Remember Rational Anthem, the LP currently rushing up the charts from DHM Stallard's top property dispute partner Martin Allen? Well, RollOnFriday wrote a story about it last week, simultaneously offering a prize of the album to the Roffer who most tickled us with their legal musical pun.


The results are in. And the winner is....[drum roll]....well, actually, we couldn't decide - so many of them were brilliant. So we'll keep the CD - along with industrial quantities of cotton wool, and various sticks on which to bite down. Trust us, we're doing you a favour.




Notable entries included:

Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter and May
Barry White & Case
Whitesnake & Case
DLA C/DC
Howard Jones Day
Ray Charles Russell
Guns and Norton Roses
Take a Clifford Chance on Me
Beach Boys Croft
The Herbert Smiths (obviously Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now)
Davis Arnold Cooper Temple Clause (if only you'd left your name!)
Lily Allen & Overy
Lou Reed Smith
No Reasonable Doubt
Keith Richards Butler
Ginger Baker & McKenzie
Linklaters with Jools Holland
Strawberry Freshfields Forever
Black Escrows
Evershed Seven
Born to be Wildes
Never Mind the Orricks
F Lawrence Graham + the Machine
Ash Hurst
Gary Barlow Lyde & Gilbert
Gilbert O'Sullivan & Cromwell
The White Book Album
Bird & Bird is the Word
Ozzy Osborne Clarke
Shakin Stephenson Harwood
Estop! Hammertime!
The Dead Kennedys


Most bitter entrant was I Fought the Law and the Law Won, by The Clash (over my pisspoor bonus).

Thanks for all your entries. A magnificent effort.

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Do you sing like Susan "hairy Angel" Boyle? Are you a legal type?

Then why not join the Lawyers' Chorus, part of Lawyers' Music which consists of an orchestra and choir, both of which meet weekly during term time.

The choir usually puts on three concerts per year, and the orchestra five.

There's a 'taster evening' on Thurs 9th Sept for anyone who might like to join a choir in London.  It's open to lawyers, other professionals, students and their friends (and anyone else you care to think of). On the 9th, there'll be a sing through of various parts of this term's work (Haydn's St Nicholas Mass and Britten's St Nicholas Mass), and then have some wine and nibbles.  And then straight down the pub. It's a non-audition choir, and it's fair to say that it's mixed ability.  The key things are that people love their music, they have a basis understanding of it, and have had some previous choir experience.

The Choral Director is Chris Oakley, a Senior Associate at Nabarro.

The orchestra tends to have fewer issues with their recruitment, and are not holding a similar evening this term.  However, they are always on the look out for new members on a rolling basis.

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Just received the following press release. Initially presumed it was a spoof, but extensive (3 seconds) internet searching has proved me wrong. Cannot find the words to do it justice:

"Cash and Curry, the British gangster flick is out on DVD from July 19th.

The film stars Kinga and Makosi of Big Brother fame. The gruesome twosome made the BB6 series with their impassioned antics, arguments and nudity. Kinga infamously made love to a bottle of wine and Makosi claimed that she bedded Antony in the housemate’s pool. (A claim which was denied viciously by Antony, the eventual winner of the show)

Also starring in this multi cultural gangster flick are Pooja Shah – voted Britain’s sexiest soap star ever by the News of the World, Tiny Iron the muscle in Dead Man Running and Ameet Chana of Bend it Like Beckham fame.

CASH AND CURRY SYNOPSIS:

Cash and Curry is the story of the Fascist UK Front who are fed up with the immigrants 'invading their country'. Added to their woes is the fact that London has been carved up between two rival drug lords - one black, the other Asian. This makes a mockery of the UK Front's war cry: "Ain't no black in the Union Jack!' Meanwhile, Raj (Ameet Chana, Bend It Like Beckham) and his friends (Pooja Shah and Ronny Jhutti, Eastenders) are tired of being "errand boys" at the bottom of London's criminal food chain.

Desperate ambition leads Raj into a dangerous double-cross that lands them in the middle of a gang war between two of the biggest drug lords in London: Gabbar (Manish Patel, Triads, Yardies & Onion Bhajees) and Isaac. To elude capture, Raj and his friends are forced to submerge themselves in farm life much to the dislike of the local racist skinhead who takes exception to this 'multicultural invasion' of the old English countryside!  Meanwhile Gabbar and Isaac dispatch various henchmen, including Tiny (Andrew ‘Tiny Iron’ Harrison, Dead Man Running) to track down Raj, the money and the drugs!!"

So it actually is real. And as if Kinga and Makosi weren't enough, there's also Lee Latchford-Evans from Steps.

http://www.cashandcurry.com/

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Everything is touch screen nowadays. Phones, computers, and beautiful yet pointless Apple products.

But I'd never had a touch-screen camera before, not until I got my hands on the new Kodak Slice. It's got 14 megapixels, which is approximately 14 times better than the camera on my otherwise lovely touch-screen phone. It lets you tag photos (and video) ready for Facebook or YouTube - the only way in which anyone ever gets to see any kind of self-produced media anymore (when was the last time you flicked through ahard-copy photo album, at least without wanting to shoot yourself to death? That's because technology has destroyed your mind).

So it's a camera without a little hole you look through (apologies, but my previous camera was a Box Brownie). The entire back of the unit is just a massive screen, where you can scroll through the various settings to take the pictures of your dreams. As a complete novice, I stuck largely to the automatic settings (i.e. the clever thing does all the hard work for you) and turned out some charming pictures of a wet weekend on the south coast. Actually, it was lucky that it wasn't too sunny, because I fear the otherwise-lovely touchscreen might become impossible to read in direct sunlight. Having said that, smearing greasy fingers all over it during the course of an afternoon didn't seem to do it much good either.

 

Merrie England in the rain, captured by your correspondent.

And to be honest, I didn't really cope very well with the touchscreen anyway. It's simple enough, but my generally quite slim fingers kept alighting on the wrong bit and I spent many unhappy moments missing otherwise excellent moments (Kodak moments, one might call them). I don't know, but it just seemed that some things were just better with actual buttons you could press, even if me pressing buttons on a camera is roughly akin to tourists pressing the door-opening buttons on the Tube.

One of the great things is the ability to flick through your album of snaps. And of course you get to see them on the camera's big screen, far better than the tiny previews you'd otherwise get on a digital camera. And even when you've uploaded your photos to a computer (and then probably forgotten about them - because that's the digital future), thumbails are retained on the camera for future reference. It does lots of other clever stuff too - like recognise faces and allow you to do rudimentary editing and takes high-quality film. The thing I liked best was that you didn't need any tedious software downloading to get the transfer process going - plug and play, quite literally.

And a final bonus. You don't need to buy another small plastic hunk of technology to save your photos. The camera has 2GB (which is enough for 700 top-quality photos) built in, and surely that should be enough for anyone.

The Kodak Slice camera is available now, retail price around  £250 (online). .... read more >

England in 1990 wasn’t all fun. Poll tax riots, economic strife, and every Saturday, violence at football grounds around the country. Even at Oxford United’s ramshackle Manor ground, where I learnt swearing. In 1986, England lost to both the hand and then the magic boots of Maradona, but that largely passed me by. I was six, too busy with my Daily Mirror sticker album and the exploits of John Aldridge to worry about the World Cup.

But twenty years ago, I became transfixed by international football. There was a game outside of the old first division. I became aware of great players from other countries, and excited by an England team I'd hitherto completely ignored. And what worked for me, worked for the rest of England. Italia 90, and England’s performance, was era defining and attitude changing, as One Night In Turin, a new documentary based on the fantastic All Played Out by Pete Davies, attempts to show.

England were a pretty terrible team. Look at all the really average players who went to Italia 90. Even the film (voiced by Gary Oldman) describes the game as an “oafish melee”. Can’t argue with that. So why is it remembered so very fondly? Italia 90 was, by all footballing standards, pretty bad. A terrible goals-per-game average. A terrible final (like they always are). Why was it a watershed? Everyone else in the world was already playing real football. Pass and move, players able to put a foot on the ball. Not endless passes over the top or shanks into the channels. And then suddenly, just for a few fleeting moments, we could do it too. England lost, gloriously, memorably, in the match of a generation. One night in Turin to change football with 30 million watching at home. To pave the way for Cantona and Europe and Wenger. Sky TV and Posh & Becks.

The film combines game footage with archive clips of Italian policemen wielding batons and Maggie’s terribly effete minister for sport, Colin Moynahan, who revels in all the skull-cracking. How marvellous to have a film about football not populated by the usual rent-a-gob idiots. But even better is the behind-the-scenes stuff – the squad hacking around on the Sardinian golf course, on the look-out for lions. The tiny, tiny shorts around the pool. Gascoigne playing endless tennis with tourists in the middle of the day. And then getting drunk on the beach surrounded by locals. Patronising coverage of ‘plucky’ Cameroon with their witch doctor. Managers smoking on the touchline. Endless time-wasting backpasses to the keeper. The amazingly camp referee in the England-Cameroon match, windmilling his arms to award a third penalty.

The music (Stone Roses, The Farm, Nessun Dorma). The players. Van Basten. Voller and Rijkard. Schillachi. Valderrama. Gullit. Maradona. Schifo. Beardsley. Shilton. Des Lynam. What moments. Stirring stuff, brilliantly put together, well paced, utterly engrossing. Gazza cries, and so you will, again, as Bobby Robson comforts him.

Epic memories – here’s to the next set. One Night In Turin is released on DVD on 31 May 2010. Watch it at your pre-World Cup party and dream.
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