Mark Albrighton

As it goes, I don’t find it addictive in the slightest. I order it when I’m driving mainly due to a lack of alternatives. An occasional cup of tea is sometimes bought. But that’s in the colder months. Orange juice, too sugary. Cordial/squash, I’ve never had one from a pub that I’m particularly happy with. Not drinking alcohol free. Options are kinda limited.

Can’t massively tell the difference between the full fat and zero coke stuff. Certainly not enough for me to have an opinion either way. So I have the zero stuff and avoid having 40% of my daily sugar intake in one drink. I would be utterly hopeless at the Pepsi challenge.

Hope they both rot.

If “Morgan Rogers” scanned with “Buck Rogers”, we’d be in business. Such is life.

Pretty much how I feel towards her. Although in fairness I don’t see her on shows often. I think she’s intelligent, generally I feel like television is better for having someone like her on presenting. I’m kinda glad she’s a success. But there’s something about her that I just don’t warm to. Maybe a condescending quality I’m picking up. Don’t know.

I’d give a bit to charity. Whatever you feel comfortable with.

I’m ever so sorry. Re reading your post. So the order is - 3rd - “fantasy land” 4th - dunno, something? 5th - stone cold realism That about right? Those who think 3rd was a possibility aren’t delusional per se, but they are residents of Fantasy Land? The point is, if you want to have fewer people calling you negative for your view, you’d likely be better served not calling others delusional. You can’t control how others reply to you, that’s on them. But you can control how you phrase things. If you want less name calling, practice it.

Villa must win some matches between now and the end of the season in order to finish 4th, 5th, 6th or even 7th (and lower). So by that rationale there are “must win” games. But I don’t know if any one game is. If Villa lose to Sheffield United but win the other 15 games, then no, Sheffield United isn’t a must win game. But to reduce the must win-ness of other games, beating Sheffield United would help.

Well, there’s a patronising tone in this final sentence. Up until then you were doing ok.

Calling people “delusional” for suggesting the club will finish 4th is equally as bad as those calling people “negative” for believing the club will finish 5th. Two glass houses. Plenty of stones have been thrown at both. Add to that the all encompassing “I told ya so” glass house that surrounds both, once again waiting to be broken.

I’m the Robert Webb character.

Happy birthday @sidcow

Big ol’ caveat to begin with. I have not watched The Traitors. Any of it. Despite that, they way I see it being discussed on here, the way I see it being discussed elsewhere in the media, it seems like it would be the natural successor to take the mantle from The Apprentice in the “reality show that requires its own thread on VT” stakes. Not that I’m bothered either way, I don’t often appear in this thread. But I don’t know, it seems to provoke a comparable, enthusiastic vibe. The water cooler chat, as it were.

I guess the reasoning for describing it as sickening is simply that he probably doesn’t deserve to be among the highest earning managers because he’s not a very good manager. Whereas he legitimately earned his substantial wealth as a player because he was a good player. But I don’t massively care. If the Saudi league want to waste money paying him, it’s no real bother to me.

I don’t think I’ve ever received a scam WhatsApp message. I’ve received more than my share of WhatsApps that I wish I hadn’t seen from my mates, but never a scam one from anyone, anywhere.

It’s going to be difficult to say a name that absolutely no one has heard of in Off topic on VT as I sense the vast majority of us tumble down rabbit holes on Wikipedia or similar. So I’m only thinking of people whom I think probably don’t quite have the public recognition their work merited. Beryl Vertue is a name that might be recognisable to anyone who has watched a mainstream UK sitcom but her impact is probably less well known. Starts off as an admin role, typing up Goon show scripts. I can’t quite tell how it happened but it comes across to me as “We need someone to sort our contracts out…let’s ask the secretary to do it.” And then she becomes an agent to Galton & Simpson, Hancock, Spike Milligan, Eric Sykes, Frankie Howerd… And then was the person who was tasked with selling the rights to the US for versions of UK sitcoms. So basically G&S would have made a good amount from “Sanford & Son” and other writers benefit from her work. Also I’d never heard of Pauline Boty until the other day. Hers seems like the sort of life that would provoke a bio drama in one form or another.

Ooh Citizen Cane is on BBC four. Considering he’s not quite a household name, Joseph Cotten really did have quite the set of films in his CV. Not film related but I saw him in an episode of Alfred Hitchcock presents (this episode directed by Hitch himself) “Breakdown”. In its own way, that was a fairly nightmarish watch.

I’m never normally happy reading stuff about the tories. However this sentence I really am not at all pleased with I would say 35-50 is the age range that BCS would appeal to most. Whether those who vote Tory also like BCS is another matter. To my mind, they’ve taken a critically acclaimed show, with a catchy title which literally instructs you needing the service of an individual and put Starmer in place of the show’s protagonist. The character who, while flawed I believe people like (I’m referring to Saul, not Starmer). It’s not dissimilar to that time Labour (?) put Cameron’s head on that detective from Life on Mars. Let’s associate our enemy with something good and/or popular. That’ll show ‘em.

I think it could be, as suggested, people who you think should be more well known to the general public. I’d agree that we if said, say, five out of ten people have heard of the archduke Franz Ferdinand, I would wager that proportionally speaking, only one would have heard of Princip. Said before, everyone knows Guy Fawkes. Very much not everyone knows Catesby. There will be an obvious British bias for this, but it’s Scott of the Antarctic, not Amundsen of the Antarctic. Or it could be about very famous people who you hadn’t heard of until later in life. I previously posted in the “On this day in history” thread about how I’d never heard of Nicolae Ceaușescu. But I’m reliably informed for a few years leading up to his festive demise he was a regular fixture in the news. In terms of know people who should be more well known. I dare say Juan Garcia isn’t a household name and his role in Operation Fortitude isn’t well known. Receiving both an Iron Cross and an MBE isn’t something that many people manage. Moving up the fame scale, Henry Cavendish probably should be more famous. They went through his writings years after he died and found that he’d independently discovered loads of things that would only be discovered later. Robert Hooke did a tonne of work in various sciences. But we don’t know what he looked like and it’s only springs that he’s associated with. And Slinky from Toy Story has probably taken that title these days.

Missing Spurs at home in the list. Otherwise, yes, we can.

My sincere condolences, @Seat68

I’ve only watched the Sunderland one because I knew it was a car crash. Not particularly fussed about watching the behinds the scenes footage of a successful club. There is much to be said for failure. It is much more interesting than success - to quote Max Beerbohm. I would likely watch a Villa one. But only if it’s on a streaming service I already have. Wouldn’t sign up to watch it. Am sympathetic to @Spoony in that I don’t think there would be much interest outside of the Villa fan base. By all means try and sell the product, but I’m not sure it will take. Argentinians will have a certain fervour for Martinez but after that I’m not sure of the wider appeal of the other players - as much as I like them (and I really do). And am sympathetic to the wider point of it all being a bit soapy. Although I think football has really always been a soap drama to an extent, it’s just notably packaged and sold that way now. T’is the way of the world now.

Always think it’s something of a ballsy move to give a song the same name as an even more famous song. Especially something unique like “Goldfinger” where the phrase doesn’t appear anywhere in the lyrics of the second song of the same name The carefree attitude of youth, I guess.