bleungberg.com

Bleungberg is off travelling again - starting with the briefest of stops in Miami (here’s hoping Virgin Atlantic will get there on time), before a two-day jolly in Mexico City. Following that is an 18-night stay in San Jose, Costa Rica, before rounding off the trip to freezing New York. We’ve managed to pack everything into one suitcase - encompassing all seasons, and contingency plans have also been made should we take a diversion to Cuba, Panama or wherever else we fancy.

ITV’s got rid of Jim Rosenthal, despite being a fairly competent presenter and natural broadcaster, and replaced him with a former Holiday presenter, Craig Doyle.

They’ve also ditched plans to show the Euro 2008 final, citing lack of home teams and commercial reasons. That’s the same channel which will be showing the FA Cup, and England Internationals from next season. Some commitment(!)

Meanwhile, Huw Edwards - autocue reader on BBC’s Ten O’Clock News - is to fly business-class to Beijing to commentate on the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, replacing the demi-god Barry Davies, whose experience in sports broadcasting is pretty much unrivalled. In fact, Davies  - who only landed the gig at Sydney when David Coleman was slurring his words - worked rather well alongside Hazel Irvine at the last couple of Olympic opening and closing ceremonies.

At a time when the BBC is cutting costs and trying to make savings everywhere, the decision to promote Edwards ahead of Davies is baffling, not least because Edwards knows next to nothing about sports.

So whilst Davies will be working on hockey and gymnastics during the Games, Edwards has nothing to do until the Closing Ceremony two weeks later. Sure, he can present the Ten O’Clock News every now and then live on site but is it really worthwhile presenting the news at 06.00 local time? And for what purpose? They could save on satellite costs and his business-class return tickets plus 17 nights’ hotel accommodation if they just went with Davies and not Edwards. At least Davies will be working whilst Edwards will probably go walk the Great Wall of China to lose some weight.

The BBC will argue that they are merely looking forward to having Edwards at the helm for London 2012. Are they therefore assuming the Davies will be dead by then?

And whilst we’re at it - what’s wrong with Channel 4 Racing?! For the past few years, they’ve moaned about the lack of money and that broadcasting horses is financially unviable. Could someone therefore explain to me the wisdoms behind sending  a truckload of presenters to far-flung racecourses for its preview show, The Morning Line, only for another presenter to anchor the afternoon’s coverage? Couldn’t they just use the same person rather than doubling petrol costs and expenses by having two different presenters?

Jockey Kieren Fallon’s been banned by France Galop for using cocaine, and won’t see a racecourse until late-2009 at the earliest. He’ll only be 46 then - young enough to return to the top of the game. It just depends on how he copes with his time off - mentally and physically.

Sad to say though, Martina Hingis will never come back to tennis. Last autumn, the Swiss player vowed to clear her name after failing a dope test at Wimbledon last year. Now it’s emerged that she’s quietly dropped her appeal and will just serve out the ban in conjunction with her retirement from the sport. Naturally, for those of us who’s followed her career closely, it is not the most positive (excuse the pun) development and is probably her admission of guilt. Let’s hope not. Let’s hope that merely, she can’t be bothered to fight on. Somehow, with her time, energy, feistiness and wealth, that’s a highly unlikely scenario.

His $4000 haircut couldn’t do it. Nor could his southern drawl and championing of the blue-collar middle-class. A mixture of good-looks and easy charm couldn’t propel him into the top two. And rather ironically, his campaign wasn’t torpedoed by all these little whores he’s alledgedly been seeing/shagging behind his cancer-stricken wife’s back.

In the end, they just didn’t like him very much. Senator John Edwards’s second-consecutive defeat in party nomination for the presidential race means that should be the end of the road for the Bhutto-whore.

You see, Bleungberg always knew he was no good the moment he offered Pakistan his ‘heartfelt sorrow’ before Bhutto had even been taken to the mortuary. It’s this kind of cynical and insincere diplomacy which showed up the former Senator for North Carolina. Ordinary folks could see right through those good-looks, perfectly coiffeured hair and easy-charm, and find a vacuous human-being underneath. Good riddance, Bhutto-whore, and please, Hillary and Obama, don’t take him on as your running-mate: he’ll be gunning for your back for as long as you remain in the White House! In Hillary’s case, he might even want to go where Bill hasn’t been for years!

In light of Novak Djokovic’s excellent victory in the Australian Open this morning, a lot has been written in the past few days regarding a new order in the tennis world.

After three years of Grand Slam domination, some reckon that the world numbers one and two - Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal - are now on the wane because neither managed to make the final of this slam, and also how easily they were beaten in the semi-finals by Djokovic and the unseeded Frenchman, Jo-Wilfred Tsonga.

This is pure non-sense. In no way was this a ‘changing of the guard’. Rather, Djokovic’s meteoric rise means now that we have a triopoly instead of the duopoly at the top of men’s tennis. Djokovic’s been knocking on the door for the past year, and was bound to push through at some point sooner rather than later.

His record in the past four slams - semis at Wimbledon and Roland Garros, runner-up at Flushing Meadows - is a perfect indicator of what the young Serb is likely to achieve in 2008, and his breakthrough should not have surprised anybody. It’s similar to the American triumverate of Agassi-Sampras-Courier dominating men’s tennis in the middle of the 1990s. That can only be a good thing - Nadal vs Federer vs Djokovic should ensure two great matches towards the end of a Grand Slam rather than the solitary encounter between Federer and Nadal in the final, as proved by consecutive finals in Paris and Wimbledon.

And a word about Jo-Wilfred Tsonga. Good to see the French media getting potty about him. France Televsion forked out shitloads of money just to show the final, and his defeat led the evening news bulletins on the two main channels. We all saw what he was capable of when he dumped four-time winner Lleyton Hewitt out of Queen’s on the grass in London last summer - and was fantastic to see the confirmation of his talent during the past fortnight in Melbourne.

This should also serves as a wake-up call to those who were quick to criticse Andy Murray - and to an extent, fellow Frenchman Richard’s Gasquet - for their defeats by Tsonga at the Aussie Open. Both are extraordinarily talented and gifted players, and both were beaten by the better and more in-form player. They shouldn’t feel too disappointed by their performances and should take comfort from the fact that they lost to a player who just happens to be going through a purple patch.

                                      (The Sukarno and Sukharto show in 1965.)

Suharto’s dead - rejoice!

Bleungberg can’t begin to tell you how glad we are to hear of the demise of this nasty Indonesian dictator.

We don’t hate him because of what he did though it was pretty hideous: he ruthlessly clamped down on political dissent and imposed harsh economic blockades on East Timor, leading to years of mass starvation and countless deaths in the former Portuguese colony. It was something much more trivial - Suharto nearly fucked up Bleungberg’s history degree!

The reason is that Bleungberg never quite managed to remember which of Indonesia’s post-war leaders came first: Sukarno or Suharto, and therefore had to spend a considerable amount of time trying to remember which of these bastards committed crimes against humanities. Oh, hang, on - both did. See why it’s so bloody confusing?! Both were nasty, nasty human beings, with a thirst for violence, power and greed, and thank goodness they’re both now dead. Good riddance, Su-something!

I didn’t really follow Heath Ledger’s career, not have I seen any of his films from start to finish. The one I’ve ’seen’ the most is probably ‘A knight’s Tale’ simply because it’s always on TV.

Anyway, waffle waffle…the intense press and TV coverage surrounding his death really surprised me. Guess I underestimated his celebrity status.

A few things caught my eye out of this whole affair: Ledger checked into rehab for heroin addiction early last year and yet, no on knew. Secondly, the masseuse  who found his body rang Mary-Kate Olsen (the landlord) first before ringing the ambulance! Is she crazy? Apparently, realising that he’d died, she rang Olsen again! (Who’d want to live in that apartment now??).

And lastly, George Bush has been temporarily silenced by Ledger’s death; his plan to launch a prescription drug-abuse campaign has been postponed.

The character Vera Duckworth passed away in Coronation Street on Friday night, after 33 years on the screen. It nabbed 12.5m viewers for ITV.

Three weeks ago, Coronation Street - always a potent weapon in ITV’s perennial ratings battle with BBC1 on Christmas Day - had only 9.9m viewers, despite some wonderful storylines and terrific performances. EastEnders’s doom and gloom had nearly 14.5million viewers!

This begs the question why the producers of Corrie didn’t kill Vera off on Christmas Day?! It’s not as if she died a violent death - she passed away peacefully on a chair - and I’m certain that had they goe ahead with it, it would’ve given EastEnders a run for its money.

Soap operas go through cycles and right now, Corrie is in the doldrums whilst Enders is riding high. If killing off Vera could garner 13m viewers, then the producers at Granada should really have considered that on Christmas Day. Compared to the dramatic and gratuitous  ‘exits’ (ie, deaths) over Christmas and New Year in Enders, Vera’s demise would not have offended  a single soul and could easily have toppled Enders from the Christmas TV ratings.