Nigel Kennedy in The Grauniad

[Legion]

Thanks. Watching it now. Scroll to @27.77.

[pauliewalnuts]

Loving your Britishness doesn't mean forgetting the bad things.

I'll bet you what you like Danny Boyle didn't mean that.

It's easy to say "move on" when you were the guilty party.

But for how long do you carry it on.Look at Australia they have just voted in a government that has said they will turn boats around even if they have children on board.We would never do that.I and you cannot make amends for what happened in the past. Celebrating being British or English for that matter should not be an embarrassment.

I never said it should be an embarrassment!

[Can Gana Be Bettered!?!?]

Rule Brittania now. I love being British, if countries were football clubs Britain would be Villa. The one with all the class and tradition.

Yet, ultimately, the one nobody really cares about, and have never won anything for many, many years?

Wimbledon? Olympic gold medals? Tha Ashes? Wars?

Or are you on about the Eurovision song contest?

I was thinking football.

Come on though, speak to other clubs fans and nobody really cares about us. Nobody hates us (other than the obvious). We're just there. Unless you support Villa, would you really pay any attention to us? I don't think people do.

Just my opinion.

[Ads]

Maybe if we increased our levels of self-loathing, then people would care more?

[Chris Smith]

Rule Brittania now. I love being British, if countries were football clubs Britain would be Villa. The one with all the class and tradition.

Yet, ultimately, the one nobody really cares about, and have never won anything for many, many years?

Wimbledon? Olympic gold medals? Tha Ashes? Wars?

Or are you on about the Eurovision song contest?

I was thinking football.

Come on though, speak to other clubs fans and nobody really cares about us. Nobody hates us (other than the obvious). We're just there. Unless you support Villa, would you really pay any attention to us? I don't think people do.

Just my opinion.

Just your opinion, but not one I agree with. Perhaps it's a generational thing.
Plenty of people I meet speak about the Villa. Some still puzzled about O'Neill flouncing off, some impressed with what Lambert is doing and some remembering trips to VP with their respective teams. If you allow yourself to think that the football is only about the clubs anointed by Sky then I suppose you might draw that conclusion but if you look at it from a wider perspective then I think you get a different picture.

[supertom]

I wonder if gabby ever sees this

He strikes me as a huge fan of classical music!

If you ask Gabby what classical music is, he'd tell you it's Tupac and the Fugees.

[Yossarian]

I wonder if gabby ever sees this

He strikes me as a huge fan of classical music!

If you ask Gabby what classical music is, he'd tell you it's Tupac and the Fugees.

As far as footballers go with his middle class background I expect him more likely than others.

[thick_mike]

It's easy to mock Nigel, he cuts a slightly pantomime figure when he's interviewed...but when you see him doing what he became famous for, you realise he has the chops to back it up. Just watched the Vaughn Williams a couple of times. It was beautiful.

We played his version of this at my wife's funeral, it was magical.

[Gerrin]

He points at someone in the crowd holding a Chelsea flag and does the money gesture with his fingers.

[saunders_heroes]

Hasn't gone down well over in Small Heath. They seem very angry for some reason.....

http://www.that lot.com/read.php?1,1356240,page=1

[dave.woodhall]

Hasn't gone down well over in Small Heath. They seem very angry for some reason.....

http://www.that lot.com/read.php?1,1356240,page=1

This one got it right.

If ever 1 man epitomised a club's support this is it

[Damo70]

Some very well thought out artistic appraisals there. He is a dickhead and a crap violinist. They even googled a few violinists to throw in a few examples of better ones.

"I was enjoying an evening of British pomp and have been forced to turn over and watch Keith Lemon.
Hate is not strong enough a word."

Contempt isn't strong enough a word.

[PeterWithesShin]

Anyone would think they were obsessed with us.

[OzVilla]

Loving your Britishness doesn't mean forgetting the bad things.

I'll bet you what you like Danny Boyle didn't mean that.

It's easy to say "move on" when you were the guilty party.

But for how long do you carry it on.Look at Australia they have just voted in a government that has said they will turn boats around even if they have children on board.We would never do that.

You any idea how many people are dying on these boats because they don't get safety turned around. 

Over the last few years it's certainly into the hundreds, probably thousands.

Yeah, I'm sure that's the motivation behind the policy.

It's actually a humanitarian disaster.  Paying a people smuggler in Indonesia up to $20k to get onboard a leaky fishing boat that could barely get across the English Channel on a calm day in the hope of either finding Christmas Island (that's the tiny dot on the map in the Indian Ocean) or sink and pray to God that the Australian Navy can get there quick enough to rescue you.  Only it can take the Navy many hours to locate where the boat is/was and often they just find driftwood and some bodies. 

All this while the Indonesian Government looks on refusing to lift a finger.

That's the sad reality and the reason why both Labour and Liberal have some fairly hard core policies to try and counteract this (Labour's deterrent being you go straight to a camp PNG and be re-settled there and have no chance of ever setting foot in Australia if you arrive on a boat - Liberals being they'll patrol the Indian Ocean further north, intercept them and where safe tow them back to Indonesia).   That's how bad the situation and loss of life has become.

Not that i'd expect you to know any of that, why would you.

[Monty]

Just your opinion, but not one I agree with. Perhaps it's a generational thing.
Plenty of people I meet speak about the Villa. Some still puzzled about O'Neill flouncing off, some impressed with what Lambert is doing and some remembering trips to VP with their respective teams. If you allow yourself to think that the football is only about the clubs anointed by Sky then I suppose you might draw that conclusion but if you look at it from a wider perspective then I think you get a different picture.

There is a generational split, I think. I went to the Falkirk-Dunfermline game a couple of weeks ago, and a few older guys talked to me about the Villa pretty much non-stop throughout the game - and they weren't fans, they were just talking about the Villa like neutrals talk about any huge club. However, a couple of the closer-to-adolescents laughed as if I was a 90 year old who still thought 'wicked' was relevant slang.

I think there are two areas of neutral fans who like us, and they're quite far apart: older guys who think of us as the embodiment of footballing tradition; and the football hipsters who read the Guardian and worship Barney Ronay - and they like Lambert and that we're playing psychotically entertaining football with our super-race of toddlers.