Bigger Deal

London rocks. The welcome party for the London EPT  was on a Thames cruise boat and former EPT champion Brandon Schaefer and I were discussing the town as we passed the Tower of London. Brandon shook his head in disbelief: “I’ve been to 35 countries and this is my first time in London. What was […]

Lee McCreery of The News Of The World writes I’VE just returned from Barcelona. Turns out it’s a lovely city but this was no sightseeing holiday - I’d won a seat to the opening event of Season Four on the European Poker Tour. The prize came courtesy of PokerStars, who generously put up the $13,000 package […]

For better or worse, I wasn’t at the WSOP Europe inaugural event. If the situation for the press and media was anything like Grub Smith described, I think it’s better that I was safely ensconced here in the north. But honestly, I would have liked to have been there just to the see the smile on […]

 I grew up in a crossword solving house. Home from work, my dad like to settle down in his armchair with the Telegraph or the Times, chewing the end of his pencil as he decoded the cryptic intentions of the setter. It was a contest every evening, a battle between two formidable brains. He enjoyed […]

No main courses today – just little dishes from the past few days of the European Poker Tour and rambling the streets of Barcelona. The Parrots of Barcelona Pass this plate to Lisa, John, Claudia, Michael, and Connie – the people in my life who most love parrots. In two separate parks today, I heard a noise […]

Television around the world is desperate. You can’t switch on these days without seeing a lost-for-ideas celebrity wandering the highways and byways in search of nostalgia. And this I did a couple of weeks ago to view a fat Scottish man, Robbie Coltrane (better known as Rubeus Hagrid in the Harry Potter films), behind the […]