There are some pubs in Llanelli that I wouldn't even walk past, but then that's probably true of any large town with a drug problem...
The drug problem must be a more recent thing? This guy used to tell us great stories about his weekends back home in Llanelli; he made it sound like The Wild West, always very funny, and he always seemed to end up getting punched by a rugby player. He's now a respectable middle aged chap apparently.
I will never forget Haverford West ! I signed off a salvage ship in Fishguard one rainy Sunday in in early 1972 and got on a train to go home to Southampton. However the train i got on stopped in Haverford West and i was told that was it until Monday morning ! I was only a kid and i had about one new 50p bit on me ( as we were just changing over to decimal currency ) and nobody would accept it ! A very kind lady on the station heard my plight and offered to put me up for the night and i gratefully took her up on it - her husband and kids were shocked when she came home with this skinny bedraggled young seaman. Her old man had also been in the MN. I was made ever so welcome and the son & daughter walked me to the station the next morning where i got a train home. I later sent this great family a card with a couple of new £1 notes in it to pay for my board ! Ive never been back to Haverford West since but i will never forget that little Welsh town and that amazing Welsh family.
Ah, rugby players ......... dodgy folk, them. Mind you - I remember walking through Shirley on my way to the Dell in the late 60's on a day Saints were playing Liverpool. I had nothing to identify me as a Saints fan, but it didn't stop a load of Liverpool fans throwing a full bottle of milk at me (thankfully it missed) and chasing me for a while. Glad most supporters aren't like that now.
They don't have the rights for the next olympics if I'm correct. In addition, I thought their coverage of this one was pretty sub standard.
I loved having a dedicated channel on sky for each sport. Thought most of the coverage was brilliant, actually. Didn't know they didn't have the rights to 2020, it's a shame because I don't think anyone does sport as well as the BBC (apart from some strange highlight selections on MOTD)
I don't think the camera work and production of the actual events was anything to do with the BBC. That was all done by Brazilian TV and sold round the world.
True, 2012 was done really well and basically set the standard for how to cover competitions online. If you wanted to watch a random weightlifting qualification round you could. Then all the highlights stayed up in an easily searchable way so you could go back and watch the interesting matches/rounds/whatever. But they couldn't do anything like that this time online, and there is no way of spreading it all across 2 channels and a red button whilst squeezing in the news etc as well.
100% correct. They take feeds. The only Olympics, in living memory, the BBC has been responsible for the pictures was London 2012. In addition, there was also the official Olympic feed, which is independent of any country. The BBC took some of that on BBC4. It featured a couple of Aussie commentators, in particular, and several others. The quality of comment was lower, imo, than the BBC commentators like Steve Cram, Brendan Foster and Steve Backley, but it was completely unbiased and still of pretty fair quality overall.
The camera work was fine, I just found that sometimes we missed live sports to see highlights of a bronze from 6 hours earlier for the 10th time. *exaggerating*
I carried out VAT visits to some of them in the 80s....can't say which ones though; Official Secrets! I also remember walking from Bynea, over the Loughor (used the bridge, I'm not MLT or Barry John), to see Life of Brian in Gorseinon, because it was banned in Llanelli. Felinfoel now ...some excellent beers. Agree with the Wadworth comment, though!
There were 8 "red button" channels this time round. also on BBC1,2 & 4. I didn't bother the red button route though and just found the channel numbers and put them in my favourites for the couple of weeks.
Good man, winter is coming (as game of thrones keeps telling me) so it'll be back soon. My wife works for Wadworth so I get freebies
Lucky man! My favourite tale regarding Old Timer goes back to the late 70's when I lived in Box in Wiltshire and used to frequent the Northey Arms. One weekend a couple of mates from Yorkshire visited and we got to the pub about 10 minutes before last orders. They were full of scorn about weak Southern beer and despite our warnings to go slowly, each downed 3 pints of OT in about 10 minutes. They had to be helped back up the road to ours.