong foot. The fact I'm getting a Prince album for 65p is forgotten. The fact I can buy three copies for less than £2 (before you ask, one for use, one for back-up, one to remain still sealed for collection purposes...see, totally sane). All I can think is 'blimey, does he have that little faith in the wider market he has to give it away'.

Which brings us in a very long and overly waffly way to 20Ten. Released with the Mirror last Saturday.

Now, and this has not been easy I can tell you, I have spent the week (and the days leading up to it when it leaked) of avoiding all reviews. I've not dabbled on the forums I usually frequent, in fact I've not even stuck my big toe in the 20Ten discussion threads...

Why? Purely so I could make my own mind up on what I thought of the album. To not in any way be swayed by public opinion.

And you know what? I really, really enjoy it. There's a really nice ebb and flow to it, a uniformity of sound which I have to say makes it one of his most pleasing recent efforts.

It's not Sign o' The Times, or Parade or Lovesexy, but then it would be thoroughly unreasonable to expect it. But it is certainly a 'good, solid' album. There are a couple of songs I've had completely jammed in my head for the week, and, one week of constant listening later, I've not tired of it at all....I've even resisted pressing the skip button on a couple of tracks, and been repaid by rather enjoying even the weaker tracks.

But it is just how a Prince album should arrive...surrounded in hype (all whipped up by the Mirror, admittedly, but still..), available in hot summer weather (his music sounds better in the sun, I don't know why, it just does), and amid some live shows (although admittedly, all, thus far, on the European mainland).

The Linn Drum machine is in full effect, the synths have been dusted down and put centre stage, and while the effort to recapture past sounds is apparent, it doesn't seem to be the be all and end all (which, I felt, was very much the case with MPLSound, for example, from the Lotusflow3r set - his last recorded output.) Instead, it comes across as unforced, quite natural sounding, and, bizarrely, reasonably contemporary as a result. Although I consider everything where the Eighties and Nineties is concerned to still sound cutting edge...so don't trust my judgement too much here...

Not sure there are any real stand-out tracks, just a very pleasing, rounded effort.

So I've listened to nothing else for a solid week now and here...track by track, is my take on it....the minute I pen the last word I will be straight off to the Prince sites of my choice to find out what everyone else said, and no doubt discover I love all the songs which the world hates...

Prince - 20Ten



Compassion
Now, I believe it should be law that Prince albums start with a cheery little number. It just should. Look at Let's Go Crazy (the ultimate album/concert starter of all time). And this opener ticks the right boxes. It reminds me very much of I Can't Stop This Feeling I've Got, the opener from Graffiti Bridge, and has exactly the same effect - it tees me up a treat.
It's bouncy, it is tight, you can imagine it being a good live track, and by the time it begins to fade out it's turned into a right funky little thing. It may not win any songwriting awards, it's not particularly sophisticated, but there is something about it which is so completely likeable, it is difficult to resist its charms. In fact, I haven't. One of the albums better offerings, and a cracking starter.

Beginning Endlessly
Ah. Track two and it gets interesting. Along with Compassion, this is a cracking starter to this album. Fundamentally sluggishly paced, there is a drive to this song which makes it feel faster, and the synth sound on it is really very good indeed. It provides the pulse to a song which is so very Prince. It's funky, poppy, trots in a number of different directions, and at the end of it makes you feel like you may have been listening to three songs merged into one. Sure, there is an appalling lyrical line (something along the lines of 'if I ever get to explore your anatomy' which sounds like rhyming couplets gone crazy) but the vocal delivery is cleverly done and this is a really classy song. Plus there's a wonderful bit of jangly guitar at the end, which, I suspect, I will prize highly until the day I die.

Future Soul Song
The opening bars of this song make my heart slump into my boots. It is classic Prince 'slowie'...pre-the vocals kicking in, it has that wet, syrupy sound to it which normally bellows 'you're going to hate this one' at me. I have to be honest, I've never been a big fan of his ballads. I just don't think it's what suits him. Which I know is odd, because many fans are completely sold of them. To me, they too often make him sound just like any other R&B artist and slow down the pace. Not always, but certainly in recent efforts. On Planet Earth, for example, Somewhere Here on Earth kicked in as track three, and I not only resented it, I just thought it was horrid. Not sure I've ever listened to it much since. Even when he played in on the last of the 21 Nights shows at the O2 I can remember sitting back down for it...such is my complete dislike.
HOWEVER...that is being too harsh on this. Because, actually, for one of his slower offerings, this is pretty reasonable. It has a pretty little 'sh-la-la-la' refrain which saves it completely, plus near the end it appears to grow some balls as Prince gets himself in a state and a guitar rises in and out. Not brilliant, but if the 'track three slowie' has to exist, things could be worse. Reminds me a tad of When 2 R In Love. This, by the way, is the example of a track which at first I thought I should skip, but giving it room to breathe paid dividends. Plus, it doesn't usher in crap...for the next song is excellent...

Sticky Like Glue
This starts off sounding like it will meander in a typically Prince like way, without really getting anywhere, but by the end of it, I become thoroughly hooked by its fiendishly addictive chorus. It's actually quite a slow paced song, but it has that so very Prince vibe to it, plus the cannot-resist jangly guitar. Sure, it includes, perhaps misjudged, a rap in the middle, but it is so very interesting I can't help enjoy it very much. By the time Prince is practically rapping off with himself at the end, on top of a classic layer of vocals and guitar, I'm ready for more.

Act of God
I'll be honest, this song leaves me somewhat cold. I hope to like it, but it just seems a bit too obvious. It doesn't really go very far and sounds too much like a modern day version of Money Don't Matter Tonight - both lyrically and musically, and I didn't care much for that either. Dare I say it? I just find it a bit dull and unremarkable.

Lavaux
Now this is my favourite on the album. Got a really nice synth intro that wouldn't sound out of place on something from The Time, and it is just wonderfully fresh and funky. Sure, the way he actually says 'Lavaux' is ice-cold cool, and the fact Lavaux is in one of my favourite parts of the world (a particularly picturesque Swiss town that sits on the banks of Lake Geneva, close to Montreux (assume he visited during his shows at the Jazz Festival there) vineyards flowing down it with views across the lake and across to the magnificent rising mountains on the other side...truly a glorious, wonderful place), ushers it into a special place in my heart, but it is just a great, laid-back funky little number which is particularly good blasted loud. Wonderful stuff. Needed to be too, because the next two songs are a bit uneventful.

Walk in Sand
Now if there is such a thing as a Prince stencil for songs, this was cut from it. It's that classic slow/medium paced love song thing which could, in truth, have been culled from any Prince album for the last 20 years. Sort of track I'd consider filler, but knowing Prince would probably be the next single, and flounder at number 30 (back in the day, that is)...Nice enough, but just a bit nothingy to be honest.

Sea of Everything
I'd almost say ditto the above for this. Although this is a little prettier...but I'd still be hard pushed to say much about it, if I'm honest. So I won't.

Everybody Loves Me
Bit odd this song. It sits a little out of place at the end of this album. It is a very clear nod to his former most successful era, but it sounds quite unlike most other things he had done. I never thought I'd say this but it does sound a bit like a Jim Bob track (he of Carter USM fame) which are two of my musical favs I never thought would find a common ground. It's a bit of a bizarre super bouncy number with a rather nasty little jangly piano bit but is still, somehow, rather good. This is the sort of reason I get so hooked on Prince. This song shouldn't work, yet somehow it just about does. His voice sounds a bit silly on it, but there is something to it which is difficult to hate. The day I hate a jaunty, lightweight, fast-paced Prince song will be a sad day indeed.

Lay Down
The 'hidden track' and a rather funky little number. HOWEVER...unforgivably...he refers to himself as, and I quote direct here, 'the Purple Yoda'...yes...you heard that right...oh dear.
Which is a shame, as it's another of those songs which can only ever come from Prince (and perhaps why I find those identikit ballads so dull). There's a dirty guitar, a bit of call and response, and you can imagine in an aftershow setting this could be something of a highlight.

So there you have it. Not classic Prince, by any stretch, but a good effort and one which I've enjoyed far more than I expected. Now, finally, I'm off to read what the rest of the world thought.

A bloody long walk...a reflection

The Yorkshire Three Peaks challenge normally takes around 10-12 hours. At 26-miles the clue to the sort of terrain is very much in the title.

Yet, just 15 minutes in, as I tried not to concentrate too much on the looming turret of peak number one which sits like an immovable Jabba the Hut immediately before the enthusiastic walker, a girl in her mid-twenties is already heading home.

As she stomps down proclaiming loudly into a mobile phone and in a strong northern accent ‘I just can’t do it, it’s too much’. I think a number of things.

Firstly, I’m hoping the fact she is clearly a tad overweight and looking like she’s dressed to go to the shops rather than a ruddy great long cross-country hike is the reason for her somewhat hasty – dare I say it, premature – decision; that she looks like she’s about to open a box of fags the minute the phone call ends, means she’s simply horrendously misjudged what this was about.

Yet, a nagging doubt suggests creeps into my head. Just what, it says, lies around the corner here? Just what makes someone give up so soon into such a marathon effort? Just what have I let myself in for?

About 30 minutes later as I find myself literally clambering across rocks heading towards the first peak I fear the girl may have had a point. And that I would be following right behind her. An amusing anecdote for the hardy souls who see it through.

This is not, after all, me. This is way out of my comfort zone. I don’t even like walking very much.

Yet, the Yorkshire Three Peaks would prove a remarkable journey of personal discovery for me and inject a sense of pride and achievement in myself I didn’t think possible.

The three peaks in question are Pen-y-Ghent, Whernside and Ingleborough – spread out over the undulating, sometimes dramatic, always beautiful Yorkshire Dales.

They lurk around the landscape, looming up and above all their neighbours, and it is the path which links them which forms the challenge. A 26-mile extravaganza which pits man against blisters and dodgy ankles.

Stone walls line the route, rocky paths alternate with peat ground so soft it springs under foot. The gentle trickling of streams and rivers flow around you, sheep and cows quietly and peacefully going about their business.

The occasional stone cottage or farm building arrives on the horizon and just as quickly disappears.

But it is treading these paths of rough stone and smooth rock where you will develop an appreciation of many things. Most significantly quality footwear, thick, comfy socks and talcum power.

So while the country prepares itself for England’s World Cup clash against Germany in a little over 24-hours, what brings me here on what was then the hottest day of the year?

As is so often the case, the pursuit of cash. Charity money in this case. My mother-in-law was recently diagnosed with a particularly aggressive and very rare form of breast cancer. Driven by a desperate desire to do something ‘positive’ and to focus the mind at such a traumatic time, my wife signed us up three weeks before hand to tackling the three peaks in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support.

All well and good, except my walking normally extends to strolling to my car and back. So the three short weeks were spent each weekend pounding the oh-so-subtle slopes and flats of Kent and the occasional jaunt to the gym when the blisters from the practice walks had died down enough to allow me to walk without being in agony.

It was probably just about enough. But it hardly left me mountain-goat like.

And at 7.30am as I stood in the pretty little village of Horton in Ribblesdale staring up at the first peak, and then saw that girl walking down, I pondered to myself if I hadn’t made some terrible mistake.

To complete it within 12-hours was my goal. I didn’t much care if I had to crawl the last peak. I just wanted to achieve it. Driven by the extreme generosity of sponsors – we raised a little over £1,000 between the pair of us – I just wanted to not be pulled up halfway around and told I was simply too slow/that I was a danger to myself and others/they couldn’t afford a helicopter to lift me to safety.

My wife, on the other hand, has spent the year getting super fit and thus bounds up each hillside leaving me in her wake (I do wave her on, I hasten to add, she doesn’t simply tut, laugh and leave me there without a backward glance). She will complete this unless she breaks her leg. Even then I suspect she’ll hobble around it.

Around 500 others had signed up for this specially organised day, and as we set off, the mood was light and the feet unscathed. Neither would last for long.

Without wishing to bore you with a step-by-step guide, the climbs, I found, were excruciating. They were long and hard and seemingly unrelenting. Certainly to someone for whom the North Downs had provided the only real experience of uphill walking in the weeks leading up to it.

Worse, was that the route down – with the exception of peak one – was almost as bad. Not, perhaps, as physically demanding, just slow and painful on the feet.

Yet, as the time ticked along and the long expanse of countryside between peak one and two allowed hours of steady, flat-ish, walking, the pain and anguish of the climbs and descents could be forgotten.

I actually rather enjoyed it.

Although perhaps the vision of Ingleborough looming high and ominous so soon after peak two will long live in my memory as something which made my blood run cold. So steep. So imposing. So near to the end, yet so very, very far.

But as I climbed the final zig-zag path leading to the summit, the tears which came to my eyes as I realised I had done it, taking me completely by surprise and almost unable to control myself – self-indulgent though they were – will live perhaps longest in my memory. A sense of personal achievement the likes of which I am not sure I have ever experienced. That someone as unhealthy as I could do it.

It was very hard. I cannot deny that. It was as much a challenge of the mind as it was the body, but to achieve it would make me draw parallels between many challenges we all face, big and small, and how with determination and a prevailing wind, you can achieve it.

Just, whatever you do, never, ever, underestimate the vital, over-powering benefits of looking after your feet before, during and after.

One week to go...oh blimey....

This time next week - at the precise moment I write this - I will be nearly four hours into a 26-mile trek. Yet, four hours will not even be half-way round.

I'll have probably tackled one of the three Yorkshire peaks I find in my way. Another eight hours will stretch far into the distance. Hours of pounding and blister making ahead. I just hope four hours in, I'm not suffering too much. Because quite aside from the physical task which lies ahead, I'm not sure I could stomach the abject humiliation if I fail this challenge.

I appreciate the scale of the thing completely. And 26 miles flat walking would be not something I'd bat an eyelid at. It's just those bloody steep looking hills that really concern me.

But I really do not feel stopping is in any way an option. In fact I honestly feel like I may have to be carried off the bloody slopes than just say 'balls, I'm not doing this anymore'.

Because the generosity of sponsors means we've raised over £1,000. Which is such a staggering amount of cash (there was a genuine concern we'd struggle to raise the minimum £200 when we started asking for money) that to not achieve what we've promised to do makes my heart sink to my boots.

To think of having to refund people - and of course you'd have to do it out of my own pocket rather than depriving the charity the money - is just not worth thinking about. Imagine the humiliation.

So I just hope and pray the Gods I believe in smile down on me next week and will me to end. Blisters I can take. Having to tell people I failed them, I'm not sure I can.

World Cup....a memory jerker

The World Cup is one of those events which anchors my life. Not quite, admittedly, in the same way that a Prince UK tour does, but mention a World Cup year and I'll be able to remember, roughly, where I was in life.

For example, 1978, my first World Cup memory, I have vague - yet distinct - memories of watching Argentina v Holland, the final, on a little portable television while on a family holiday in a caravan on Hayling Island. At least, I think it was Hayling Island. I was only five at the time.

1982, my father had been made redundant and so we enjoyed our most exotic holiday ever - driving down to stay for two weeks in a villa in Italy - the eventual winners for a tournament then staged in Spain.

1986 and I watched the Hand of God in the bar of a campsite in the Dordogne.

1990 and I'd stopped holidaying with my parents and so had friends round to watch the tournament and the semi-final - albeit this a tad marred by my moody dog biting one of my friends to the extent they needed a tetanus jab. Typical.

1994 - England decided they didn't want to qualify so I endeared myself to my soon-to-be-wife-but-then-only-just-recently-started-dating girlfriend by shouting so loudly when Ireland scored against Italy I woke our young son just seconds after she'd taken hours to get him to sleep. And a summer of watching games in what memory throws up as endless sunshine. It probably rained every day for I can remember.

1998 - Michael Owen, the wonder goal, Beckham getting sent off, my wife heavily pregnant with our second child.

2002 will forever be remembered for a tragedy that befell a work colleague on the dawn of the tournament she had been so, so excited to watch; 2006 by being, to be honest, pretty unremarkable.

What, I wonder, will I take away of my memories of 2010?

Training for a bloody long walk....day one

I am a man anxious. Anxious because having committed to doing a rather rash bit of fundraising, I'm having a serious - albeit kept to myself - attack of self-doubt.

Now, don't get me wrong. My ego is built on a solid foundation of purest gold self-doubt. Just that with that, I tend to be the only one who suffers.

If I bollocks this one up I'm letting down an awful lot of people.

I have agreed to join my wife in a 26-mile walk through the Yorkshire Dales, taking in three peaks. Now, I'll be honest, I'm hoping they're not all that 'peakie' and rather just a tad hilly. But I suspect they'll look like bloody great mountains when I stand before them.

This jaunt takes place in just three weeks too.

Now. It has to be said, I don't really much like walking. I love the idea of it, but normally I'm put off by the fact by the time you've sorted out the kids, and all the bags they need carting around, and got a bastard dog yapping at your heels, the relaxation part of the walk, the chance to just chat and enjoy the countryside/coastline, rather diminishes.

By the time you throw in the fact this thing is going to be 12-hours-plus of non-stop bloody walking with all the pain that is likely to deliver to my unfit body and sensitive feet and I may some real explaining to do to all the good souls who have so far been so incredibly generous in sponsoring the effort.

I've just returned from the gym where I was completely preoccupied as I tried to waddle away on the treadmill setting the tilt thing up and down like it was one of those games where you have to balance a ball around a maze.

But after 30 minutes, and feeling a tad weary, I'm acutely aware of this being on a smooth treadmill in an air-conditioned gym. Quite how I'll feel five hours in, not even halfway, and with a blister the size of Bournemouth developing on both feet, I have no idea.

Lost in my own sad little mind....

Oh bloody hell. I've become obsessed. Lost this time. The TV series which ended this week and has left me an emotional mess ever since.

I've chewed over the ending of this show in my mind almost constantly since I watched the bloody thing, and try as I might, its emotional thwack continues to leave my ears ringing.

As I type this, Lost soundtracks are slowly but surely navigating their way down broadband pipes and onto my laptop. If ever there is a sign that I have got it bad, it is surely downloading the theme music. Most of which is lots of screechy violins as something rather scary happens.

But by crikey, if ever a bit of music packs an emotional punch, the little refrain and piano piece on Lost is surely it...makes my ears well up just thinking about it let alone actually listen to it...

That Lost is over I can contend with. My obsession, I fear, may only just be changing phases...

Now, I feel considerable sums of cash may part my hands in a pursuit of answers. Actually, no, not answers, a pursuit of more wonderful confusion. Sod the answers...I'm diving in and splashing around the sheer chaos of it all.