Champions League Pie, Beans and Chips

The Champions League Final is the culmination of hundreds of thousands of hours of human effort.

Throughout the course of the tournament the finest players European football has to offer (with the exception of Hibernian Football Club's personnel who decline to take part on a frustratingly regular basis) are on show displaying incredible levels of skill and athleticism for millions of fans around the world.

Every season the competition takes place there's drama, controversy, elation, jubilation, dejection and heartbreak that only ratchets up a notch the closer the team you're supporting get to lifting the trophy. I mark the occasion of the Champions League Final by hosting a 'Champions League Pie, Beans and Chips' night.

I don't know if children of the 50s, 60s and 70s were dished up pie, beans and chips by their parents but everyone that was born in the 80s and even some children of the 90s that I know love pie, beans and chips. We could argue all day as to whether the beans should be Heinz, Branston, store brand or from the budget range and no-one can be in any doubt that a crinkle cut chip adds a certain gravitas and je ne sais quo to proceedings but the one undeniable fact about what goes on your plate is that the humbler the Scotch pie you serve up (by which I mean the greater the mutton's arsehole and eyelid ratio to actual meat) the better - and this ladies and gentlemen is where I got it wrong this year.

You see, I've lived in a flat for a number of years so I've had to rein in my enthusiasm for having mates over because there are only so many people you can accomodate in the living room of a two bedroom flat. This year though I'd moved to a house with a garden, three bedrooms and toilets upstairs and downstairs. I could accomodate as many people as I wanted and still have room to anything I wanted.

I'd invited my two brothers, my two mates, my son and my brother in law and because I'd gone up in the world I thought I'd splash out and show off a bit and contribute a little to the local economy in one fell swoop by getting half a dozen steak and gravy pies from the butchers up the main street. To help pay for this extravagance I went into work to do some overtime and asked my wife if she wouldn't mind getting the half dozen pies I wanted.

While I was at work my wife messaged me on WhatsApp to say that the butcher didn't have half a dozen steak and gravy pies so she got three sausage rolls, two bridies and a steak bake instead. I told her that Champions League Sausage Roll, Bridie or Steak Bake, Beans and Chips was a bit more of a mouthful than Champions League Pie, Beans and Chips but that it wasn't a problem and we'd roll with it - after all, how much can I complain when I've got other people running about after me or providing others with a free feed? Besides, I'd already mentally planned my bit of showmanship to gloss over the fact that there were no pastry encased seasoned arseholes and eyelids.

I thought no more of it until later that night when my mate turned up with 12 Scotch pies and 4 Macaroni pies. Unbeknownst to me my wife was out with my mate's girlfriend who phoned him to ask him to get some pies. In the meantime my brother-in-law asked if he could bring one of the boys we play five-a-side with. "No problem" I said "I'll need to go out another pie for him but the more the merrier, it'll be a laugh".

In addition to the two pies I bought for the late arrival my brother-in-law brought four pies which was in addition to the sixteen pies my mate had brought which was in addition to the assortment of six sausage rolls, bridies and steak bakes.

Then, when my wife got home with my mate's girlfriend, they'd brought another four pies.

WHAT IN SUFFERING FUCK WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH TWENTY SIX PIES, THREE SAUSAGE ROLLS, TWO BRIDIES AND A STEAK BAKE?!

Now this is a story all about how six of my mates brought twenty six pies and I'd like to take minute just sit right there I'll tell you how I became the owner of my own Gregg's franchise..

Hampden holds no hoodoo, since Gray got the winner on 90+2…

“Hibs are going to Hampden” are five words that have become as familiar to Hibs fans as the sound of our own breathing, the rising of the sun and every word spoken on Time for Heroes – including the bit where you had to listen really hard Anthony Stokes when he described The Rangers defence as “fragile” given the molasses like thickness of his Irish accent.

It’s become so familiar that after Hibs 3-1 victory over Ayr United fans took to Twitter and amusingly commented that they were making enquiries into getting a season ticket at the national stadium (A.K.A Easter Road West) while others noted that there are plans to build a third dressing room so that there’s one for Queens Park, one for the visiting team and another for Hibs.

If the record books are correct then this is an entirely unique situation for Hibs in as much as we’re going into the Scottish Cup Semi-Final as holders of the Scottish Cup for the first time in our history. The briefest of research reveals that in Season 1902/03 Dundee knocked Hibs out at the third time of asking at the Quarter-Final stage (the original fixture and the replay not being enough to separate the two sides) and while Wikipedia is a bit scant on detail when it comes to Season 1887/88, it’s complete enough to know that Hibs didn’t make the Semi-Final and a team called Renton won it.

This is also the first time, at least in recent memory, that Hibs have gone into a Scottish Cup Semi Final completely unburdened by our history in the competition. It bears repeating (not like anyone has forgotten, not that we’ll let anyone forget) that Hibs won the Scottish Cup for the first time in 114 years on 21^st May 2016, the magnitude of the event being something that only Hibs fans truly understand the meaning of, something we’ll never tire of hearing, seeing or reading about. It’s one of the reasons I’m writing this right now because the circumstances of this competition, of this Semi-Final and what it could lead to are so, so different.

When Hibs faced Dundee United in last year’s Scottish Cup Semi-Final we were coming off the back of a defeat against Ross County in the League Cup a month earlier and in the midst of a pretty poor run of form. Three defeats on the spin preceded the League Cup Final followed by two draws and two defeats before we played Dundee United in the Scottish Cup Semi-Final. LLLLLDLD.

I remember my friends and my brother and I all walking to Hampden on 16^th April 2016 with a blasé attitude. We’d had the customary couple of drinks before the game but the atmosphere was subdued when you take into account thatHibs were in the Scottish Cup Semi-Final. There was no pre-match excitement for us, no running about in the weeks before ensuring we were on supporters and. There wasn’t even the usual scramble for tickets. We went through on the train, had a quiet couple of pints and made our way towards the ground knowing that, no matter what, we were going out for tea afterwards as we had all simply dispersed after the Ross County game and made our way to our respective homes. I couldn’t remember exactly why we felt that way, particularly since events of 21^st May 2016 have coloured everything since so I asked my friend why he thought that was. I didn’t ask if I could use his full name so let’s just call him Budgie.

He said “I honestly think the League Cup Final against Ross County had killed the optimism that you usually attribute to an appearance at Hampden.

The disappointments I can consciously remember are blinded by the League Cup Final in 2007 and winning the Scottish Cup in 2016 but I think before the Semi-Final against Dundee United we had a real concentrated period of repeated disappointments. You had the Hearts debacle in 2012 followed by the Celtic final the following year where we were never in the game. Then there’s the Falkirk Semi-Final which we inexplicably lost followed by Ross County where we maybe didn’t deserve to win but definitely didn’t deserve to lose.

On top of our relationship with Hampden, Hibs had conspired to get relegated. One win in 19 games would have seen us fine. One win. Relegated in the same year as Hearts went on to run riot in the league while we got knocked out of the playoffs from a Rangers team we were much better than. How could you have possibly been optimistic after experiencing all that in such a short space of time?

Going to Hampden on 16^th April 2016 we knew that Oxley was suspended following a booking for wasting time / losing a contact lens, it transpires later that Virtanen has shat it during the week and Logan’s in goals. Everyone is thinking ‘look at the nick of him’, Cummings lobs the ball over the goal with his penalty. Mixu was in charge of them, Rankin was playing and Anier was in the squad. It was all adding up to another disappointment so rather than wallow in self-pity about it, we made a conscious decision of not to give a fuck about the result”

When Cummings missed his penalty and after our jaws had joined the rest of our face from of the floor, one of us remarked that “this is how it happens”. Basically, this is how we make a mess of it, this is how we lose and this is how the Scottish Cup eludes us again, without ever reaching the final. It was to turn into a running joke for the remainder of the game. Every time United were through on goal, “this is how it happens”. When Rankin has his dig at goal “this is how it happens”. When Anier was introduced late in the game “this is how it happens”. Logan, however, defied all our expectations and was simply phenomenal during that game saving everything that was put his way including two penalties in the penalty shoot-out. In the space of an hour or so “this is how it happens” changed from this is how we get knocked out to “this is how IT happens”.

Given our league form at the time of the Ross County defeat I said to my friends that Hibs needed to focus solely on the Scottish Cup the reason being that no-one would remember if we got promoted whereas no-one would ever forget if we did the unthinkable and won the Scottish Cup. Hibs didn’t focus solely on the Scottish Cup but instead professionally went about trying to gain entry into the Premier League via the Championship Playoffs while continuing to battle for the Scottish Cup.

Hibs fell short in the league and finished third behind The Rangers and Falkirk which meant two ties against Raith Rovers who we beat on aggregate over two legs before eventually exiting the competition following a two-legged aggregate defeat against Falkirk. I remember coming away from The Falkirk Stadium trying to console my brother (again) who was thinking of jacking the whole thing in and giving up his season ticket (again) and thinking out loud that David Gray hadn’t had a great game and that Niklas Gunnersson might be a better choice at right back for the Scottish Cup Final 9 days later – can you imagine how different the world would look now if Stubbs had listened to my pish? Unthinkable.

Our form at the start of this year has been mixed.  We had reason to be optimistic following four wins in January but it was followed by mixed fortunes in February that continued into March. A draw against Ayr preceded a nil-nil draw against Hearts in the Scottish Cup tie at Tynecastle. Hibs then shared the points in another draw against Raith Rovers with the Hibs team putting in a performance so poor that Neil Lennon gave a scathing critique of his players in his post-match radio interview which seemed to have the desired effect as Hibs then absolutely demolished Premier League opponents Hearts in the Scottish Cup replay 3-1 at Easter Road, a game where Andrew Shinnie replaced the injured Chris Humphrey after just a few minutes in an unfamiliar left-wing position but delivered as good a performance as anyone else on the pitch.

Hibs then had a quite stunning collapse against Dunfermline at Easter Road after going two goals up (which in my opinion had as much to do with Liam Fontaine’s injury, leaving Hibs with only one fit centre half and Dunfermline sensing we were there for the taking) before losing 2-0 at St. Mirren in a midweek encounter in Paisley.

Is it perhaps understandable then on seeing the odds of Ayr United beating Hibs / qualifying from the tie at 10/1 and 11/2 respectively that I thought they were a touch generous and put a reluctant fiver on each? Not that I wanted Hibs to lose because I never want Hibs to lose but I felt that injuries (Hanlon, Forster, Fontaine, McGeouch, Humphrey), suspensions (McGregor) and a loss of form (Fyvie) had simply taken their toll on a Hibs team previously depleted by injuries to key players and it might in fact benefit Hibs not to have to face any additional games.

And yet…

Hibs put their inconsistent league form to one side to beat Ayr 3-1 in a tie we never looked like losing and have now made the Semi-Finals for something like the sixth time in the last 10 years.

Maybe it’s because winning the Scottish Cup felt like (and was celebrated like) a once in a lifetime deal that I hadn’t given much thought to winning it again and had allowed myself to be side tracked by other so-called ‘priorities’ (E.G. The league) but our history with the competition means that the idea of winning it again must surely occupy the same part of the brain where all the memories of 21^st May 2016 reside. This is for the time being at least, OUR cup and it took so long for us to get our hands on it that this Hibs side and the supporters have zero desire to let it slip from our grasp without a fight…or a party.

The noise that Hibs fans have generated since that opening tie at Tynecastle, but from the full house at Easter Road in the Scottish Cup replay under the lights in particular, has been nothing short of breath taking and the party atmosphere that follows Hibs in the cup is something that I think has been instrumental in our performances and in getting us to the Semi-Final once more. Graeme Hunter’s “We are Hibs” (Hibs, woah-oh-oh-oh-oh Hibs, Hibs) has quickly cemented itself as a Hibs anthem. The original recording was a fantastically creative bit of song writing and Graeme deserves credit for recording it and uploading it to YouTube. I wonder how he feels hearing his own voice coming over the speakers at Easter Road? And does he sing “Fuck your 1902” with as much GET IT RIGHT FUCKING UP YE as I do?  

A recent and classic bit of Hibs footage shows cult hero ‘King’ Dom Malonga scoring a sublime solo effort. He takes a long clearance from John McGinn in his stride on the halfway line, ghosts between three players and calmly slots the ball past the stranded goalkeeper. Malonga’s plying his trade in Italy again however our opponents in the Scottish Cup Semi-Final, the team King Dom scored against and helped Hibs knock out on our way to the League Cup Final are none other than Aberdeen.  

We’ve got a good record against The Dons in cup competition in the last few years and we no longer have the weight of history holding us back. We can play without fear. We could beat Aberdeen and we could make the final.

Could this be how IT happens…again? 

Happy Birthday, Lewis Stevenson

The first time I remember seeing you in a Hibs shirt was when John Collins sent you on as a second half substitute against St Johnstone in the Scottish League Cup Semi-Final on 31st January 2007.

You'd played for Hibs before that but your ability, versatility and work ethic would help lay the foundations that would cement you into Hibernian folklore as the only Hibernian player to lift the Scottish League Cup and Scottish Cup.

You're painfully shy and public speaking isn't your forté but you're incredibly well thought of by your team-mates as evidenced by the fact that you are surrounded by them and receive a standing ovation from the crowd on the odd occasion you score - credit where it's due by the way, I haven't seen you score a tap in.

At 29 years young it's been my long held belief that a footballer of your age is at the peak of his abilities. I don't know why this is exactly, it's just one of those things that gets handed down and assumed as fact such as The Great Wall of China being the only man made object visible from space. Perhaps there is some truth in it from the point of view that while you will undoubtedly continue to learn as a footballer, it'll just get that little bit harder for you to the respond to the physical and psychological demands that the game will place upon you.

Advances in medical science, diet, lifestyle and surgical techniques mean athletes are performing at the peak of their abilities for longer and to the best of my knowledge you haven't spent a great deal of time on the treatment table so if you manage to avoid serious injury and keep the heid doon, I reckon you'll be good for another 6 years. I wouldn't want to see anyone else occupying that left back position at Easter Road in the meantime.

Happy Birthday, Lewis. Don't ever change.

With all my love, Wild Bill.

I thought he was dead...

So to give a bit of background to this picture of the back of someone's head...

Hibs have won The Scottish Cup for the first time in 114 years and everyone connected with the club in any way shape or form has headed back to Leith for the party to end all parties that everyone had dreamt would happen.

People are raving on the Zebra Crossing outside The Harp and Castle while buses and cars are getting covered in every carbonated alcoholic beverage from Babycham to Prosecco and while I caught my breath, I tried to have a chat with one of the police officers who had arrived en masse with their batons drawn just in case the #exuberance got a wee bit too #exuberant for Police Scotland's liking or The Rangers released another statement, whichever came first.

Later on we head back to a mate's hotel for a bit of a private party where I developed a taste for a bottle of maple flavoured Jim Beam that had been brought along for the occasion. I never normally drink whisky or bourbon straight but the maple took the edge off just enough that I was able to do my best Tinie Tempah impression by drinking from the bottle.

There's an internationally known author in the bar who I'd met once before in Sweden after Hibs were knocked out of Europe by Elfsborg. I remember him because he told me to cheer up (not to mention I've read his books) but he doesn't remember me and he hasn't read my blog. I know this because my mate's later told me that I asked him.

At some point during this exchange I've gone to the toilet and gotten locked in there. In the dark. I've done my best to get down on my hands and knees (by falling off the toilet) to find the pieces of the locking mechanism that I'd heard scatter onto the floor behind me as I came in. I finally had to admit defeat when my mate tries to talk me through the intricacies of putting the lock back together before he finally kicked the door in after I allegedly admitted to being scared of the dark, which is where he found me with my trousers round my ankles, the toilet seat in one hand and the remaining parts of the locking mechanism in the other.

I've gone back to the bar after this and struck up a brief conversation with the author again before the maple flavoured Jim Beam has the effect of rendering me unconscious. The author asks my mate if I'm OK after I've slumped to the floor and my brother announces to everyone that they should ignore me as I'm just attention seeking before I'm gently kicked into the recovery position which is where I remain until sometime later when I'm helped to bed (albeit, apparently, with a brief stop after half a dozen stairs to allow me to 'rest').

I wake up a few hours later and the first question that came to mind when I woke up wasn't 'Where am I?' or 'Who am I in bed with?', it was 'Where are my shoes?'. I eventually found them at the foot of the bed after returning from the same toilet I'd wrecked the night before for an early morning wee.

The effort of getting out of bed, going down and then climbing back upstairs proved to be too much for me and I realised that I was going to throw up. What was worse was that I also realised that I wouldn't make it back downstairs in time so I did the only thing I could and carefully took aim at what might be the smallest piece of porcelain masquerading as a sink and emptied the remainder of my stomach down the drain.

After getting back into bed I realised that throughout this entire event and all the commotion I'd made, the person I'd shared the bed with who I had never laid eyes on before in my life, has never moved a muscle. I'm pretty sure he hadn't taken so much as a breath and I started to think he was, in fact, dead. On the other hand I was merely dying so I made my peace with the situation and got back into bed to try and recover in time for the Cup Final Parade down Leith Walk.















*As it turned out the gentleman in question wasn't dead but was in fact the heavy sleeping actor Tam Dean Burn who had a small part in Scottish soap opera 'River City' and is a long-time friend of internationally known author Irvine Welsh who kicked me into the recovery position and still hasn't read my blog.

The Eternal Battle Between Spiders and Humans

I was sitting at home the other night playing Fallout 4, the latest instalment in the post-apocalyptic wasteland computer game. My wife was at work so I was free to waste some time and immerse myself in the building of a settlement or freeing a farm from the clutches of gangs of raiders or super mutants.

The last thing I remember doing was making sure that the two pink plastic flamingos adorning the grass outside my ramshackle house were just right because immediately afterwards and out of the corner of my eye I saw movement on the carpet and watched as a relatively large spider scuttled across the floor and cunningly attempted to camouflage itself against the floor to ceiling wall unit we have. Spiders don’t have the ability to camouflage themselves against floor to ceiling wall units or any other types of units to the best of my knowledge (which I hope remains that way because the alternative is a terrifying prospect) so perhaps it had momentarily stunned itself or was admiring my pink flamingos.

Either way, now that I had the spider in my sights I began plotting to catch it and free it into the wild via the window but given the sheer size of the arachnid and the fact that I’d recently read that the changing seasons meant spiders were moving indoors and were horny, I didn’t want it to know that I knew it was there, so I pretended to continue playing the game while I kept one eye on the spider’s movements and another on trying to find things in the living room that I could use to catch it, lest it suddenly find me attractive and try to mount me.

With the glass that was next to me in one hand and a bit of cardboard from the back of a Deadpool comic in the other, just as I stood up the spider seemed to recover its senses and made a move for the relative safety of the darkened corner of the room. Maybe it’s because I’m 6ft 5”, walk on two legs instead of eight and weigh about 17 stone depending on which way the wind is blowing but my lunge with the glass was too slow and I succeeded only in trapping one of the spiders eight legs. I didn’t know what to do next as I was no further forward than when I started. There was nothing I could use to capture the remaining 90% of the spiders body and legs against the curvature of the glass and I know I wouldn’t like it if someone had pinned one of my legs so I let him go and watched him scuttle into the corner he’d been trying to reach all along. I pretended to go back to playing Fallout 4  but I kept my wits about me because I knew this wouldn’t be the last I saw or heard of my 7-and-a-bit legged friend.

It seemed a reasonable assumption that if the spider was going to come out of the corner and lie in wait before trying to catch one of us unawares, the most obvious place would be in the shadow of the blanket that was draped over a chair in our living room, so the last thing I did before leaving for work the next morning was fold the blanket thereby removing the shadow and denying the spider a hiding place. As I hadn’t actually told my wife about the large, horny spider in our flat I thought that if it was going to come out of its hiding place and make itself comfortable (the spider that is, not my wife) then at least she’d maybe get a head start if she had to run away from it.

We exchanged these messages on WhatsApp the following day

"By the way" she said "I killed a massive spider in the flat today, I moved the game chair and it got crumpled underneath it. Like, HUGE".

"YASSS!" I said "I tried to catch that fucker earlier in the week but it got away. I did injure it though which might have helped you catch it and I've been keeping an eye out to go round two with it ever since".

"Are you fucking joking? she asked "It could've got me!".

This isn’t the first time I’ve ran into a spider who didn’t miss leg day at the gym. A few years ago now I stayed in a flat on Slateford Road in Edinburgh and one morning I woke up in a daze (to be fair, I wake up in a daze most mornings, who doesn’t?), went into the bathroom for a wee and out of the corner of my eye saw a large, unfamiliar presence in the bath. I did the only thing I could; pretended I hadn’t saw it, finished my wee and tucked myself back into my boxers before turning on the shower, hoping to flush the spider down the drain.

Imagine my horror as I watched the spider spread its enormous legs over the plug hole, brace itself and then start power scuttling towards the opposite end of the bath. “I’ve just tried to drown my spider flatmate” I thought. “If he makes it to the shower and turns it off he’s going to ask me to leave. I’ll be out on the street at 8am in my boxers because there’s no danger I’m hanging about for that conversation. There’s only one thing for it, I'll need to fight him to the death”.

In an effort to cheer myself up and fill the long, lonely hours at home after breaking up with my girlfriend, I’d been watching a lot of war films that I’d picked up on DVD out of ASDA; Saving Private Ryan, Full Metal Jacket, We Were Soldiers, Kelly’s Heroes and Where Eagles Dare to name but a few. None of these helped in actually defeating the spider since most of them were about defeating Ze Germans or the Vietcong but I did have Richard Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ from Apocalypse Now in mind as I turned the shower up, closed the plug and started water bombing the spider into submission with cups of water that I filled from the sink. “You can run from some water” I said, chillingly “but can you run from ALL the water?”.

Daa-da-da-da-DAA (SPLASH!)

Da,da-da-da-DAA (SPLASH!)

Da, da-da-da-DAAA (SPLASH!)

Da, da-da-da-daaaaaaa (SPLASH!)

Instead of standing outside in my boxers looking every inch the embarrassment to the top of the food chain I was, I danced around the flat paraphrasing Robert Duvall’s character from the same film. “SPIDERS DON’T SURF!” I shouted “I LOVE THE SMELL OF TOILET DUCK IN THE MORNING, IT SMELLS LIKE LEMON FRESH!”

After a while the spider stopped moving but I continued to watch it intently just in case it had been watching over my shoulder when Owen Wilson’s character from Behind Enemy Lines plays dead under a pile of bodies in a mass grave.  Satisfied that I’d won (and if you wanted to get really philosophical, are there ever any winners in war?) I opened the plug and watched the spider make its final journey.

And then swiftly closed it and every other plug in the flat for the next three weeks.

Punching babies in the face

***Originally posted on the Hibees Bounce website in response to a discussion about a 5 day old baby getting punched in the face by a 63 year old man in a branch of Tesco in Manchester - felt I had to share it with a larger audience***

I read about this at work yesterday and laughed in spite of myself. Then I told someone else at work about it and they laughed in spite of themselves too.

It reminded me of a situation recently where I was tempted to clout a wee shite on a train or plane I was on. They'd been causing all kinds of grief on my particular mode of transportation and I thought "Fuck this, I could just skelp the wee fucker. No-one will be more shocked than the bairn or the parents. No-one will believe what they've seen and with the right amount of confidence I could probably get away with it. Skelp your bairn? Fuck off. Who does that?" It'd be like the flashy thing in Men in Black but a balled fist of punched your bairn in the face induced amnesia instead. 

See if the old boy had stuck with the "I never punched your baby" line, it could have been one of those stories he told on his death bed "Pull your chair closer young man, let me tell you about the time I punched a baby and got away with it". Instead he's probably going to die old and lonely because he punched a baby in the face.

It's not funny but it really really is.

Disclaimer: I do NOT condone punching babies in the face.

The Naked Attraction

The Naked Attraction is a minefield of a show and I've absolutely no idea what to make of it. Culturally speaking I can't decide if it's a good or bad thing for television, dating, society, men, women or anyting else for that matter. Not that anyone would actually listen if I could.

It is, however, a great opportunity to see folk in the scud that you wouldn't normally have had the opportunity to. That's the attraction of the show (pardon the pun), the free pass for everyone sitting on the sofa to have a gander at whatever Channel 4 have served up for your viewing pleasure. Big knobs, wee cocks, shapely breasts, big tits, labia, scrotums, nipples, the whole shooting match. Only the people with a thing for bleached arseholes or otherwise miss out.

I understand the premise of the show, you strip away everything until all you're left with is a physical attraction and a desire to fuck the naked person standing opposite you with none of the other things that make us reject potential partners getting in the way. Which is fine but no relationship will ever be sustained that way because it removes the key element that can often see two people bumping uglies  - a decent bit of chat. Yeah, Channel 4 get them dressed and send them all on a date to the same bar they sent all the other 'couples' to but the only way any actual fucking is taking place is if these people get along.

Maybe it's the enforced nakedness causing some nerves, maybe it's the cameras leaving people tongue-tied but some of the chat on offer doesn't leave me with a lot of room left to wonder why these people have resorted to enforced nakedness to try and get their Nat King Cole. What's the last of your last resorts, folks? Payment?

Tracy, a mother of two and 'contestant' on the show, hasn't been in a relationship for three years and described the dimensions of her vagina as being a bit of a jam jar. I don't care what you look like (blonde, pretty, nice smile), how fake your tits are (credit to her surgeon, good job) or how big or small your vagina is (strawberry preserve apparently), if I'd been one of the two well hung gentlemen she'd whittled her choice of a date down to, I'd have simply walked the fuck off the show because that sort of chat is absolutely brutal and I wouldn't want to put my cock anywhere near her (from a visual point of view) self-described "beef sandwich".