Obscure, Unusual and Just Plain Weird Sports Associations
Anyone who has caught the tail end of a 30-minute news broadcast on a slow news day knows that there are a myriad of people in the world with an uncanny ability to conjure up the most bizarre and intriguing types of sporting competitions: ice golf, mobile phone throwing championships, wife-carrying contests, moustache-growing races and, of course, fistball(?). Many of these sports are just meant to be fun (albeit kind of silly). Others, though, are taken so seriously that they have their own associations which oversee the rules and competitions within the various sports. Here are a few official sporting organizations you might not have thought existed:
The Apprentice Was a Joke … And I Watched Every Minute of It
After viewing all 12 hours of Britain’s far too overconfident “entrepreneurial elite” boasting, backstabbing and blundering biscuit baking, I can’t avoid arriving at the conclusion that the outcome was predestined or – as the more cynical amongst us might claim – fixed.
Clearly Tom Pellereau, the ultimate victor in the survival of the corporate fittest, represented the safest haven for Alan Sugar’s 250,000-pound investment compared to the competition.
Perhaps Susan Ma as the longest of longshots, but that would entail a man who made his fortune in electronics moving into the cosmetics business, which despite the much-ballyhooed “margins”, doesn’t seem to be a good fit for the diminutive and hirsute captain of industry cum curmudgeonly reality-TV desk banger.
To add a bit more credibility to the next series of the Apprentice – which again is to be about starting a company with Lord Sugar – the producers might consider bringing in more people with proven entrepreneurial spirit and fewer salespeople and executive assistants. Just an idea.
Stephen Fry 200/1 to Be First Chair of Independent Sky News
Actor Stephen Fry is among a long list of longshots to be the first head of an independent Sky News on a novelty wager currently taking place at Irish oddsmaker Paddy Power. The noted thespian stands at 200/1.
Other big names with a distant chance of bringing in a lot of money are Tony Blair (66/1), Jimmy Wales (200/1), Alan Sugar (80/1), Alistair Campbell (200/1), Julian Assange (200/1), James Murdoch (80/1), Rebekah Brooks (66/1) and Andy Coulson (200/1).
The bet “applies to the first appointed Chair of Sky News post separation/partial separation from BSkyB. Must be Chair of a board independent from BSkyB board.”
Betting ends on July 17.
Modern-Day Slave Labor: The PBS NewsHour Internship
What priceless lessons did I take away from my $150-a-month stint at one of the most prestigious names in the news business? I learned Robert MacNeil isn’t adverse to a little sangria with lunch, Jim Lehrer takes a nap before he goes on air, and the head of the newsroom likes his coffee black.
Real April 1 News? Marshmallow Attacks and Travelators on Golf Courses?
April 1 is by far the most challenging day to read a newspaper. After all, numerous news items could potentially be an April Fool’s gag.
Take, for example, today’s story in The Sun of a 13-year-old boy who was questioned by police for attacking a fellow student with a marshmallow. The story was released near midnight and has subsequently been picked up by The Plymouth Herald and The Daily Mail, whose editorial team, one speculates, would not likely follow up on a Sun piece unless there were an element of veracity to it. (We will wait until tomorrow for the answer to that.)
For its part The Mail ran a piece which seems to be true about a moving escalator at the Schloss Auel Golf Club outside of Cologne, Germany.
I write the word “true” because news of the “magic carpet” that transports golfers first green to the second tee also appears on the Schloss Auel GC website.
