TUPNews

THANK YOU

2007-12-31T15:47:00.000Z

Two weeks ago I left London in a rental car. It was a one-way trip. Having completed my basic training as a member of the jet set, it is now time to undertake an overseas tour. Hong Kong or bust!

As TUPNews has been a record of my life as a London business traveller, it seems an appropriate time to bring it to a close. I've filed fewer reports this year, not because I've fallen out of love with London, but because fewer things have struck me as urgently newsworthy. My love for the capital has settled into a contented hum, not a giddy newlywed high. I've continued to travel, but have spent more time returning to old haunts (Singapore, Houston) - having a wonderful time, but uncovering little new to share with you, dear reader. I took this as a sign to shake things up, to have a little adventure. Five years in London = the working week. Two years in Hong Kong = the weekend. Don't worry, I'll definitely be back for the Olympics.

I'll keep you abreast of what is happening on the other side of the world once I get there, but it will be through another medium. Until then, thank you for your support of TUPNews and all the best for the future!

SPORTSMAN OF THE YEAR

2007-12-31T12:07:00.000Z

MAN OF THE YEAR

2007-12-31T10:53:00.000Z

DEAL OF THE YEAR

2007-12-31T10:51:00.001Z

Reducing bus fares AND annoying Times readers in one fell swoop. Red Ken: always into something.

ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

2007-10-10T21:05:00.001+01:00

I am live blogging from the British Museum, where I have just seen the chinese fellas. It is really quite marvellous, i must say. Christ I love this city.

ASIA NEWS

2007-09-28T17:29:00.001+01:00

It’s Friday afternoon and I’m mildly drunk at work, so here’s some racy TUPNewsExtra! In a departure from our usual practice all of this information is second- or third-hand, but I still felt it worth reporting.

A colleague of mine (male, Malay, Muslim and married) recently visited Japan’s Tokyo for a conference, and hooked up with a Japanese friend living there. It turns out that Japan really is a nation of perverts - but an impressively innovative bunch of perverts.

First off, even karaoke, innocent pissed-up entertainment in Western Europe, has a seedy undertone in Japan. If you visit Martha Lane Fox’s “authentic” private booths in Soho, you will probably not be invited to take your pick from a line-up of young girls, for a companion who will sit on your knee, laugh at your jokes and duet with you. Hmmm.

Next up are the rather disturbing “scenario” clubs, where different rooms are made up to represent a subway carriage, a locker room, a classroom (!) etc. Here you will hang on to a pretend strap surrounded by hostess girls in commuter clothes while a tannoy issues instructions – move closer to the girl, now everybody grab a whatever, etc. Unbelievable. My colleague wasn’t allowed in to this one, though, as he is not Japanese.

Pushing it a bit further are Soapland bars, mostly located in the Yoshiwara district of Japan. Here you are taken to a private room and bathed by a soaped-up naked Japanese girl. You lie on your back on a rubber mattress and she squirms around you, even under your legs – as in, between your back and the mattress. Then, if you want, sex.

My colleague did actually go to one of these, although I don’t know how far it went. He remarked that it was “nice to leave a club feeling nice and clean, rather than grimy like you usually do.”

Finally and most appalling/fascinating are the kaiten-eros bars. Kaiten-sushi is the Japanese term for those conveyor belt sushi places. At a kaiten-eros bar, you sit in a three-sided booth, with the open side facing a stage. Some girls dance on the stage, but a line of girls walks in a circle in front of the booths (unfortunately they are not literally on a conveyor belt). If you see one you like, you simply call her in to your booth.

So far, so uniquely demeaning. Here’s where it gets really odd: the girls only perform oral sex, and, as my colleague put it, everything has to be “done and dusted” within about ten minutes, or they will just leave. However! You are not paying on a per-transaction basis – rather, you pay by the hour and can take advantage of the services as much as you want – an “all-you-can-be-eaten” offer, to put it crudely.

Again: from a moral angle, pretty awful; from a consumer choice angle, laudable.

AMERICAS NEWS

2007-09-26T11:44:00.001+01:00

TUPNews recently visited the Bowery, in America’s New York, to walk around, drink beer and watch soccer.

This was back in May, in fact, and the soccer game in question was the Champions’ League final between Liverpool FC and AC Milan. I dropped into my firm’s office on Lafayette Street at around noon to make arrangements with a Scouse-supporting expat colleague. Kick off was 2.45pm Eastern Standard Time; although my hangover from the previous day’s long, long lunch was imploring me to stay in the air-conditioned office and fuck about on the internet, my more adventurous spirit prevailed. After all, I was on vacation!

The Bowery is famous both as a notoriously shitty area and also (and relatedly) as the birthplace of New York punk rock; in particular, the home of the now-defunct Country, Bluegrass and Blues club (CBGB’s). Impoverished artists and musicians including Television, Talking Heads, Ramones and Blondie were drawn to the area’s cheap rents and bohemian ethos in the late 1970s, spawning a music and fashion scene which, whilst counter-cultural at the time, was revived and brought into the mainstream during the first half of this decade with remarkable success. As such, the Bowery is a newly relevant site of historical interest, the wellspring of every 2005 teenager’s stripy shirt and Converse All-Stars.

Post-Guiliani, the Bowery is pleasantly down-at-heel rather than outright scummy. Large parts of it, particularly the southern half, have been absorbed into New York’s Chinatown. Much larger than the London equivalent, this Chinatown seems to make even less concession to the non-Chinese speaker than central Hong Kong. Commerce is driven largely by restaurants and food centres, but also by mobile telephone vendors and massage parlours.

The real treat was up the street, however. Block after block of the northern half of the Bowery is made up by a series of ridiculously specific wholesale stores. For example, an entire massive store that just sells cash registers. Next to one that just sells scales for kitchens. Next to one that sells kitchen equipment, but only for pizzerias. Bizarre, and genius.

America generally dries me out, New York included, just through its sheer try-hard contrivance. Authenticity, that much-maligned anchor of sanity, is thin on the ground over there. Everything is marketed to the point where nothing carries the charm of a surprise: once the initial African/snow giddiness of witnessing a truly, impressively consumerist society in action (free refills!) subsides, a craving for unassuming reality, for texture, kicks in. It is there, but you have to look a little harder for it than in most places. But here, down some obscure corridor of American capitalism, I was surprised, and charmed.

I arrived at the appointed bar – Irish, and profoundly Liverpool-supporting – a little early, in order to secure a seat. Before my colleague arrived, I fell into conversation with some American college students, who played soccer locally and followed the European leagues. We discussed Beckham and the US soccer scene; I filled them in on some EPL info. My colleague arrived and the game started. The bar was now packed, roughly half American and half Brit. I was struck immediately by the different modes adopted by spectators on the other side of the pond. The Englishman watches an important football match in near silence, furrowing his brow and letting out occasional grunts of approval or frustration (take any group of friends watching a match: invariably it will be the least knowledgeable who talks the most.). He flatly refuses to state the obvious, such as shouting for offside or loudly denouncing unsportsmanlike conduct; at the most, he will growl “Ref…” under his breath. Instead, he will occasionally make insightful comments in a low voice to his companions, such as “they need to use the width”, or, “Player X looks tired.” This is because he is saving up his emotional energy for goal celebrations and chants.

The American, by contrast, plays a more up-tempo game, responding immediately and vociferously to the events of the match with a constant stream of analysis and invective – and the more knowledgeable the fan, the more vibrant the chatter. I sat wedged between my silent and increasingly sullen colleague and an enthusiastic Yank, enjoying the contrast.

By the end of the game I was blind drunk, and elected to spend another night in New York. The city is starting to grow on me.

SPORTS NEWS

2007-09-24T11:24:00.001+01:00

Cricket
LV County Championship Division 1

Surrey bt Lancashire by 24 runs

TUPNews recently reported my intention to take in more cricket at The Oval. Naturally I didn't get round to it until this Saturday, when I popped up to watch the post-tea session of what it turns out was the last match of the season for Surrey CCC, vs Lancs. I tipped up at a half three, hoping to wangle a discount from the £12 full day price, only to discover that they let you in for free after 4pm! Take note, reader. Not a bad thing to do on a Saturday at all, really - take in an hour or so of county cricket in the late afternoon before commencing with the hardcore new-rave clubbing/raving, or whatever it is kids etc etc. I had a quick drink in the Beehive (mock Tudor on the outside, leathery poshness on the inside), and arrived back at the ground at five to four. There were about twenty other scabs standing outside the Hobbs gate (pictured).

I would recommend that the reader arrives at five past rather than five to, in order to breeze through the gates like a ghost rather than stand outside like a beggar. Incredibly, people waiting outside were actually gently arguing with the steward ("by whose watch? but they had an early tea? surely-"), working themselves into the quiet indignation of the mildly-inconvenienced British customer. "IT'S FREE FOR FUCK'S SAKE" I roared at them, in my head. Finally the Oval's clock struck four and we wandered in.

Watching county cricket as a neutral is a pleasantly meditative experience: the ground was barely a tenth full, so quiet that the people dotted around me - a mixture of elderly men, middle-aged couples, Times readers and families - kept their conversations quiet in order not to attract attention to themselves. When my mobile rang, I rushed to answer it as if it had gone off in a gallery. I have a theory that, as one gets older, one enjoys feeling pleasantly bored and will seek out excuses to do so - here is an excellent excuse.

I had to leave after about ten overs to go meet people, which is a shame as I was starting to become engaged in the Lancashire run-chase. I learnt later that had that run-chase been successful, they would have won the championship. I kicked myself for not finding out about the free gate earlier, and hoped that in sharing this information with you, reader, I could atone. Next summer, enjoy.

EUROPE NEWS

2007-09-09T01:45:00.000+01:00

TUPNews recently popped over to Paris, to see how the French are holding up. They're doing just fine, I'm pleased to report.

Longtime readers may recall that on my last visit to Paris, the French were all about the roller skates. This time, it's all about the free bikes.

A couple of months ago the mayor of Paris installed self-service bike rental terminals at dozens of locations within La Peripherie. You leave a credit card deposit, get your ticket, punch in the number of the bike you want to take, and off you trot. When you get to where you're going, you find a station and drop it off, and it automatically charges you whatever you owe. There's like, ten thousand of these fucking bikes - grey, three-speed, durable and faintly art-deco - and the stations are everywhere, not just in the touristy areas.

It's cheap as well. The first 30 minutes is always free; after that, a nominal per-hour charge kicks in. Streetwise Parisians never stay on a bike for more than 25 minutes, preferring to avoid the charges by changing bikes several times on their journey. I couldn't be bothered with this, so just stayed on the bike for the duration. Four hours on the bike worked out to six euros, including the one-euro 24-hour subscription charge. Bonzer.

That said, it took some persuading for me to actually get on one. My girlfriend, who has a near-suicidal disregard for the dangers of the road (frequently walking out into traffic without looking, bombing down the A40 at 100mph in a rent-a-wreck after taking the wheel for the first time in two years, speeding through a Spanish hailstorm, over winding unlit Pyrenees motorway, while I squeeze the handle of the passenger door, in the dark) was immediately up for it, even insisting that we cycle five miles back to the hotel after a long boozy dinner. I, however, have neither a driving license nor a cycling proficiency certificate, and found the idea of weaving through Parisian traffic completely terrifying, and flatly refused. On the second day, however, I relented, and agreed to cycle from our hotel near the Eiffel Tower to a restaurant in the Latin Quarter. Here began my conversion to cyclism - I was so taken with the experience that we spent the whole of the next day bitching around town on our velos.

It's simply a fantastic way to see the city. Unlike London, Paris is one of those cities that can just be absorbed. While London is a patchwork of villages, some colourful, some dull, there is a uniform pleasantness to central Paris that rewards the unfocused, free-spirited tourist. When you're breezing along on a bike, that charm is amplified - for the first time in six or seven visits, I felt almost like a local. A sunny day in Paris, the wind in your hair; anonymous, invisible, free - this can't be commercialised or made touristic, not like the cynical pricing in the pavement cafe outside Pere Lachaise, or the English language bookshop on the South Bank (with the cat, the upstairs library, the cots, the typewriter anyone can have a go on, perfectly, perfectly bohemian, and thus sadly but inevitably filled with American post-grads drinking wine, playing Doors covers on an acoustic guitar and trying to lay each other) - past monuments and down scummy side streets, it's a pure experience. I was even wearing a stripy shirt; it was like a fucking Belle & Sebastian song.

And it's a cycle-friendly city, made up for the most part of long, broad boulevards, many of which sport separate cycle lanes. There is a stretch along the North Bank where the bike lane is lined for about a kilometre by poplars, creating the effect of a shady country lane, until you look to your right and see the Musee D'Orsay through the trees. Then left, up towards the opera house, left again down to Place Madeleine (one of my favourite parts of Paris, not really sure why), left again onto Place Vendome, then right up the Champs-Elysees.

At this point, somewhat intoxicated with my newfound comfort on the bike, I insisted that we circumvent the Arc de Triomphe. This is, of course, ludicrously dangerous - even my daredevil girlfriend was skeptical. But I was hooked.

My heart was pounding as we waited at the final traffic lights. It should be easy enough - we could just stay on the outside lane and go three-quarters around. The lights changed and I set off - within twenty metres, it was clear that this was not a great idea. The outside lane - a purely abstract notion, as there are no marked lanes - offered me little safety, as cars veered aggressively across my path to make their exits. I pulled over to reassess my approach, expecting my girlfriend to follow suit. Of course, she overtook me and plunged straight into the chaos. As she disappeared around the bend, I prepared to set off again, but was stopped by a middle-aged Frenchwoman. She asked whether I was Parisian; learning that I was not, she implored me not to go through with it ("Tres dangeruex!")

Sheepishly, I dismounted and walked my bike back over the pedestrian crossing, braced for the sound of screeching tires. Killing one's girlfriend tends to put a damper on a romantic holiday, so I was of course extremely relieved to see her arrive safely, if a little ashen, at the three-quarter mark. This proved enough excitement for one day; we took a far more leisurely cycle back to the Eiffel Tour, and our hotel.

Long story short, let's get this set up in London as soon as we can.

ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

2007-08-03T12:26:00.000+01:00

TUPNews recently took in some stand-up comedy at the Round Table pub in Covent Garden. I went with members of my book club. In a tiny, antique room at the top of the pub, a crowd of no more than twenty packed in to watch five low-rung comedians.

The tension in the air was palpable from the start. Stand-up takes more guts than any other type of performance – you simply cannot hide from not being funny. The audience also shares in the fear of failure: what could be more excruciating than watching a failing comic at such close quarters?

This was, in fact, what we got right from the offing. The compere was a sympathetic yet visibly drunk girl who hashed through ten minutes of poorly-improvised banter, to limited nervous laughter. My colleagues cringed; I found it electrifying. Such a crucible! My friend Al had expressed some anxiety beforehand: he had been cajoled into audience participation at a previous comedy show with embarrassing results, and feared a repeat. Sure enough, he was picked out right away by the compere for some what’s-your-name-and-what-do-you-do. “Mark, maths teacher” was a sturdy forward defensive, but did not prevent him from being appointed applause captain for our side of the room. I delighted in his stoic discomfort.

The first comic upped the ante even further, dispensing with his routine and making an apparently cocaine-fuelled attempt to base his entire set on free-flowing audience interaction. The results were miserable – long silences, baiting of tourists, a total inability to convert what scraps he was offered into anything resembling comic bronze, let alone gold. By the end, some audience members were openly begging the guy to tell a joke. It was awful, and utterly compelling.

Thankfully the rest of the comics actually had routines, and the standard steadily improved across the night (although the last two were polished to the point of being somewhat bland). It was not until the final comic was well into his act, however, that the knot in my stomach began to unwind. We walked out into the night breeze sighing with relief, as if leaving a tricky yet well-handled examination.

I don't know if I'll be back in a hurry, but there was a low, furtive thrill about the whole affair that has stuck in my mind, even if few of the jokes have.

BUSINESS NEWS

2007-08-02T17:14:00.000+01:00

TUPNews recently interviewed the CEO of a major energy trading firm. Based in London, it is the trading arm of a wider French electricity supplier, at which the CEO spent most of his career. Here are excerpts:

How do British and French business cultures differ?

The UK is more pragmatic and business-oriented, while the French are more conceptual. The French like to build a conceptual framework in which the business is to be understood. The UK approach is more efficient, but sometimes it would be worth stepping back and understanding the environment.

Also the relationship with profit and money is more simple in the UK. In France, there is the sense that if you are profitable, it is a shame.

What advice would you give your successor?

In France, there is a tendency for a newly-appointed CEO to say, what came before was rubbish, I will show you how to be successful. It’s engineer culture - engineers like to start from scratch. But that doesn’t work. You have to look at the existing strengths and weaknesses, and figure out what you can do to bolster the strengths and improve the weaknesses. It’s a more commercial approach, and, from what I can see, more common in the UK.

What is the best business advice you’ve ever received?

One of our former chairmen came to give a commencement address in the early 1990s for graduates from engineering school. His advice to engineers was to listen to what people want.

He told the story of being a young civil servant in charge of the barges in Paris during the May 1968 unrest. The barges did not strike during May, so he wasn’t as busy as his colleagues. But at the end of the month, the barges decided to strike, simply because they felt it was their turn. But when he went to discuss the situation with the barge workers, he discovered that they didn’t have any demands – they were just angry about losing business during the other strikes.

He went away and considered the problem, and then came back to the barge workers claiming that the government had developed a plan to make half of them redundant. The barge workers now had a motive to strike, and continued to do so in earnest. A few days later, he went back to the barge workers and said that the lay-off plan had been scrapped. The barge workers claimed victory and went back to work.

FINANCIAL NEWS

2007-07-11T15:27:00.000+01:00

pictured: Chinese capitalists collecting used bottles for resale

The word on the street is: sell China. Various macroeconomic factors are turning to shit there, particularly inflation, but the key problem is the incestuous lovefest developing on the local Chinese stock market. Chinese companies are rediverting revenues away from investment in organic growth – and, increasingly, borrowing money from banks – in order to invest it in the Chinese stock market. Given that Chinese companies are the Chinese stock market, they are effectively investing it in each other.

Clothing manufacturers and steel factories are setting up whole separate investment divisions, often secretively and in violation of financial regulation, to buy other companies’ stocks. This creates a weird virtuous cycle. Acme China buys stock in a whole bunch of other Chinese companies, pushing their stock price up. But Acme China’s stock price is affected by the performance of its investments, which are going up. So Acme China’s stock price goes up, encouraging other companies to buy Acme China’s stock, which in turn pushes their stock price up because they hold Acme China’s stock and it’s doing well, so Acme buys a bit more of their stock, and so on. So on, until someone calls bullshit on the whole thing, and the virtuous cycle becomes a vicious cycle: Acme China has a lot of overvalued stock, so other firms sell Acme China stock, lessening the value of their investment portfolio, so Acme sells their stock, and so on.

Bubbles form and pop all the time, but it’s particularly dangerous with China for two reasons. The first is just the sheer scale of its economy. This is one big fucking butterfly to start flapping its wings. The second is the primitive nature of its financial services industry. Over the last ten years, the Western financial services world, led largely by the City of London, has realised that bankers can make huge amounts of money by spreading risk around a broad range of investors. This has had the fortunate effect of stabilising the global financial markets, because when things go wrong in a particular market, a lot of people take a small hit, rather than a few people taking a massive hit. The imminent collapse of the US sub-prime (aka junk) mortgage market will probably not cause the collapse of the US economy, as the banks and lenders who wrote those crappy mortgages in the first place have since sold on that risk to a diverse range of other investors, who will simply have to make do with a cheaper brand of port this Christmas.

China, however, is still cowboy country when it comes to financial derivatives and risk management. The banks there are shouldering most of the risks themselves. If things go tits up, banks may collapse. This is rarely a good thing, although I would probably welcome the collapse of NatWest. In China’s case, it could be catastrophic. Sell, sell, sell!

SPORTS NEWS

2007-07-06T12:03:00.000+01:00

Cricket

Twenty20Cup
Group game

Sussex Sharks bt Surrey Brown Caps by 5 runs

Last night TUPNews visited the Oval, in South London, to watch a spot of cricket.

Despite the threat of rain, I was awfully excited. My last visit to the Oval was three years ago, where I watched Andrew Flintoff, then approaching the peak of his ability, put fifty past a hapless West Indies touring side. It was a beautiful summery day, and the start of my conversion to our national sport: a conversion completed by England’s defeat of Australia in the 2005 Ashes series, a magnificent summer for which I already feel nostalgia.

In looking to foster my newfound love of cricket through participation in the county game, however, I was frustrated. My obvious home ground is The Oval: a fifteen-minute bus journey from my home in South London. I like where I live and would happily support the South London team.

The Oval, however, is the home of Surrey Cricket Club. A fine institution no doubt, but I have never thought of Brixton as being part of Surrey. To me, Surrey is a far away county of which I know nothing – I cannot see myself getting behind the Surrey boys. Equally, the county structure means that I automatically owe my allegiance to Somerset, land of my youth. But Somerset CC play at Taunton, some five hours by train. Factor in the baffling and sub-optimal structure of the league system, and county cricket is looking like a non-starter.

I was attending this match simply because a friend had a spare ticket for an office-organised day out. My friend works for one of the many secretive arms of the government charged with protecting us from the threat of terrorism, and as such I was surprised to see so many of them in the same place at the same time. His stories of incompetence and corruption in his corner of Whitehall do not inspire sound sleep, and I will not repeat them here. I did, however, meet a Detective Constable of the Metropolitan Police, who is stationed in my own borough of Southwark. He is soon to move into the burglary division, and let me in on a delicious little scam known in the trade as TIC, or Taken Into Consideration.

TIC works like this: thanks to the current government’s obsession with the meeting of targets, police are looking at novel ways to solve more crimes. One way is to take an imprisoned burglar out for the day: “Buy him a nice lunch, let him see his mum, maybe even let him boff the missus,” as my new friend explained. Then, during a post-prandial, post-coital leisurely drive around his old stomping ground, the con will suddenly start admitting to all kinds of previously unsolved burglaries. Which is great for the Met, of course, as the solved crimes target box gets ticked.

“Some of the stuff they come out with is ridiculous,” the detective said, even though the prisoners are usually briefed, sans brief, on which jobs to cop to. “’I done that whole hotel!’ Really? Don’t you mean that house over there? ‘Yes, guv.’” Or they admit to crimes that were committed while they were still inside.

Surely, I asked, the prisoners would be reticent, given that admitting more crimes could add to their sentence?

“Are you kidding?” he laughed. “That’s the best bit – the more they admit to, the more gets taken off!”

It’s simply not cricket, but even as a taxpayer, I couldn’t help but find this funny.

The game had been scheduled to begin at half five; with the skies still dark grey at half seven, we were just about ready to give up and go home. Economics came to the rescue: ten overs must be played to prevent the issuance of refunds, so the two teams were more or less shooed onto the pitch to bowl five overs apiece. The conditions were comical, but the players managed to put on a good show for the now inebriated die-hards: several sixes and clean-bowled wickets, a hairline run-out decision, some comedy misfielding. We requested several times that Sussex player Rana Naved give us a wave; eventually he did. Sussex set a tough target of 65 and Surrey, despite leading their group in the Twenty20 competition, were unable to match it.

We left buoyed and a little drunk, and I had a change of heart about the county game. The Oval is a unique and charming ground, and I simply want to be a part of it. Even without any cricket being played, we had had a fine old time, chatting and drinking reasonably priced beer. A major bookmaker had even helpfully set up a mobile betting shop, so I was able to fritter away cash on the dogs while we waited for the skies to clear. While I still cannot see myself as a fan of Surrey CC, I resolved that I would become a fan of “cricket at the Oval”, and spend long summer weekends indiscriminately applauding fine play.

LONDON NEWS

2007-06-27T17:46:00.000+01:00

TUPNews recently visited The Mall, in London.

The Mall is a wide boulevard that connects Buckingham Palace to Trafalgar Square. To the south lie the tourists and pelicans of St. James’ Park; to the north, the joggers and lunchbreakers of Green Park. The Mall is flanked by a series of flagpoles, which usually bear the Union Jack. In an effort to increase my lung capacity, I have taken to running the length of The Mall, as well as a circuit of Green Park, every lunch hour.

Today I left my gym kit in the office, however, in order to join the throng waiting to catch a glimpse of the outgoing Prime Minister, Tony Blair, as he left Buckingham Palace after tendering his resignation to the Queen.

It’s been a while since I thronged, and Mall throngs are some of the best in the world. In this I was disappointed, however. Save a small police presence and a handful of cameramen, no one in the vicinity seemed to have any clue that one of Britain’s great constitutional rituals was unfolding yards away. The sense of anticlimax was eerie: I felt like grabbing tourists and breathlessly explaining constitutional monarchy in theory and practice.

Earlier I had snuck down to the Hand and Racquet to watch another great example of British political theatre: Blair’s final Prime Minister’s Questions on a bartop TV. The tone was more civilised, more elegiac, than I expected. David Cameron, the Leader of the Opposition, lobbed Blair four consecutive softballs, before paying tribute to the cordiality of their working relationship. Menzies Campbell, leader of the Liberal Democrats, and Ian Paisley, leader of the DUP, followed suit. Blair seemed wistful; Brown seemed bored, and fidgeted. I read later that PMQs ended with a unanimous standing ovation, although the BBC had by then inexplicably switched back to the tennis.

Down on The Mall, I asked a photographer whether I had in fact missed the departing Blair.

“No, he’s still in there,” he said. “No-one seems to give a shit – even the protestors have stayed home.”

“One Jaguar looks like another,” he added, sanguine.

But even as he said this, the motorbike cordon was firing up its blue lights. Blair’s limo slid silently past clueless tourists. For the first time, I saw him in person – just a two-second flash, through a tinted window, as he passed me in the car. He was talking to his wife, and bore the tired and mildly-distracted expression of someone waiting for his baggage at the end of a long holiday.

ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

2007-04-03T17:25:00.000+01:00

TUPNews recently attended an all-ages gig by accident at Nambucca, on the Holloway Road in London.

I was there to see Pull In Emergency, a rather excellent combo who had supported my now-defunct band last August. Oddly, they were all about thirteen. But they were nice kids and had kept in touch, so I thought I’d pop along and lend my support.

My plan was to hit early doors at six when the place was still empty, have a bite to eat and watch the England play Israel (despite being a resolutely indie-schmindie venue, Nambucca always has the football on in the bar area, even during gigs. My mate reports that a sensitive singer-songwriter’s acoustic gig was recently disrupted mid-song by the roar elicited from Shevchenko’s wonder strike against Spurs).

Arriving at quarter past, I found to my surprise that the place was already absolutely rammed - I was fortunate to even get a ticket. Even more surprising, it was absolutely rammed with remarkably well-dressed fourteen-year-olds.

I bumped into a former band colleague who had come down to meet a mate and ended up having to sneak in through the back. He was chatting with Faith, lead singer of Pull In Emergency. I offered both a drink; my mate asked for a G&T, while Faith looked utterly baffled by the whole concept of being offered a drink. She eventually settled on a Coke, but had wandered off by the time I got back.

My mate and I had played the venue together several times, but agreed that we had never seen it like this. The kids had filled the stage area and were moshing to the music played in between bands (the kids didn’t go for the DJ’s initial selection of Too Much Too Young by the Specials, but went apeshit for Lethal Bizzle’s Forward Riddim.)

We both waxed lyrical about how incredible the experience must be for bands and fans alike. While the stereotype of the static, po-faced London gig-goer is not completely accurate, it is, however, well, basically completely accurate. It suddenly seemed obscene that kids can’t go to most shows – they clearly get so much more enjoyment out of it. Just the effort that went into the clothes was impressive – lacking the cash to splash on faux-rock high street clothes, many wore self-customised T-shirts in the punk style (one kid just wrote his full name on a white T-shirt – genius), or new-rave magic-markered baseball caps.

(One girl had written “Trash Fashion” on her baseball cap. I decided it would be cruel to tell her that Trash Fashion frontman “Jett Storm” was a contemporary of mine at Oxford, and had received the highest first in engineering in his year.)

As for the bands – well, you’re fourteen and you’re the lead guitarist in a band that plays actual gigs to actual crowds in actual London venues. What more do I really have to say? Although we did wonder what it would be like for them in the future, burnt out of music at 18, or maybe even onto their third solo record by 25.

My mate eventually shot off to a shindig in Hackney, and I returned to the bar. The taps had been covered with black bin bags, and all beer was being poured out of bottles into plastic pint glasses. This was to prevent kids from operating the taps Homer Simpson-style when the barstaff’s backs were turned.

After flashing my black wristband at the bar to indicate my overage status, I got chatting to the barmaid. I asked her whether the kids all bought non-alcoholic drinks, or whether they just didn’t drink anything at all. Whenever I am off the booze for whatever reason, I still go to the pub and have one orange juice for everyone’s pint – I wondered if this is just learned behaviour. But it turns out the kids do still buy drinks, although it’s not quite as busy.

“This is my second all-ages show,” she said, “there’s no way I am ever working another one.”

There had been trouble at the previous gig, when 900 kids had attempted to gain entry to the 250-capacity venue. The police were called. More generally, she was pissed off that they only ever seemed to ask for tap water (although I don’t see why that would be a problem for her personally.) As we chatted, a few kids attempted to use woefully unconvincing fake IDs. She warned me not to take my eye off my pint glass, as it would be snapped up immediately, and went off to serve another customer.

Finally, Pull In Emergency came on. A nagging thought had been running through my mind: everyone was having fun, but the bands so far hadn’t really been particularly good. Good for their age, of course, but these kids are supposed to be properly taking over music. Anyway Pull In Emergency delivered a tight, confident and imaginative set. Faith was excellent up front, and the whole band had a natural stage presence. By the end I had joined in the moshing, although I was careful not to crush anyone half my size, and half my age.

I left confident that rock no longer needed me, and was in safe hands.

SPORTS NEWS

2007-03-12T14:50:00.000Z

Football
British Gas Business League

Bath City 2 – 2 Gloucester City

TUPNews returned last night from a wonderful weekend in the West, where I watched Bath City FC draw 2-2 with Gloucester City in a West Country derby.

My beloved City are currently sitting pretty at the top of the British Gas Business League, three points clear but with three games in hand over second-placed rivals Team Bath, a taxpayer-funded farce that has no business occupying space in the football pyramid. Crowds have swelled in response to this strong run; this, combined with fine spring weather, made for a perfect footballing day out.

We arrived five minutes after kick-off, thanks to a laggard lunching companion. Before I’d even had time to get the teas in, City were 1-0 up from an own goal in the ninth minute – cracking! But straight from the restart, Gloucester equalised with a hopeful punt from forty yards: one-all. Five minutes later, City were back ahead courtesy of a headed goal (pictured) from Craig “the Whippet” Davidge, a promising young super-sub now apparently given a first-team break due to a mysterious neck injury suffered by star striker “Super” Scotty Partidge.

After this flurry of goals I was reluctant to turn my back on the action, so my laggard friend was dispatched to the tea bar. A sensible move on my part, as a defensive howler saw Gloucester equalise on 25 minutes. The rest of the half was up-tempo, with several City chances.

Despite shipping two fairly weak goals, my City-supporting companions were bullish at the break. My mate John predicted a final result of 5-2, I stuck with a more conservative 4-2. News from elsewhere was also positive: Team Taxpayer were 2-0 down at Yate Town (they would eventually lose 3-0). The neutrals among us predicted a closer affair, a view that proved justified.

The second half was a nerve-shredding (for me at least) series of missed opportunities for the City boys. The build-up play was composed, the width was used well, but the shots simply weren’t on target. Worst of all, for every three City forays forward, there would be one terrifying Gloucester counterattack.

I was a mess; I had simply forgotten what it is like to watch a tense game of football in the flesh. During my maiden season as a City fan we were locked in a relegation dogfight from about November onwards, narrowly avoiding the drop thanks to a 1-0 away win on the last day of the season. I attended every home game, averaging around twenty B&H per match, the majority of which were smoked in the last ten minutes as City desperately tried to claw back a goal, or two, or three. It was absolute torture.

Since moving to London I only get down to about five or six matches a season – this was my fourth of this year’s campaign. The first was an August Bank Holiday 2-1 victory over the students; we were one-nil down at half-time, which provided a modicum of worry, but was too early in the season to have more than symbolic import. The second was a jolly day out to Sittingbourne to watch an entertaining, if goalless draw in the basically meaningless FA Trophy. The third was a 5-0 Boxing Day pasting of the students that was pretty much sewn up by the 20th minute, so no drama there either. But now, top of the league in mid-March and deadlocked at two goals apiece, each cross into the box brought sharp intakes of breath and hurried deals with the divine. By injury time, I was quite happy to take the draw, and I was onto my third post-match bottle of Westons Organic before the nerves finally faded.

EUROPE NEWS

2007-03-09T15:46:00.000Z

TUPNews recently visited Brussels, in Belgium. It is my pleasure to report that Brussels is banging.

Travelling by Eurostar had already put me in a good mood, despite the overbearing Aussie property developers on the other side of the aisle. There is something so incredibly unnatural about air travel.

I arrived in Bruxelles-Midi to find that I’d been put up in the rather fabulous Hotel Metropole, seemingly modelled on some vaulted gothic train terminus, which further improved my mood. The Metropole was also housing the conference I was there to attend.

At the close of the first day’s proceedings we made our way to La Manufacture, a red brick ex-factory now decked out in stainless steel and mahogany. Brussels food is good. There I ate ostrich (like a beefsteak but sweeter and more tender); talked Scandinavian political party formation with a Dane; discussed football economics with a German, and bonded with a Finn over our shared love of Talisker single malt whisky. It was a lovely night, even if they were a little slow with the wine.

Earlier, en route to the restaurant, I had got a little lost and wound up circling the St. Gery area of Brussels. This is a little enclave of trendy-looking bars and cafes on the side streets that surround the St. Gery church. At the end of the meal, I decided to go back and hit a few bars.

I was utterly exhausted, reader, but I did this for you.

The first bar I found was a corner bar, but a long and thin corner with plate glass on both sides. Dimly-lit and with a Caribbean vibe, it attracted a crowd of trendy twentysomethings, half of them black and half of them white. I sat at the mosaic counter in my black suit, trying to figure out what the deal was with the ten-foot tree sprouting from behind the bar. I highly recommend this place.

The second was a bit more of a eurobar, brightly lit and marbled, like a Pizza Express, but in a good way. It may have been called Roi de Belges. It was packed, and had a huge selection of local beers. I chose one at random; it was perfectly fine. Feeling a little exposed at the bar, I walked up the spiral staircase to the little Austin Powers cocktail bar on the second floor to find a little privacy. This place is worth a stop.

The third and final place was possibly my favourite. The décor was lazily eclectic: black and white prints of NYC on brick walls, a vintage arcade machine, flowers on the tables. But even more eclectic were the clientele. On one side, a family gathering of ten; on the other, a group of Belgian goths doing shots; some impoverished-looking grad students hunched over a table nursing espressos, prim middle-aged women drinking wine. It was quite bizarre, and well worth a look if you’re ever over there, which you ought to be, because Brussels is ace.

Just watch out for the taxi drivers. They’re a bunch of fucking crooks.

BUSINESS NEWS

2007-02-22T18:47:00.000Z

TUPNews recently had a haircut at the excellent Pall Mall Barbers of Whitcomb Street, a side alley just off the northwest corner of Trafalgar Square. If you work in the West End, I thoroughly recommend it.

I’ve been going to this hairdressers’ for four years, back since it was called C. Rose, run by an ancient Italian gentleman called Luigi. Back then, it was a no-nonsense Italian barber shop, spare and wood-panelled with magnificent porcelain sinks. As soon as I was in the chair Luigi would make the same joke: brandishing his clippers and asking in a heavy accent if I wanted a number one grade buzz “as a present for your girlfriend”, taking rascally old-man delight (the highest form) in my confusion. The haircuts were professional and affordably priced – and in a theatrical flourish, every session ended with a cut-throat razor applied to the sideburns. Old school.

Luigi died two years ago, and a young stylist named Richard left a deputy position in a Mayfair salon to set up his own shop on the premises. I like what he’s done with the place. The prices have gone up, but are still fair. The porcelain sinks remain in situ, and despite a welcome lick of paint warming the air a little, the place has not lost its old-fashioned sobriety. A stylised barber’s pole twirls outside the shop.

Richard’s sensibilities may be traditional, but his business methods are modern. I had assumed that it would take a lot of business planning to open a salon, but once it was open, you would just cut hair and charge money. Not so; at least not for Richard.

We talked a little shop and he outlined many interesting ideas, but one in particular struck me as innovative. The two obvious marketing fronts to me would be expanding the customer base through advertising on the one hand, while retaining existing customers through good service and competitive pricing on the other. Perhaps you could also extract more value out of your existing clientele by selling them hair products. Richard has identified a new front, however: extracting more value out of your existing clientele by convincing them to get their hair cut more often.

His logic is compelling and true to my own experience. The average gentleman simply leaves it too long between haircuts. At some point, we notice our hair getting a little shaggy. We mention to a friend or colleague that it might be about time to get a haircut. Invariably – at least in my case – they reply, “No, on the contrary I think it looks quite nice.” Why they lie so, I do not know: the hair is clearly too long. Nevertheless this then somehow gives me mental leave to put off getting my hair cut for a further two weeks, at which point the haircut is virtually a medical necessity.

Richard posits that the life expectancy of a gentleman’s haircut is one month. Of course, he has a vested interest in claiming this. If we take this to be true, we will end up spending more money on haircuts. But as he argues, why should men be happy to spend all kinds of money on designer clothes and expensive watches, and then be prepared to spend a third of their lives walking around with overgrown hair for the sake of a few quid? Let us accept this monthly chore with good grace – after all, is it not basically an enjoyable experience?

To this end he is proposing to launch a text messaging service for regular clients. I look forward to receiving my monthly reminder to look in the mirror.

I wish he'd bring back the cut-throat razor though.

BUSINESS NEWS

2007-02-22T18:07:00.001Z

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange, featured in the films Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Trading Places, announced today that it would begin listing a futures contract for nursery-rhyme staple dry whey in March.

Whey is the liquid remaining after milk has been curdled and strained and is a by-product of the manufacturing of cheese. Whey that is dried has traditionally been used in a variety of foods such as crackers, breads, cereal, commercial pastries and animal feed. In recent years, dry whey, which is high in protein and low in fat, has been used in the increasingly popular energy and power bars as well as protein drinks and powders.

"With the growing consumption of energy drinks and power bars, dry whey is increasingly in demand thereby creating more frequent imbalances between supply and demand, often as a result of spider-based supply shocks," said John Harangody, director of CME Commodity Products. "As a result, dry whey has become a volatile commodity. CME can provide buyers and sellers of dry whey future price protection, hedging opportunities as well as a mechanism for price discovery."

The CME does not at present offer a contract for curds, which TUPNews thinks is something of a missed opportunity. Think of the arbitrage opportunities!

BUSINESS NEWS

2007-01-26T16:35:00.000Z

Regular readers will be aware of my feelings about unfairly maligned Russian gas giant Gazprom. Thankfully they are finally heeding my advice and stepping up their PR effort by, well, having a PR effort. Who knows, maybe I will go join them at some point.

Anyway as if you needed another reason to love them, here is a link to “Sweet Home”, a collection of Russian children’s drawings commemorating Gazprom’s 10th anniversary. Featured above is an entry from Ignatova Oksana, who is 11 years old.

BUSINESS NEWS

2007-01-09T15:27:00.000Z

January, money’s tight, simple pleasures are important. Thumbed through some travel brochures that came free in the Guardian last night, the deals look cheap, cheap, cheap, but tourism pornography is a lousy kind of escapism – at £139pp for four nights in Bruges, suddenly the cogs are turning and the pulse quickens, how fast can I raise the dough, who can I pitch, look at those canals!! I’m making plans and strategising, I’m stressed.

Far better this link my colleague Roddy forwarded me today. Nothing beats a good office forward. Can’t stand people who roll their eyes at office humour. As far as I’m concerned, it’s what separates us from animals.

Anyway this one is a searchable database of Enron employees’ inboxes, made public during legal proceedings against the famous firm of ambitious crooks. If you look hard enough you can probably find various smoking guns lying around, but more interesting are the prosaic emails from peripheral employees: spare tickets for the Astros game, marathon sponsorship requests, enquiries about parking spaces etc. I’ve been immersing myself in the office culture of a defunct company all afternoon, like an archaeologist unearthing rare treasures.

For instance, I chanced upon this budding office romance between Julie and Scott:

03/15/2001 03:12 PM
To: Julie A Gomez/HOU/ECT@ECT
cc:
Subject: Re: The New York Energy Risk Management Seminar
That would be fun...is your hotel taken care of through the weekend??? I
have an old unused domestic ticket that I may be able to apply to New York.
Maybe I could even take Friday off....
Scott

Julie replies:

Yes - you have a hotel room with me (can you handle that!?!?!), but it will
not be at the Four Seasons...
:-)

Saucy! The flirtation continues as Julie takes a trip to Prague.

Sent: Sunday, June 03, 2001 6:58 AM
To: Hendrickson, Scott
Subject: Hello from Prague

Hello Scooter,
Hope you had fun on your three dates this weekend!!! (you slut!)
You know I am jealous. Peggy says not to spread yourself too thin!!!!
You would not believe how cheap it is here. Today at the musuem I had a
sandwich, snickers and a cafe latte for $1.50!!! A three course dinner last
night cost $3.00.
The bad news is that your gift cost $0.20!! (ha, ha) I really haven't bought
it yet.
Take Care,
Miss you,
Julie :-)

Oh, the playful flirtation. Scott replies:

Sent: Monday, June 04, 2001 10:57 AM
To: 'onvacation '
Subject: RE: Hello from Prague

I doubt you will get this b4 you get back, but I'll write anyway. Yes, I had a GREAT weekend, but I was partying way too much!!! Went out every night from Wednesday to Sunday!!! I'm paying the price now though. But I had a really good time and kept very busy :). I've been two times to your house so far. Everything seems fine.

Sounds like Prague is treating you well. Is it beautiful? Tell Peggy I'm not spreading myself TOO THIN...but remember, you can never be too thin or too rich!!! I can't believe the prices. And if you get me something that costs 20 cents you better get alot of them!!! HEHEHEHE
Miss you! Hurry back!
Scott

I’m obviously quite enraptured by this point. But then comes the twist!! Scott writes to friend Connie:

Connie --
Actually, they reacted very well - or at least as well as can be expected. They were sad, but not horrified or anything. They respect me and know that it's not a choice. It was just so weird, because I did not have any agenda or intention on telling them that at that point, we were just talking about stuff (and drinking) and I just told them. And I told them, you can't be totally surprised by this - and they said no. They had questioned it before, but had not wanted to offend me by asking. At the same time, they were holding out hope that it wasn't true. But now they know. They didn't really have alot of questions or anything, but were just accepting of it. I'm very happy to have it off my chest.
Sorry to hear about your stomach!!! That doesn't sound fun at all. I had a pretty bad hangover yesterday, because I drank profusely before durning and after the whole outing myself to my parents ordeal.

Scott

He was gay all along!! Further examination of his inbox reveals that he has recently split from Rayfael, who works at NASA. Rayfael is a bit of an ingrate, in my opinion: other emails see Scott buying Rayfael books, trying to get him an interview at Enron, and moving his pet dogs outside the house to accommodate Rayfael’s allergies. But hey, judge for yourself.

MAN OF THE YEAR

2006-12-31T11:52:00.000Z

The TUPNews Man of the Year is Australian cricketer Shane Warne, who captured his 700th Test wicket on Boxing Day, in front of his home crowd in Melbourne. He is an inspiration to slightly overweight womanisers everywhere, and TUPNews salutes him.

Happy New Year and thank you for your continued support!

BREAKING NEWS

2006-12-21T10:28:00.000Z

Turkmenbashi the Great, president of Turkmenistan and former TUPNews Man of the Year, is dead at 66.

Russian security services will be blamed, probably fairly. It’s gas contract renegotiation season, you see, and Turkmenbashi is probably not pro-Russian enough for their tastes. The fewer despots controlling Europe's energy security the better, says TUPNews, but at the same time, farewell to one of the last great mentalist rulers of our times.

LONDON NEWS

2006-12-12T19:18:00.000Z

TUPNews recently visited London’s Maritime Greenwich for ice-skating, drinks and dinner.

This time last year I described here my joy at sneaking away one lunch break to skid about at Somerset House. Rather than make a return visit, I ventured out to Greenwich last Friday night to check out what they’re doing over there.

Greenwich Ice Rink is framed by Christopher Wren’s columns on the grounds of the Old Royal Naval College, and as such matches any of its rivals in the scenery stakes. The floodlit National Maritime Museum overlooks the rink from the south, while Canary Wharf glistens coldly in the distance from the north. Magnificent.

That said - there’s no way around the fact that Greenwich ice rink is generally a bit low-rent compared to Somerset House. I was immediately disappointed to see that there was no Zamboni skimming the ice between sessions; instead, a simple-looking chap stood in the middle of ice spraying water from a hose. This ran across only the middle third of the rink – his colleagues made vague efforts to scrape the water around, and then gave up.

But still - seasonal music piped through tannoys, check, rosy-faced youngsters, check, overpriced mince pies, check. Fuck you, quite frankly, Brazil: take your samba, rumba, facepaint, uninhibited “car-nee-val” spirit and shove it up your ass: it’s Winter and I live in London.

Just before I took to the ice I was gripped by a mild panic. I can get so caught up in the romance of various pursuits that I forget details such as my fear of heights, the fact that cricket balls are quite hard, or in this instance, that I am an appalling skater. Not such an issue during last year’s solo outing on the Strand, but this time I was with a companion I wished to impress. As the kids pushed past me, I prepared excuses.

Thankfully I remembered most of the basics – feet pointed slightly apart, knees slightly bent - and was soon off and running. The ice at Greenwich is poorly maintained, which actually worked to my advantage: like the farmer’s field football pitch aiding the scrappy non-league outfit against the top-flight team, the lack of slickness gave me more traction; I stayed on my feet for the duration. We pushed and scraped for a good forty-five minutes, pausing periodically to catch our breath, admire the more talented skaters, and speculate as to the rationale of the large uniformed police presence.

Reader – wherever you skate this winter, wear a few pairs of socks. I went unprepared in this regard, and can now barely walk for the blister on my right foot. You’ve been warned.

A little tired, we repaired to The Trafalgar around the corner. The Trafalgar is as good a pub as its location, right on the river, allows it to be; to some extent a victim of its own success, particularly in the summer months, and now with raucous office parties disturbing what should be a tranquil, old man (of the sea?) atmosphere. But now, sitting in the large bay window, which gives one the impression of being sea borne, drinking a pint of Spitfire and a single malt chaser, I was enormously at peace with the world. Had I been alone, I would have likely drifted into a deep, amber-hued sleep.

But the evening was young: all that skating had made us peckish, so we hit town in search of eats. Mysteriously, Greenwich seems the have the largest concentration of dodgy-looking Mexican restaurants in London (such grim joints are generally a curse on the capital; I am reliably informed that the single Mexican restaurant worthy of the name is in Streatham, of all places), we avoided these and made a spontaneous decision to dine at Peter de Wit’s Café, an unassuming establishment on Greenwich Church Street.

It’s a treasure. An intimate affair, it holds maybe twenty diners: tonight, mostly middle-aged couples. Tucked against the wall was a piano, on which a heavily-pregnant Japanese woman played jazz standards, with a guitar accompaniment. Occasionally a graying, bedraggled figure would emerge from the kitchen and play some saxophone; I was unable to determine whether this was in fact Peter de Wit.

I was immediately won over by the menu, which featured just three starters, three main courses and three desserts. I have recently developed menu blindness, possibly as the result of frequent business travel; the tyranny of choice weighs heavily on me. I ordered the fish pie and one of the three bottles of white wine on offer: painless. Enough to forgive the failure to accept credit cards.

As we waited for our meals to arrive, we flicked through a copy of the Beano, which we had found on the café’s magazine rack. They’ve got rid of The Jocks and The Geordies, and Lord Snooty. Rodger the Dodger is still in effect, though.

The food and wine were just fine; the music was pleasant; the service friendly – but this place is far more than the sum of its parts. I strongly, strongly recommend you dine there at your earliest convenience.

On leaving, the sole waiter (again, possibly de Wit?) seemed very eager to know how we had enjoyed the evening, possibly because we were the youngest couple there by a good ten years. “Excellent, my good man,” I said, “I shall tell all my friends,” which now, of course, includes you, dear reader. Just make sure you book, we were very lucky on this occasion.

ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

2006-12-12T17:36:00.000Z

This year’s New York Times Magazine “ideas” issue is out. It’s even weaker than last years, unfortunately, but there are a few bits and bobs that are OK. Highlights:

NCAA Psyop

In which UCLA basketball fans obtained the Instant Messenger number of the star player of rivals USC before a derby game, created a fictional account in the name of “Victoria”, and initiated an online flirtation with said player in the run-up to the game. When the player stepped up to take his first free throw of the game, the entire UCLA crowd chanted “Victoria! Victoria!”, as well as reciting the player’s telephone number en masse.

Negativity Friendships

In which a study suggests that friends bond much more easily over mutual dislikes then mutual interests.

Reverse Graffiti

In which a graffiti artist calls the council’s bluff by “writing” messages simply by cleaning already dirty/graffito’d walls.

Web-based Micro-Financing

In which a website (www.kiva.org) allows you to lend some guy in Africa £20 to start a clothing business etc. He then lets you know how the business is going. I might get involved in this, it looks pretty cool: you can have an international empire of business concerns, with people reporting to you etc., for a couple hundred quid. You don’t get to charge them interest, however, it’s more like a charitable donation that you will almost certainly get back (they claim it’s a 97% repayment rate).

Other mildly interesting ideas:

Taxing Virtual Economies
Voting Booth Feng Shui

And two potential album titles:

Workplace Rumours Are True
Yodeling Is Universal

LONDON NEWS

2006-11-08T15:24:00.000Z

TUPNews recommends you visit Crown Passage, in Mayfair, for lunch.

It’s helpful to know places in central London that feel tucked away and remote. I only recently discovered Hanway Street, a cosy mews full of bars, record shops and Korean restaurants that runs between Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road. You can lean drink-in-hand against the outside wall of the thoroughly excellent Bradley’s Tapas Bar (my favourite tapas bar in London, on the grounds that it doesn’t actually serve tapas) and watch the tourists, tracksuits and hi-fi shoppers walk within ten yards of you, completely oblivious to your presence. Very relaxing, I recommend it for a drink. For dinner, James Street never fails – pavement dining at cheap Turkish, Greek and Italian eateries lined up resort-style on a traffic-less road just a stone’s throw from the bustle of Bond Street. And for lunch, I now add Crown Passage, which I visited today.

I was acting on a tip-off; my former boss and fellow cheap eats aficionado Dave had told me about a place called Fuzzy’s Grub. Dave is the one who turned me on to the Monte Bianco Deluxe, served at Pepper’s just off Trafalgar Square, so I trust him totally. The MBD, or as we rechristened it, “The Motherfucker”, was the finest hangover cure known to man, disguised as a massive chicken escallop and mozzarella ciabatta sandwich. The trick was to ask for a little Tabasco sauce. Pepper’s changed management six months ago and scrapped the MBD, which I found devastating. Even worse than when the White Hart in Waterloo changed chefs and started serving just two types of potato with their Sunday lunch, rather than three.

So I dodged the crazy traffic around St. James Square, walked west down King Street and turned left down Crown Passage.

As it happens, Crown Passage is a heady Dickensian alleyway filled with suits seeking out lunchtime stops. There’s a vibrant 70s-style greasy spoon called Charlie’s (I think) that looked fantastic, as well as a few traditional Italian sandwich shops and a Clapham-esque sandwich bar with the baffling title Get The Foccaccia (“Get the fuck off ya?” I don’t get it.) A lone Pret sits cowed in the middle, looking self-consciously unobtrusive. They all looked great. But the queue for Fuzzy’s Grub was spilling out into the street, and I took my place at the back.

Fuzzy’s is more carvery than sandwich shop. There are only five fillings available: topside of beef, leg of lamb, loin of pork, turkey breast and chicken breast. About ten serving staff work shoulder to shoulder cutting slices of meat off of hefty roast joints. These cuts can either be served as a straightforward roast dinner, or crammed into a large doorstopper cut from thick farmhouse loaf. The awning outside proudly displays a painted Union Jack.

I plumped for a beef and horseradish sandwich, and was somewhat confused when I was then offered roast potatoes, stuffing and gravy. These came included in the price, so I said sure, imagining that they would be served as side orders. In fact, the serving girl crushed the potatoes with a spatula and stuck them on my sandwich, to my total delight. Stuffing was stuffed on and, audaciously, gravy poured all over the whole affair. I was so impressed that I paid the extra quid to eat in – a classic London stitch, perhaps, but it seemed barbarous to consume this work of art in my grey battery-farm of an office. I took a seat by the window and got stuck in.

Reader, this was the best sandwich I’ve ever had.

It was, I imagine, what sandwiches must have tasted like when they were first invented in the Earl of Sandwich’s kitchen: a whole dinner shoved between two massive pieces of bread. Tender, melt-in-the-mouth beef, crunchy roast potatoes, spot-on stuffing: absolutely fucking A. I remembered my French dining companion in Cannes; “Eat this, mademoiselle,” I thought, “and you will know that I am right.”

I thought also of a conversation I had recently with my brother’s girlfriend, who wanted to switch to organic meat but worried it would prove too pricey for her waitress wages. The solution, I suggested, was to start thinking of meat as a luxury rather than a staple: to eat less, but better. The same should apply to sandwiches, I realise now. Life is too short to eat lacklustre sandwiches.

The frosted windows of the Red Lion looked inviting, but solo lunchtime drinking is not really the thing. I popped round the corner to the Royal Legion headquarters to buy a replacement poppy, and walked off my lunch in St. James Park. November in London is truly beautiful.

EUROPE NEWS

2006-11-02T17:54:00.000Z

TUPNews recently visited Cannes, on the southeast coast of France. It was my last business trip of the year.

It’s not as swish as I imagined; in fact the approach from Nice airport called to mind Weymouth. The landmark hotels look pretty ordinary, and the seafront is mostly touristy fish restaurants and private beaches. In fairness, all of my preconceptions about Cannes were based on the video for Elton John’s I’m Still Standing, so it had a lot to live up to. And the nightlife was not bad: I ate a fantastic steak in a restaurant that had apparently been interior-decorated by a five-year-old girl, and then paid £10 for a tumbler of single malt in a try-hard Turkish-themed bar.

I was in town to attend a conference, but I wasn’t much in the mood for it. Instead, I headed down to the municipal beach, about a five-minute walk from my hotel on Rue d’Antibes, one of the flashier shopping streets. Well-attired Eurotrash regarded me with a mixture of confusion, disgust and fear as I walked down the street: among the distressed denim and designer sunglasses, I cut a fine figure in my no-name jumper, black trunks and sockless brown trainers. Hotel-logo’d beach towel slung over my shoulder and the Alan Clark diaries tucked under my arm, I was a strange mix of beach bum and English eccentric. What with it being mid-October, the beach was quiet, but the sky was bright and the water was warm. “I like Cannes,” I thought, floating on my back.

That night I attended a lavish banquet at a grand chateau a little ways out of the city. The host, a major French energy company, will shortly float on the stock exchange, so this was something of a last hurrah. The champagne flows less freely when there are shareholders involved, unfortunately. So we got stuck in while we still could.

I sat next to a charming French girl (is there any other kind?) and argued about British and French attitudes to food. The British have no clue, she said – having recently attended an excellent cheese festival in Cheltenham, I put her straight on the quality of British produce. “Just eat this fish,” she said, pointing her fork at me, “and you will see that I am right.”

She also told me that English men speaking French in English accents is attractive in the same way that French women speaking English in French accents is. I was very pleased to learn this.

ASIA NEWS

2006-09-29T17:04:00.000+01:00

Hong Kong was low comedy; forty-eight hours of fantastic filth. I woke up Sunday afternoon in my friend Joe’s flat on Hollywood Road. He had got back together with girlfriend Dewi the night before; her friend Venus was sprawled out on his sofa, looking more hungover than anyone I have ever seen. At around three we set off on a little double date.

Joe tucks in

Joe took us to a dim sum joint down the street. It ran a bizarre special offer: half price food all weekend. Because of course, no one ever wants to eat out on the weekend, so you have to cut prices. These days I pretty much refuse to eat in Chinese restaurants unless I have a Cantonese person to order for me, so having Venus there was a total result (Dewi is Indonesian – close but no cigar.) After a lengthy consultation with the waitress, we got stuck into a banquet of steamed leaves, prawn parcels and god-knows-what: divine.

Venus is an eccentric girl with a limited grasp of English. We made slow, leisurely small talk, both amused by our hangovers, and not too concerned when the thread of conversation was intermittently lost. I asked her where she worked - she replied, excellently, “In an office,” before adding, “it’s small potatoes.” I was just about able to communicate that I worked in the London office of Joe’s company.

The food and conversation were just fine, but by the end of the meal I was in a little trouble. By this point I was operating firmly on British Businessman Time, a time zone inhabited by those who travel around a third of the globe eastwards and then stay up all night drinking. The heat of the restaurant and the clatter of the plates were playing on my nerves, and I needed to get out. I picked up the bill (less than £12 for four) and we hit the street in search of a fruit juice stand.

Dewi buys some juice

I had about two hours to kill before I needed to head off to catch my return flight to Singapore, so we visited the Mann Mo Temple on Hollywood Road. Mann Mo is a Taoist temple dedicated jointly to the gods of literature and war.

There are two types of Taoism, broadly speaking: Daojiao, or religious Taoism; and Daojia, or philosophical Taoism. Adherents of the former have gods and temples and prayers and ancestor worship; the whole nine yards. It’s basically the standard Chinese folk religion. Adherents of the latter don’t go in for any of the supernatural stuff, but just read Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu and silently contemplate the Tao all day. I’m a Daojia Taoist, but I was interested to see what my Daojiao brothers and sisters get up to.

I must admit I like their style. The temple was cool and dark inside, which calmed my nerves. Coils of incense hung from the ceiling, and visitors burnt incense sticks in front of the shrines. People also struck a large iron bell with a wooden stick – as Venus showed me, first three times gently, then three times hard. I was in no condition to start asking what all this represented, so I just made a donation and soaked it in.

At one point I lost sight of her, and then found her again, praying on her knees in front of a shrine near the door, presumably for some deity to cure her hangover.

Joe and Dewi got bored and went to wait outside, but I stayed in there for forty or so minutes, listening to bells and staring at the statues until my nerves were totally gone. I floated onto the plane on Hong Kong Airport, as cool as a cucumber.

Venus checks out her Chinese Zodiac sign

BUSINESS NEWS

2006-09-26T18:18:00.000+01:00

The commodity futures contract with the highest turnover last year was the West Texas Intermediate Crude Oil contract. 59 million lots were traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The commodity futures contract with the second highest turnover last year was the No.1 Soybeans contract. 40 million lots were traded on the Dalian Commodity Exchange in China; a lot of soy sauce in anyone's book.

ASIA NEWS

2006-09-22T17:29:00.000+01:00

Food is cheap in Asia and I ate like a king. I’m adventurous in this regard: I generally don’t mind shoving random foreign foodstuffs into my mouth, and Singapore is good for this. The only thing I literally couldn’t eat was a “Snow Fungus” dessert in Changi Airport in SG – it had the texture of cartlidge.

Anyway one of my favourite places to eat in the whole world is Lau Pa Sat festival market in the financial district of Singapore (if there can be such a thing). Three rows of stalls representing the three main Singaporean cuisines - Chinese, Malay and Indian – stretch out from the centre. I ate some Indian food, I really can’t go into any more detail than that, I have no idea what it was. It was great though, and cost about a quid.

Despite foodie renown, Singapore doesn’t really have a cuisine of its own, other than a dish called congee, which is fine.

Outside, the market is ringed by satay stalls selling chicken and beef satay by the stick. Satay hawkers grab tourists and shove a simple menu in front of them – it feels rude not to get stuck in. One evening I sat there with a cold beer and some chicken sticks: life does not get any better than this, I thought.

ASIA NEWS

2006-09-22T17:09:00.000+01:00

Good enough for Conrad Hilton / Not good enough for my eyes

(apologies to The Uncertainty Principle)

TUPNews recommends the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Singapore.

Last time I was in SG, I stayed in the Hilton on Orchard Road. Excellent cheesecake notwithstanding, it was a cramped and soulless experience. By day, I sat in a small Travelodge-like room filling out civil service applications. By night, I strolled past row after row of empty shopping malls, crowded Starbucks and forlorn hookers. Not great.

The Mandarin, however, is fantastic – modern, breezy décor in the spacious rooms, with serious marble and mahogany going on in the lobby. They seem to have taken the General Assembly hall of the United Nations building in New York as their style guide – superb. The restaurants are excellent and affordable, enough to forgive the dress codes.

Best of all, the staff all say good morning / good evening to you as you walk out – all of them. There are some staff who apparently are hired just to say good morning / good evening to guests. As a result, every time you enter or leave the hotel, you are obliged to say good morning / good evening to at least ten staff. At first I found this a chore, a little intrusive even. But by the end, it made me feel like the Fonz. I would glide out of the lift and sweep through the lobby as bellhops bowed and smiled on either side of me – I felt that I should burst out into song.

I was genuinely sorry to leave.

ASIA NEWS

2006-09-07T18:05:00.000+01:00

TUPNews has just paid a visit to The Oz Bar in Tanjin Street, Singapore. I was looking up an old friend, Wei Ling.

The Oz Bar is a shitty dive bar the size of a shoebox, but it has live music, which is important to the solo business traveller. I ate dinner tonight in the Marriott restaurant, surrounded by pasty whites with escort girls – one year ago I would have found this pathetic, but after many nights alone in restaurants on business trips I get their angle. I’m too young to cross that line, so live music is my thing when I’m an Englishman in God-knows-where.

I last visited The Oz Bar two years ago, when I came to Singapore in search of the Asian credit market. It doesn’t exist, don’t bother looking. I was staying at the Hilton round the corner, and dropped in for a few beers. The place was packed, in a delightfully seedy way.

There I met Wei Ling, the bar manager. An elderly Aussie woman owned it, but Wei Ling took care of the day-to-day. She saw I was on my own and came over for a chat. I must say I liked her style. The black sheep of an Indonesian family – brother a government flunky, sister married to a doctor – she rebelled and ran this dive bar in SG. We chatted for hours, and I came back the next two nights, and we chatted some more. When she found out I was staying at the Hilton, she started raving about the blueberry cheesecake they served in the café there. I’m not a sweets man, but I gave it a crack, it was excellent. In the single most romantic gesture of my life, I had the concierge box up a slice and send it round the corner to her when I checked out.

She’s not there anymore, the place has been refurbished and is under new management. It was empty – just me and a handful of locals. But there was still some half-decent live music from Bernard and Jeff.

ASIA NEWS

2006-09-07T06:23:00.000+01:00

Hyori Lee: running things

TUPNews can report that, when in comes to Asian music, Korea runs things.

Thankfully, I flew Singapore Airlines to Singapore, rather than Virgin, which I fucking hate. I can’t recommend Singapore Airlines highly enough: good food, good inflight entertainment, friendly service. The flight attendants all wear those patterned dress things, making them look much more dignified than Western “trolley dollies.” The male attendants wear snazzy light blue sports coats, making them look like game show hosts. Excellent. And I got to sit next to a couple from Bristol, although of course that’s not part of the service.

Best of all, however, was the audio, which featured a wide selection of Asian popular music. Here’s the deal:

Canto-Pop is over: it has become very thin and plasticky.

J-Pop is also feeling flat: very ballad-y and tame.

K-Pop is fucking heavy. I give you Hyori Lee, former leader of girl-power pop group Fine Killing Liberty, whose second album “Dark Angel” kept me amused at 30,000ft. The Neptunes have clearly been the latest victims of Asia’s relaxed attitude to intellectual property: in fact, Hyori stopped promoting the album (launched in February) after Britney Spears sued her. I really hope this doesn’t end her career, as she is basically better than Britney. Contemporary sound, local flavour: all good.

Not that Hong Kong doesn’t represent. If there is one Asian track you need to download immediately, it’s “One Person” by Sandy Lam, which is a Chinese-language cover version of New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle.” It was playing every time I got into a taxi in Hong Kong, it is phenomenal.

ASIA NEWS

2006-09-04T20:39:00.000+01:00

TUPNews endorses Jetstar, a subsidiary of Qantas and the Ryanair of Asia.

Faced with a work-mandated week in Singapore, I pulled some strings and got myself sent out four days early, and looked for a cheap return flight from SG to Hong Kong. Jetstar sorted me out with one for £120.

The seats are comfortable, the décor soothing, the staff uniforms are sleek black dresses and the inflight food and drink surprisingly inexpensive. But best of all, there was a flight attendant on the outbound flight named Jolene. And on the return flight, one called Tammy. Excellent.

Jetstar: they're a little bit country, I'm a little bit rock and roll

BUSINESS NEWS

2006-08-30T17:41:00.000+01:00

TUPNews recently visited the 40th floor of the 30 St. Mary Axe, also known as the Swiss Re building, also known as the Gherkin.

This is the best thing that can happen to a City hack. The 40th floor is the bar set at the very top of the building, pictured above. Neither the bar nor the dining rooms below are open to the public – you have to know people. And no wonder: it is a truly sublime place.

The 40th floor is the most elevated bar in London. Even on a cloudy Tuesday afternoon, the views of the city were staggering. I took a few hurried snaps on my mobile as my hosts looked on and grinned, gracious enough to allow me the time to soak up the experience.

I’ve said before that high-quality office environments induce feelings of calm and serenity in me. This place just blew me away. It was peaceful, like an executive class departure lounge, but with a Fifth Element-style hypermodernity that made it feel otherworldly. Everything just felt so incredibly still.

Snaps snapped, we sat down in modernist leather armchairs as two friendly Poles catered to our every need. It was early afternoon, so I stuck to coffee, served in a futuristic espresso cup that I won’t even try to describe. I was tripping out of my mind with serene office pleasure – I could barely stay focused on the interview.

I was there as a guest of an Israeli chief executive who is doing something very interesting with options pricing. I liked him a great deal. His company had previously occupied the top office floor of Tower 42, and therefore was the most elevated company in the City. When the Gherkin was built, this was no longer the case - while the Gherkin is ten feet shorter than Tower 42, the uppermost office floor is higher. This drove him crazy, and he moved mountains to get his hands on the top floor of the Gherkin.

In the end, he had to settle for the second-highest office floor, the 33rd. But still, I like his style.

BUSINESS NEWS

2006-08-15T12:19:00.000+01:00

TUPNews has discovered a new financial derivative instrument that is so beautiful I nearly wept when I read about it.

The Japanese have a tradition called hanami, in which people sit under a sakura, or cherry blossom tree, drink beer and reflect on the transience of life. There are festivals based on this pastime, coinciding with the blossoming of the trees. The small hanami industry – festival organisers and tour operators - relies on the cherry blossoms falling at the right time.

TUPNews has just learned that it is possible to trade cherry blossom derivatives.

BUSINESS NEWS

2006-08-08T13:08:00.000+01:00

TUPNews can report that Barclays Bank, to whom I have remained loyal for many years, is suffering from some kind of mid-life crisis.

Barclays always treated me well, even during my reckless student days, and I anticipate banking with them for as long as I reside in the UK. I like the brand. NatWest, Lloyds and the Royal Bank of Scotland all strike me as – there’s no other word – naff.

HSBC has a certain global citizen charm, I suppose. But Barclays, however, is the bank of the English gentleman. “Help yourself,” I imagine them saying as they treat me to another overdraft extension, “you’re an Oxford man, I’m sure you’re good for it.”

But this veneer of competent conservatism is starting to slip. First off, I was disappointed when they dropped their incomprehensibly pretentious “Fluent in Finance” TV ads, featuring the actor Samuel Jackson. These annoyed many, which in turn delighted me. This is exactly what I want from my bank, I thought – for them to say, “we are fluent in finance, so run along and play while we go look after serious things like your money.”

These were replaced by the “brainstorming” TV ads, essentially office comedies in which young Barclays executives pitched outlandish schemes to each other. These were odd, but were at least in my view vaguely funny. I was mildly concerned, but figured it was just a phase.

A recent visit to the Charing Cross branch has left me bewildered, however. To my amusement and horror, Barclays seem to have hired the same brand managers as those – there’s no other word – gaylords at the Innocent Smoothie Company.

I reach the front of the queue, to be greeted by this sign:

Nearly there*
*Thanks for waiting!

I am trying to work out why the apostrophe is necessary when the teller calls me to the window. She is wearing a badge that reads:

Jennifer
Counter manager
I’d love to help.

This I find a bit try-hard, but Jennifer is so polite and friendly that I actually believe it. After cashing my cheque, Jennifer invites me to participate in a customer feedback exercise, which involves answering five questions by pressing buttons on a machine next to the counter.

The first is innocuous enough – “How long did you wait today?” 0-3 minutes, I happily respond. The second question is equally prosaic and technical, I don’t remember it precisely.

The third is a statement to which the customer is invited to express a level of agreement. The statement was:

I made you feel special

At this I burst into uncontrollable laughter. Thinking about it, I decided that Jennifer had indeed made me feel special, and went to punch “Strongly Agree”. Except I wasn’t offered “Strongly Agree” or “Agree”, but rather “Absolutely” or “I’d say so.” I went for “Absolutely”.

The next statement sent me into a protracted giggling fit:

Overall, it went well today

Yes, I thought, tears forming in my eyes, it did go well. In fact, it was perfect. I will remember this day fondly. I hit “Absolutely”.

I was hoping that the final statement would be something along the lines of “It would be nice to see each other again soon, maybe go to a movie or something”, but it was in fact “I would recommend Barclays to friends and family.”

I punched “Absolutely”.

EUROPE NEWS

2006-08-04T11:09:00.000+01:00

The best word in Italian is "basta", which means "enough".

It's best delivered by small children who are having drinks poured for them.

EUROPE NEWS

2006-08-04T10:58:00.000+01:00

TUPNews recently visited Italy.

My aunt lives out there, in an old Tuscan mining town with her six-year-old daughter and estranged husband. Once a cocktail waitress in Asbury Park, New Jersey, and a trained chef of the Culinary Institute of America, she now works in the fields of the Fattoria il Palago vineyard, which is owned by the Zonin corporation. There are two teams at the vineyard – the field team and the wine press team. My aunt works in the field team. “Breaking the rocks / in the hot sun / I fought the law / and the law won,” she would sing when she got home from work, because that was in fact what she was doing. She took me on a tour of the vineyard one day.

We started at the wine press, an airy building full of terracotta, stainless steel and air-conditioning. A short, friendly Italian man took me through the whole process, from the loading of the grapes from the field to the aging in the barrels. Men in white coats walked around, adjusting dials on forty-foot vats of fermenting wine. I was surprised by the sleek cleanliness of the environment – somehow in my head I expected wine spills and stains everywhere, and big open cauldrons letting off steam. As it was, you could have told me that it was a baby milk, or anthrax factory and I would have happily believed you. Only in the dimly-lit, chandeliered foyer, where there were fifty or sixty wooden barrels patiently awaiting export to Islington, did the place carry any rustic charm. But still, it seemed a pretty cool place to work.

After that we checked out the fields. They are as you imagine – rows and rows of vines. The work of the field orderly is varied. One day it may be as simple as making sure that the growing vines are fastened securely between the wires of the row. I had a go at this; it was relaxing. Other days, they may be pulling rocks out of the dirt to prepare unused ground for planting. The work can be hard, but there is camaraderie among the workers. And my aunt says she likes being close to nature.

Italian labour laws suck, however. The field orderlies only get paid if they work. If it rains and they can’t work, they don’t get paid. Many employers don’t offer paid holidays – instead, the government pays you a kind of unemployment benefit if you’ve worked enough – but not too many – hours that year.

In the UK, this kind of bitch labour is generally undertaken by plucky immigrants. Here, all of the workers were local. Many even lived on the grounds of the estate in workers’ accommodation, and had worked there all their lives.

My aunt is at least lucky to be paid on the level. Her husband, who manages the public relations of a baseball team, is paid in cash. No tax sounds great – except many companies, including his, take advantage of the semi-official status of their workers by only paying them when they feel it is convenient. He is always paid what he is owed, but never on time.

On the way up to the tractor yard, we passed a ruddy, weathered fellow in overalls. He declined a lift; “why get the car all dirty?” He was covered in dust. As we pulled away, my aunt explained that he was a Sicilian. It’s common in Italy for Sicilians to turn up in places other than Sicily and quietly take jobs without going through any formal selection process. This is because they have links to organised crime.

We finished the tour by visiting the spot where the field orderlies sometimes have their lunch together, if they don’t feel like going home. It was high up on a hill, with an excellent view of the surrounds. At the bottom of the hill was a small statue of St. Barbara, the patron saint of miners. At the top of the hill was a cast-iron memorial to victims of a mining disaster.

We stayed a few minutes, and then drove off to visit a couple from North London. There we drank gin and tonics, talked about property prices, and discovered from the World Service that things were getting hot in Beirut.

AMERICAS NEWS

2006-07-11T12:21:00.000+01:00

TUPNews recently visited Houston, in the Republic of Texas. I had more fun than I would care to admit, little of which would translate to the page. Again, if you’re on your way over there, drop me a line and I’ll tell you some good spots to go. But do let me tell you about the wrestling.

It was the day after a conference organised by my employers, and most of my colleagues were jetting off. A handful of us were left behind, and we sat nursing hangovers in the lobby of the Intercontinental, wondering how we were going to kill the three days until our return flight.

After an awful dim sum lunch at the lobby bar, I struck out with my colleague Danny in search of the wrestling. Danny is my business travel Paduan learner; after blooding him in Essen, I have been instructing him in the art of expense fiddling and foreign strip club patronage. On that last count, I fear I have created something of a monster.

There was some sleuthing involved; we were aware of the upcoming wrestlefest only because of a large tarpaulin poster we had seen from a cab some nights previously, so we instructed the mad Polish taxi driver to drive around the area we thought it was until we spotted it. On the way over, he pointed out Lakewood Church, which with 30,000 attendees per week is the largest church in the world. It didn’t look that big from the outside, although it was later explained to us that the actual worship area was a massive underground cavern.

After a few false starts we found it. We pulled in, wheedled some blank receipts from the driver and joined the fun.

I’m a fan of non-league football, so I was delighted to learn that WWF-style wrestling has its equivalents. This was a World Outdoor Wrestling event, hosted in the car park of the Diamond Club, a strip club in southwest Houston.

The crowd was sparse, consisting mostly of families and strippers. Danny and I stood in a roped-off beer tent by the side of the ring, drinking $5 cans of Coors and watching one of the warm-up matches. There, we got chatting to Jay, a young bartender with a blonde mohican haircut, and Tom, a fortysomething real estate agent who was clearly a regular at the Diamond Club. They were planning a holiday together, and argued over the destination. Tom was set on California, while Jay was insistent on Europe. “I only get one fuckin’ week of vacation a year, I’m not spending it in this fuckin’ country,” she explained. We advised Amsterdam.

The subject turned to real estate and the shocking price of London property. I mentioned plans to purchase abroad. Tom, who minutes earlier had been seeking my assurances that audience participation in Amsterdam sex shows really does involve onstage fellatio (NB I have never been to Amsterdam), handed me his card with a view to facilitating a purchase in the Houston area. Drunk in the heat, this actually seemed like a good idea.

This conversation was interrupted by a little audience participation of our own: the MC invited all comers to don comedy over-sized boxing gloves and duke it out in the ring. I apologise to you wholeheartedly, reader, for not volunteering. It was just too hot. But Jay, firecracker that she is, was up there in a flash, merrily beating the crap out of one of the strippers. We congratulated her on her return and treated her to a beer.

Jay, before the fight

I mentioned to Jay, as politely as I could, that the girls working in the Diamond were a little unconventional-looking. “Oh yeah,” she replied breezily, “we have all kinds of girls here: fat girls, old girls, ugly girls – doesn’t matter what you’re into, we got it.”

After the boxing came the main event.

The title-holder, pictured, described himself as the “Ultimate Bad Boy,” and had stalked the perimeter of the stage throughout the day, barking self-aggrandising statements and put-downs of future opponents. He was not a popular champion. His repeated threatening of the master of ceremonies did not endear him to the crowd, who seemed to find him arrogant and out of touch. He did, however, comfortably defend his title in the marquee match.

Now quite drunk, we bid farewell to Jay and Tom and caught a cab back to the hotel to join our other colleagues for dinner: fish and chips in a mock British pub called 221b Baker Street. It was the best fish and chips I have ever had in my life.

LONDON NEWS

2006-07-03T11:21:00.000+01:00

TUPNews recently visited Brockwell Park Lido, in South London. I will never tire of telling people that Brockwell Park Lido is simply one of the best things about the London summer.

Last Friday was cloudless and hot, so I rang work and pretended to be incapacitated by a duff oyster. After a little lie-in, I whipped on my trunks, grabbed a towel and packed my bag with the essentials: music player and headphones, a selection of light reading, and a bottle of mineral water.

On the way to Brockwell Park, I stopped off at the market on North Cross Road market to buy some of stallholder Andrea’s fishcakes for lunch, and then at East Dulwich Sainsbury’s, which was selling Amber Solaire spray-on sunscreen for six quid; a fucking result in any language. I got the lido around one o’clock.

There’s a great ambience at the pool, as always. We all roll our towels out onto the London concrete and pretend we’re in Spain, or Morocco, or Egypt. Police sirens sound at a distance, planes circle overhead, but we’re in a little secret patch of our own: it’s lovely.

The near-nakedness of everyone is also pleasantly relaxing: Londoners of all shapes, shades and sizes, sans class signifiers save some tattoos, letting it all hang out. The first half hour I devote to checking out pretty young things, but soon this impulse fades and I just dig the naturalist, garden-of-Eden vibe.

The pool is Olympic-sized and ice-cold, which means it rarely feels crowded. You get the odd point-to-point lap swimmer, but I’m more of a five-minute dip man. I specialise in the underwater somersault and the lying on my back with my feet sticking out of the water. Me and the lap-swimmers don’t get in each others’ way too much.

These little dips have a remarkable effect on me. Within seconds of being in the water, I feel as though all of the stress of city life – which in my view is amplified in the sticky-suited heat of the summer – is discharged into the water, like static charge grounded. I dry out in the sun, and then repeat: after two or three of these dips, I am as relaxed and restored as I would be after a week’s vacation.

I have a small but persistent hangover from last night’s band practice, I’m hungry, and I find my reading matter doesn’t quite match the mood (last summer was all Murakami and Blondie’s Parallel Lines, absolutely perfect for the pool). Also I’m a little bummed out by a text from Emeline, a gorgeous French girl I’d met last weekend, cancelling our date that night. So after a couple of hours in the sun, I hit the road.

On the way back I stopped off at Nicolas, my local wine store, for a few bottles of Corsican rose to drink during the next day’s England vs Portugal World Cup quarterfinal. In France, there is a Nicolas on every corner; in England, around forty stores, all in Greater London, all staffed by French nationals. I think they may be posted out here from France. This Nicolas was displaying a large flag of St. George in the window.

“Ne pas un tricolore?” I inquired. “No,” the French national responded gloomily, “I zink zere is more hope with zis flag.”

Alors!!

SPORTS NEWS

2006-06-23T16:57:00.000+01:00

Football
World Cup group stage match

Portugal 2 – 0 Iran

TUPNews watched this match at the Café Estrela in Stockwell.

Stockwell is sometimes known as Little Portugal, owing to the large Portuguese community living there. There are Portuguese cafes all along the South Lambeth Bridge Road: the Estrala is probably the most upmarket and popular.

People in these cafes love their football – every time TUPNews visits the area, the televisions in the cafes are invariably broadcasting live feeds of games from Portuguese networks, regardless of the time of day, or day of week – and so I thought I’d head down to soak up the atmosphere.

Sure enough all the cafes were packed, and Portuguese of all ages crammed the pavement outside the Estrala, whose TV screens face the street.

There was a nice buzz in the crowd, even if it wasn’t quite a carnival atmosphere. In contrast to England matches I have watched in public, many of the Portuguese fans were keeping only one eye on the game. Families chatted amongst themselves, shirtless teenage boys eyed up tanned teenage girls. Best of all, some fans simply circled the block in flag-adorned cars, beeping every time they passed the caff.

I was surprised to hear that many of the younger fans had full London accents. I eavesdropped on their conversation as they justified to each other their lack of support for the England national team.

I couldn’t really see anything of the match, but I was pleased when Portugal triumphed 2-0. With victory assured, the carnival atmosphere kicked in. Klaxons, drums, and massive Portuguese flags all came out. A few flags of former Portuguese colony and group stage opponent Angola were also in evidence.

There is a small slip road near the Estrala that leads on to the South Lambeth Bridge Road. At one point, a car bearing an England flag pulled up and was surrounded by the crowd. The Portuguese fans booed, which was taken with good grace by the smiling driver. They then started to gently rock the car, which the driver also took in his stride. TUPNews found this hilarious. Then one fan ripped the England flag off of the car, prompting the driver to floor it. Within seconds, the fan had his lighter out and the crowd were chanting “Burn it! Burn it!”

TUPNews watched from a safe distance, and then retrieved the battered standard. I keep it in my house now.

ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

2006-05-26T16:54:00.000+01:00

TUPNews recommends that you read foreign newspapers printed in languages you can’t understand.

“What shall we say of modern man?” asked Camus. “He fornicated and read the papers.” And why not? It’s lovely and relaxing to idly leaf through a newspaper. On a lunch break, in the park on a sunny day, on a Sunday morning after breakfast – it’s one of the great, simple pleasures.

But the reader is always in danger of being exposed to “opinion” and “analysis”. The former drains the soul, while the latter hurts the brain. Whether the tedium of Monboit or the crassness of Littlejohn, one puts the paper down feeling freshly assaulted.

TUPNews was in an Air France departure lounge recently, and found myself picking up a copy of Le Figaro that was lying around. It’s a nice-looking, breezy paper, not dissimilar in design to our own Guardian. But as I was unable to comprehend anything more than the basic subject matter of each story, reading it was sheer, lazy pleasure, unadulterated by the whining of po-faced twats.

The only article of which I could understand more than half was, for some reason, a preview of the Biarritz vs Munster Heineken Cup final, which is a Europe-wide rugby union competition. It was typically, beautifully French: the first two-thirds of the article were pure hyperbole about what an amazing team Munster were, how rugby is not a game but a battle for Munster, how rugby is not a game but a way of life for Munster fans, how Munster are more like oxen than men, how Munster were the overwhelming favourites. The rest of the article dealt with Biarritz’s level of preparation, concluding that they had better be fucking well prepared to stand a chance of beating Munster.

Munster later won 23-19.

LONDON NEWS

2006-05-17T10:29:00.000+01:00

TUPNews was enjoying a few lunchtime pints with colleagues on a sunny Friday afternoon recently, outside the Tom Cribb pub in central London. Even though it was the Cup Final the next day, the weather forecast suggested rain tomorrow, so we were eager to make the most of it. Anyway our truancy was rewarded by the incredible sight of the monkey god, pictured above, making his way down Haymarket.

The monkey god was on a massive bicycle with moving feet, and had smoke pouring out of his mouth. TUPNews doesn't want to tell anyone how to run their lives, but if I was in charge of the Hare Krishnas, I would make the monkey god more central to the whole "become a krishna" pitch. By focusing their efforts on faffing around with a loudspeaker outside HMV, they are missing a trick.

LONDON NEWS

2006-04-27T14:13:00.000+01:00

Today is National Cheese On Toast Day, TUPNews can exclusively report.

In Leicester Square, trade representatives of the UK's major bread and cheese manufacturers have set up stalls. On one, roughly 200 slices of bread have been laid out on a table in a big grid and covered with grated cheese. A woman then melts the cheese with a blowtorch. Fantastic.

Unfortunately, TUPNews had already eaten.

BUSINESS NEWS

2006-04-20T16:39:00.001+01:00

TUPNews has reported on this in the past, but as today’s FT headline shows, unbelievably biased coverage* of the Russian gas giant remains popular in the mainstream press, and may well seep on a dinner party table near you. As one of only two Gazprom-defending journalists in the UK (my girl Mary D at the Independent is the other), I’m pleased to offer you some insider chat on what promises to be a long-runner.

So there you are, admiring the frozen grape and dark chocolate dessert, wishing the host would crack open more wine. From the end of the table you hear the words “energy bully”. Without pausing to establish the context, or even the identity of the speaker, bellow the following:

“Ukraine is a nation of thieves who don’t know who their real friends are. Russia has effectively subbed their economy for a decade with dirt-cheap gas, and all it asked in return was for Ukraine to be its mate. In return, Ukraine steals from the pipes at every opportunity and racks up massive debts. Then Ukraine decides it would rather be mates with the EU. Fine – but it can’t expect to keep getting mates’ rates on gas - if your girlfriend leaves you, you can respect her decision but still stop sending her flowers. It doesn’t make you a “flower bully”.

As for the “shady intermediary” RosUkrEnergo handling Gazprom’s Ukrainian sales – what exactly is shady about using a subsidiary or joint venture? RUE is half-owned by the ‘prom, half-owned by an Austrian bank. It’s all there in black and white. In fact, the only shadiness going on is the question of who the Austrians are representing here – the word on the street is, fucking Ukranian politicians/gangsters!

Also why the fuck do you think Russia is so keen to move its commercial relationships with its neighbours to “market conditions”, i.e. a higher, market-driven price, not the amalgam of mates’ rates and pipeline access barter that it has been up to now? More dough, certainly, but also bare pressure from your precious friends the WTO, which Russia is desperate to join. They’re just trying to play by the rules of your sacred free market!! And how do you respond? Getting all protectionist over the Centrica bid, and generally accusing them of starting a new Cold War.

Finally - what has Ukraine got out of this great new pro-Western stance? Fuck all. Fuck all investment, fuck all modernisation, fuck all trade, just a vague promise to maybe join the EU in about twenty years.”

At this point someone may interject: “Yeah but Putin, like, was in the KGB, and he’s, er, oil…”

Feel free to physically attack them.

*What happened: Gazprom complains about the fact that the UK is furiously trying to change the law to prevent it from taking over Centrica, and points out that if it is prevented from growing in Europe, it will have to grow into other markets instead.

What was reported: “Gazprom in threat to supplies” screams the headline. Gazprom “threatens” to redivert supplies, as a “warning” to the EU and a “riposte” to the UK.

UPDATE!

RosUkrEnergo has revealed who owns the other half (i.e. the half not owned by Gazprom). It’s two Ukrainian businessmen, one of which had been rumoured to be involved in deals with crime lords, but denies it and nothing has been proven.

Meanwhile Putin had this to say:

“When European companies come to us it’s called investment and globalisation, but when we go there it’s called expansion by Russian companies.”

Finally, a Gazprom spokesman admitted that Moscow had committed a PR blunder by remaining silent during the Ukraine cut-off: “I think the mistake on our side was that we didn’t explain it properly,” said a spokesman.

SPORTS NEWS

2006-04-18T14:33:00.000+01:00

Football

Southern Premier League
Twerton Park

Bath City 0 – 2 Chippenham Town

I was hoping to write an in-depth report about this Easter Monday fixture, but the result has left me too depressed to go into it in any detail.

It was, in fairness, a lovely day to go down the football, and the fine weather and import of the match had swelled the crowd to over two thousand, well above the average gate of six hundred. But we was robbed: an early red card for a City striker put everything off balance in an already sloppy match, and the atmosphere was dead by the sixty-minute mark. Usually I can watch City lose and still enjoy the day out (God knows I’ve had enough practice), but God I fucking hate Chippenham Town, and faced with a home loss like this, all my Zen deserts me.

So all TUPNews has to share with you is a realisation I had on the terraces: that the emptiest, most lonely sound in the world is the sound of the away support celebrating a goal from the other side of the ground. Their roars don’t just sound like a quieter echo of the home supporters’ cheers - they actually sound like the inverse of the home supporters’ cheers, like the air is being sucked out of the stadium.

LONDON NEWS

2006-04-12T14:14:00.001+01:00

TUPNews was just stopped on London’s Carnaby Street by a young woman with a plate of meat, camera crew in tow. She asked me to sample her wares – little grey meatball things – while the cameras filmed me. I ate one; it was tasty. What is it, I asked. Lamb testicles, she replied. The camera crew leant in, awaiting my gor-blimey-gov’nor-well-I-never reaction.

Who do they think they’re kidding? I’m a LONDONER, for fuck’s sake. You really think this is the first time I’ve eaten a lamb’s nuts? Fuck, I could probably give you a Time Out-style top five places to eat lamb balls right off the top of my head.

I signed the consent form triumphantly: look out for me on Food Uncut.

MIDDLE EAST NEWS

2006-04-11T15:46:00.000+01:00

Part 1

We rounded off our trip with a few beers in the exclusive bar on the top floor of our hotel. Now that the ordeal was over, the mood had lightened. In fact, I started to feel a little sentimental.

Like I said before, I am primarily a desk-bound feature journalist. I don’t get out much. I have no rivals, and know few of my peers. Even at events, I rarely find myself socialising with other hacks, preferring the company of bankers and lawyers – I don’t know why this is. As proud as I am of my press card, I’ve never had a sense of being part of the international brotherhood of journalists.

But in the emptiness of the Qatari desert, adversity and futility had bonded this disparate group of hacks together. For a couple of days, I was more than a member of the press. For the first time in my career, I was part of a press corps.

Part 2

The final thing I want to write about is what it’s like generally being in an Arab country.

The first thing that’s weird is visas. On my arrival I was escorted to a small, plush waiting room while headscarved women checked my papers and brought me tumblers of chilled water. This put me in mind of a 1970s international espionage thriller, or an episode from the original Mission:Impossible.

The second thing that’s weird is seeing burkas everywhere. I live in London so it’s not like I’m not used to seeing them. But the cumulative effect of seeing them on around half of women, and hijabs on most of the rest, made the place feel other-worldly. Specifically, it reminded me of the Star Wars prequels.

I did get a chance to wander down the seafront and around the old town for about two hours. Along the seafront were dozens of joggers and power walkers, many wearing burkas, which I found charming. The traditional souq in the old town looked nice, but was empty. Traders sat around stoically, completely failing to surround and hassle me to buy their spices/rugs/plastic footballs. Joe Qatari, it seems, has moved on to the designer shopping mall next door.

As the sun began to set, I found myself in a throng of builders trooping off to the nearby mosque. Somehow I had failed to hear the call to prayer – I did not hear it the whole time I was there.

Part 3

There was a young, impeccably dressed, impossibly thin, severely good-looking girl among the Arab press. All us British boys were fascinated, but were too intimidated by her beauty and culture to approach her. Luckily I managed to find myself in a lift with her and introduced myself. She works for Radio Monte Carlo.

Do I even have to say it? I fell immediately in love.

MIDDLE EAST NEWS

2006-04-11T14:48:00.000+01:00

Our time in Doha was drawing to close: there remained only the gala, alcohol-free launch dinner.

The trench humour of the Ras Laffan trip had given way to a listless depression, as we sat right at the back of a massive dining hall and watched the ridiculous video presentation unfold, unfeelingly. We picked at our starters, barely able to summon the energy to comment wittily on the proceedings.

David Frost was the master of ceremonies: the poor boy seems to be suffering from Parkinson’s, or some similar disease. Frost is about to take up a senior position within the al-Jazeera TV news organisation, which is based in Qatar. He dutifully rolled through the script.

In a final cancellation, the Emir himself had wisely decided not to turn up to his own event, sending his prime minister along instead. The prime minister had the honour, therefore, of placing his hand on a tacky glowing sphere and formally launching the new city.

David Frost before his speech

To their credit, the British press officers were still frantically trying to secure an audience with the Qatari oil minister, who had blown us off several times already. Just before the main course arrived, word came – the minister would take questions! We grabbed our pads and Dictaphones and went to wait in the wings.

This was very exciting for all of us, but me in particular. I have always been a desk-bound feature journalist – I’ve never door-stopped anyone, or been part of a media scrum.

(My editor, by contrast, was once a bona fide oil reporter on a major newswire, who has seen firsthand the media scrums that accompany OPEC ministers wherever they go, and has participated in a few herself. She once scooped her rivals by turning up at an OPEC minister’s favourite London hotel at 5am in her jogging clothes, just in time to join him for his morning run. Old school.)

Thick with adrenalin, I rehearsed my questions and fiddled with the voice recorder function on my phone. The minister came over to inspect the model city along with the rest of the royal family. We were yards away. A harried press officer I hadn’t seen before approached him and pointed over to the assembled ranks of the international media, hungry for anything they could bring back to their editors. He looked over, smiled at us, and fucked off.

We shuffled back to our tables, to find that we had missed the main course.

MIDDLE EAST NEWS

2006-04-11T11:15:00.000+01:00

By the second day, the press corps was in open revolt. Promises of one-to-one meetings with ministers had been quietly swept aside, and even the British public relations boys were admitting to us in private that the trip was a bust.

(At the previous night’s reception, I had casually asked a British PR how the day had gone from his perspective. He leaned in, stared fixedly into my eyes like a hunted animal, and confessed that it had been the worst day of his career.)

Disillusioned, we impassively accepted our fate: a morning at a liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility in Ras Laffan, some forty minutes’ drive from Doha.

LNG is where you compress gas into a liquid, whack it on a ship and send it off to Asia, or increasingly, the US. It's good if you don't want to build pipelines. It's the future, some say.

The cracks started to show during the introductory video presentation, which told the story of Qatar’s natural gas industry and the Ras Laffan plant, closing with the phrase “It’s Ras Laffantastic!” This had a few of us desperately biting our knuckles. Herded back on the buses for the grand tour, the stout and somewhat camp tour guide made some opening remarks in English, causing the Arab press to again go apeshit. A few chuckles were suppressed from the Westerners at the back of the bus. The driver then fired the engine, which shook gamely before shuddering to a complete halt. This was too much; the international media dissolved into fits of laughter.

Wiping tears from our eyes, we watched on as the poor guide attempted to give his speech in both English and Arabic, only for the Arab press to shout him down every time he dared speak infidel, which was every thirty seconds. He pleaded that he was “just trying to please everybody,” but this didn’t cut it – eventually, the buses stopped and the Westerners were evacuated to the bus behind. Linguistic segregation assured, the tour continued.

I’m being a little disingenuous in running down the experience of touring the LNG facility. I write about the more rarefied financial aspects of the energy industry, so it’s refreshing for me to see the nuts and bolts every once and a while (although this was clearly not true for most of my colleagues.) Big gas flares, racks of computers keeping tabs on flows and pressure - it's all good.

Best of all was the anti-dehydration signs in the men's room, which explained what the optimum shade of urine is, using a colour-coded system (the lighter the better.) I wanted to take a picture, but as my phone is not "explosion-proof", I had to turn it off during my visit.

Also there were loads of cool LNG tankers from all over the world. My principal regret in life is that I am not a mariner - I tried to join the Merchant Navy two years ago, but I was too old and they wouldn’t have me - so I was perfectly happy to hang out by the docks for a while.

Tom looks at a tanker, utterly disillusioned.

MIDDLE EAST NEWS

2006-04-10T22:41:00.000+01:00

The first day ended with a drinks reception in the Royal Suite of the Four Seasons, a little closer to Doha city centre. I was twenty minutes later than the others in arriving, but that twenty minutes had clearly been enough to totally destroy whatever morale might have been left among the press corps.

We had been promised a 4x4 desert safari; I don’t mind admitting it was the principal reason I accepted the assignment. Instead, we were stuck drinking non-alcoholic smoothies in a gold-leaf apartment with smiling, vacuous officials. The balcony afforded a fine view of Doha; my boys looked ready to jump.

Like many middle-class Britons, I’m happy to indulge the line that we’d all be better off if we sipped slowly like the French rather than etc etc. But a drinks reception without drink is just wrong, I’m sorry. And for British journalists – it’s just insulting, quite frankly.

I tried to cheer everyone up with amazing stories of my visit to Lusail. At the presentation they had attended, Lusail looked like this:

In fact, Lusail currently looks like this:

They all found this hilarious, as you can imagine. I was also able to laugh, having survived the car journey back from Lusail. The Qatari state is pretty obsessed with road safety, for a country where there is presumably no drink driving, and most of the roads are of the straight, desert variety. To deter people from dying in traffic accidents, there are loads of posters literally encouraging people not to die in traffic accidents, as well as car wrecks perched on roadside plinths. These were a curiosity on the way out, but more ominous on the way back - at least while the hi-tech dashboard of our driver’s Mercedes repeatedly asked him to pull over and check the tire damage he had suffered busting a sharp U-turn across the road. Not a strong English speaker, he was oblivious; not a religious type, I nevertheless prayed for my immortal soul.

Of course, the reception did at least afford an opportunity to hobnob with the bigwigs. A chance to pick up the scoop, the inside, the real deal.

A common paradox in financial journalism is that the more important someone is, the less they have to say. The top dog is invariably so elevated from the real action as to be reduced to vagaries and verbless sentences. For crunch, you actually need to speak to the ambitious head of a minor desk, the maverick analyst, or the central European lawyer who’s spotted a problem with such and such directive.

Tom, for instance, had covered the G8 summit in Gleneagles, and declared it to be the dullest week of his life. The only relief from the tedious mission statements and position papers was being able to watch the riot police wade in on the kids, all from the safety of the hotel. That, and watching the professional fury of the major outlets’ big-dick reporters, stuck in a remote Scottish village while the YTS boys back at head office got to cover the biggest terrorist attack in London’s history.

True to form, none of the top brass had anything to say – in fact, most of them had only been brought on board a few weeks previous, and none of them seemed to understand what the company was or what it was doing.

After a mediocre buffet dinner and some stilted chat with our brothers in the Arab press, we made a unionised decision to fuck off back to the Ritz-Carlton for some $10 cans of John Smiths and an early night.

MIDDLE EAST NEWS

2006-04-04T14:55:00.000+01:00

We reconvened at noon, to learn that the promised 18 holes at a luxury golf club had also been cancelled. TUPNews was secretly relieved, as despite some proficiency with the putting iron, I am overall a poor golfer. Instead, we were carted off to the Qatari Financial Centre for the launch of a new energy exchange.

Imex will be the centrepiece of Energy City Qatar, the financial district that will be the centrepiece of Lusail, a whole new extra city the Qataris are whacking up in a bid to become the new Dubai.

The press release claimed that Imex was the first energy exchange in the Middle East, which is a straightforward lie, given that the Dubai Mercantile Exchange launched last year. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, as they say.

The Imex officials were pretty non-committal about such details as what type of futures contracts might be traded, who might trade them, etc. After an hour of half-Arabic, half-English Q&A with the Qatari economics minister that went nowhere and revealed nothing, proceedings were brought to a close – and then rapidly re-opened after the Arab press went apeshit and demanded to be allowed to ask more pointless questions. I love the Arab press.

A light buffet lunch later and we were treated to our third schedule change of the day: a trip to the Qatari Hotels Association – not, as listed, the Four Seasons, where the British, Bahrain-based TV producer had already sent his crew - to watch a presentation about the development of Lusail, the brand-spanking new city we were all so looking forward to seeing.

I was in the car with the TV producer, and we broke away from the main convoy to swing by the Four Seasons to pick up his crew. It was not his usual crew, he explained: his usual crew had been denied visas for being “insufficiently managerial.” It is remarkably difficult to get around the Middle East, even if you are a local. A Bahraini must be a manager to come to Qatar on business, and despite receiving an on-the-spot promotion in Bahrain International Airport, the poor lad was grounded. Instead, we were joined in the car by his makeshift, Doha-based crew: a silent Indian and a chipper Dutchman.

The producer was pretty stressed at this point, musing dolefully about what an incredible amount of effort it took to produce a vapid 15-second news clip. Little did he know that, thanks to a misunderstanding with our driver, we were about to land a scoop – the first viewing by Western journalists of the actual Lusail development itself.

BUSINESS NEWS

2006-04-03T17:50:00.000+01:00

TUPNews lunched today at the W-lbrook Club, in London’s The City, as the guest of a French investment bank.

Despite the indignity of having to wear a house tie, I was completely won over by the club and resolved to join immediately, or just as soon as I become a wealthy industrialist. With just three rooms and a bar, the W-lbrook is a cosy affair. It was founded in 2000 as a simple City dining club, so it has none of the dusty, oppressive history of the Mayfair bruisers. The décor is modest yet quirky: the old-school portraits are there, but mixed in with 1920s cartoon sketches and Edwardian architectural drawings. Although I didn’t see it, the club’s Oak Room is apparently decorated with celluloids from the Beatles film Yellow Submarine, alongside Sir Peter Blake’s paintings of wrestlers.

And when I saw the massive model of the ocean liner Saturnia behind the bar, it was, of course, love at first sight.

After a quick drink in the bar, around thirty press and bankers assembled in the upstairs dining room for lunch and a presentation. The food was excellent, as you would expect from a French bank. A few glasses of fine wine took the edge of TUPNews’ boat race-induced hangover.

Seated on my left was a darling young girl from the Dow Jones newswire, bright-eyed and bird-like, who charmed me off the table. But to my right, more excitingly, was Caroline Hayas, the chief energy reporter for the Financial Times.

To me, FT writers are celebrities. They’re not that much better than other City hacks – my journalism heroes all work at The Sun - but when you read their stuff every day, you can’t help but feel excited when you actually meet one. I have no desire to work for a daily, but for the pink ‘un I might make an exception.

Hayas was just like I expected: a slim, elegant woman in her early thirties, doubtless a graduate of the LSE or Sorbonne or something, putting sharp questions to the brass one minute and telling us cute anecdotes about her two-year-old the next. Brilliant. People always tell me that City journalism is a male-dominated line of work – this might be the case statistically, but it always seems that the quality hacks are girls. Two of my last three editors, for instance.

Before I left I went for a slash. The marble urinals had a frosted glass piss-guard about eighteen inches high, which kept my marvellous shoes safe from errant flecks. Genius.

BUSINESS NEWS

2006-04-03T15:10:00.000+01:00

BREAKING NEWS!!!

Just got this press release in my inbox:

Bergen and London, 03 April 2006 - Fish Pool AS, the first international marketplace for the trading of financial salmon contracts, today announced that it has selected [such-and-such software] to power this entirely new market.

The marketplace will officially open on 27 April 2006 and has been created to facilitate the transaction of financial salmon contracts for farmers and purchasers of salmon. The contracts to be offered by Fish Pool are completely new tools for the salmon industry and will aim to bring more stability to the prices of salmon.

MIDDLE EAST NEWS

2006-04-01T19:53:00.000+01:00

What the Emir wants, the Emir gets. He wanted the international media present at this shindig, and was willing to shell out to make this happen. So here we were, jetlagged and woozy from a champagne-soaked flight.

The international media consisted of myself; Tom, a wry freelancer who claimed to have fathered “dozens of children”; Luke, a young educated hippie six months into the job; Mark, a broad-shouldered, soft-spoken Texan; John, a depressed Atlantan in his late forties; Elizabeth, a very funny middle-aged woman from a Malaysian tabloid, and Wang, an unnervingly young-looking reporter from the New China Daily. There was absolutely no common editorial link between our publications, and by the end of the trip, we would all agree that there was absolutely no point in any of us being there.

We had been promised unforgettable hospitality, unparalleled access to senior figures, and a massive story: the establishment of a fully-fledged trading hub in the Middle East.

The Middle East produces vast quantities of crude oil and natural gas, but this is all sold directly to Western energy firms who take it at a fixed price and then sell it on the major commodity exchanges in New York, London and Singapore.* The Middle Eastern producers don’t get to wear brightly-coloured jackets and shout at each other, like in Trading Places. Understandably they feel left out, and want to set up their own, which is what they’re doing, which is why we were there.

On the morning of the first day, we were visibly excited. A grand ribbon-cutting of a sparkling new futuristic energy city!Pages and pages of easy-to-write copy, with dazzling photographs! Mucking about with the Qatari oil minister! It doesn’t get any better than this.

Unfortunately the morning of the first day was cancelled. We repaired to our hotel rooms, watched one of the eight channels devoted to football, had a look out of the balcony, read the awful local paper, wondered if we had enough time to check out the sauna, decided that we didn’t, and reconvened in the lobby at noon.

*Some more background: the Middle East and Russia produce sour crude, while the West produces sweet crude – West Texas Intermediate (WTI) from Texas, and Brent crude from the North Sea. Sour crude requires more refining before it can be turned into gasoline, so it is cheaper. Fair enough. But prices for crude oil are “discovered” by the balance of supply and demand on Western exchanges, which use Brent and WTI as the benchmark grades. That is, the price of Brent and WTI is determined by the actual supply and demand for Brent and WTI, while everything else – including Middle Eastern sour crude – is priced at discount to those benchmarks. Sour crude producers would rather see it prices for sour crude set by the underlying supply and demand for sour crude, and are eager to establish a sour crude benchmark in the same vein as Brent or WTI, most likely on a Middle Eastern exchange. This way, “price discovery” could occur nearer to home.

MIDDLE EAST NEWS

2006-03-30T11:47:00.000+01:00

TUPNews recently visited Doha, the capital city of Qatar, on the Saudi Arabian peninsula. I saw two camels; and more palm trees than I could count.

Doha will be a remarkable city, once it is finished. Everywhere one turns, there are magnificent billboards trumpeting the modern Qatari dwellings and offices of the future. Not unlike the scene in Back To The Future where Marty visits his neighbourhood in 1955, to find it is yet to be built.

Doha is, at present, literally half-built: for every functioning skyscraper, there is a scaffolded clone across the road. And on each scaffold, a handful of Qatari builders.

The Qatari manual labourer is a circumspect chap, with a finely tuned sense of the work/life balance. He is not afraid to bite off more than he can chew: for every sixty-story tower, there only ever seemed to be ten or twenty workers. Faced with such an immense workload, and the oppressive heat, he is careful to conserve his energy. Most of the workers TUPNews came across were, quite sensibly, taking “power” naps underneath roadside palm trees.

Such prudence may, however, be under threat from the money-grubbing Nazis at the International Olympic Committee, who have threatened to withdraw December’s Asian Games from Doha if the Qataris fail to provide some evidence of having actually built some sports facilities. The Qatari philosophy of project management – roughly translatable as “it’ll be alright on the night” – is rattling nerves in Lausanne, where IOC chiefs still shudder at the memory of Athens 2000, and are starting to crack the whip.

TUPNews, for one, would find the imposition of such harshly capitalist working practices on the noble Qatari worker an awful shame.

Joe Qatari, incidentally, is getting a little peeved at the fact that his city is now effectively a building site – no matter how great the future rewards. I can see his point. At first, the visitor is invigorated by the sheer promise and ambition of this plucky city-state. But after a while, the sense of unfinishedness becomes unnerving. As a fellow hack remarked, visiting Doha today is like “getting to a party before anyone else has arrived.”

(pics to follow)

SERVICE UPDATE

2006-03-23T14:37:00.000Z

Basque Train

TUPNews is pleased to announce photojournalism functionality via the Flickr system. This is a test image.

MIDDLE EAST NEWS

2006-03-21T09:18:00.000Z

Todday TUPNews reports live from Doha, the capital of Qatar.

So far it’s just been airport, taxi, Ritz-Carlton, so I can’t give you too much juice just yet. I saw a pedestrian crossing sign; the silhouetted figure on the sign was a woman in a burka, which was excellent. And when you pull open the stationary drawer of the desk in my hotel room, there is a little sticker indicating the exact direction of Mecca. Also the money is absolutely amazing. There are no people on the banknotes, just images from nature. A one-riyal note has some small birds on it. A fifty-riyal has a massive oyster. Go look for it on the net.

Speaking of which, the internet access costs here are astounding, so this will unfortunately be my only live post. Plenty more when I get back, though.

I will say, in passing, that next time you have a stinking hangover and a howling case of beer shame, TUPNews recommends you sleep it off in the Club World compartment of a British Airways aeroplane. The seats are like little cubicles; they recline to horizontal. I slept like a child. And in my precarious state, the kindness of the service nearly brought me to tears.

Despite my love of the jet set, I have a fear of flying. This is based on my fear of dying cheaply in a plane crash. I was cured totally in this instance, however. This is how I want to die, I thought – on my back, with a belly full of crayfish and champagne, smashing into the snow-capped Swiss Alps.

UPDATE!

Just got in on Qatar Airways, business class - now that is the way to die!!

SCIENCE NEWS

2006-03-13T14:42:00.000Z

Smell gas? That's because gas suppliers add a chemical to natural gas to make it smell "gassy". When you take it out of the ground, it's actually odourless.

ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

2006-03-13T11:59:00.000Z

TUPNews recently visited Nottingham, in England’s The North.

It’s difficult for the Londoner to praise the nightlife of the smaller cities without sounding patronising: nevertheless, I was pleasantly surprised. Is Northern nightlife actually the best? London is always trying so hard to be new; the South is always trying to so hard to be London – for effortless, unpretentious class, try Manchester or Nottingham. Or not – I don’t really know, it’s not my area of expertise. But I had a good night. Highlight: chatting up the wife of the lead singer of Six-by-Seven in the Social after flashing my press card and pretending to be an NME freelancer compiling a venue directory.

While our night began and ended in stylish drinking dens, our choice of eaterie was a little left field. Faced with a thirty-minute queue for a table at Wagamama’s, TUPNews and companion took the only respectable course of action for two young lads out on the town on a Saturday night: we went to Hooters.

The Hooters formula is very simple: take a normal American sports bar, insist that all waitresses dress in hot pants and tight, white T-shirts; increase bar and food prices by roughly 50%. Launched in Florida in 1983, there are now over three hundred such restaurants in the United States of America, as well as a Hooters magazine, a Hooters Mastercard and even a Hooters airline. The concept hasn’t really taken off outside of America, however: the Nottingham branch is the only one in the UK.

I’m not surprised: the girls aside, it is a charmless place. Tackier than stablemate TGI Fridays, the clientele is exclusively male, hollow-eyed and slightly moneyed – like a Nuts magazine focus group. All were in packs: seated at a table for two, my companion and I actually looked slightly gay. Dozens of flat screens feed international sports into a room charged with frustration. The whole dynamic is a bit weird – there are so many men and so few women that it does almost feel like a gay bar. This is also true of strip clubs, I suppose, but that’s stage-based entertainment – you’re there for a purpose. The girls here don’t entertain you beyond simply looking attractive and pouring you beer; there are lots of places you can go for that. What is the point of actually being there? Are you supposed to just stare at them? Everyone seemed a little uncertain.

But the girls redeem the experience, just, through their sheer Englishness. Let the Yanks keep their bottle-blonde, heavily-made, Pilates-buff sirens. Ours is a nation of shopgirls, thank God: I’ll take the puppy fat and girl-next-door charm of these Sherwood maids every time. Reader! I swear I fell in love with each and every one.

Just as we were leaving, I saw something that had me in stitches. Two gorgeous, stick-thin platinum blondes of scant dress walked into the basement bar, coolly walked up to the pool table and put their 50p down. They gave the incumbent players a little wink; about fifty men stopped and stared. Talk about knowing what you want and where to get it!

SPORTS NEWS

2006-03-13T10:31:00.000Z

All of my football teams won this weekend, for the second time this season:

Premiership
Chelsea 2 – 1 Tottenham

La Liga
Deportivo 0 - 1 Real Sociedad

Southern Premier League
Banbury 2 – 3 Bath City

Rymans League Division One
Dulwich Hamlet 2 – 0 Corinthian Casuals

ASIA NEWS

2006-03-10T11:45:00.000Z

TUPNews has been carrying two sheets of notepaper around since I visited Singapore on business two years ago. I’m going to transcribe them here, so that I can finally throw them away:

1.

Things I’ve seen in Singapore. 24.5.04

Stand on the left in Tube escalators.
Chicken feet soup
Ad on tube train: “the workplace is the best place to make friends, learn to cope with stress, eat healthier, quit smoking”
Equatorial vegetation
“Muslim cutlery station” at Lau Pa Sat
countdown at crossings
cab drivers very knowledgeable about the Premiership. They don’t like Chelsea. The newspaper had a 6-page feature on Houllier resignation.
On the tubes = “Graciousness is… saying thank you to someone who has made your day easier.”
“You don’t have to use long words to speak good English. Speaking English can be like music.” – one of many library adverts.
“Without music, life would be a mistake” – record bag.
Sentosa
When Singaporeans speak to each other, they flit between Malay and English
Crazy in Love with a Chinese rap.

2.

Food Diary

23rd.
9pm – Club Sandwich, Cheesecake. $48.

24th
8.30 – Fruit Salad. $20
11.30 – Hokkien, Number One Malay Food, $3
Lau Pa Sat Festival market – lush!
2.00pm – Teriakyi Chicken Burger, Chilli Fries + Grape soda, Mos Burger - $7
8.00pm – Vietnamese spring rolls + Scallops stuffed with prawns, Sukothai - $75

25th
7.30am – Dim Sum @ Tim Sum, LPS –
$5.50 – lush
but felt rough later
1pm – Mozzeralla + tomato salad,
Room service. $27
10.30pm – Mushroom Pizza, Clarke Quay
reggae bar - $10

26th
11am - eggs on toast, Cosi - $6
7pm – Oysters + veal chops, white asparagus at Hebar Grill - $200

27th

LONDON NEWS

2006-03-09T15:16:00.000Z

This morning TUPNews visited the London Hilton on Park Lane for a little Q&A with a Brazilian bigwig. It’s rubbish! Looks like a trumped-up Travelodge.

But on the way back, I saw a gold Mini Cooper with Arabic plates. So it wasn’t an entirely wasted journey.

SPORTS NEWS

2006-03-09T15:14:00.000Z

TUPNews nearly exploded with joy to see today’s The Knowledge on the Guardian’s football pages. It is a list of foreign football terms for which there is no direct English translation – view it immediately on the Guardian’s website. A few highlights:

Anschlusstreffer - the goal that reduces the deficit to one, eg brings the score to 2-1 rather than 2-0. (German)

Cucchiaio ("spoon") - The chipped penalty into the middle of the goal. (Italian)

Optimistblikket ("the optimist look") - describes the focused expression on a player's face as he intently watches the trajectory of a shot, suggesting it is going close when in fact it is travelling miles wide. (Danish)

Angličan ("Englishman") - a goal that goes in off a post. (Czech)

EUROPE NEWS

2006-03-08T16:35:00.000Z

A few more of my favourite things about Denmark:

People are constantly singing in public, and rather well. It’s something of a sing-song language in the first place, which might have something to do with it.

I love Swiss railway clocks, and there are Swiss railway clocks everywhere – including a massive one in the arrivals lounge of Copenhagen airport, a building in which I would happily live.

It is absolutely freezing – conversation stops when the wind blows - but this is somehow made more bearable by the massive thermometer running down the side of a three-story nightclub on the main square.

BUSINESS NEWS

2006-03-08T16:27:00.000Z

One of the highlights of TUPNews' recent travels was the acquisition of the Economist’s most recent city-by-city guide to business etiquette. This will always turn up some quaint insider take on the proper handling of business cards, acceptable levels of lateness, tipping customs and so on. Don’t talk family and football in Berlin; talk of nothing else in Johannesburg, that sort of thing.

It’s worth tracking down a copy just for the Moscow entry, which is focused almost exclusively on how not to become violently drunk. It reads like advice you would give to a seventeen-year-old before freshers’ week. Sample:

On business trips to the provinces, a valedictory feast punctuated by frequent
toasts may be unavoidable. If you know you are in for a marathon, trying lining
your stomach with fat first by eating a large chunk of butter, perhaps spread
thickly on some bread. You will stay sober longer, and in extremis can go and
make yourself throw up the booze before it penetrates your system.

Elsewhere, it advises you to pretend that you are on antibiotics. The Economist, ladies and gentlemen.

EUROPE NEWS

2006-03-08T16:11:00.000Z

TUPNews is aware this is becoming a love letter to Denmark, so I should acknowledge this letter to the editor I read in the Economist on my train journey from the airport to the centre of town:

“I would agree that “free speech should override religious sensitivities” if the
publication of cartoons deemed insulting by Muslims had taken place in the
tolerant Denmark we knew ten years ago. Unfortunately, they weren’t printed in
that idealised country, but in a Denmark that over the past five to ten years
has slid into an abyss of rampant xenophobia, nationalism, racism, and above
all, a bottomless Islamophobia.”

This wasn’t entirely news to me; I visited Denmark ten years ago, and I have read various articles since along the lines of “Scandinavian socialist dream turns to shit”. Ten years ago, Denmark did indeed seem like an idealised tolerant utopia, and I’d be interested to know how much truth there is the “crap Denmark” thesis.

If TUPNews were a more intrepid reporter, I might have buttonholed a Dane and grilled them good. However, it was inevitable that if I talked politics with any Dane, the subject would unavoidably turn to those fucking cartoons, a controversy that has already bored me within an inch of my life. There was simply no way I was prepared to waste another drop of valuable brain juice on such a discussion, so instead I’ll have to give you a somewhat vague impression of how Denmark has changed over the last ten years.

The Danes remain unfailingly friendly and polite. But there is a slight undercurrent to every transaction that suggests a broad, unarticulated sense of - well, just being slightly pissed off.

EUROPE NEWS

2006-03-08T15:13:00.000Z

By lunchtime on the second day, TUPNews had given away all my business cards and found enough story ideas to launch my own magazine, so I elected to take the afternoon off and explore Copenhagen.

I ended up hitting three art galleries, enjoying each one more than the last.

The Bertel Thorvaldsen sculpture museum is in the old town, near the royal palace and finance ministry. This quarter is worth checking out just for the weird spires of nearby churches, and of the old stock exchange.

Not a particular fan of sculpture, I was a little reluctant, but the charming girl at the concierge desk had recommended it particularly, and I didn’t want to let her down.

Say what you like about Thorvaldsen, but the man had a good line in great big fuck-off statues of popes and kings. Most of them look like they should be sitting on plinths, not nose-to-nose in a modest-sized gallery – the scale is a little unnerving. You’re in and out in twenty minutes, but as one-trick ponies go, Thorvaldsen gets the thumbs-up.

Next up was the Nikolaj contemporary art center, which I found by dumb luck. Went to see the inside of a cool-looking church with a cool-looking spire, turns out someone’s converted it into a cool little modern art gallery.

The exhibition focused on the Fluxus movement, one of my least favourite. Lots of “War is over if you want it”, crazy beat happenings and general hippy carryings-on, but one gem: a poster and recorded commentary of a two-ball football match that took place on Iffley Road football ground in Oxford in 1973, between University College and St. John’s College. The commentary was Danish, so I do not know the result.

Again, twenty minutes in and out. But by further dumb luck, Wednesday is free museum day in Copenhagen, so I wasn’t sweating it.

I had inadvertently saved the best for last, in the form of the magnificent Statens Museum for Kunst, which was recently extended. The new building itself is fantastic – large, vaulted and white-marble, but with a great deal of natural light, most of which comes through a sixty-foot high glass window that overlooks a park. There is amphitheatre-type seating in the atrium where one can sit and look out on the city. It also has a do-it-yourself cloakroom, with little lockers, which I loved.

Artwise, it’s a neat little collection, with the highlight being the preposterous “Highlights” exhibition, a nine-room show that attempted to show the visitor highlights of all art from the last seven hundred years. The curator has attempted this despite not having any real big hitters, aside from a couple of Matisse and a lesser-known Picasso. I love the optimism.

The same curator may be responsible for the new Rembrandt exhibition, which features two paintings that may or may not be newly-discovered Rembrandts previously dismissed as fakes. The museum is confident that these paintings, which had been kicking around upstairs for decades, are the real deal, and is as such happy to charge money for the privilege of viewing them – but one must respect their honesty in titling the exhibition: “Rembrandt?”

The sun was starting to set and my feet were starting to ache, so I set off for my hotel, hoping to hit a hot-dog stand on the way.

BUSINESS NEWS

2006-03-08T12:17:00.000Z

Highlight of TUPNews’ recent 5-year strategy session with colleagues:

TUPNews: There’s definitely space in the CDM/JI market for a standalone publication, if you shift the editorial focus to sellers as well as buyers.

Employer: How big is the CDM market?

TUPNews: Hard to say – it’s early days and it’s not very transparent. Number of projects is in the thousands, though.

Employer: So if it’s not transparent, is there an opportunity for us to provide data on the market? Maybe an existing setup that we could acquire?

TUPNews: Possibly.

Employer: Who runs the registry of CDM projects?

TUPNews: The UN.

Employer: Can we buy the UN?

EUROPE NEWS

2006-03-01T09:06:00.000Z

Another dispatch from wonderful Copenhagen.

I was unfair to describe the town as "grim" in my last report. It snowed yesterday, transforming it into one of the most beguiling cityscapes TUPNews has ever seen.

Last night we were bussed from our conference hall to an old brewery on the outskirts of town, for a party. Alone, tired and a little drunk, I spent the half-hour journey staring out of the window at frozen lakes, gothic factories, snow-encrusted churches of unrecognisable architecture - it's like a Tim Burton film here. Or the cover of the Bloc Party album. It's amazing.

The best thing is seeing a tree that has fallen into a river, when the river is frozen and covered in snow.

Once I had drunk my fill, I left the party on foot rather than queue for a taxi. I wanted to soak in more of the snow, even though it was dark. I came across some interesting things, like a fifty-foot bottle of beer. I stopped at a service station to buy a hot dog - it was excellent, so I bought another. When it got too cold I caught the underground back to the centre. The trains are clean, and the seats are shaped oddly and asymetrically, like everything in the Jetsons.

Upon leaving the station I immediately became lost, which was good because it gave me a chance to ask someone for directions, which I kind of like to do. A polite Dane directed me across the street, into which I instantly stepped out, sending another polite Dane skidding into the slushy ground on her bike. The young girl picked herself up and instantly apologised to me - in English.

I would have felt less guilty if I had murdered someone - I was so shaken I had to stop off for one last Tuborg to calm my nerves.

EUROPE NEWS

2006-02-28T10:27:00.000Z

Today TUPNews reports live from Copenhagen, in Denmark.

It’s a little grimmer than I remember, although that could just be the time of year and the place I’m staying (a lot of traffic). There are plenty of things to charm the visitor, however, starting with the Mickey Mouse currency. I want at least one sterling coin to feature little love hearts, like the 5 kroner coin.

TUPNews can report that there’s a law in Denmark that requires strippers to stand behind a mesh screen, in order to preclude any possibility of contact from carried-away punters. This was explained to me by a charming hospitality girl from Chepstow in the “La Dolce Vita” nightclub. My colleague and I went there assuming it was a strip bar, which it was not. I didn’t stay long enough to find out exactly what type of bar it was, but there were lots of girls who were keen to chat and also seemed to like champagne, including this Welsh girl who had found herself far from the Valleys.

Also for those who were concerned about TUPNews’ appalling experience staying in a Holiday Inn in Essen, rest assured that the First Hotel Vesterbro is a modern, quality establishment. Although entering my room for the first time to hear Rage Against The Machine blaring from the TV was a little disconcerting.

More on my return.

FINANCIAL NEWS

2006-02-21T15:24:00.000Z

TUPNews has come to coin-related grief not twice but thrice today.

First I went to my local newsagent this morning to pick up a can of Coke and a copy of the Sun, which I attempted to pay for with one of the new £2 coins. Shopkeeper just refuses to accept it. Without any other coinage on me, and in a state of utter rage, I have little choice but to declare a fatwa against the shop (only my second in three years of living in East Dulwich, the first being against Café Noodle after ordering one of their inappropriately-named “Happy Meals”, which is a different story altogether) and storm out never to return, which is a pain given that it is the closest newsagent to the bus stop.

At lunchtime I go to change some Euro-denominated coinage into pounds sterling, as my cheapskate employer won’t allow me to return coins from my travel advance. Therefore I have an ongoing FX position scattered about my desk. I’m trying to change 11 euros, which is like £7. The guy won’t let me have it. “Not enough.” What the fuck? You’ve got a rack of coins and a fucking computer in front of you, what the fuck is your problem?

I learn the problem at the next place I try, the American Express office on Haymarket. Here the clerk obliges, but when I express disbelief at his rival’s reluctance to trade (expecting him to unburden himself of some more vignettes about those fascists at Eurochange), he explains that bureaux de change always avoid taking coins because of the associated liquidity risk. Paper money trades so quickly and in such volume across the counter that the individual branch can cope with day-to-day fluctuations in the exchange rate simply by following instructions from head office. But just like on my desk, coins tend to build up because no customers want them – and this point, he pulled a massive plastic bag of coins out of his desk – and so there is liquidity risk at the branch level as well as currency risk at the company level. In other words, something’s only worth something if you can actually sell it, and frequently they just can’t shift coins.

At first I thought this was bullshit, as surely people always buy foreign currency by handing over a wad of domestic notes, and receiving $241.67 in return. But I suppose recently I’ve been more likely to request 200 euros and pay for it on a card rather than take sterling out of the wall and exchange it.

As TUPNews was standing in the queue at Tesco Metro contemplating this exchange, the sweet middle-aged Indian woman at the checkout queried my 10p. Apparently she had never heard of the Bailiwick of Jersey. “It’s fucking LEGAL TENDER!” I near-bellowed.

UPDATE!

Just did some quick research about this report, and it turns out that my “new” £2 coin was in fact minted in 1995, before £2 coins were properly introduced, which means it is in fact rare and probably valuable, and TUPNews used it to buy cornflakes and Lucozade.

EUROPE NEWS

2006-02-16T09:43:00.000Z

Today TUPNews reports live from Essen, Germany.

Meat and cheese for breakfast is pretty good. "Schmeltzkase" sounds better than "melted cheese." And the German businessman`s habit of gently rapping conference tables to express approval is utterly charming.

I`m struggling to get much more out of Essen, however - it`s a total shithole. Not helped by the fact that they`ve got me in a Holiday Inn. A Holiday Inn, readers.

More when I get back.

UPDATE!

I’ve decided not to write anymore about Essen – I ended up having a better time than I expected, went to some good bars, drank some good beer and talked to some crazy taxi drivers, but I didn’t really learn anything worth sharing. If you’re ever headed out there, let me know and I’ll tell you the good places to go.

LONDON NEWS

2006-02-09T14:43:00.000Z

TUPNews has just now visited an exhibition on manga production at the Japanese Embassy on Piccadilly.

The exhibition is a modest one-room affair in the lobby, with about twenty boards demonstrating manga manufacture from sketch form to final version. The examples are drawn from the work of Kiriko Kubo, a popular female manga artist who is hugely popular in Japan despite having lived in London for the last ten years. Disconcertingly, you are made to walk anti-clockwise around the room, reading right to left like the Japanese.

You’d be stretched to spend more than ten minutes here, but it’s free and you get to go through a metal detector. You can’t really complain about visiting an embassy.

I’m hardly the first reporter to bang on about the incredible imagination of the Japanese, so I won’t go on about it here. Other than to say that I wish I’d grown up reading Buckets de Gohan, a comic strip about a bunch of animals who work at a zoo, but commute home to their own cities full of their own species.

SPORTS NEWS

2006-02-09T13:24:00.000Z

Football
FA Cup Fourth Round Replay
Selhurst Park

Crystal Palace 1 – 2 Preston North End

TUPNews took in some of the magic of the FA Cup this past Tuesday, watching Preston North End defeat Crystal Palace at London’s Selhurst Park.

The train from East Dulwich to Norwood Junction wasn’t exactly the storied Football Specials of old – amongst rows of sleepy suits, my companion and I looked out of place with our meat pies, chips and tins. Sure enough, we found after pushing through the strangely narrow turnstiles that the stadium was only a quarter full – the third lowest attendance of the season, we would later learn. The tannoy announcer chirped up somewhat optimistically that “it’s a small crowd, and small crowds always produce the best atmosphere.” This didn’t really prove to be the case, but Selhurst Park is a pleasant ground nonetheless.

Luckily we were seated with the Preston fans, who were in fine voice. It was strange, but fantastic, to be suddenly surrounded by Northern accents and Lancastrian wit for two hours. A weird kind of tourism that I totally endorse.

Both teams wore their home strip: lily-white for Preston, blue and red stripes for Palace. But for the quality of the football, the squinting spectator could imagine he was watching Real Madrid versus Barcelona.

Palace generally looked like a half a Premiership team, while Preston looked like a solid Championship team, which I suppose is what both are. Palace striker Andy Johnson looked yesterday’s man. He trotted out his signature move of diving in the box a few times, but drew no penalties, only chants of “Fuck off Johnson!” from the away stand. Mostly, he ran sideways across the pitch very quickly, only to find nothing there. Palace scored first but ultimately succumbed to two goals from former QPR striker Danny Dichio, the first before the break and the second within minutes of the final whistle, sending the Preston fans giddy with both the excitement of victory and the total relief that the evening fixture hadn’t gone to penalties.

My Preston-supporting companion told me an interesting Preston-related fact. Preston North End are one of only two teams in the League – the other being Reading – who, through some form of royal patronage, are entitled to wear their white strip for any match. For courtesy and commerce Preston does have an away strip, but they could in theory show up for a fixture at, say, White Hart Lane and demand that Tottenham play in their away colours.

LONDON NEWS

2006-02-07T15:21:00.000Z

BREAKING NEWS

Legendary London-based imam and man-about-town Abu Hamza al-Masri – aka “The Hook” - has just been sent down for soliciting to murder, TUPNews can report.

Astonishingly, his legal name has been revealed as Mustafa Kamel Mustafa. No wonder he ended up the way he did – the playground must have been torture. He’s got a name from a Carry On film!

SPORTS NEWS

2006-02-06T16:36:00.000Z

Selected football results from the weekend:

Premiership
Chelsea 2 – 0 Liverpool

La Liga
Real Sociedad 2 - 1 Mallorca

Southern Premier League
Chesham 0 – 1 Bath City

Rymans League Division One
Lymington & New Milton 0 – 1 Dulwich Hamlet

All four of TUPNews' teams won - this hardly ever happens.

LONDON NEWS

2006-02-03T14:04:00.000Z

TUPNews doesn't normally play the lottery - I'm more of a greyhound man - but I just bought my ticket for tonight's £125 million EuroMillions draw. Everyone else in the queue was doing the same thing. In my head, I could hear a Pathe newsannouncer narrating my purchase. Brilliant.

LONDON NEWS

2006-01-31T15:30:00.000Z

TUPNews learned today that a stitch in time does, in fact, save £45, which is the cost of relining my winter coat after the lining was scratched almost a year ago after being stored safely in an overhead luggage compartment. Over the winter, it has almost completely disintegrated. Rather gallingly, the £45 repair cost represents 45% of the original purchase cost. I do love that coat, though.

If you need clothing fixed cheap, TUPNews recommends that you deal with it sooner rather than later. But regardless of when you deal with it, I recommend my tailor, located near the corner of New Bond Street and Brook Street.

Walk west down Brook and look out for a side street called Haunch of Venison Yard (I know, it’s fantastic!). Go down the little passageway and turn immediately to your right – a white door is directly in front of you. You should be able to see them working away through the first floor window. Ring the buzzer, go inside and climb the wrought iron spiral staircase.

There’s no name on the door, as it is basically a sweatshop – about four or five Middle Eastern guys stitching away in a tiny room. If you were to go into one of the more impressive Savile Row tailors and request a basic alteration or repair on an inexpensive item of clothing, it will almost certainly be farmed off to my tailor, but charged at Savile Row prices. Cut out the middleman!

UPDATE:

Just picked it up, it's a work of art. Lining is now satin. I was so pleased I even tipped him. Now I can go back to looking the dapper gent, rather than wearing my stand-in fleece that makes me look like a middle-aged lesbian.

LONDON NEWS

2006-01-27T16:04:00.000Z

TUPNews has zero beef with the UK's surveillance culture, but I was a little surprised by the cinematography on last night’s 36 bus from Victoria to Camberwell Green. Sitting back-seat-top-deck like a rude boy, I quickly realised that a camera was trained directly on me – and just me. This meant that every six seconds, viewers of the in-house CCTV, i.e. the rest of the bus, were treated to an establishing shot of yours truly. I didn’t mind the invasion of privacy so much, it’s just that I felt a vague pressure to entertain them in some way, and couldn’t think of anything on the spot.

SERVICE UPDATE

2006-01-26T15:58:00.000Z

Some of you may be experiencing service difficulty with your TUPNews-feed. I will endeavour to fix the problem by doing nothing and hoping it fixes itself.

LONDON NEWS

2006-01-26T15:52:00.000Z

TUPNews was out for a stroll this lunchbreak, when I came across a man holding court and cracking wise with three or so companions on the steps of St Giles-in-the-Fields. He was doing so in sign language, and they were all pissing themsleves. I only ever see signing on TV or occasionally in buses. I never see deaf guys just standing around shooting the shit, so I thought it was pretty cool.

BUSINESS NEWS

2006-01-25T15:31:00.000Z

This morning, TUPNews attended a press conference hosted by Russian oil giant Lukoil at the Four Seasons Hotel, just off London’s Park Lane.

I’ve never understood why the visitor to London would want to stay in any of the hotels clustered on Park Lane and the western tip of Piccadilly. It’s a nice enough walk out there from Piccadilly Circus; past The Ritz, Green Park and the cool model oil tanker in the window of the Hanjin Shipping offices, but once you get a bit further on, it’s just a massive dual carriageway and the Hard Rock Café – although it theoretically overlooks Hyde Park, the immediate surroundings are pretty unpleasant. The Four Seasons itself is of the 1960s brutalist school of architecture, and wouldn’t look out of place in Sofia or Bucharest. I suppose it’s all the same to taxi-bound aristocrats.

The interior is pretty special, though. Lavish and understated at the same time – a lot of mahogany going on. The presentation took place in a medium-sized conference room, decorated in the Georgian style and featuring a rectangular chandelier set into the ceiling.

It was Lukoil that added the nicest touches, however. There were about sixty people in the room, a mix of journalists and bank analysts from both Russia and the UK (including a smattering of gorgeous Russian girls). To reflect the international nature of the occasion, the ranks of tables on which we sat all sported intertwined mini-flags of the Russian tricolour, a white Lukoil flag and the Union Jack. Brilliant.

But best of all, the Russian executives all addressed us in their native language, giving us the opportunity to use those cool headset translation things. The translation device was about the size of a bulky remote control, with a small glass bulb on top. There was an on/off button and two dials – one for volume, and one for language selection. The language selection allowed the user to potentially choose from twelve language options, each represented by a yellow star, mimicking the flag of the European Union. Of course, there were only two options in this case. A Russian woman sat at the back of the room in a soundproof booth, translating.

TUPNews always struggles to maintain alertness at such presentations – not because of the subject matter necessarily, but because of the soothing nature of the environment. Listening to the woman’s voice through headphones created a feeling of disconnect from what was happening – by the time the second speaker took the dais, I was starting to drift. The second presentation included a ten-minute summary of Lukoil’s worldwide exploration and development activities, illustrated by ten minutes of pictures of plants and facilities in Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan and even Iraq. This send me completely into my own hypnotic world, and I didn’t really recover until I again found myself pounding the Piccadilly pavement on my way back to the office.

LONDON NEWS

2006-01-20T11:42:00.000Z

The borough of Lambeth has launched a crackdown on street trade of marijuana, TUPNews can report. Under the ‘No Deal’ initiative, anyone caught buying, selling or smoking marijuana in Lambeth will be automatically arrested. This follows the previous “Go ahead, smoke up in the street” pilot initiative of a few years ago, which was widely regarded as a failure.

Of course, when I say “automatically arrested”, I mean “automatically arrested, unless you are a member of the middle-class.”

TUPNews was enjoying a post-gig marijuana cigarette in a Brixton back alley on Wednesday night when the boys in blue turned up. Actually, they weren’t in blue, they were plainclothes, and one of them was a girl. They read the riot act to TUPNews’ companion, who happened to be holding the jazz fag at the time, searched him good and informed him that he faced automatic arrest under the new policing initiative. My companion basically shat himself.

As the search of the unlucky loser of “pass the parcel” went on, however, the rest of us fell into some good-natured banter with the other officer. It soon became apparent to both officers that we were in fact rather posh. The deal was sealed when the arresting officer asked my companion whether he had been born in London. “No, Bath.” “Really? That’s a nice place”. Having established that we were in fact middle-class, tax-paying, Oystercard-holding yuppies, they let us off without a caution.

Britain: one law for the rich, and one law for the poor. Thank fuck for that!

SPORTS NEWS

2006-01-09T12:44:00.000Z

Football
Rymans League Division One
Champion Hill Stadium, East Dulwich

Dulwich Hamlet FC 0 – 0 Dover Athletic

TUPNews recently visited Champion Hill to watch Dulwich Hamlet FC take on Dover Athletic. As two of my housemates are longtime Dover Athletic fans, the match had special import.

The first half was all sound and fury, signifying nothing – knee-high tackles flew as the two sides fought a war of attrition in the midfield, but with nary a shot on goal the whole half. A scrappy game of non-league football on a bitterly cold January afternoon – TUPNews was in heaven. There was even a good old-fashioned 22-man fight at one point. Every unfair assumption you might have about the city of Dover is reflected in their football club – basically eleven white skinheads who play like a prison side. This makes for very entertaining football.

During the first half, TUPNews overheard one spectator explain that Peter Crouch, now of Liverpool and England, had once donned the pink-and-blue of Dulwich Hamlet while on a month’s loan from Tottenham. He was shit, the team were shit, and they were relegated that year.

At half time the sizeable Dover away support (over seventy) switched ends, and TUPNews retired to the club bar to check what delights the magic of the FA Cup had delivered in the third round. Everton trailed one-nil at the Den, while Manchester City were a goal down, at home, to Scunthorpe. Furnished with drinks and dry roasted, TUPNews’ companions elected to stay warm indoors for the second half, and take advantage of the elevated, panoramic view of the pitch the bar affords.

Dulwich started to look a bit more likely in the second half, stringing together some passes and putting pressure on the Dover back four. The visitors continued to play like animals, and the somewhat erratic referee finally dished out a second yellow for the Dover captain, who threw his armband at the referee in disgust.

Sensing a Dulwich victory, TUPNews persuaded colleagues to venture out into the cold for the last quarter hour, for the atmosphere. Of course, 10-man Dover simply went into pure defensive mode, and Dulwich were unable to bag a late winner.

My decision to return to the stands, however, was vindicated by what happened at the final whistle. Dover fans rushed to the tunnel to scream abuse at our players and the referee, as is their wont. Dulwich striker Charley Side took exception to being called a “cunt” and smacked a Dover fan across the face. Within seconds a full-scale brawl had erupted, involving players and officials of both teams and a few Dover fans for good measure. We ran down to the bit of the stands overlooking the tunnel and had a spectacular bird’s-eye view of proceedings. It ran on for five or so minutes, and was quite simply the funniest thing I have ever seen at a football match.

Spectators at the recent Dulwich Hamlet match. TUPNews visible in the top right corner. Photo from www.onionbagblog.com, which also covered this match.

LONDON NEWS

2006-01-04T10:50:00.000Z

BREAKING NEWS

There is a large fire raging in Leicester Square, TUPNews can exclusively report.

LONDON NEWS

2005-12-22T12:15:00.000Z

TUPNews recommends that you go ice-skating in Somerset House, on London’s the Strand.

I went on Monday and it was thoroughly sublime. Reading a nineteenth-century novel had put me in a nineteenth-century frame of mind, which was perfectly suited to the Dickensian tableaux of young, rosy-cheeked, rather posh gentlemen and ladies in long grey overcoats scraping about on the ice. The stately-home setting is perfect, and thankfully so was the weather – cold and dry, the very best London has to offer. Families brought young ones to the ice for the first time. Parliamentarians treated their staff to a few laps and some mulled wine. It was fantastic.

How can the sheer innocence not soften the hard-set urban jaw? How can the heart not melt to see the tall, soft-spoken West Indian ice marshal helping small children (and at one point, TUPNews) to their feet? How can the rustic cynic doubt that London is simply the best place to live in the whole wide world?

Women, of course, become totally divine on ice. Either stumbling helplessly, bringing out the primal stuff, or gracefully, artfully gliding around, stirring fantasies of cosy mountain living. The ice rink at Somerset House is a great place to fall in love.

This is the fiftieth and final post of the year. A happy holiday season to all of TUPNews’ readers! Thank you for your continued support.

BUSINESS NEWS

2005-12-22T11:51:00.000Z

TUPNews recently lunched with the carbon boys at Barclays Capital in Canary Wharf, in-house mind. Not many banks do the in-house catering any more. The French banks tend to do it best, but the Barcap boys excelled themselves here.

More to the point, TUPNews noticed that a massive ticker has been slapped on the side of one of the Canary Wharf buildings – above the Corney & Barrow as you turn right out of the space-age tube station. It’s yellow on black, curves around the building and was running stock prices from the FTSE 100.

Tickers are fantastic. TUPNews recently visited Times Square in New York City, where there are tickers galore. Reuters, Bloomberg et al running news headlines, share prices, sports scores – all different colours and sizes. It’s particularly cool when two tickers stacked on top of each other run at different speeds – Bloomberg TV has this, for example. TUPNews feels a deep sense of serenity when watching these tickers, and I hope that Canary Wharf ends up covered in them.

The best thing about side-of-a-building tickers is that they are completely pointless. The chances of an outdoor ticker delivering critical information at a critical time are virtually nil – if it’s really important for you to keep track of real-time stock prices, you’re probably sitting on a trading floor rather than standing outside watching a ticker on the side of a building.

I can’t prove this, but I suspect that outdoor tickers are the finance community’s way of tacitly recognising that what they do has some aesthetic value, that it is sometimes strangely beautiful.

ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

2005-12-13T11:40:00.000Z

The New York Times Magazine has just published its annual ideas issue, where it lists forty or so interesting ideas that have emerged over the last year. I have to admit it’s a little weaker than last year, but it’s still definitely worth a gander. TUPNews presents you with edited highlights for the Xmas dinner party season:

1. The Hypomanic American

This is a genetic theory of American exceptionalism, which posits that Yanks are the way they are – competitive, energetic, exuberant - because they are all relatively recently descended from immigrant stock. People who emigrate are genetically more inclined to be risk-takers (even when things get really awful in a country, only a small percentage emigrate), and that risk-taking gene (which transcends race) is why America is such a bastion of free market capitalism, dog-eat-dog, red-white-and-blue etc. etc.

2. The Fleeting Relationship

From the book “Together Alone: Personal Relationships in Public Places”. This is kind of rooted in the “we’re all atomised” theory, but it basically suggests that the fleeting encounters with colleagues, service industry employees and the geezer next to you on the terraces actually provide you with important emotional sustenance, and should be appreciated as such. In one sense, a statement of the obvious, but it’s an obvious thing worth stating.

3. The Laptop That Will Save The World

You might remember the wind-up radio that they invented for Africa (it’s cheap and it doesn’t need batteries). Now they’ve invented a wind-up laptop that costs about $100. It’s very basic, of course, but it should have African children learning important IT skills in no time, providing they don’t drop dead of starvation or malaria first. “It looks like you’re composing a desperate plea for famine relief. Would you like some help?”

And these excellent ideas don’t require explanation:

Monkey Pay-per-view
Robot Jockeys
Two-dimensional Food
Zombie Dogs

LONDON NEWS

2005-12-05T16:20:00.000Z

The other day TUPNews saw an Arab woman near Bond Street Station wearing a Burberry hijab. YES!!

AMERICAS NEWS

2005-12-02T10:21:00.000Z

The second thing that the Yanks are better at is lager. Not the watery piss that is exported over here, mind (although in fairness Bud Light et al don’t get a fair trial in the UK, where they are routinely served at a temperature several degrees warmer than their taste is designed for) – but the wide range of boutique microbrewery lagers available in supermarkets and off licences, or “liquor stores”.

These are basically the equivalent of England’s real ales. But whereas we British are generally happy to stick to crappy session lagers – that’s an industry term, by the way, devised by European brewers thinking, “how can we pervert centuries of brewing tradition to produce a watery, tasteless yet extremely alcoholic lager of which Brits will be able to down ten pints per session and still have room for a curry and a further five pints, i.e. how can we produce a lager designed to be drunk in sessions?” – Yanks have become a bit more demanding over the last twenty years. As a result, the casual lager-drinker is overwhelmed with choice.

Samuel Adams is probably the most famous example of the microbrewed beer – the Boston-based brewery (originally called the “Boston Beer Co.”) has been knocking out fine lagers since the 1820s, although it went bust in the 1970s, before the “better beer” movement led to an explosion of microbrewery beer, and a 1985 purchase by the Koch brewing family and rebranding to “Samuel Adams Boston Lager”, named for a Bostonian signatory of the Declaration of Independence. Sam Adams now sells dozens of varieties of beer, including stouts and cream ales, and the new “seasonal collection”, of which TUPNews sampled the “Winter Lager”.

TUPNews heartily endorses Samuel Adams’ fine products. My favourite Yank lager, however, is Yuengling Lager, America’s oldest beer. David Yuengling established the Eagle Brewery in 1829, in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. He later gave the beer his name. The brewery survived for a hundred and fifty years (including the Prohibition) by doggedly avoiding any growth of any kind – it was only when the current owner, a fifth-generation Yuengling, decided to capitalise on the 1990s “better beer” craze that Yuengling was sold outside of Pennsylvania. It’s now the fifth biggest brewer in the US, even though it is basically only available on the East Coast. It’s lovely.

The guy who owns Samuel Adams half-heartedly claims that Sam’s is the oldest brewer in America, as its precursor Boston Beer started brewing in 1828. But it shut down in the 1970s, so the chain is broken. He’s good friends with the Yuengling guy, so he’s basically just trying to wind him up.

The oldest beer in North America is in fact Canada’s Molson, established in 1786.

AMERICAS NEWS

2005-12-02T10:13:00.000Z

TUPNews recently visited New Jersey, in the United States of America. The weather was cold but clear. I ate Thanksgiving dinner, watched American football and went to a Broadway musical.

There’s not much I can tell you about the United States of America that you don’t know already. In fact, it’s almost remarkable how well the stereotypes and clichés actually prepare you for a visit. America is generally rubbish, for reasons well documented elsewhere. There are two areas, however, where I must admit the Yanks have an edge.

The first is the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. TUPNews is a Tate member and a vociferous supporter of the Tate Modern in London, regarded by some as the foremost modern art gallery in the world. It wounds my sense of civic pride to report that the Museum of Modern Art in New York City first knocks the Tate Modern into a cocked hat, and secondly pisses on said hat from a distance of metres (yards). Yet this is the truth, so I must report it so.

An art critic would argue that MoMA’s permanent collection is simply better than the Tate Modern’s, and this is indeed so. You’ve got your Warhol soup cans, Jasper Johns flags, some actually famous Picassos as opposed to the handful of sketches at the Tate. Proper coffee table stuff.

TUPNews, however, was won over by the Architecture and Design collection on the second floor. This was basically a collection of design classics of the 20th and 21st centuries, with the general conceit being “look, you wouldn’t normally expect to see this in an art gallery, but if you think about it, it’s a design classic.” At times this conceit bordered on the cute, but of course this was always a risk. TUPNews loved it anyway. Here is a selection of items on display:

1. An Italian airport departures/arrivals board

One of the ones where the times and destinations change by small black panels flipping down, making that strangely soothing clicking noise

2. A single blade from a Boeing engine turbine

3. A Smart car

4. A Macintosh SE from 1984.

TUPNews had one of these as a boy. It still works perfectly, unlike TUPNews’ iBook which died after about four years, which is apparently completely par for the course these days.

5. The original iPod.

TUPNews owns one of these now. Seeing it behind glass was worse than when my old mobile phone was featured with a bag over its head in those “ashamed of your mobile” ads. Fellow art lovers laughed at me when I took it out of my pocket and held it up against the glass.

6. A Bic Cristal biro.

Or in fact, two, a red one and a blue one. This is where it came close to being a bit too cute, until you read the inscription and realise that the Bic Cristal’s hexagonal design has been the same since 1950. (The idea for a ballpoint pen was first conceived by Hungarian journalist Laszlo Biro in 1938, before Marcel Bich acquired the patent rights.) Also the inscription is hilarious –

Bic Cristal
Bic Corporation, France
Gift of the manufacturer

I would have liked to have attended the gift-giving ceremony.

As well as these gems there were Bauhaus prints, Soviet typography, 60s computers, Rennie Mackintosh posters, all manner of sublime shit. It was brilliant. Before coming I’d heard the line that MoMA was more stuffy and museum-like – the history of modern art – than the Tate’s freewheeling, thematic approach to hanging. But this was exactly the type of thing – gimmicky, but fun – that I’d like to see the Tate taking on.

In defence of the Tate Modern, it has had some very strong exhibitions, especially Cruel and Tender and that one with all the video work – with the Japanese women archers etc. MoMA’s exhibitions on the top floor were pretty weak (“Safe: Design Takes On Risk” promised much but was ultimately trying too hard to be clever, although the collection of Japanese flight safety information cards was pretty cool.) And of course, it’s worth noting that the Tate Modern is free, while entry to MoMA will set you back twenty American dollars.

I’ll tell you the second thing later today.

ASIA NEWS

2005-11-11T16:32:00.000Z

BREAKING NEWS!

Yes! They're finally here. The official mascots for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. One's a fish, one's a panda, one's a Tibeten antelope (controversial?), one's a swallow, and one's an Olympic flame. God I love the Chinese.

"The five friendlies are an incredible little family carefully chosen by Beijing 2008 to represent all of China to carry a message of friendship to the children of the world," International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said in a statement that was read at the ceremony.

"China is so lucky to have so many beautiful animals to represent the Olympic spirit," Rogge said, heroically keeping a straight face.

A plethora of real and mythic creatures were among the candidates considered by Chinese leaders, Olympic officials and design specialists over the past year. Among those that didn't make the cut were the dragon and a mischievous magical monkey out of Chinese folklore.

Best. Olympics. Ever.

source: AP

UPDATE!

As promised here are the 2002 World Cup mascots, Ato, Nik and Kaz, who come from Atmozone in space where they play a version of football. One of them is supposed to be a manager, the tall one presumably.

"Avid football fans, the three set out to help create a special atmosphere at the FIFA World Cup finals. The two youngest mascots have many adventure and cause much chaos on their way to the matches in Korea and Japan. In the end, they help make the 2002 FIFA World Cup the greatest tournament ever by creating an exciting atmosphere among the players and spectators and in the process convey the lesson that harmony is the key to every success."

ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

2005-11-11T16:27:00.000Z

TUPNews recommends you invest 30p in a copy of today's Sun. It's one of the best issues published since Rebekah Wade took over. Today's Deirdre's Photo Casebook is worth the cover price alone.

BUSINESS NEWS

2005-11-11T14:25:00.000Z

Now that oil prices are receding, the hot pseudo-controversial opinion at London dinner parties is “nuclear, that’s the only answer.” Cue shrieks from lefty females and patronising lesser-of-two-evils, if-it’s-good-enough-for-the-French chat from Decent Leftists. The TUPNews reader, however, will keep his counsel until the argument is spent. Then he will stun all into silence by announcing that the future is, in fact, coal.

Coal? Arthur Scargill? Ken Loach? The Falklands War? Chimney sweeps? Dinosaur industry?

Half of all European electricity is generated by coal-fired plants. Unlike oil, there is still shitloads of the stuff left in the ground. The problem has always been that coal is awful in terms of carbon dioxide emissions, which is currently bothering big energy chiefs and Joe Sixpack alike.

Clean coal technology has come on leaps and bounds, however. It is now possible, through use of science, to burn coal in a way that emits roughly the same CO2 as natural gas – a reduction of 50-70%. The FutureGen project in the US, meanwhile, will potentially allow for a zero-emissions coal-fired plant.

As with all new technology, the main problem at the moment is the vast amount of capital required to build these new types of plants. But once the economies of scale are in place, clean coal is well positioned to be the energy source of choice for the 21st century.

OK, so you’ve shut up the nuclear alpha males. That still leaves the left-leaning maidens to impress, and they sure as hell aren’t going to be impressed by a coal enthusiast. Here’s where you bring the eco-charm – courtesy of your new best friend, the jatropha tree.

The jatropha tree was, until recently, a useless piece of shit whose only remarkable quality was its ability to thrive in the most godawful, desiccated climates known to man. It produced nothing of any use to anyone. But crops such as the jatropha tree are perfect for converting into biofuel, which you can run cars on. Biofuel is already being blended into the gasoline as we speak, in time it could replace oil as the transport fuel of choice. Best of all, it means that people who live in godawful places can now become jatropha tree farmers and make bare cash.

So there you are – an even more controversial opinion than nuclear, and an opinion with “bio” in it that also saves the world’s poor. Advantage TUPNews reader.

BUSINESS NEWS

2005-11-10T14:20:00.000Z

TUPNews recently returned from a morning press conference at the Carlton Club, a gentlemens’ club on St. James Street in London’s sophisticated St. James/Mayfair area. After a hairy moment when your correspondent was nearly turned away for my failure to sport a necktie, TUPNews was escorted downstairs to the Cabinet Room, thankfully without having to bear the ignominy of wearing the ‘house’ tie that such clubs often keep behind the desk for the rare and unpleasant occasions when members of the merchant class such as myself attempt to gain entry.

The Carlton Club has strong links to the Conservative Party. The Cabinet Room is so named because it contains the original Cabinet table used by Benjamin Disraeli, a former British prime minister who pretty much founded the modern Conservative Party. The table is circular, and would seat around twelve to fourteen people at the most. I arrived too late to take a seat there, unfortunately, and was therefore unable to fantasise about debating the Climbing Boys Act. Instead, I had to make do with the row of seats at the back of the room.

Large portraits of famous 20th century Tories line the room – Heath, Major, Lord Wakeham. Mrs. T takes pride of place, with the largest portrait directly behind the table (that is, where the chairman of any meeting would sit.) It’s pretty cool, and the effect is rendered more impressive by the cosy size of the room, and the fact that it is tucked away in the basement.

The subject of the press conference was the “Energy Crisis in the UK and Europe.” Much was said. To summarise: buy a nice, thick jumper this winter. And maybe some long johns.

BUSINESS NEWS

2005-11-09T12:03:00.000Z

TUPNews was going through some old receipts in my wallet this morning when a particularly garish back-of-a-receipt advert caught my eye. I’m surprised that back-of-the-receipt adverts are still going, as they must be the most easily ignored adverts outside of the web. I was also surprised to find myself taking a second look at this one, based solely on the fact that it featured a very colourful, psychedelic swirl design, but the content surprised me even more. The advert was for The Magdela, a pub about ten minutes down my road.

I checked the front and found it was a receipt from my local Somerfield Market Fresh on Lordship Lane. Somerfield must, therefore, employ someone to sell back-of-a-receipt advertising to local merchants – local as in within two miles of a specific store location. Amazing!

I can’t see how they make any money from it, though. You go from just buying millions of yards of generic receipt paper and sending it out to whichever store asks for it first, to printing thousands of individual batches of different receipt paper, and employing people to make sure that the right batches go to the right stores. Local merchants must have a lot of faith in the penetrability of back-of-a-receipt advertising.

If you’re interested, the Magdela (on Lordship Lane, past the police station) is offering two for one pizzas every Tuesday, including takeaway. I’ve eaten pizza in the newly-refurbished Magdela, it was excellent and affordable. They have a decent pub quiz on a Sunday night as well. Unfortunately TUPNews can’t go back there for a while, after drinking all afternoon and heckling the quizmaster with such witty barbs as: “What’s the capital of Bolivia?” “Your mum!”

UPDATE!

On the subject of receipts, check your receipt the next time you use one of those self-service checkouts. At Somerfield at least, the receipt will say something like:

"YOUR STORE MANAGER IS JASON BUTTS
YOU WERE SERVED TODAY BY ROBOT ANGELA"

It's a nice touch, but I can never help but wonder whether Angela is the name of the till-girl who got laid off when they brought the self-service machines in.

LONDON NEWS

2005-11-08T14:08:00.000Z

The President of China, Mr Hu Jintao, is in town today to meet the Queen and do some sightseeing. TUPNews can report a massive security presence in the Savile Row / Mayfair area of London, where plainclothes policemen with earpieces are escorting Chinese diplomats around the shops. The Chinese diplomats are all wearing poppies.

ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

2005-11-08T13:12:00.000Z

A teacher who visited a brothel found that one of the hookers was a moonlighting female colleague in Queensland, West Australia.

from the Sun