Top of the world

Not many people climb Machu Picchu dressed like they've just walked off the latest Bond movie set; then again, not many people have Sabbir Hossain's credentials: restauranteur, pilot, TV & radio personality, film critic, race relations adviser, spokesman for the Bangladseshi community in the UK, cricket nut and good friend to the Medd family. It was good to see you again this weekend Sam.

Saxomophones

Grover Washington Jr

Gerry Mulligan

Here's a delicious collaboration between two of my favourite sax players; although Gerry Mulligan and Grover Washington are no longer with us we were lucky enough to see both these jazzers live. In fact we even met Gerry Mulligan – he was staying in the same hotel as us while we were at the Brecon Jazz Festival in 1991. Grover Washington we saw in the summer of 1998 (the year before he died) - he was playing The Concord Festival in a stunning amphitheatre in California; the only part of the world where smooth jazz really works.

He's not the Messiah

Not the best place to sign your autograph Alan

The Holy Trinity

I was a fairly typical young boy when it came to outdoor pursuits: my three favourite sports were football, football, football. Living in Hull I was taken to Boothferry Park by my dad, but between the ages of ten and thirteen I flirted with Manchester United (don't worry, it soon passed). We're talking early 1970s: the Best, Law and Charlton years; not their most successful period by any stretch of the imagination, but a time when they would strut onto the pitch at 3 o'clock on a Saturday afternoon with their swanky new v-neck collared shirts - thus making Football Focus and Match of the Day unmissable on our recently acquired colour television from Radio Rentals.

Yesterday I was speaking to someone who lived in Manchester from 1969 to 1973 - directly overlapping my brief dalliance with United. His surname is Busby; he said that in that time there were only three Busbys in the Manchester phone book. And (Sir) Matt wasn't one of them; so on a Saturday evening if the team had lost his phone would often be ringing with some heckler on the other end venting his spleen. If at the time I'd had a direct line to the top I'd have been asking Sir Matt why he put Alan Gowling in his starting eleven. Alan Gowling, for me, stood for everything Manchester Utd weren't: he was gangly, ungainly, and if he had a Top Trump card his swagger rating would be 0 %. I hated him. He'd got a Degree and his middle name was Edwin. Looking back I was probably a little harsh on Gowling. He couldn't help being the way he was. Also, the stats would indicate that he did at least know where the back of the net was - something I conveniently airbrushed out of my memory at the time. So, anyway, if on the off chance you're reading this Alan, no hard feelings?

Xylophone Man

Take a walk down any busy thoroughfare, anywhere in the world, and it won't be long until you come across somebody singing for their supper; busking (from the Spanish buscar - to seek or to wander) has been around since Medieval minstrels and jongleurs would sing and dance in European city squares and passers by might, if they were any good, throw coins at them. Then, as now, I'm sure busking can be very lucrative; some of my best friends are buskers and if you have the right location location location, and can carry a tune, you should be all set fair.

That said, my favourite busker of all time couldn't carry a tune in a bucket. Xylophone Man would play his trade in Nottingham city centre in the late 80s and 90s playing nothing more than a child's toy xylophone: hitting random notes in an equally random fashion was the extent of his repertoire, but that never stopped his hat from filling up with high denomination coins of the realm. When he died in 2004 it was said that his xylophone was donated to the short lived Nottingham Hard Rock Cafe, just around the corner from his pitch, where it hung on a wall next to one of Pete Townshend's wrecked guitars.

I was reminded of Xylophone Man recently as I've just started covering this endearing and strangely addictive tune by Neil Diamond. It's got a lovely xylophone refrain throughout that, I'm sure, Xylophone Man would have made a good fist of.

 

Back End

After one of the hottest summers most of us can remember in a long time, we’re now entering the time of year my dad has always called ‘back end’. As with many of Gordon Medd’s weather related catchphrases, another being ‘it’s warm behind glass,’ although I may not fully understand them, I totally get them.

October really is the marker post that heralds autumn and beyond (pretty much like the Hatfield and The North sign that sits at the bottom of the A1). And for me it also flicks a switch in my head lighting up a little circuit board full of things like soup, jumpers, de-icer, dark mornings, central heating, mulled wine, floodlights at half-time and tea pot & telly nights. It will also soon be time to reconvene the Whisky Focus Group: our small ad hoc collective comprising single malt devotees who, on a Sunday afternoon as the light is fading, love nothing better than to taste and try whiskies from as many Scottish distilleries as they can get their hands on. Sampling anything from the peaty reek of a 10 year old Laphroaig to a hospital corridor smelling Talisker our informal group is now entering its third year. And, if the long range weather forecast is anything to go by, it will be distractions like the WFG that could well be my guiding light through the back end and the inevitable cold winter that follows.