It Would Curl Yer hair

I found myself, unexpectedly, on live TV today, talking on Sky television via Skype on the subject of... curling. Who'd have thought? There I was, sipping a cup of tea and contemplating lunch when a tweet comes in from the producer of the Sky News programme "Boulton and Co". Would I appear live in two hours' time in defence of curling?

I should explain that this all stemmed from a blog I posted last Saturday in response to an appalling article in the London Evening Standard which ridiculed curling and curlers. As someone who curled for 20 years himself, and as a one-time journalist confronted by the insult to the profession that this article represented, I wasn't about to let it go. You can read it here (along with the original article).

So suddenly, it seemed. I was an expert on the subject and qualified to defend the sport against the aggrieved basketball lobby, hurt by the withdrawal of their funding and determined to find a scapegoat in curling. In the end, the Skype connection was pretty poor and I had to content myself with a 30-second eulogy on the virtues of curling, before I became totally pixilated.

Life is full of surprises!