bleungberg.com

So, ITV have appointed Adam Crozier as its new chief executive, as it seeks to find a way to make money after years of mismanagement and the advertising downturn.

For us, Crozier’s appointment is an absolute shocker, and one which can only be financially-motivated. Under Crozier’s leadership, the Football Association became a cashcow and made tonnes of money through the sports rights markets spiralled out of control - inflated, ironically, by the ill-fated ITV Sport Channel’s desire to compete with Sky Sports and the BBC.

The Scot was also instrumental in appointing Sven Goran Eriksson as the England coach which was ultimately a very costly failure for both the FA and Crozier’s successor, the much-ridiculed Brian Barwick (see the Bleungberg archive for our hatred for him).

Most damaging of all, is that Crozier also left behind a legacy of poor morale at the FA, and is instrumental in turning the once much-respected organisation into a laughing stock and an administrative mess that it is today.

That’s not all though!

Crozier fared even worse at the Royal Mail.

Yes, he balanced the books somewhat by cutting costs, but failed largely in wholesale reform (he constantly faced stiff opposition from the unions who called numerous strikes), lost some notable contracts (TV licensing, for example), and never managed to sort out the massive pension blackhole. Meanwhile, morale hit rock-bottom, whilst customers had nothing but complaints for Royal Mail.

All the while, he picked up huge pay cheques and even performance-related BONUSES!

At ITV, he’ll face even tougher challenges - and its pension deficit is massive.

So ITV board, you only care about your shareholders and about making a profit. You clearly don’t give a flying fuck about the viewers, and even less for your long-suffering employees. Job cuts will follow. GMTV will fold, which is no bad thing but that’s besides the point. Regional news will never be produced in-house again, and there’ll even more money-spinners like X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent-related shows, stifling creativity and budgets alike.

In the short-run, ITV may succeed. But longer term, it’s doomed to fail.

They should consider firing him NOW.

Marat Safin & Amelie Mauresmo: two champions who lit up Bleungberg’s living room for best part of a decade…often at some ungodly hours during various Australian or US Opens. Physically, they were great to watch. But 90% of the time, it was to see whether they could cope mentally, and more often than not, Mauresmo would crumble whilst Safin raged against anything in his sight.

But when they were on song, they were always entertaining - and memorable.

2006 Australian Open, Wimbledon winner

2000 US Open champion

2005 Australian Open champion

Two wealthy power-hungry presidents, with a combined age of nearly over 150, both with a penchant for hair-dye/plugs and cosmetic surgeries, controlling newspapers, television, using football as a diplomatic tool, are the best of chums, and are probably most upset that they are separated by the Mediterranean.

So, which one do you hate more?

Hosni, or Silvy?

Whilst watching Fernando Verdasco at the Australian Open the other day, Bleungberg was slightly disturbed by the rituals the Spaniard went through: both pre-match and in between games: towelling, ball-bouncing, and most disturbing of all: the neat rearrangment of his water bottles in between games by his seat.

All of these first surfaced during last autumn’s Paris Masters event, and have continued ever since.

We wonder if he’ll actually win something significant this year….none of these rituals seem to have done his compatriot and the equally-superstitous Rafa Nadal any good during the last 12 months!

RIP Bill McLaren - pioneering broadcaster who was not just great on TV, but was absolutely brilliant on radio. Bleungberg chatted to Mr McLaren once and mentioned how enjoyable his radio commentary was during the 1999 Rugby World Cup.

We’d often wondered what would have happened had he stuck around for the 2003 World Cup, won famously by England and that drop-goal….damn the BBC executive for forcing McLaren into ‘early’ retirement…

RIP Maggie Jones aka Blanche Hunt - far and away Coronation Street’s best character.

Bleungberg arrived here a fortnight ago, and will remain here indefinitely. We’ve rented an office, and at the moment, Cairo is rather ‘nice’ – warm during the day, cold at night and very chilly indoors all day. And no sign of cockroaches (or geckoes) yet – thankfully – but they WILL come. (By the way, cats are really scrawny here, and plenty of dead ones around on the streets, too.)

Anyway, this is our first time in Cairo, and we decided to move here upon others’ recommendations, our own intuition and past experiences in the Middle East, and the prospect of getting some random jobs/challenges/studies. So far, it’s been fine, and Cairo is totally unique – it feels like a city on the brink, and looks like one giant mess; a catastrophe on an epic scale. When we saw the TV pictures from Haiti last week, we looked out of my window and thought, “it looks the same!”…Cairo’s like a bombsite. For us, the most comparable place to Cairo that we’ve visited is Seoul: both are massive, very cheap, grey, horribly polluted, immensely dirty, with unbelievable traffic jams and really confusing to walk around. An associate of ours here argues that at least the Nile makes Cairo pretty. We retorted that one can only see the filthy Nile if you live by the river, and not anywhere else! However, none of these has come as a surprise, so there’s no culture shock or anything as yet. These are also the reasons why we’ve chosen to live near the city centre instead of the nicer, plusher feel of the suburbs miles out (where the air is definitely cleaner), as downtown is where all the action is, however hideous they might be. One thing we weren’t expecting though is seeing 90-95% of the women wearing a hijab or a niqab (just the eyes, and sometimes, just the glasses!); we were expecting 65-70% at most. Anyway, like 20 million others here, we are doing our best to cope admirably in the presence of merciless drivers, occasional power/water-cuts, lack of pavements and some of the worst food ever in the world.

Yes, unlike Seoul – where the food is superb – Cairo’s is beyond shit. we thought Havana (food shortage and ration books!) was bad but Cairo is seriously taking the piss. It’s easily the worst place that we’d ever been to for food. Now, some of you would have followed our travel entries over the years, and we can guarantee you that McDonald’s and Asian food do not figure prominently – if at all – on our itinerary even in the Third World. That’s because no matter how unpromising a place looks, there’re always a few tasty dishes to keep Bleungberg going. We once spent 21 days in lamb-loving Iran, and loved the food there by completely avoiding all lamb-related dishes. Likewise, Turkey – rubbish seafood, but nice veggie bean stews and gorgeous chicken dishes to neutralise the evil lamb kebabs. Six weeks in Central America – rice and peas (gallo pinto) everyday…mmm…loved it. And so, it is with great sadness to report that our first-ever meal in Cairo was spent….at McDonald’s (which was very nice, by the way). As was the third (less so). The fifth came at a Chinese restaurant called ‘Le Peking’, followed by a Japanese meal. So, you get the general picture here. For sure, we’ve found a few nice local specialties (koshory, stuffed pigeons, chicken kebabs, molokhiya) but on the whole, Cairo’s a cruel place. And we can’t even begin to tell you how horrible those Chinese and Japanese meals were. Texas in 1990 and Havana in 2008 were, until last week, the nadirs of Bleungberg lifelong experience of Chinese food (yes, we here at Bleungberg bear ‘food’ grudges). But ‘Le Peking’ has now beaten the disgusting ‘Tres Dragones’ in Havana’s Chinatown into last place. At ‘Le Peking’, the lowest point came when the Egyptian waiter(s) ‘lectured’ us on the sauces available: soya, chilli and sweet & sour. Sweet & sour?! There’s no such thing called sweet & sour as a dipping sauce! We were mildly outraged/bemused, but was later seething when we took a bite out of the single worst piece of tofu we’d ever, ever had in my life. It was powdered tofu!! POWDERED!? At a Chinese restaurant?! Yuk. As for the Japanese, we badly needed pork only for the Japanese owner to tell us that swine flu killed off their pork supply six months ago. So, unagi (Japanese grilled eel) it was, and we can guarantee you that we’ll probably never ever have another fillet of unagi that was as tough and as salty as this ever again. To sum up, these meals were so bad that we wouldn’t even feed them to a cockroach.

OK. Food-rant over. we had fish and chips at a pub tonight, so we’re happy. There are also fresh fruits everywhere, which is fantastic. But, thank goodness our office has a kitchen. However, that’s all for now. we love Cairo, really – grocery shopping trips at 3am have never been more fun, as is crossing the road. Just not so sure about the people here yet…..
The words ‘ulterior’ and ‘motives’ spring to mind.

Bleungberg’s moving….