New Year audio extravaganza

Firstly, if you can bear to finally leave the year that gave us the cynicism-busting European Championships and that casual Sunday afternoon tennis match back in July (it's actually really hard to be coolly understated about the latter), not to mention Bolt, Phelps, Harrington and Egan, happy new year.

Onwards and, em, backwards. Before the Christmas, I posted a brief video clip of a television appearance by Don Revie and Brian Clough just after Clough had been sacked by Leeds in 1974. After much painstaking research (ah, Google) I found the full audio of the show on the Okey Doke Football blog. Bear in mind that this was the two foremost English managers of the day (when that really meant something), sworn enemies, one of whom was the England manager at the time, both highly controversial, speaking mere hours after Clough's firing. Here's the mp3 (25 KB, 26 mins -- the audio quality is not great but it's still listenable).

A nice surprise while listening to RTE Radio 1 yesterday. The first in the Presidential Lecture Series on the "Ireland of Tomorrow" was delivered by none other than Martin O'Neill. It wasn't so much a lecture in this instance as a pleasant stroll through O'Neill's background in Derry, his experience as an Ulster Catholic in Britain, and his feelings on what it means to be Irish. RTE's website is a bit messy, so if there's an stream, I can't find it, but here's the mp3 (52 KB, 53 mins) if that sort of thing interests you.

Another nice, and somewhat strange, surprise was to be found on the BBC. If you ever wondered what it would sound like if Jarvis Cocker -- the man who I hesitate to call a genius only because I use that word too much as it is (but see this or this or this or this to catch my drift) -- and Johnny Wilkinson -- fly-half extraordinaire, when he's not in I-don't-understand-it-Doctor-I-sneezed-and-every-bone-in-my-body-just-disintegrated mode -- got together to discuss sport, death and Schroedinger's cat, then wonder no more:



And finally: nothing to do with sport -- I just want to pHrEeQuE you out this winter evening: