Lukas Gamble

Sunday night.  Just settling down for an early night in front of the telly.  So, how come that four hours later I’m in a pub in Laugharne, rubbing shoulders with Keith Allen, Howard Marks and Rhys Ifans?

I had a call from a good friend on Sunday, around 5.30.  He had a spare ticket for a screenplay reading of Twin Town, by the original cast, to be held in the village hall in Laugharne.  It was the final performance of a literary festival held over the weekend.  I had known about this months ago, but had completely forgotten about it.  I had been meaning to buy a ticket, but now one had just dropped in my lap.

So, we meandered down to Laugharne, only to bump into Rhys Ifans, as he swaggered, ungainly, into a fish & chip shop, looking like he might have started the Twin Town reunion celebrations early (or is that just the way he walks?).

The venue was tiny.  About 150-200 of us crammed into the village hall to see the whole cast, minus one or two, sat in a line accross the stage.  Kevin Allen (brother of Keith), the writer of the screenplay, narrated, whilst the actors ran through the entire film script.  It was all quite surreal, but the results were hilarious.  Admittedly, I hadn’t seen the film since it was released, ten years ago, but as the actors ‘performed’, I remembered every word.

“Here’s twenty quid. Buy yourselves a big can of sticky-sticky, and fuck off back to Noddyland.”

At the end, one of the organisers stood up on stage, thanked the small audience for coming, and invited us all back to the pub.  Stroll on! (as Hawksey would say).  It just got more surreal as we walked into the small pub to find Howard Marks sitting in the corner.

The beer flowed, we left late, and I felt sick the next morning.  Work was a bastard on the Monday.

Right foot, header, left foot.  The perfect hat-trick from Peter Crouch on his return from injury, sent Liverpool leap-frogging over their opponents into 3rd place.

3rd place, 4th place, doesn’t really matter in terms of qualifying for the Champions League, but it is an important victory none the less.  On one level, it’s purely revenge, for knocking us out of both the F.A. and Carling Cup, but more importantly, it is a mental victory that will demoralise Arsenal, and strenghten Liverpool,  moving towards the end of the season and into the next.

Now the talk is of Peter Crouch, “the saviour for England”.  It wasn’t so long ago that all the hacks thought he was an over-rated stick insect, despite the fact that, for England, he out-scores Rooney at a ratio of six to one.  With Michael Owen soon to return from the knee injury he picked up in the world cup, Rooney could find himself keeping the bench warm for the next England game.