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  Readers, the nights have started drawing in and the damp London air is turning S&T’s hair to frizz, which means we are finally ready to heartily embrace the conker season. Yey! For those of you in parts of the world that aren’t blessed with the noble offspring of the Common Horse Chestnut tree (are there posh ones?), conkers are the large shiny brown seeds-cum-fruit that (sometimes painfully) fall from the trees’ branches encased in prickly green husks and are collected (usually) by youngsters up and down the length of the UK and Ireland, soaked in a vat of vinegar or baked in the oven (for extra hardness), drilled into with a corkscrew (not often with parental guidance), thread with a piece of knotted string, and then used to belt the living daylights out of a similarly-treated conker belonging to a chum (or more fun – an enemy). Such is the pleasure involved in a good old conker fight that we expect the pursuit will be banned by the UK government at some future juncture.
In the meantime, S&T is delighted to report that the picturesque Northamptonshire village of Ashton in England plays host to the World Conker Championships on the second Sunday in October every year. According to the event’s official website: “Thousands flock to Ashton to watch this great spectacle as modern day gladiators fight for glory armed only with a nut and 12” of string.”
Organised by Ashton Conker Club, the competition first took place in 1965 and has grown year-on-year ever since. Nowadays, teams from all over the world take part. The competitors play on 10 white podiums on the village green and go through rounds until the winner emerges and is led to the ‘Conker Throne’ and crowned with conkers. By the time you read this month’s missive, the new Men’s, Women’s and Junior World Conker Champions will all have been presented with their Horse-Chestnutty-headpieces. Bliss!
S&T is extremely envious and intends to pay the event a visit next year, and also to check out some of the stalls in the accompanying festival which raises money for the blind and the visually impaired. (Which if S&T was feeling cruel, could be akined to the World Paragliding Championships raising money for people with vertigo. But luckily we aren’t feeling cruel).
According to S&T’s favourite font of miscellany, Wikipedia, the name ‘Conker’ derives from the nineteenth-century dialectal word conker meaning snail-shell (related to French ‘conque’ meaning a conch), because the game was originally played using snail shells. (Empty we hope). The name may also be influenced by the verb ‘conquer’, as the game was also once called Conquerors. Conkers are apparently known as ‘obblyonkers’ or ‘cheggies’ within parts of the UK. Oh my lord, S&T is going into raptures just thinking about them!
The S&T Michael Palin Story However, it isn’t all glossy and gorgeous caramel-coloured nutty japery you know. Even the sport of conkers, we’re sad to report, has a dark side. Wikipedia says that altering conkers to gain competitive advantage is – gasp – a form of cheating. Indeed, ex-Monty Python stalwart Michael Palin was disqualified from the 1993 World Conker Championships for both baking his conker and soaking it in vinegar. Well, quite frankly S&T is glad that he took his conkers so seriously. We kept our best conker in the airing cupboard for a year once (circa 1980) to toughen the beauty up and then took out Owen ‘Eggy’ Hirst’s equivalent prized specimen with a single blow. Oh happy days!
Talking of Michael Palin, S&T now finally has the opportunity to reveal our ‘Michael Palin Story’ (MPS). Apparently, one is not a true Londoner unless one has an MPS (not to be confused with a VPL or an ASBO). In fact, Michael Palin was sitting at the next table in the first restaurant S&T ever had lunch in when we moved to London in 1993, the same year as his World Conker Championships ‘disgrace’. But that’s not our main MPS, that’s just a subsidiary one. A wee taster if you will.
Actually, our proper MPS is much more dramatic. Just to set the scene, we should tell you that S&T often sees fellow runner Michael Palin trotting through a park near ArkSports Towers of a morning (the name of which we won’t mention in case the poor man gets harassed. By someone other than us. We also see Bill Oddie from The Goodies birdwatching up there as well but he doesn’t like us very much. Despite our hairdresser going to school with his daughter. Not that he knows that.)
Anyway, back to our Ripping Yarn. Two years ago, S&T was running through the aforementioned park in a carefree manner, being overtaken by old age pensioners, bag-pipe players and the like, when we exchanged our usual “Good Morning”-type greeting with Michael Palin. Nothing unusual there. The next evening, S&T went to a Royal Television Society event where Michael Palin (same one) was interviewing the legendary broadcaster and naturalist (not naturist, as he was fully-clothed), Sir David Attenborough, about his life filming gorillas and that sort of thing. (We bet he’s good at conkers with all that access to Arboretums and jungles etc).
Skip forward to the next evening (albeit a different time-zone), after a particularly sumptuous First Class flight with Thai Airlines (courtesy of the Asia Sports Summit where S&T was speaking), and we decant wobbly-legged to Bangkok airport to look for our personal chauffeur. Lo and behold if we didn’t pinch ourselves several times and exclaim “Golly gosh” out loud, but whose name should be held up next to ours on a piece of card – but Michael Palin’s! We kid you not. Unfortunately we were whisked off to stay in the most divine hotel S&T has ever had the pleasure of staying in (no wonder the Asia Sports Summit was a one-off), so we were unable to see if our fellow traveller was the same Michael Palin, but bearing in mind it is a pretty unusual name (or might be; we have no data to back that up whatsoever), then we expect it was him. Spooky indeed. So that’s our MPS. A triumvirate of happenstance! Please feel free to write in with your own ones. (But we doubt they’ll be as good!) Letter from a reader! Last month, we indirectly mentioned Michael Palin by explaining that the term ‘spam’ derives from one of Monty Python’s hilarious sketches (or is hilarious until your mates down the pub re-enact it for the 12,000th time and mix it up with the Dead Parrot sketch).
S&T sensationally invented the term ‘splogging’ ™ – to refer to the contents of this column, and had a general vent about how we don’t like people sending us jokes by e-mail. One of your dear readers felt strongly enough about the matter of unfunny funnies to write into us with the following: “I thoroughly enjoyed your rant on blogging, spam and the curse of forwarded 'jokes',” he said “There is nothing worse than the latter. I delete immediately without reading. Generally utter garbage etc. One person's humour is another's Jim Davidson!”
Now there’s a name you don’t hear very often anymore. Particularly in the same breath as Michael Palin. S&T remembers seeing controversial and tabloid-favourite British ‘comedian’ Jim Davidson in pantomime at the Bristol Hippodrome circa 1978 alongside The Krankies and decided to see what Wikipedia had to say about him. (Is it possible to ‘Wikipediate’ someone instead of googling them?) Apparently, not only did Davidson pre-empt the International Cricket Council by moving to Dubai just before them, but he has sadly since been declared bankrupt, on the grounds that he couldn’t afford his £2.2m mortgage. ICC beware! There must be a gag in there somewhere. (Actually, there isn’t. Say our lawyers, Clintons Solicitors). BCFC OK! Finally, before we try and recreate our Thai Airline experience on an Easyjet flight from London to Nice for SportelMonaco, (with a bag of crisps and a tepid sparkling water via Morecambe to watch Exeter City away), S&T would like to update you all on the progress of Sport and Technology-sponsored soccer team Bromley Common Football Club. The team’s opening match of the season at the end of September unfortunately ended in a 4,1 defeat for our Orpington and Bromley District Sunday League side, but did involve some action in the higher echelons of the English Football League. This is because at one point the ball was kicked over a hedge and had to be retrieved by S&T from the Crystal Palace FC training ground which was alongside. It’s a very glamorous life being a sponsor you know! In fact, S&T is now the new Chairperson for BCFC as well, so next we’ll be ordering a private jet and properly larging it up with all the soccer greats at Soccerex in Dubai next month. No more Easyjet for us!
On that salubrious aviation-themed note, see you shortly at the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco and don’t forget that we are hosting a panel discussion on the morning of Wednesday 18 October, entitled ‘Opportunities in Digital Gaming’ – that’s if our panel manage to avoid getting arrested by the French police of course, because, like the US authorities, they are, ahem, not big on loving the online gambling industry at the moment if you catch our drift. Meanwhile, life goes on in fluttersville, and despite a week of tumbling coffers for many of the large online bookmakers, S&T enjoyed a very pleasant day out at the 888.com UK Open of Poker, where we are pleased to report, they could still afford to supply some very delicious sarnies in the green room.
If you can’t make Sportel (because you can no longer pay for the flight or you get arrested at Nice airport), fret not dear readers, as it’s not too late to join the secret-handshaked Sport and Technology Executive Club (www.sportandtechnologyexecutiveclub.com) and then join us on Thursday 26 October for a breakfast seminar hosted by Clintons on sports data rights (they give good bagel), and then later at an evening soiree hosted by Addleshaw Goddard, both in central London. At ArkSports Towers, we are declaring the 26th October, National STEC Day! Don’t miss out and join today. And bring your own conkers. Rachael Church
Editor - Sport and Technology
Chairperson - Bromley Common Football Club Do you have a Michael Palin Story or is Bill Oddie more your bag? If you have any comments or feedback on this article or any of the features in S&T, we would be delighted to hear from you. Please e-mail your comments to editor@sportandtechnology.com. Or watch television instead. S&T is currently enjoying the return of Robson Green in Wire in the Blood; you know, that chap who used to be in singing duet Robson and Jerome. Whatever happened to Jerome?
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