The wiles of snooker
IT'S AS IF half the balls have jumped off the table from the break. International snooker is rocked by the suspension of world champion John Higgins, and his manager Pat Mooney, as a result of video footage in which they discuss with a heavily accented individual (not seen on camera) the possibility of "throwing" a few frames in return for 300 000 Euros.
The footage was shot in Kiev, in the Ukraine, and it was apparently shot by the News of the World in a set-up.
Higgins and Mooney claim they thought they were being approached by a member of the Russian Mafia and were nervously humouring him before getting their flight out.
But it looks very much like a snooker on the black ball.
Foul snooker?
HOWEVER, the affair surely raises a question of ethics. Is this not entrapment? It's one thing to expose something unsavoury or criminal that's already going on – quite another to try to entice somebody into committing it.
The News of the World is not the most salubrious journal and the word "ethics" does not feature in its lexicon.
It could also be a foul snooker.
Fancy play
THE VOICE on the soundtrack sounds convincingly Russian/East European and is laden with menace. It also has something of the forceful tones of Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
But at least nobody is trying to pin this one on him. He's had a rough enough ride already this election campaign.
In snooker parlance, if the opinion surveys are anything to go by he is about to sink the white. Yet the vagaries of the British electoral system mean he could, conceivably, remain in office in a hung parliament with a minority of the overall vote.
That would require some really fancy play off the cushion. Brown is no doubt chalking his cue.
Quintessential RAF
"THE FEW" get fewer and fewer. Durban-born Gerald Stapleton, who was in the thick of the Battle of Britain in 1940 and spent many years living in his home city after World War II, has died in England at the age of 89.
Gerald joined the Royal Air Force in the 1930s and flew Spitfires in the Battle of Britain, where he shot down several German bombers and at least seven Messerschmitts. He himself was shot down once but managed to crash-land.
He flew Hurricanes that were catapulted from the deck of merchant ships on the North Atlantic convoys and he flew Typhoons in rocket attacks on German gun positions in the occupied Netherlands. It was while leading a low-level rocket attack on a German arms train that he flew into the debris of his own explosion and had to crash-land again, this time behind German lines. He was taken POW.
After the war he flew for BOAC in West Africa then returned to South Africa, where he held various positions in industry. He also became a tour guide, specialising in photographic safaris to Botswana.
Gerald was the quintessential RAF type: a ginger handlebar moustache (his Zulu nickname was inevitably "Madevu") and an uproarious sense of fun. I recall him, while in his 70s, doing press-ups in my living room to entertain my children. He had a slight bewilderment at having somehow survived his wartime experiences and lived life to the full.
In 1994 he and his wife Audrey returned to England to be near her relatives in Lincolnshire. When he became ill she (a trained nurse) looked after him at home.
The RAF organised the funeral, which was in the village church at Ketton, Lincolnshire. A Spitfire of the Battle of Britain Flight made several passes over the church, finally performing a barrel roll. Audrey says there was a breathtaking moment during the service when a shaft of sunlight came in at the window and lit up all Gerald's medals that were on display.
Churchill had it spot-on: "Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few."
Tailpiece
A CLERGYMAN sees a small boy trying to ring a doorbell that he can't reach. He steps up behind him and gives it a solid ring himself.
"There you are, my big fellow."
"Thanks. But now we must run like billy-ho!"
Last word
It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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