Paloma/ HIGNFY

I remember riling up Jambon back in my university days by omitting to post "APPRENTICE SPOILERS WITHIN".

I was thoroughly appalled but not all together surprised by Lord Sugar's (Sugar from here on in as there's no love lost) complete ignorance in the boardroom this week. It was perfectly obvious that even if Shibby did lack "business acumen", the two alongside him were quite patently completely unemployable, would be completely incompatible with his organisation and are undeserving of any post. Sugar should have thrown Paloma out when she referred to Shibby as " a joke" , before she had the chance to tell barefaced lies, denying that she stabbed the workshy Sandeesh in the back by discsussing her lack of activity with the rest of the team. Initially I presumed the decision was due to Sugar's incompetance at evaluating the contestants, however, in retrospect the evil Paloma did pull the wool over his eyes with her tirade of lies and personal abuse. I say bring back Margaret, Paloma's diabolical personality traits would have been spotted immediately by her. Karen's probably too used to dealing with footballers etc. to notice!

There seems to be a bit of a trend of contestants with any kind of moral compass falling by the wayside. Sugar was not even astute enough to avoid representing himself and company in a poor light by questioning the need for Shibby to pay compensation to the hotel's chef for failing to fulfill the order. No doubt Amstrad will lose a bit more credibility!

For supposedly bright candidates, the contestants are a complete shambles. Melissa, captained team Synergy this week. In spite of her ineptitude they managed a victory, the argument she had with Alex over GCSE results was particularly amusing. She's another one I'd lay super long odds on ever getting the job.

I've always considered Janet Street Porter to be highly irritating. However, I must say I was pleasantly surprised by her appearance on this weeks HIGNFY, her voice does not seem quite as piercingly shrill as before, perhaps I've aged and my eardrums are no longer subjected to the highest frequency squawks. Reginald D Hunter was a little quiet I felt, perhaps he tired himself out in Edinburgh.

I renewed my deucescracked membership today, so will probably make a token effort at watching a few videos in the dead time before the next episode of "World's Strictest Parents".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search?q=The%20World's%20Strictest%20Parents

Congratulations to Rupert who came second in Sunday's FTP $640 for a whopping $142k. He also nearly made the final table of the Poikerstars million but was chewed up and spat out by Andrew Litchenberger. For those of you not too au fait with online poker, that was an amusing pun pivoting on Andrew's online moniker being : "Lucky Chewy"

Ding Ding.

So far have spent the weekend playing a tonne of poker, which has gone rather well. The games have been pretty good and I've been listening to the Annie Mac shows on Iplayer, as well as a great Harry Hill interview on the Scott Mill's show:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00v4slc/Scott_Mills_Friday_Harry_Hill/

Mongy won a tournament last night, no congratulations for that, but I will, however, tip my cap to you for this link:

Encore

I felt obligated to update the blog before the mosquito induced scarring covering my ankles vanishes altoghether. Once Mr Ducharme ( a whole 8 months more mature than at our last meeting) made his way to the villa, the holiday was ready to begin in full swing.

Scott had a couple of memorable celebrations throughout the course of the month, the first of the double fistpumps occured after dinner in Ville franche. George missed a rather nondescript "blackball, corner pocket" shot which Rupert had a tidy wager riding upon, however, I'm sure he could appreciate the pleasure Mongy derived from this as he jubilantly waved his cue about, Rupert was later heard to say the joy on Scott's face was worth more to him than the money. After one sherbert too many, George was concerned that missing the black could be a metaphor for the rest of his life, the poor lad was worried about "bottling" the high pressure situations!

After a few days of settling in, a fellow Devonian came out to join us in the form of my schoolmate David. Despite now living in Geneva, David has retained a reassuring solid condascending stance on Europeans. We undertook some day trips whilst he was staying with us, including checking out the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild. Strolling around the grounds was great, there were nine different themed gardens, all with their different nuances, the Provencal garden was particularly impressive. The afternoon was rounded off with a Kir Royale, which incidentally is the favourite drink of Torquay Casino's Bob.

After a few days David had picked up the lingo, (he's pretty sick like that) and was at ease with Ducharme wearing pyjamas in public, so was ready to hit Jimmy*z with us. Jimmy*z didn't disappoint, this institution has been "setting fire to the Riviera" for 30 years, I was distinctly aware that there seemed to be a lot more "brass" there this year, perhaps they were more concentrated with it being more off-season. Unperturbed, we soldiered on, making our way through the vodka and fresh apple whilst Rupert and David did their bit to promote Anglo-Russian relations. We made 3 Jimmy*z trips in total, they all seem to have blurred into one haze of cigarette smoke, vodka, and:

I do however, have distinct memories of everyone shining individually, the most incandescent example was Sweir. Upon leaving, Callum was trying to coax a rather dazed Ducharme into his car, Sam was quick to make the most of this opportunity and quickly donned the high visibility jacket that French law dictates should be in the back of every car. Whilst in Hong kong he sadly never made it into the Dragon Guard's van, he was able to sneak into Callum's Corsa and pretend to drive. The "bouncers", inverted commas because really I have no idea what you have to do to be asked to leave, perhaps ordering an alcopop or something, looked on this with great mirth, this was not, however, shared by Callum, who after he'd removed Steve's socks, raced around to retrieve his car keys.

I enjoyed a few evening at Nice casino, accompanied by Steve and Sam on different occassions. The 5/5 game there was really fun, and full of Russians, one blonde, who wore really low cut tops and translated to her husband who spoke no French or English, this made things difficult, as when the inevitable argument about who has to show hand first broke out he had to resort to shouting at the top of his voice in Russian. He was a good lad though, I saw him in Jimmy*z and he recommended we check out Nikki Beach, which hopefully we will in future. The floorman was a thoroughly nice guy, the whole experience of playing live there was thoroughly enjoyable. The game was soft, the atmosphere congenial, the rake exorbitant and the G&T's free.

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I've left it a bit too long to feel like writing a more thorough report, but suffice to say the month flew by and thanks to Rupert for his organisational endeavours.

Rupert Guest Blog

In typical Warwick fashion my blog is temporarily redundant since I can't login. No doubt this new wave of graduate bloggers has made them realise they should go back to charging for WGA membership.

Anyway, it's been bloody ages since I last blogged - partly because I was in France for a month, but mostly because i've been incredibly lazy.

France was its wonderful self with a glorious month of sun, Jimmy*z and downswinging. When all was said and done, I was relatively poor compared to the start of the holiday which made me very sad.

Nevertheless, since getting home I haven't let being drastically underrolled from stopping me playing an absurd volume of poker. It wouldn't be time for me to blog unless I won a tournament recently so you should note that after my 4th place in a $75, 1st in a $20r and 3rd in a $109 I am nothing less than a bona fide tournament genius. It wouldn't be bragging unless I mentioned that i'm up a bag at cash since getting home too.

It's all becoming a bit too much. After I got home I found myself with a delightful cold, sore throat, cough, sneezing fits, swollen tongue (????) all wrapped up in a two word diagnosis the doctor informs is as a "throat infection". My old mate from GCSE History Flemming is here to help me out though and i've been popping 8 penicillins a day like a recovering junkie. With great success too I may add, since I am practically cured and can now speak without sounding like a complete spastic.

As Tommo has granted me the privelege of blogging a guest post (due to aforementioned reasons) i'm humouring him at the possibility of moving up to Edinburgh with him. Availability of premises seem largely limited at the moment, mostly by not having an HMO license which apparently is the be all and end all these days when letting an apartment. Still, gives me something else to refresh in the morning.

Much to his disappointment, i'm going to allow Tommo to complete the France trip report because he's doing a fantastic job, and also I can't be arsed.

Rupert

Les Vacances- Part I

My adventure began with a trip up to Norwich for the annual Alan Partridge Convention, handily enough it was held at the airport hotel, which made it pretty convenient for Rupert to collect me and the break to begin. Despite getting off to a somewhat melancholic start (the Alan Partridge tie and blazer badge packs sold out before I could get one) Bury St. Edmunds proved the perfect tonic. Home to notables such as Peter Charalmbos, James Keys and Rupert, it's a picturesque English market town that has a solid reputation for producing beer, housing the Greene King brewery. We ambled about the town, managed to squeeze in a pint in "The Nutshell" reputedly Britain's smallest pub:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nutshell

Buoyed up with Dutch courage I managed to negotiate a discount on a blue pinstriped jacket I'd seen earlier in the day. The previous tailor had stated he may be able to throw in a pair of socks for free, however, I managed to cajoule the manager into knocking off a few guineas. I stayed the night at Rupert's house before we left and kept an eye on Koopa, Rupert has a tendency to neglect him, he clearly needs handling every hour to check whether he is asleep etc...

After we finally managed to overtake mongy, who, was once again plodding along in the middle lane, we arrived first at the port but were soon met by the Brighton Boys, Scott and Callum. After a fairly uneventful crossing, we arranged to meet at the Chateau which we were staying at to break our journey up. Rupert and I managed to circumvent the debris littering the road, alas George was not so fortunate, they endured a few hours of garage related pigeon english as they decided how best to replace two of G's wheels. Meanwhile, Rupert and I kicked back with a few G&T's at the Chateau, rowed around the moat before picking up a couple of cases of champage from the production outlet nearby. The chap who gave the tour of the premises and explained the manufacturing process did so entirely in French, however, Rupert and I purloined an English middle aged balla who was on his way back to St Tropez with his son to translate for us. Picked up a couple of cases and a Magnum.

When the boys arrived we all tucked into the restaurant’s tasting Menu which was very good. We also got involved with some vintage port which went down rather better than out request for Port Salut cheese, the waiter huffily informed us that this was “Supermarket cheese” and stormed off to go and peel some more onions. We set off for Villefranche the following morning in jolly spirits.

Once again the tortoise triumphed, with Rupert’s mighty Almera beating the Scooby to the finishing line. We were greeted by the housekeepers, Elektra and her husband Victor. What an eccentric couple they were, well we’ve not had our deposit back yet, and after last years farce I’d better move swiftly on before I tell of racist jibes, violent outbursts, death threats etc.

The Villa itself comprised of two self contained unit. Initially I thought that this would lead to a rather more segregated affair than last year, however, this didn’t really prove to be the case as the group was more divided upon ideological principles, such as how awful “Two jacks in the hole” is, rather than by domestic constraints. We all set up our computers downstairs in the living room eager to shoot for loot for the coming month. We were soon joined by Steven, regular readers may recall him from my Australian tales.

To be continued...

Hellocanuhearme

Will be bashing out a blog soon, in the meantime I'd recommend you check out James's page here:

http://hellocanuhearme.wordpress.com/

If he learns capital letters, he might just be the best...

September

New month, flying up to meet Rupert later and will be on way to the Villa in south of France via a jaunt around Champagne tomorrow. Quite a lot to endure really, will be rely on Roy Jones Jnr to keep me motivated to get some hands in.