Out and about

The end of last week was both sad and joyful: it mainly consisted of self-anaesthetising myself at a party to mark the departure of one of my many bosses, who is off to extend his reign of terror to the staff and students of Oxford Brookes University. They are very lucky people. I applied to fill his shoes (and my boots) but wisdom prevailed and one of my friends got it to general rejoicing. I shall remain an humble droid, the Wall-E of the English and Cultural Studies departments. This delightful CIA document shall be my Bible in the years ahead, though I fear that the higher echelons of management have mining the same seam for aeons.

Anyway, I rose the morning after the party with a clear memory of the night before, which is better than some colleagues, but a slight headache and a guilty sense that it was much later than I planned to be up and out. Having done the majority of my marking and attended more meetings than any human should, I needed to blow away the cobwebs with a decent bike ride. The rain eased off as I got off the train at Wellington and headed (as I thought) to Ludlow. Sadly between the electronic map in my phone and the hastily jotted list of villages in my pocket conspired against me and I discovered that my route took me up every hill in Shropshire – some of them twice as I retraced my steps. 

Despite the pain, it was glorious. The sun was out, Shropshire's rolling hills looked beautiful and the back roads were empty as I headed very, very slowly around the Wrekin 

to Little Wenlock, Dawley (wrong way), Buildwas, Much Wenlock, 

Brockton, Aston Munslow and all sorts of tiny villages the length of the county. It was cold, sunny and deserted - absolutely perfect for a fat git hauling his weary bones across the landscape. Nobody needs to see me in head-to-toe lycra (yes, I may be a MAMIL but I'm not a full pro kit wanker because I don't want to be mistaken for an habitual, professional drugs cheat).

I finally creaked into Ludlow three hours later and scarfed two chocolate bars down before getting on a train home because I'm not a proper cyclist and couldn't face the return journey at all, let alone in the dark. A day's recovery later and I was off walking in the Pennines with my friends: we scrambled up to a cluster of the very biggest inland wind turbines they make – deeply uncanny as well as majestic. Despite being way off the ground, when the blades come towards you it's hard not to flinch. The sound is wonderful too: a deep hum overlaid with a slicing noise as they cut through the air. 

And now here I am, back at my desk with more marking and admin to do than your average junior employee at Das Schloss… Woe is me. Still, at least my Hungarian colleague has brought me some fine paprika to snort. That should keep me awake during meetings…

Oh yes, I also read Llewellyn Powys's Ebony and Ivory: very much the minor one amongst the three Powys brothers who were writers – he was one of eleven –  I would suggest (I have yet to read his sister Philippa's novel or see his sister Gertrude's art), and Jonathan Coe's new novel Number 11, which has many good moments but doesn't quite hang together. 

Cycling: the latest zombie pursuit?

You might know that I'm a keen cyclist. You can catch me out on the roads at any time (as long as it's dry and the temperature is between 10-23C) wearing Specialized cleat shoes, Craft Lycra shorts, Lycra top, gel gloves, DHB cycling glasses and a helmet, inelegantly atop one of my two bikes, either my carbon-forked Forme Longcliffe 4.0 or my customised 1967 Moulton Classic.

I am, in short, a MAMIL: a Middle-Aged Man In Lycra. There are lots of us about. Whenever I go out, I give a cheery nod to lots of men and some women dressed just like me, often riding bikes that wouldn't shame a professional cyclist with a ticket-price to match. They're all faster than me.

Aside from the mid-life crisis crew, cycling's everywhere. The Tour de France is coming to the UK this year. Bradley Wiggins, Varnish, the Trott sisters, Cavendish, Froome, Pendleton, Armitstead and several others are all over the media.

So lots of people are cycling and professional cycling is hugely popular. Why, for the love of God, do I think it might be dying? Well – I'm worried that it's becoming ghettoised as a hobby for rich elitists, professionals and gear-fetishists. Look at my description of my cycling life: branded to the last comma. Ten years ago I had a knackered 1970s racer bought for £10. I don't even recall whether it still had a maker's name. I didn't agonise over the extra weight incurred by using cheap inner tubes, nor care what other cyclists thought. I just went places. Nor did I concern myself with consuming gels: I had a bottle of water. Now, we acknowledge each other while casting a discerning eye over each other's frames and wheel sets, all trying to look like we're on the Sky reserve list.

In short, I worry that cycling is next in line for the golf treatment. I loathe golf, but I know it has a rich history outside the Home Counties of being a poor man's pleasure (let's discuss golf's inherent misogyny another time). Out in the wilds of Aberdeen or Kerry, normal people could go out and smash a few balls round a course with a basic set of golf bats then go home happy. Then courses started getting professionals. And expensive redesigns. Equipment manufacturers realised that they could whack up the prices by holding out the promise that buying their stuff would improve players' games and make them look like their heroes. Bingo: a sport becomes a business.

Cycling used to be more than a lucrative 'lifestyle' occupation. It used to be mass transport, and it used to be a means of liberation. For a low price, the workers could reach places previously out of bounds. The price of admission to the countryside or the seaside was a very few pounds and strong legs. Entire sub-cultures grew from the invention of the bicycle, such as the Clarion Clubs (still in existence), which linked exercise, travel and socialism.

I could just about imagine Bradley Wiggins endorsing this slogan, but not Chris Froome, currently residing in Monaco for tax purposes. There were a whole load of other people's cycling clubs too: for vegetarians, communists, Tories, workers, Masons, Daily Mail readers, servant girls, actors, soldiers, Christians… There was even a rebel British League of Cyclists formed to run illegal road races after the National Cyclists' Union caved in to government hostility and banned the sport.

The bicycle didn't just bring about political liberation either: for women it assisted their move into the public sphere, allied to Rational Dress and closely entwined with the Suffragists.

Cycling was good for the genes too: though I've never been able to track down the source, there's a claim that the French peasantry grew an inch taller once a generation of them had the chance to ride bikes to court people living further away than a decent walk, most of whom were their relatives!

So cycling's a special activity: it's a product of industrial capitalist modernity which democratised movement, speed and physical exercise at a fairly minimal cost. But now – and I'm certainly part of the problem – the sport has been to some extent taken over by cults of consumerism and physical perfection. You don't see people like the young me around so much, riding ramshackle contraptions for fun, though many of the country's cycling clubs are doing fantastic work. Instead, there's a competitive element both with regards to kit and performance which I think moves cycling into the same category as golf and similar bourgeois sports in which the consumerist aspirational element has become too prominent. I can see how it happens: I know very well the seduction of desiring more, supposedly better kit (in my other hobbies of fencing and photography too) when I know in my heart that just trying harder will make more of a difference. At least when I go swimming there's almost no equipment to worry about! Or at least none that can be improved without serious surgery.

I love cycling (in the right conditions). I like the speed, the surroundings, the pleasure of squeezing that little bit more out of what's frankly an unlovely and low-quality body, and simply of getting to interesting places under my own steam. I think cycling is special because it's so open and democratic, and don't want it to become hierarchical, competitive and the preserve of the MAMILs. Few phrases are more snobbish than 'Bike-shaped Object', used by 'serious' cyclists –and me, sometimes – to describe the (often-dangerous) budget bikes on the roads. Cars and bad urban design have pushed bikes off the roads for work as well as pleasure except in a few British cities - I'd hate to see the cult of consumerist perfection and professionalisation discourage the leisure cyclists and those without loads of cash by setting examples that can't be followed. Fatties of Britain: Unite and Get On Your Bikes!

I like to ride my bicycle

…but more than that, I like to watch athletes ride their bicycles, before I go for a slap-up feed. Last night I went along to the women's Grand Prix and men's Classic held in Stoke. I missed all but the last lap of the women's event (thanks to work) but saw all the men's race. It was a beautiful sunny evening, the circuit included lots of tight corners and short climbs, so there lots of opportunities to take pictures in between drooling over stunning – and stunningly expensive – bikes and fellow spectators' cameras. There was a decent crowd ranging from passers-by to the local Coppis and Hinaults (well, they had the kit…).

Here are some of my favourite shots: click to enlarge. The whole set is here.

Women's race celebration

I like the expression on the guy in the middle

I tried a few of these blurred shots, but they're not easy without a tripod

Look out for the dog, which really makes this picture and a couple more

The pain starts to show as the race draws to a close

Pointed looks in the peloton

More pained expressions

Local heroes

Jon Mould aims for the line, having lapped almost every rider early on

This breaks all the rules but it somehow works

Jon Mould, race winner

I Got Off My Bike And Stopped Looking For Work

Down Under, one of the academics I respect most of all is having a very nasty encounter with cancer. Unlike I would in such a situation, she's not rocking backwards and forwards in a darkened room uttering incoherent moans of terror (I would also be looking at the room of unread books and thinking 'that was a waste of money and time then'). She's thinking about the academic life and how it fits into social and institutional structures, particularly the way we all overwork.  

I know why I overwork: to make up in quantity what I lack in quality; because so many of our activities aren't following orders but help colleagues who are usually our friends too; because a student in need isn't someone you can ignore because time's up. A dentist doesn't clock off half way through a root canal because it's 5 o'clock, and nor can we. Also, a lot of our work is also pleasure. After a day's admin, it's actually fun to read some Foucault or scribble down some ideas for a paper. I think I got through my degree because study didn't feel like work (unlike the student who told me that she hates my Ethics module because it makes her think).

Kate's insight into why academics overwork (yes, we do) is that it's more than a personal act. She uses the fascinating comparison of pro-cycling. Being a fat cyclist myself, I initially thought that was a good thing, but I was wrong. From Coyle and Hamilton's book, she learned that:

To ride within the limits of your own ability became naive, disloyal to the team, and uncompetitive. Young riders waited to be invited to join the inner circle who were doping, and accepted pills handed to them on the basis that it would make them healthier; team management understood and allowed this to happen, because results had become the currency for economic survival, not just for individual riders, but for vast whirling enterprises of sponsorship, employment and profit.

For pro cyclists, being good wasn't enough because professional sport very much isn't about the taking part. It's about winning, and not for the sake of winning. Pro-sport is simply a complicated form of advertising. Teams need sponsors and advertisers need eye-catching sites for their logos, whether that's an F1 car or a cyclist's arse. Enormous profits and losses depended on whether a cyclist performed. Capitalism made Lance Armstrong dope, not simply individual greed.

That's the important point about Coyle's and Kate's point. I have my perceived reasons for overworking, but that's far less important than the culture and structure within which I operate. In a Foucauldian sense, I've simply internalised the disciplinary and surveillance models which surround me. I feel bad when I don't overwork because I've been trained to see overwork as normal. Our employers – and every employer: this isn't simply about education – depend on overwork. Our classes are bigger than is educationally optimal. Marking is more rushed than it should be. Holidays, when taken, actually become opportunities to do the marking in exotic new places or the time when new books are read. We have less time to keep up with the field, less time with individual students or small groups, less time to think about each student's development, less time to talk about colleagues' ideas: I've been trying to find time to read a colleague's paper on the politics and culture of the Youth Hostel Association for weeks, despite knowing that it's going to be fascinating. I couldn't hang around after today's 2 hour sonnets class to chat to students about their work in general because I had another 3 hour class to go to elsewhere. Colleagues aren't going to each others' research seminars because less important but more immediate demands are being made on their time.

Kate puts it like this:

Imagine that the university offered to pay salary X, but in any given pay week, multipliers applied to X on the basis of worker need in the moment. Imagine that your employer could hike up your rate of pay on demand like this, without any need for forward planning or budgetary calculations. Oh, you need more cash this week? Sure. How much more?

Because this is exactly what university workers offer in return. It’s Thursday and you need this report by Monday but I’m already in meetings or teaching all day Friday and grading on Saturday? Sure, I can offer Sunday, would that do? And of course, I’ll spend most of Saturday night thinking about it because I’ll be at a Christmas concert for my kids so I’ll have some mental calculation time and could check an updated version if you email it to me, provided I’m sitting up the back. So yes, we can meet on Monday and you’ll have your report, because I ride for the team. Obviously, if I wasn’t doing your report I’d be trying to meet a publication deadline, so I’ve already more or less paid my weekend up front anyway, as a downpayment on something or other. Don’t worry about the publication though, I’ll make that up next weekend.

It's true. Our work seems important to us, and we obliged to fulfil a lot of it not because of the money, but because we exist in a social web we don't want to break. I'm currently meant to be working to contract as part of my union's industrial action, so I'm meant to be doing 37.5 hours per week and not taking on any extra duties. But research is fun; I like my students and don't want to inconvenience them; X is my friend as well as my boss so I don't want to say no to him/her; this thing's really important, what if everybody says no?. The result is that working-to-rule is painful and divisive, however right. The pressures are the same in any job, but the situation is special in a sense: because there's less division between work and non-work (we're less alienated, in Marxist terms), it's harder to resist. Someone making things can stop at the end of the shift and can't make more of them at home. Because academic work often doesn't involve machinery or infrastructure, it can be done anytime, anywhere - and so it is.

So we all internalise the pressure to overwork, and feel bad if we don't. This is ideal for our employers. They like the fact that there are thousands of desperate PhDs out there looking for whatever hours they can scrape together. They like the fact that our consciences ensure that the work is done, however intolerable the pressure. They like outsourcing their requirements to our sense of responsibility. It gets the work done without having to spend any money.

There are a couple of downsides. Firstly: who will be the academic who refuses to take the steroids? Who declines on quality of life or quality of work grounds? That person will be pilloried by management as 'not a team player' and envied by colleagues for their selfishness. But overwork isn't only personally destructive: it forces everyone else to compete. Nobody wants to let their students and colleagues down, so (with some exceptions) we all overwork just to keep the ship afloat.

And here's the kicker: the more we overwork, the less we get paid.

For 5 years, our pay has gone up by 1%, which is significantly less than inflation, so we're back to 2008 real-terms salaries. The university intends to keep doing this for the next few years too. I sit in Board of Governors meetings and listen to everyone acknowledge that we're doing more for less, but I never hear anyone admit that we're making things worse. If we stopped overworking, those hungry PhDs would get decent jobs. We'd know our students' names and how they're getting on. Our lectures would improve. We'd write fewer, better books and journal articles because quality would once again trump quantity. Our loved ones would talk to us again rather than enduring apoplectic rants about work followed by an immediate and unromantic collapse into catatonia.

Where does it stop? No one university can get off the bus because the government's trying to organise private-sector providers who'll dump the expensive stuff (research, libraries, qualified staff) in favour of cash-and-carry courses, which is like a country voluntarily putting on the dunce's cap. No, it's much easier for a university to pass the pressure downwards and let us deal with – and worry – about it individually. But here's the thing: because the pressure is intangible and entirely absent from directives, reports and reviews, it's also non-existent. I couldn't point to a single piece of paper telling me to mark harder or do more. It's so diffuse that it's completely deniable, and as Foucault points out about Bentham's Panopticon, it doesn't even need a hierarchy. We'll behave as if they're watching even when they aren't watching. That's the point of hegemony: it doesn't need force or even explicit enunciation.

Kate found this all out the hard way: she couldn't find time for a health check with the result that her cancer was detected later than it should have been. Her choice, you might say, but the point of being a poststructuralist scholar is that we know that nobody operates in a void: we do things within structures and cultures, whether we're aware of them or not.

Take the evening off. Not for your sakes, but for your students and your colleagues. And for Kate.

*The title of the post references Conservative politician Norman Tebbit, who in the depths of a terrible economic crash, claimed that mass unemployment was due to laziness. He said: 'I grew up in the '30s with an unemployed father. He didn't riot. He got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking till he found it'. Which is so economically illiterate that he should have been beaten to death with a copy of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.

If I was thinner, taller, braver

Were I not a short fat bloke who reads books for a living, I'd be out there with these men and women. In an era when organised sport - particularly Tour cycling - is both sanitised by corporate interests and devoid of integrity as competitors pushed by sponsorship and commerce fuel themselves with ever more esoteric (and dangerous) drugs, underground, amateur sport is the only place you can find the rawest, purest form of competition, unadulterated by owners, TV, sponsors and greed. No procession of support cars, no motorcycle vanguard, no cleared roads or scantily-clad sex-objects. Just speed and danger.

Pedal to the metal

Well, one day in Kerry and I've already seen a stage finish in a major (and mountainous) cycle race - the Ras Mumhan. I can't post all the photos on this connection (I'd be back at work before they'd be uploaded), but here are a few - I'll put the rest online in a week or so:

The stage winner

Uphill sprint finish for the peloton

Celebrating that elusive 132nd place

A day to lose heroes

Tony Curtis is dead - he was good even in bad films.

Also, Alberto Contador has been suspended after positive drugs tests. Heartbreaking. I thought his victory in this year's Tour de France was a turning point for the sport - a clean race with a titanic struggle between the two very best cyclists on the circuit. But now it looks like another embarrassing fix. These days, in cycling, it's very much a matter of guilty until proven innocent. Sad, but the organisers, the sponsors, trainers, medics and cyclists have brought it upon themselves.

The competitors, actually, should be at the bottom of the list of guilty parties. Under the day-glo kit and muscle, they're the proletariat, slaving for a wage and forced to cheat because not to cheat means losing and failing to feed their families. The system conspires against them to make cheating (and risking early death or ill-health) the logical choice. It's not individuals pulling a fast one on their rivals (though they probably think it is, and scabs do deserve a beating), but an economic structure demanding superhuman effort at the cost of health - just like being a miner or steel-worker. Their bodies are their tools and the products - but the profit goes to the advertisers and organisers, and the blame accrues to the individual.

That's capitalism, folks.

On your bike

Spotted this photo on BoingBoing:

Random round-up

I got Cerys Matthew's CD of Welsh folk standards today, Tir. It's very good. I also got a copy of Breaking Away, my favourite film when I was a teen. It's what got me into cycling - a classic tale of an American small-town boy who becomes obsessed with race cycling to the extent that he adopts an Italian accent to emulate his heroes. Having been treated shoddily by them in a race, he forms a team of working-class locals to beat those snobs up at the university. Highly recommended.

Talking of cycling, there's a job going for you ladies. Not a very progressive one, I should point out:

Happy news for women looking to break into the male dominated world of cycle racing: the Tour of Britain, our island's humble version of the Gallic road race, is looking for a woman to take part.

The bad news is that the chosen lady will not be giving the gents what-for on her bicycle, but looking pretty on the podium, kissing the sweaty cheek of whichever man win's the day's stage.

For the princely sum of £50 per eight-hour day (plus accommodation and expenses), you could become a "presentation hostess" for the eight-day men-only race, which starts in Rochdale on 11 September.

What is crushingly depressing is that the hostesses (known widely as podium girls and festishised all over the internet) tend to be top cyclists themselves. The "winner" will join Lauren Bason, who rides for Wolverhampton Wheelers, on the podium. And at this year's Tour de France, Claire Pedrono, cycling champion of Brittany, was given the "honour" or holding up the chalkboard with the information about the riders' times.

Alastair Grant, the Tour's commercial manager, doesn't think so. "It's very much part of the history and culture of cycling - for better or worse - that there are presentation hostesses involved in the podium presentations at the end of the stage. Their role is not to stand there and look pretty by any means; they are there to coordinate the activity that goes on. They will be bringing our VIP dignitaries on the stage, handing the trophies to them to hand to the cyclists, they help the riders to put the presentation jerseys on."

If you want the very important job of helping grown men put their jumpers on, email kathryn@thetour.co.uk

Vive le Tour

I'm addicted to the Tour de France. I know that most of the riders are or have been on drugs, and that the route is several hundred miles shorter than it used to be, but there's no contest on earth like it.

Over the course of three weeks, a group of men - most of whom are there only to support their star rider - cover  over 2000 miles of France and neighbouring countries (1926 was 3570 miles), from cobblestones to the mountains which have killed several of their predecessors, including Tom Simpson who died on the insane Mont Ventoux in 1967, exhausted and suffering from the effects of amphetamine use, which was state of the art doping for the time and was the only way for a working-class cyclist to win enough to keep his family. His last words: 'Put me back on my bike'


The overall winner is only one of several bitter contests - time trials, points winners, King of the Mountains and even the Lanterne Rouge (last place) are cause for jockeying. They fight, cheat, try to break each other, yet there's also a strong code of honour (which the current Yellow Jersey, Alberto Contador, broke a few days ago when he took advantage of Andy Schleck's broken chain to steal a stage. In the early days, riders would cheat (sometimes taking the train or getting a lift), while fans would beat up their favourites' rivals.

Today's a Col de Tourmalet mountain stage. There are several mountain stages, all graded except for Tourmalet and a select few which are considered so extreme that they're unclassifiable (hors catégorie). Basically, a car struggles to get up them, yet 140 cyclists manage it. Tourmalet's so high that the ski station is only two thirds of the way up - and the Tour is visiting it twice this year.

Discovering an unmade road rendered impassable by snow, Steinès dismissed his driver and continued on foot. He got lost, fell down a ravine and had to be rescued, but the following morning, in a gendarmerie in the hamlet of Barèges on the way down from the 2,115m summit, he cabled his boss: "Tourmalet crossed stop very good road stop perfectly practicable stop Steines."

As Lapize crossed the summit of the next pass, the Col d'Aubisque, he hurled a famous imprecation at the commissaires. "You are all assassins," he shouted with what remained of his strength. "No human being should be put through an ordeal like this. That's enough for me." Nevertheless he carried on, thereby establishing a precedent for an ineluctable combination of cyclists, mountains and suffering. 

Some riders, a select few, have made light of the Tourmalet's challenge. The great Spanish climber Federico Bahamontes, forever known as the Eagle of Toledo, led over the summit on four occasions, and in 1954 he even stopped for an ice cream to let the others catch up and accompany him on the descent, a skill at which he was less adept. 

On your bike

This looks like paradise to me. The sped-up footage gives it the charm of a Harold Lloyd film (imagine it in black and white). Look out for The Man On Two Bikes. What a hero.

Cambridge might be a little like this, if it actually catered for cycling seriously rather than merely tolerated a lot of cyclists.

Stilig!

Things guaranteed to make me happy:
Copenhagen
Bicycles
Good photography.

So imagine my joy when Neal sent me a link which combines all three. Enjoy.

On your bike

It's been, in a meandering sense, a productive day. I took my old boneshaker into Halfords (a car and bike stuff supermarket) for a service before going for a painful 60 lengths. I've tried to arrange Euro for my long weekend in Germany, and failed, and still need to look at places to store books. I mean, places to live.

There are two excellent bike shops in Wolverhampton, into which it's a geek pleasure to venture.

But. My main bike is a Viscount Apollo tourer. It's at least tenth-hand and is probably thirty years old, but was apparently a very decent cheap racer, despite the Death Forks, which I need to check. The two proper bike shops would laugh in my face. I love all the gear associated with proper cycling, and dream of owning a new Moulton NS Double Pylon (pictured below), but I wouldn't do it justice, and can't afford it anyway.

Going into a bike shop is like going to a record shop - you have to run the gauntlet either of sneery, superior gits who see your choice of bike/record as emblematic of your invertebrate status, or of pitying experts. My bike, bank balance and ego aren't up to it. And so I crawl off to unjudgemental Halfords, where they take my money and don't pass judgement.

Also, the main posh bike shop is manned by a guy with a goatee, baseball cap and facial piercings who addresses me as 'buddy', though we aren't acquainted. The man at Halfords, of similar age, talked knowledgeably in a genuinely friendly fashion without resorting to the trappings of false bonhomie, and for that, he wins my respect.

Sorry Jo…

A bit of sport, but not too much and not the usual suspects.

This years Tour de France inspired my to get my bike out again, with a lot of help from Neal. Unfortunately, neither I nor my umpteenth-hand racer bear much similarity to what I've been reading about, but what a fantastic race it's been - despite a number (let's not be too specific) of the competitors being on drugs, there have been epic battles, surprises and romance - the return to Mont Ventoux, the mountain which killed Tom Simpson and regularly ends races and careers, Wiggins's results and Cavendish's battle with Thor Hushovd have produced a stunning spectacle. I particularly liked Cavendish/Hushovd's end to their rivalry: yesterday they conspired to put on a 50 metre sprint at the end of a stage and ended it dead-level, grinning madly.

There's just something about the Tour which transcends the grubbiness of the money-and-drugs circus surrounding it. The hugely unreasonable demands on bodies, the fans' obsession, the personal battles and the huge respect felt for those who drag themselves thousands of kilometres without any hope of even a stage win, particularly the Lanterne Rouge (the man at the back).

In other sports news, my brother's made his final (official/professional) appearance in the newspapers, which I thought was worth recording:

STOKING OFF

Owners attempting to slip amusing or risque names past the censor, can breathe a sigh of relief. Owen [Vole], communications officer at the British Horseracing Authority, who has taken pride in stopping potentially embarrassing monikers from making their way onto racecards, is to leave next month in order to pursue a legal career. His first stop will be a year back in the classroom at Keele University.

The ever-affable [Vole] has often been the first port of call for many a racing journalist when pursuing a story, but his portfolio of tasks has also included dealing with angry punters who regularly ring to vent their spleen about apparent non-triers. "It's not always been easy. I remember someone on the Betfair forum once called me 'The Comical Ali of the BHA' after I defended the ride given by a particular jockey," he told Tattenham Corner.

"I started working under John Maxse at the Jockey Club in 2001 and quickly learnt what the job entailed with the Panorama and Kenyon Confronts investigations. The worst name that I ever managed to let through was a horse called Skanky Biscuit, although I later went back and checked the date it was approved and it was the first day of a skiing holiday, so I obviously had my mind elsewhere. "Now I am returning to Stoke, the city of my birth, and home of the greatest team in the Premier League."

Life comes to a juddering halt

I'm about to experience life as a non-consumer for a week or two, thanks to some utter, utter, bastard who defrauded my debit card last night. He or she managed to pay for two lots of 'phone credit then had a £300 transaction refused, so I won't lose anything, but it'll be quite a while before I get a new card, change all my online accounts (ABE, Amazon, Apple, loads of others) and start buying books again. What a monumental pain in the bottom. Well done to Co-op Bank though - they caught on very fast.

On the agenda today - final exam board meetings to get through the resit grades, do some more bike fixing (I just bought some bright blue tyres to go on my ancient bike - quality turd-polishing) and perhaps even some proper work.

You're not singing any more

Finally tonight, two great pieces in the Observer Sport Monthly: one on football chants, which can be utter genius, and another on Rwanda's nascent competitive cycling culture (I'm a sucker for road racing, despite the competitors being stuffed with more drugs than an American steak). The new team is more than just sport - it's a way to transform lives and Project Rwanda deserves your money. I'd also like to see their traditional wooden bike race.