NEXT LITERALLY SHOW: 7:30pm TONIGHT! WEDNESDAY 28TH JULY - THE POLISH CLUB, ST PAUL’S ROAD, CLIFTON, BRISTOL. FREE/£5 SUGGESTED DONATION TO WATERAID. BOOK HERE! COME!

Dear (Mr/Miss/Mrs) Riley/Reilly,

I wonder if you could help me: I would like to live the life of Riley/Reilly. Literally.

My name is Paul, and I’m a writer and comedian, (in a sort of Dave Gorman vein), and am currently doing lots of things literally to reclaim the word “literally”. I am currently doing a (well-reviewed) stand-up comedy show, and writing a “Literally” book due to come out in mid-2011.  I literally teach an old dog new tricks, literally bite off more than I can chew, go to Hell and back, literally lose my marbles, etc. In October I plan to literally keep up with the Joneses. This project all started when I literally cycled from A to B. It was after travelling from A to B that I realised how crucial the L-word was, and how eroded my efforts were by the constant misuse of “literally”.

So what I would like to do, is to live the life of someone named Riley/Reilly for a day or two. Ideally this would include doing your chores, doing some aspect of your job, spending time with your mates/family/spouse, playing in any sports team, etc.

That’s a pretty big ask admittedly, but I’m just trying to find one Riley/Reilly with whom I can spend some interesting time whether it be a Radio5live presenter, cartoonist, or Countdown numbers person, or everyday Joe (Riley/Reilly).  As long as it has nothing to do with the BBC sitcom The Life of Riley which is so bad it bring tears to the eyes.

I am not a nutter. I am quite a lovely man, “wonderfully affable” even, according to Three Weeks, or “amiable” according to The Scotsman. If I need to persuade further, I’d like to offer anyone called Riley/Reilly two free tickets to any of my Literally shows until I have literally lived the life of Riley/Reilly. If any Riley/Reilly is reading this before Wednesday (28th) night - please do come to my next show - THE POLISH CLUB, ST PAUL’S ROAD, CLIFTON, BRISTOL. FREE/£5 SUGGESTED DONATION TO WATERAID. BOOK HERE! (though you don’t really have to book - as I’ll be taking the £5 off you at the door.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

Many thanks,

Paul

parryphernalia@btinternet.com

I’m still not sure how I found out about Ignite. I think someone sent me something on Twitter, but I don’t remember who what or when. But it is brilliant, and I’m so glad I discovered it and got involved. Ignite is a worldwide phenomenon with groups in cities all over the world and is very similar, and easier to say than Pecha Kucha. Ignite is doing short presentations of 20 slides which switch every 15 seconds. So each person gives a 5 minute presentation. Easy. there are hundreds of wonderfully diverse Ignite talks on subjects as diverse as How to do an Autopsy on a Whale, to sketch comedy, and now: to the word Literally.

So at Ignite Bristol #2, there was a very diverse group of talkers. I am now much more aware about toxins (phthalates) in sex toys, tobacco farming in Zambia, Bayesian Logic and how to do cryptic crosswords. The great thing about the talks is that they will all be online very shortly. So I can actually watch my 5 minutes on Literally, including the slides going wrong on Ignite’s Mac… and me getting slightly annoyed. But doing OK in the end. Bring on Ignite #3.

Fabio Capello came out this week and in amongst various other excuses blamed the new Adidas Jabulani ball for the lack of goals from England players. This seems a terrible flawed argument - it is so very easy to argue that all the teams are playing with the same ball (which England goalkeeper David James has suggested himself).  Most other major teams are managing to score, unlike England, particularly in the almost unwatchably execrable game against Algeria on Friday night.  Germany said they had been practising with the ball for 6 months, and they won 4-0.

At the World Cup, all the players will have been playing with a pretty much identical ball for most of their life. Passing, shooting heading, the same football for all that time, hours each day each week each month each year for as many as ten, fifteen, or twenty years. With the same ball. Millions of touches, tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions. With a normal ball, not the magical new Jabulani ball.

Imagine you are lining up to kick a ball from the corner of the penalty area. It’s easy enough to side-foot it into the goal from there. However, once you imagine a keeper is occupying the middle of the goal, you have to now aim the ball at the edges of the goal to increase the chances of actually scoring. Now explain to someone with no idea of football (perhaps an American) how to score that goal, past a keeper. It’s almost impossible. The nuances of how to stroke the ball are so subtle -  to get it towards the goal at a sensible pace, fast enough to out-pace the keeper, not so hard it soars over the goal, still not compromising the direction of the shot, or curling the ball away from the goal or back towards the keeper, it’s horribly difficult.

One of the great things about football is that it’s open to anyone on earth. All you need is a ball. And only one ball allows 22 people to play the game. And that’s brilliant. Sadly this simplicity always seems to be the excuse FIFA hide behind in consistently ruling out technology in the elite game with goal-line cameras, etc. So the one bit of kit - is the ball. And FIFA have meddled with that one bit of kit in making a new super-aerodynamic super-sleek super-round ball.

Imagine the pure unadulterated joy, making it to the world cup finals, tens and tens of millions of kicks learning all those subtle nuances of how to control a ball, only for some twat to issue with a new curious shaped ball. With different aerodynamic properties, it’s obviously going to fly differently, and until strikers get used to them (if they do manage to learn how to coax it goalwards during the maximum 8 matches they have) we’d probably do better trying to dribble the ball into the back of the net.

For once, genuinely this one time ever, I’m going to side with the footballers. They have a point*.

*(as do Algeria now, thanks to our performance).

My brother and I are running a marathon in 157 days time. Just over 5 months. Not just any marathon, but the hardest road marathon in the UK - the Snowdonia marathon.

The course map looks rather pleasant - a scenic lap of Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa to the locals). But Snowdon is the highest mountain of wales, and unlike Fuji, it’s not a lone mountain, so the whole course is up and down the surrounding mountains. It’s when you look at the helpfully provided profile that a little bit of wee comes out, and we wonder how ill-prepared I am thus far, and how much I need to train between now and then. I have run 3 marathons before, none since 2004, and they have all been a triumph of will on the day, rather than a predictably-executed run after a well-prepared training schedule. Looking at the massive uphill for miles 21 to 24, it’s going to take some proper training from now, as well as some serious mental strength on the day.

Last year’s winner managed it in 2 hours 36, and the last finisher exactly five hours later in 7 hours 36. I am aiming to split their times, and finish my fastest ever marathon, hitting 5 hours. So far it seems possible if implausible.

Possible because: 1) I live in Bristol, and it’s bloody full of hills. So if I run anywhere here pretty much - it’s hill training. 2) I have an iPod now - which makes marathon distance training much more interesting than a long cassette/Minidisc. 3) I enjoy doing painfully difficult things. 4) My brother is doing it, and he’s a runner’s build, and if he beats me by miles it will be annoying to have to kill him. (maybe I’ll just switch our numbers at the start. that could work).

Those previous marathons:

• Mid-Atlantic Marathon, June 2004 - WINNER - 5 hours 10 minutes. A peculiar affair, which I only considered after running a half marathon around the decks of the QM2 the day before (not ideal training). It seemed like a good idea at the time, and I was keen on keeping fit, whilst not pedalling, as I took the QM2 from Southampton to New York to continue on my way from A to B. I was joined for the last few laps by various other passengers who had seen me on QM2TV. Marvellous. It later turned out I had run over 28 miles, due to a rounded-down lap marker claiming that 3 laps was only 1.1 mile. Admittedly I may have only won because I was the only starter of this race, and the only person to have definitely run a mid-atlantic marathon.
• London Marathon 2003 - 5 hours 20 minutes. My first marathon.
• London Marathon 2004 - 6 hours 15 seconds. Am not sure how this happened. I took it easy as I was heading off from A to B on the bike a couple of weeks later. It was horrible. I sprinted the last mile to make sure I got in under 6 hours, but somehow failed.