THE END: Ah well, that’s that all over with for another four years. This blog probably won’t be here by the time the next one comes along. I hope you’ve enjoyed this post. Good luck to the lucky git who won the sweepstake at work.

Normal programming will resume shortly, and thankfully, normal programming on TV will resume also. Except that Top Gear is very, very late.

Full time, for real this time: YAY WELL DONE SPAIN. Now get Top Gear on.

26:00: Goooooooooooooooal to Span. Iniesta. Forever. Booked for taking his shirt off. Tee hee.

Half Extra time Looks like it’s gonna be penners…

100:46 One of the guys in the blue football suits almost scored. But didn’t.

92:48 Some of the LED advertising hoardings have white dots where there shouldn’t be white dots. The sound also died temporarily on the Beeb.

90:00 Kick off. Again. Top gear delay inevitable. Sigh.

Full Time: Well, this is the 2nd World Cup final to finish 0-0. The other was in 1994.

86:59: Please don’t say this is going to delay Top Gear…

78:16: Can see this going to extra time. Oh…. joy.

69:15: Oooooh, unlucky Spain

66:13: Yet another yellow card. Currently, I’m eating some roast beef slices which have been in the fridge since the beginning of time. They appear to have the same taste as the plastic they’re wrapped in. Larvely.

62:45: “There is something brewing in this world cup final”…. Yeah, sorry, that’ll be last night’s madras…

45:00: Why does everyone keep missing that bloody octopus? He’s been lucky. Seven times.

Half Time: Well, that was predicably dull. It says something when you’d rather prick about deleting spam than watching the match.

39:56 I’ve just noticed that the light and dark stripes on the pitch line up exactly with the markings. I wonder if they’re used to help calculate the “distance from goal” captions when there’sa free kick? Tsk. I remember when they were purely decorative.

35:00 Well, there wasn’t a goal. Maybe it only workds if I leave the keyboard to go to the toilet?

32:10 I’m going to put some stuff in the bin out of the back. There will be a goal.

27:18: They’re still kicking a ball around. On 9th July, someone searched for “juicey n wet pussys” on this site. One of the orange guys just did a karate kick to the chest of one of the blue guys. Best moment so far.

23:20: I’ve turned my intentions to clearing some of the spam entries out of the stats database, as it’s absolutely huge at the moment, and it could do with a bit of a clean up. this may, or may not slow the site down to a crawl.

16:06: Two yellow cards already. Dirty match.

10:45: Every time I hear “Iniesta”, I always have to add, “For ever, come on and sing my song…. ALLL NIIIGHT LONG”.

07:30: Wow, look at all of those cameras behind the net!

05:22: Ah, the blue ones must be Spain. I do like BBC’s colour coded scoreboard.

04:27: Oooooh, them in the blue nearly scored.

03:45: I’ve just spammed Glen’s forum with a link to this page. I’m such a naughty boy, but hello if you’re reading from there anyway.

01:08: A free kick already. I have a feeling this match is going to be incredibly dull

Kick off: They’ve kicked off.

Random Thought: 4 years ago, I was on my first laptop, typing my thoughts into Glen’s forum because this site used Blogger, and I couldn’t update it in realtime. That laptop had no wireless built in. I believe I was connected via a 15-metre ethernet cable trailling all of the way upstairs. How times and technology have changed. I’m watching this footy in HD. I also dreamt that a pop group I’ve never heard of were firing fireworks at me and Gregg (who I’ve not seen for years, by the way), as we walked up Horseley Place. That dream was about as pointless as this match is going to be.

National Anthems: Bollocks to this, I’muted the telly, and am playing the video below and singing along. It’s awesome. Tinny laptop speakers don’t do it justice.

They’re walking on the pitch: I LOVE this music, it’s called “Fifa Anthem”, don’t you know.

Buildup 3: Jesus, what time is kick off? I’m sick of listening to ex-footballers rabbiting on about tactics and “dragging people out of the box”. Apparently, the Germans are marked. I hope they had a shower before they go on the pitch. Oh, it’s so warm in here. I’m going upstairs for a wash.

Buildup 2: You know, I didn’t even know who was playing? I just added a “uaregay” tag, which was supposed to be a parody of “Uruguay”. It’s Spain v Netherlands. Wow. I just realised how much I really don’t care! Did I mention I’m not drinking any beer for this? I only got up at 6PM. More BBC footage I’m afraid. I can’t hear Jonathan Thingy’s voice without thinking “Robot Wars”.

Buildup 1: Right, I wish they’d just get on with it. BBC are currently just showing endless video footage. Oddly, the match is also on ITV. Following ITV’s track record of abysmal coverage (see England’s goal missed), I won’t be touching them with a bargepole. I can’t remember if the last world cup final had coverage on two channels. I’ll probably switch over if BBC have Mick “Vuvuzela” McCarthy doing the commentrary.

Sad news. Ray Alan (appearently not Ray Allen, which is how I always thought it was spelt), mildly amusing 80s ventriloquist act has died.

Lord Charles is speechless…

23:15 “We’ve only got one vote in, and it’s fascinating”… my word, I don’t know how Adam Boulton will be able to console himself when the results start flooding in….

23:09 My fortune cookie… “The hardest task in life is not getting ahead of others, but to surpass yourself”… where’s the forune in that?

22:55 BBC’s first use of the swingometer!

22:52 Houghton + Sunderland South votes are in, Labour win, predictably. Sky news’s coverage is about a minute behind the BBC.

22:50 Chinese arrived after 12 minutes after I ordered it. Incredible! Can’t have been busy. That means beer is off the menu for the next few hours. Exit polls are in, giving Conservative the win. The numbers are complete bollocks though.

21:55Chinese ordered, and there’s only 3 minutes to vote.

21:48I think I’ll order a chinese.

21:33 With 28 minutes to go, do you recknon that Sky will have a great big countdown clock projected on the side of HoP or Battersea?

21:28 Well who said that the news wasn’t educational? I’ve just leared that all of the country’s weather forecasts come from Exeter.

21:20 Just saw an advert for “port Isaac’s Fisherman’s Friends”. An album sung by a group of fisherman. Has someone been watching the Simpsons and actually thought it would be a good idea to rip off The Sea Captain’s album? Sky news are still showing empty gyms and tennis courts…

21:07 Jesus. this has been on 7 minutes and I’m already wanting to punch the monitor. Kay whatshername standing on a podium saying “I declare Sky News to be the first HD election broadcast”, or words to that effect. They’re projecting the Sky News HD logo now on the side of the houses of parliament. Whatever next?

21:03 Sky are showing shots of an empty gymnsaium in Witney. I don’t even think high definition can sex that up.

21:00 Well, that was good timing. Sky’s coverage starts off with Big Ben. Already they’re whoring their HD coverage. Whoopee.

20:59 A truly heart-stopping moment, as I lose internet connectivity for 3 minutes. I thought my plans were scuppered. Thankfully, a router reboot fixed it. Sky News doesn’t have any coverage either yet. You know, I’m thinking I started this a bit too early.

20:53 BBC News doesn’t have any election shite on it yet. Instead there’s Charlie Higson talking about a book. Or something.

20:50 Well, I’ve not even mentioned the E word yet, and it’s almost two hours since I started this post. In that time, I’ve had no beer, spending most of the time trying to find a hard drive that went missing months ago.

Oooh, during my typing I’ve had my first comment!

c64glen: I’m here… Don’t think anything well happen until the first results start coming in at 11.

No neither do I, but I’m going to be here just in case! I’m upstars without a telly, so I’ll have to rely on interwebs streaming for news, for now.

19:44 Seeing as there’s nothing happening yet, I’m browsing the web whilst listening to Boney M. Found this…

19:18 Well, the time has arrived, and although I’m 18 minutes late, I’m still determined to sit through as much of this shite as humanly possible. Tonight’s telly shall be a night of unprecedented dullness, dodgy camera work and misinformation as the three major parties battle it out to see who can fuck up the country more than ever before.

Nothing’s on telly about it yet, as the polling stations haven’t closed, but you’d better believe I’ve got some beers in the fridge waiting for it all to kick off.

Just click play.

It’s called ‘The Golden Age of Video’ by Ricardo Autobahn. It’s a copyright minefield, so I’m surprised it’s not been deleted yet. I’m so glad it hasn’t.

I got out of bed at 5:50 just to play it because I woke up with it going around my head. Anything that has Short Circuit, Rainbow, The Fast Show, Anchorman, Naked Gun, South Park, and Family Guy in the same video, with a recurring chorus featuring Ghostbusters and Freaks MUST be good… and this is brilliant.

EDIT: fixed formatting.

I’ve finally found something which I haven’t seen in at least 10 years. The Richard Whitely / Countdown “Gotcha”.

For those of you unfamiliar with the “Gotcha”, it was a section of the Saturday night twatfest known simply as “Noel’s House Party”, where Noel Edmonds would play pranks on unsuspecting celebrities, with often un-hilarious consequences. You may remember this section of the show also brought us the pink and yellow spawn of Satan himself known as Mr. Blobby.

Thankfully, there was one good episode. The world, his dog and its fleas know that I am a lifelong fan of Countdown, and I remember howling with laughter at this particular wind-up. I recorded part of it, when it was originally aired, but since then, the tape got damaged and I haven’t seen it since.

Obviously, they couldn’t show the full programme on Noel’s House Party – instead they cut it down to about 5 minutes.

Whilst clicking around on youtube, I found it. But wait, there’s more! It’s the *entire* episode of Countdown! Roughly 50 minutes worth of footage, including “mistakes” which weren’t shown in the NHP broadcast – especially Richard’s “You do know you’re talking a load of bollocks, don’t you?” outburst. There is also (finally) the explnation why there were two new contestants.

Here are the links to the videos. Watch them while they’re hot, or before someone at Google HQ presses the big ‘delete’ button on them…

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

It’s a billionth generation VHS rip, but you don’t need good quality video to appreciate this.