A dull, turgid affair that confirms my doubts about warm weather training was settled by a last minute strike from Caleb Folan.

We would have lost this game last season, grown impatient by the lack of quality or flow in the game and have been pole axed by a sucker punch.

It was the worst game of the season at Walton Street by a country mile, but we learnt some valuable lessons in patience, keeping our shape and not chasing the game willy-nilly whatever the protestations from the stands.

Dean Marney had an absolute stinker. Again. Brown explained Livermore’s absence in terms of needing versatility in an illness hit squad, but it doesn’t hide the fact that we are short of quality in the centre of the park.

Having said that, Bryan Hughes moved across from the left to occupy the central berth and performed with a quiet assurance, which leads me to conclude that a partnership with Ashbee, here absent ill, would make for interesting possibilities given the Welshman’s passing skills.

New boy Simon Walton was thrown in at the deep end having travelled up from QPR on the day, a season long loan for the versatile defender having been concluded in the small hours.

He gave the ball away a lot in an unfamiliar midfield role, but then who didn’t on a rotten night for football compounded by a bumpy pitch?

We sit three points off sixth, and with a game in hand. The Nationals are not talking about us yet so the pressure is not unbearable.

I am buoyant. Winning ugly can win you things come May, and come the final reckoning this could have been a pivotal game in our season.

 Hull City: Myhill, Ricketts, Turner, Brown, Dawson, Garcia (Pedersen 78), Walton, Marney (Barmby 51), Hughes, Windass (Folan 64), Campbell.
Subs Not Used: Doyle, France.

 Att: 14,822

A Bangladeshi girl on the death of her mother, is sent to the UK for an arranged marriage and a life of drudgery in Working Class Inner London….

I read Monica Ali’s book a few years ago, and found it an interesting take on women’s issues amongst the Asian Community, confirming that despite Ken Livingstone’s protestations CRE Head Trevor Phillips was on the money when he observed that we are “sleepwalking into a segregated society”.

September 11^th and it’s fallout which culminated in the July 2005 London bombings are further affirmation that Phillips is right to highlight the ways things are going.

One only has to observe the demographics of the Brick Lane area itself (which I do on a regular basis, as it’s where the Royal London Hospital is situated) to see that the Asian community are, largely through economic necessity and educational failure, boxed into a chronically underprivileged area of London.

This in turn produces tensions with the indigenous population who (wrongly) perceive that their Asian neighbours are somehow favoured when it comes to local services, and feel overwhelmed by the sheer weight of numbers.

Throw Islam, which actively encourages separation from non-Muslims, especially for women, and you have the ingredients for parallel societies to develop with all the problems that naturally arise.

The key lies with a recognition that society is stratified along economic grounds, and the way forward has to be through educational achievement and raising aspiration.

The film is a lazy effort, stereotypical in it’s portrayal of the Asian characters and its only saving grace was the comic performance of Satish Kaushik as the pompous, delusional older man that Nazneen is forced to marry.

The book is quite lengthy and perhaps on screen it would have worked better as a C4 series in the manner of say The Buddha of Suburbia, and Gavron could have developed the characters, making them more rounded and less cardboard cut out Asians.

The filming had to be moved from it’s eponymous location due to festering resentment against Monica Ali from the Bangladeshi’s who found her portrayal of their lives insulting.

 They should have saved their energy, as this picture is blandness personified.

On his return to London from a wrongful sentence of Hard Labour, Benjamin Barker seeks vengeance on the evil Judge Turpin re inventing himself as Sweeney Todd, demon barber of Fleet Street…

Any film this year that is better than Tim Burton’s magnificent interpretation of Stephen Sondheim’s musical will have to really go some.

This is a brilliant picture, the usual Burton signatures are there in the ambience and atmosphere, the cast are wonderful with Depp a must for the Best Actor gong at the Oscars, ably supported by the chilling Alan Rickman, the bonkers Timothy Spall and a spellbinding performance from Helen Bonham Carter as Todd’s unlikely accomplice, Mrs. Lovett.

In addition Sacha Baron Cohen’s cameo as the faux Italian tonic merchant was an unexpected high, and the youngsters ably led by Ed Sanders all have glittering futures based on this film.

Stylish with heavy noir overtones, funny and ebullient with a cracking soundtrack. What more could you want from a film?

Tim Burton has produced a modern masterpiece.

My only gripe lies with a way over the top 18 Certificate in the UK. Ireland, Japan and the Czech Republic took a more pragmatic view with a 15 rating.

It’s all about context. Sure, there are the inevitable throat slittings, but the “blood” is patently made believe and there is no real gore. You don’t hear the cutting sound which would have made it much more gruesome.

It’s Sweeney Todd for heaven’s sake. Has no one got a sense of what goes on in the real world at the BBFC? Vacancy was a 15, and to me was much more violent and potentially upsetting.

 But that’s not Burton’s fault. A great picture, which showcases British Film at its world beating best.

“Rebel Without a Pause” is part two of local hero Mally Welburn’s autobiography and is as funny, engrossing and full of pathos as it’s predecessor “The Boy Who Flew Through Windows”.

Julie Burchill wrote a piece in the Guardian last week, which bemoaned the new genre of “Victim Lit”, a sentiment I entirely endorse.

Welburn can no way be associated with the new literary fad, you know the stuff. There is line after line of this depressing guff on the supermarket bookshelves.

Why on earth anyone would want to read Sara Payne’s account of the aftermath of her daughter Sarah’s murder, or the memories of Soham father Kevin Wells? It just plain takes my breath away.

Pamela Stevenson’s biog of Billy Connelly epitomised this victim-as- excuse culture; Billy had a tough working class upbringing so thereby excusing the fact he is an arrogant bully and all-round horrible bloke.

This woe-is-me charge could be laid at the door of Frank McCourt with his epic book of Limerick life, Angela’s Ashes.

No one can deny that some unpleasant things went on, or that life in inter war Ireland was extremely tough for some, but gloom pervades all, making Denis O’ Shaughnessy’s contributions all the more worthwhile for their balance and perspective.

Mally is a Hull Lad through and through, and these books have the strong flavour of Working Class life, and you can literally smell the fish docks and hear the eerie sound of the Humber foghorn as you read this honest and real account.

Mally’s books avoid all this victim status as he takes us through his upbringing on Gypsyville, near Hessle Road, the heart of our now wrecked fishing industry.

“Dysfunctional” would be the Guardian trendy description of his family. I imagine Mally would call it something far more interesting and colourful.

Welburn first came to my attention on Look North when he was interviewed in his Sport’s Shed which was all decked out in Hull FC memorabilia for the 2005 Challenge Cup Final.

Basically the idea is that Mally builds and sells these Dream Sheds marketed at sports mad blokes who can escape into their own little world at the bottom of the garden.

A genius idea and very much a success story based on initiative and drive.

Mally then auditioned for Big Brother getting to the final lot, but I suspect the production company got cold feet as Mally was “a bit of a lad” having done time for assault.

He makes no bones about the hard drinking and fighting culture that existed amongst the fishing community of Hessle Road, nor does he excuse the terrible things that he did, and their impact on his wife and children.

Welburn documents coldly and rationally what he did and why. Brave words, not mealy mouthed excuses and God only knows, Mally fits every stereotyped profile for a thug.

But, Mally is a very intelligent bloke, as witnessed by his mock nautical exam results (the best ever recorded) which he passed to gain the much coveted Bosun’s Ticket for the lucrative, but gruelling trawler runs.

And therein lies the rub.

If you have brains and the ability to take control of your life, there is absolutely no excuse for underachievement or poverty of aspiration.

Welburn has never wasted a single day of his life, always trying, often failing but willing to graft and never give up.

But this is the bit I admire the most.

He describes in detail what a total inadequate bully of a brute his father was, and the casual violence dished out to him and his Mum in particular.

The way it is written leaves you in no doubt that it is real and true. No one could make that stuff up and write about it in such a manner, just banging away with one finger, no editing, to tell it how it was.

Never at any time does the author blame anyone but himself for the stupid, idiotic and plain irresponsible things that he did.

No excuses, no hand wringing physco/sociological pleas for our understanding. Just the truth and you, dear readers make your own mind up.

It is a story of redemption as Mally reaching his forties, decides he better just grow up, stop drinking and start a new proper fulfilling life.

Using the opportunities provided by the Government schemes, he set up and ran the business living initially rough on the damp squalid, rat infested premises of Hessle Road, breaking up pallets and reusing them.

No matter what the hardship Mally stuck it out and didn’t slide back into his old ways saying; “Well, I tried…..” He just keeps on going.

Winning £54,000 on Deal or No Deal as the production team were seduced by his persona from the Big Brother auditions sealed his local celebrity.

 I admit I never saw the programme at the time, but read about it, and Mally in the Hull Daily Mail, and was immediately seduced by his larger than life personality.

These books are brilliant, a real antidote to the packaged dross that pervades most autobiography sections.

You will still “get” it if you aren’t from Hull as the themes are all relevant to our shared human experience.

The message?

Stop whining. If you want to change your life, just do it.

Pure existentialism. As jean Paul Satre famously said;“Humanity is condemned to be free”.

I am in Cottingham, in the nip and being chased by the Fuzz.

I spy a side alley down which to escape but it is blocked by a funeral procession whose Chief Mourner is none other than James Murray.

Instead of a) helping me escape the Boys in Blue who are by now in hot pursuit or b) behaving inscrutably he starts performing some elaborate River Dance type routine complete with a bohran.

I escape into a Pub where I am served by my best man (as it later turned out the quite deranged Jonny Creswell) who is smoking a revolting Lambert and Butler cigarette, which I can physically smell in the dream.

 Above the Bar are soft focus, chavvy photos of Jonny and the former Robert May’s School Head of Music Sally Bishop, who are married.

 Work that one out.

Att: 18,391

“Now comes the hard part. You’ve had it easy the last fifteen years matey”.

My old mukka and former Head of Department Don Bennett uttered those words to me on the morning of Friday 2^nd May 1997 as I floated in to work on a tidal wave of euphoria in the wake of Labour’s landslide defeat of John Major’s weak and befuddled Tory Government.

When you are an Opposition activist, and Don was quite right about this, it is easy pickings as all you have to do is pick apart the policies and mistakes of the incumbent Administration. And how simple and straightforward that had been.

From Rail Privatisation to Bosnia, and from Black Wednesday to sleaze the Tory Government were dead men walking in the wake of the ERM fiasco, and the previous Thatcher Government were a Left Winger’s dream as they declared War on various sections of the British People.

But immediately we took power there was a crushing weight of expectation, and until the Iraq Tragedy I firmly believed we had lived up to, if not exceeded people’s hopes.

But, eleven years on there remain obdurate problems that the Labour Government must face up to and deal with, and this year will the biggest challenge we have faced since we came to power.

Spending on the NHS has doubled in real terms since 1997 and there are now    78,700 more nurses and 27,400 more doctor’s full time posts. In 1997 75% of hospital buildings pre dated the formation of the NHS, by 2010 the figure will be reversed.

Fantastic achievements by anyone’s parameters. BUT I can vouch from bitter personal experiences that all is far from well in the Public Health system.

Whilst pay for the Doctors and Registered Nurses has soared, poverty wages still exist for ancillary staff who are often employed by contractors, and this has created deep division on the Wards and a collapse in morale which directly impinges on the patients. This is especially true in Mental Health, as two friends have relayed to me, and which I have witnessed via my Dad’s recent travails as an impatient. The Case Conference I attended was just unbelievable. As long as the “S” word isn’t on the agenda and he is drugged up that’s all they are worried about. Not once has the issue of why it happened been addressed. Not a word. They didn’t even know about my Mum…..

There is a growing I Don’t Give A Damn, It’s Not My Problem ethos afoot, and the good people are drowning in a sea of paperwork, targets, pointless initiatives, and failing IT that doesn’t work.

Systems are King. It should be relationships first, and the rest will flow.

Then there is the problem of the Pharmaceutical Industry crippling the NHS through patient pester power, the result of media planted propaganda.

The sense of drowning is palpable. Something radical has to be done.

Alan Johnson has shown his mettle early on, by questioning the contracts with the Drugs Companies and also forcing the GP issue out in to the open, which is the fact that they have received enormous pay rises for doing less, and refuse to work evenings or weekends.

A Royal Commission into the state of the NHS is required.

Two years of hearing evidence and a year to prepare it’s report. No out of bounds areas, no sacred cows. Some on the Left may not want to hear this but there HAS to be a role for the Private Sector, held to account by elected representatives to drive the thing forward with a real force for good. Inertia and the thumb sucking comfort zones for those vested interests must go. If they don’t do what they are meant to achieve for us, the people than they go. Oh, and no more new directives for the duration of the Commission.

The NHS is rapidly becoming a Soviet style monster, which swallows money up and allows the slowest and least efficient to set the agenda. It is over centralised, needy and unaccountable.

People trust us with the NHS because we do what we say we will do, as the slashing of waiting list and the extra cash show. And if we were to grasp the nettle of real reform I believe people would go with us.

 The NHS is the Labour Party’s historic flagship, and if we are progressive and reforming, it could just be the saviour of Gordon Brown’s faltering Government.

An ageing Professor of Literature is approached by one of his readers to undergo a procedure that will give him the body of a 25 year old Adonis on a sixth month loan….

Hanif Kureishi is best known for his wonderful screenplays such as Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, My Beautiful Launderette and most recently the magnificent geri-comedy Venus.

In addition he was the first mainstream writer to grasp the nettle of Islamo Extremism and it’s effect on the second generation of immigrants, with 1997’s My Son the Fanatic starring Om Puri (obviously) and Brenda Griffiths, who found fame in Six Feet Under.

This film demonstrated clearly the dichotomy facing the children of sub continental immigrants who, spurned by the indigenous population seek identity via a form of religion that is far from mainstream British Society, thus reinforcing the separation that they feel.

I witnessed this in Northern Ireland where otherwise educated and reasonable young people sought validation on the fringes (and sometimes within) the Republican Movement. They felt disenfranchised and excluded from the Orange Statelet with it’s overtly supremacist ethos, failing to understand that it was a matter of Class rather than ethnicity and that their Protestant neighbours were just as oppressed by the Capitalist system. They just had poverty with an inside toilet.

Hanif Kureishi, whilst addressing issues from his Sub Continental identity has never made himself some self appointed voice of British Asians and writes about everyday British situations, especially the ageing process in Venus where Peter O’Toole, Leslie Phillips and Richard Griffiths discuss seventy something male problems in hilariously graphic detail.

He is a talented storyteller who keeps it simple, and you can see where he has influenced young writers such as Kazu Ishiguro and Monica Ali.

The Body pulled me in with the characters ordinariness being supplemented by slightly surreal, absurd, mundane, fantastic and erotic circumstances as our hero embarks on his new life, but with his old personality and life experiences.

In this age of obsession with body image, Kureishi discusses what it means to grow old, and how marriage, parenthood and the passage of time change our expectations and aspirations.

Matters, predictably do not go as planned and the comedy and pathos just jump from the page because of his laconic, spare style.

A really fantastic book which would provide a good template for a Channel Four drama.

 This book was stocked in a rather bizarre section entitled Books for Blokes in Hull Central Library. What does THAT mean? Obviously we have no interest in Monica Ali, Zadie Smith or Andrea Levy…

1)        The Sopranos (C4 Network).

The greatest ever TV drama came to an inevitably brutal end in 2007 as the Mob War between the New Jersey and New York Families turned deadly.

As Tony orders a hit on Phil Leotardo matters spiral out of hand and Bobby Baccaleri is killed with Silvio Dante seriously wounded.

Is it curtains for Tony? The final scene sees the Soprano family at a diner and the camera follows an unknown guy into the bathroom. There it ends.

Did the man retrieve a gun from the cistern and then whack Tony as in a scene the Godfather? Typically, creator David Chase is not saying. 

As soon as the series finale aired, More 4 repeated the Sopranos from its 1999 start, and it is absolutely fascinating to view it again as you see things in a different light and appreciate the roles of the supporting cast a lot more.

It is very apparent how the women facilitate and endorse the brutality of the men, and in many ways Carmela and Janice are as vile as their male counterparts.

2. Doctor Who (BBC1).

This was the best ever series from a wonderful brand that has kept up with the times without ever compromising it’s core production and story values.

David Tennant is my all time favourite Doctor, and The Family of Blood, set in the shadow of the First World War rates as my number one Doctor Who story.

Airing in May 2007 we find the Doctor lost in time working as teacher John Smith in a Public School, as a Tutor to the tragic lost generation who perished in the killing fields of the Great War.

Knowing this somehow gave an unbearable sadness to the whole thing, and Russell T. Davies has produced a masterpiece to condemn the futility of warfare.

Smith has to be convinced by Martha as to his Time Lord status, and for me the parallel with Scorcese’s The Last Temptation of Christ where we see Jesus battling with His divinity in the desert, was obvious.

Davies makes the thing work well on so many levels and Doctor Who is a testament to all that is good about the BBC and Public Service Broadcasting.

Reithian Values in a 21^st Century context. Brilliant.

3) The Yellow House (C4).

Paul Gauguin (John Lynch) and Vincent Van Gogh (John Simm) set up house in the picturesque French town of Arles. Nine weeks produced forty-one acknowledged masterpieces, which at today’s prices would fetch £1.5 billion on the open market. But was it worth it?

Both were chronically unstable characters, but ultimately artstic genius bore fruit but at the expense of both men’s mental well-being.

The intensity and pathos Simm portrays in Van Gogh is right up there with his portrayal of Dostoyevsky’s seminal anti-hero Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment.

4). Life on Mars (BBC1).

When Tony Jordan met with BBC commissioning editors and said: “It’s about a Manchester cop who gets run over and wakes up in 1973 and joins the CID whilst hearing messages from the radio and TV which are from 2006, and we’ll show it on BBC1 at mid week prime time”, it must have been one hell of a sales pitch.

But it worked. And how. John Simm (again) is brilliant as Sam Tyler, catapulted back in time and working for un reconstituted old soak Gene Hunt.

It’s a cross between psychological, moral examination and comedy homage, which sounds weird but it was the surprise hit of last year and has been picked up in the US and Europe.

But ultimately, like all the best drama it focuses relationships, this time between Tyler and Hunt. Chalk and cheese in methodology but united in a belief in doing the right thing, no matter what.

5.) It’s Free World (C4).

Ken Loach and Paul Laverty return to the small screen with yet another forensic examination of how the Labour Government, for all its successes has failed many of Society’s most vulnerable, in this case Migrant Workers.

Single mother Angie, is sick to death of making money for bucolic sex pests employers, and decides she can do just as well on her own acting as a recruitment agent for Eastern European labour.

Angie starts off with the aim of only employing workers with papers, but she and business partner Rose are soon lured by the opportunity of a fast buck by providing illegals and matters soon spiral out of control when the main Gang Master bails out leaving Angie with unpaid workers followed by a busted jaw and threats to her son.

And as for the workers… the conditions are real, horrible and were the subject of a brilliant Photography Exhibition; “Slave Britain”, shown over the Summer at Holy Trinity Church, Hull. 

These people have suffered enough under the yolk of Communism and deserve a clean break with the past instead of being the modern day workhorses; flogged into oblivion to create our decadent, image and shopping obsessed way of life.

 Ken Loach is the conscience that those at the top of the Labour Party should be reflecting on.

The splendidly monikered Dr. Krippen (Emma Thompson) discovers THE cure for all cancers, but inevitably all is not what it seems…

This our first visit to the recently opened Vue Cinema, which sits astride Princes Quay Shopping Centre.

And very impressive it is too. The décor is neutral, but clean and modern and there was no quibbling over the complimentary ticket as I ‘m registered blind (Odeon please take note).

You have one queue for both food and entry and whilst I can see this makes perfect commercial sense they need to train the operatives to be a bit quicker.

Personally I think there should be a ticket only queue but I see their point as it would be easy to crack and order stuff that you may think twice about if you had to stand in line all over again.

In addition they need to organise matters more effectively so that you can get your ticket for the multi storey car park stamped with minimal wait.

But these are no doubt teething troubles, and as for the (so far unique) digital technology… Once you have seen a film in high definition with razor sharp picture quality and amazing surround sound, you will be very critical of conventional cinematic presentation. It’s just out of this world.

Which makes it all the more disappointing that I am Legend was such a dreadful film. It is highly appropriate that its release was timed for Boxing Day, as it is a real turkey of a picture.

The plot is very promising and has been filmed twice already as The Last Man on Earth (1964) starring Vincent Price, and The Omega Man (1971) starring Charlton Heston, but the dreadful, clunking script, saccharine sentimentality and brazen moralising about the Meaning of Life and the existence of God, allied to poor pace of the film meant that the excellent special effects of a hauntingly derelict New York and Will Smith’s best efforts with such a lame screen play were totally wasted.

Krippen’s cure turns horribly bad as mutations of the cure wipe out all but 1% of the World’s population, and turn most of the rest into unthinking, zombie like beasts who prey on anyone left.

Smith plays scientist Robert Neville, the only sentient being left in New York, living in an opulent brownstone house on Washington Square with his dog Samantha while working in the basement on a cure for this plague.

The scenes of a decimated New York are absolutely first class, and production designer Naomi Shohan and her IT crew, along with Smith totally carry this lame duck of a movie.

 One thing is for sure; CineWorld and the Odeon are going to have to up their performance to compete with a magnificent Picture House located bang in the City Centre.

Att: 21,252