Right, finally, it’s the post that all of you have no doubt been waiting for since last September: the end-of-season report on my Table-Tennis exploits!

As many of you know, I play in both the Folkestone league (in Division 2, for Burmarsh “B”) and the Ashford league (Division 4, for Kennington “B”). Burmarsh, despite being named after a category “A” prison, had a truly excellent season, waltzing through a reasonably tough division and losing only 2 games. All three of our players, Skip Preston, Trevor Nibbles and myself (or “Mike Hunt” as I’m highly amusingly known) finished with personal averages over 66%, our best ever team performance by a long way. In the Ashford league, Kennington “B” also got promoted very easily and my personal average was 92%, although the gloss is taken off this somewhat by the facts that a) Division 4 is populated to a large extent by the under 10s, the infirm and the short-sighted, and b) my atrocious performance in the previous season was almost solely responsible for our relegation from division 3 in the first place.

What you won’t see from either site is that both Belmarsh, sorry, Burmarsh “B” and Kennington “B” enjoyed excellent cup runs; Burmarsh reached the final of the Folkestone Cup, ending up on the wrong end of a 5-1 thrashing at the hands of some other team of dirty cheating tryhards who took it all way too seriously and whose name I can’t remember even though it was only last week that we played them*, whilst Kennington are still in the Ashford Cup, at the semi-final stage. Obviously, I’ll be trying very hard and taking it extremely seriously.

Stay tuned; obviously I’ll let you know how the Ashford Cup semi-final goes, and if this proves to be a popular topic, I’ll undertake to write and publish lengthy and indepth reports on every single one of the 46 matches (that’s 138 individual games) which I play next season!

(* - I always aim to lose gracefully.)

Gentle reader, like many of your good selves, I was always inclined to believe the oft-quoted line about our MPs being “good people doing a difficult job who get into politics for the right reasons”; however, that was before I found out the precise nature of their financial arrangements. They’re allowed £24,000 per annum for a second home (a free mortgage on a loan of about £180,000, in other words), they get a generous “expense” allowance (and don’t even have to provide receipts if the expense is under £25 - which makes you wonder what sort of bongo film Jackie Smith’s husband was watching if it DID need a receipt….) - and on top of this,  they can have as many outside jobs as they want.

Dangle these kind of carrots in front of any group of 600-odd people, and they’re going to collectively ensure that the words “trough” and “snout” quickly become appropriate.  Of course, the worst offenders are the Tories - eg David Cameron’s cousin Sir Nick Ffoulking-Lloadsamoney, MP for Rottenborough in rural Lincolnshire (a place he has never actually visited, of course - it’s absolutely ghastly), has as many as 7 outside posts; he has directorships with British Gas, Ponzi Banking, Badcough Tobacco, Blood Diamonds PLC of Sierra Leone, Rainforest Logging and Barone Sanitation, as well as being Fred Goodwin’s accountant. However, Labour aren’t much better: thanks in no small part to the housing allowance, the entire borough of Islington has been bought up by Labour MPs and their Guardian hangers-on, and now every house has its own Banksy mural, and the whole place stands as a metrosexual espresso-reeking testament to the death of real socialism.

So what should be done? Well, I don’t bloody know, do I?  How about a poll? (Only the second new poll this year or something; and here’s me moaning about MPs not earning their corn…)

Looks like we’re swapping profits for prophets; according to The Times, sales of the Bible soared in the UK by 25% last year, and apparently, it’s all down to the credit crunch (along with everything else newsworthy, of course). People are worried, and are increasingly looking to the good book for “reassurance amid the mayhem du jour“, says Bible Society director James Catford (although maybe that should be James Ford du Chat).

A Father Wansborough adds “Perhaps there is a feeling that human financial and political solutions can’t solve problems; that one has to turn elsewhere, to the Lord”. You reckon? Leaving aside the fact that organised religion has preyed gleefully on our fears and insecurities since the first caveman conman realised that styling himself as a “priest” was a FAR easier way to get the choicest cuts of sabre-toothed-tiger steak than bashing his rivals on the head with a stick, are we really so fickle that a mere 15% drop in house prices is enough to turn us from selfish, materialistic property-porn-obsessed bling-merchants who’d mortgage our own grandmothers for the latest flat-screen TV into timorous medieval-peasant-style worshipers seeking only spiritual wealth through the exploits of big G, JC and the holy spook? Well, no. To be realistic, our new-found “faith” is probably more along these lines… 

On a tangent - in America, they sell 27 million Bibles a year. The population of the USA is approx 300 million, which means that it would take about 12 years for everyone in the country to have a Bible of their own. The Bible, furthermore, has been in print for approximately twice as long as the USA has existed… from which we can conclude that the population is either ludicrously holy, very forgetful or surprisingly resourceful when it comes to finding cheap alternatives to toilet paper.

Beset by a minor case of writer’s block, aggravated by a dose of laziness and a bad case of loving you, I’ve decided to recourse to one of my “fallback” post topics (there are more; you’ll instinctively know when they rear their predictable heads.) This one’s a question as much of an observation; what are the best and worst cover versions EVER? Three of each from me; your own are very, very welcome. (I’m more interested in serious cover attempts than “student comedy” ones, e.g. Rolf Harris’s “Stairway to Heaven”.)

Best -

“Jealous Guy” - Roxy Music. Poor old John Lennon; one solitary, single, half-decent song (OK, excellent song) in his solo career, and someone else’s cover of it is way superior. Even if Bryan Ferry is a bit of a cunt(ryside Alliance supporter) these days.

“Let’s Spend the Night Together” - David Bowie. Huge credit, of course, to one of the Stones’ best songs; Mick Jagger at his feral best, simultaneoulsy prowling and preening, the consumate mix of ’60s dandy and earthy bluesman - but Bowie’s rocket-fuelled re-visioning of the song is pure stack-heeled space-age. “Let’s spend the night toge-THAR! Now I need you more than e-VAR!”

“Tainted Love” - Soft Cell. Many people (i.e. me…) didn’t know until fairly recently that this was a cover of a minor soul hit from 1964. Who would have thunk it? It’s the absolute epitome of the tortured, introspective early ’80s synthesiser indie which would spawn monsters like Depeche Mode and (in time) Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson.

Worst -

“Under the Bridge” - All Saints. If there’s one track which encapsulates the vapid, dipshit, two-dimensional nature of the post-dance, post-”E” pop scene in the UK in the late ’90s / early ’00s, it’s this thicko bimbo dayglo-orange cover of one of the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ best tracks. For fuck’s sake, they LEAVE OUT THE LYRIC ABOUT DRAWING SOME BLOOD at the end - that’s what the SONG’S ALL ABOUT. HEROIN!!!

Anything by the Fugees. One time!

“American Pie” - Madonna. The day the music ACTUALLY died. Or rather, the day the music was orphaned in Malawi.

Over to yous….