Move Over The Boss, We Have A New Winner

It was the summer of '81 when Ian and I saw Bruce Springsteen at the NEC. Bloody brilliant and until a fortnight ago unbettered. But now we have a new answer to the best gig question (can someone my age realistically use a word like 'gig'?) and that answer is - Muse as seen at the impressive Etihad Stadium in Manchester. An incidental bonus to attendance at this extravaganza and having missed it so much at Cheltenhanm this year was the availability and the good-as-you-rememberedness of the foot long hot dog. With onions.

On the Saturday after the aMusement (you see what I did there?) there was an afternoon at another English institution - the one day international, England v Australia at Edgbaston. A comfortable England victory and a comfortably enjoyable day's drinking. In passing a word of praise for the ICC Champions Trophy of which this game was part - a concise and therefore arresting tournament without either the interminable pissing-about of your modern World Cup or the monstrous vulgarity of Twenty20. Not a patch on test cricket mind.

In golf the US Open is this week being played at The Merion Golf Club in Philadelphia, sister club of the estimable Merion Cricket Club whereat the Boy Roberts batted in the nets in 1981 as the guest of Professor Alan Lawley of Drexel University. It's a long story.

Rugby Union. Yesterday afternoon I watched a valiant Scotland lose to South Africa and the commentary made me realise that there are plenty of things worse than that annoying tit Stuart Barnes. Barnes may be infuriating but he is at least not tiresomely biased which was the unabashed modus operandi of the Springbok commentators. Embarrassing.