Miguel Sanchez

Series 5 Episode 5: Jeremy is doing his attempt to get round the Nurburgring in a diesel Jaguar. He's complaining about the homotorcyclists on the track while being soundtracked by Kasabian's eponymous debut album. Unlike him, as someone who does know the track it's a bit jarring seeing him talk about being really into the lap and you see a clip of the track and he's about 1/3 of the way through. A bit like watching Rush when you notice all the on-track stuff is from Brands Hatch.

If Rangers fail to beat the 11th best team in Germany after fairly comfortably beating the 2nd and 4th best teams in Germany then yes, what else do you expect people to think?

Just finished watching that game. Tampa looked completely fucked for most of it and Toronto just had nothing. I'd be fucked if I had to watch that on a regular basis.

Everyone's made their picks and it's not fair to have them change. Especially since there's a range of Captaincies and regular picks. I'm to blame here but I don't think it's that egregious, given the circumstances.

Calling a man ‘bald’ is sexual harassment, employment tribunal rules | Sexual harassment | The Guardian Unlucky lads.

Deborah James update Since she's been in the news this week and the subject came up in the past few pages, why not. Since I started running this game I've tried to be as fair and transparent as possible. This has proven helpful when I can't count or work spreadsheets and every mistake I make is noticed and pointed out (this is good and you should all do it all the time). I think it's also been a net benefit for myself and everyone who plays, since nobody really takes it seriously enough to get upset and realises that it's all in good fun, and all of the conditions and judgements are reasonable. When people submit teams with dead people on them I don't tell them because I find it funny. Unlike famous for being ill or famous for being a relative there's no judgement to make here, they're eligible (alive) or they're not (dead). I've been having a think and I don't think the ill or relative rules have ever come up since I've done the Dead Pool until this year, where someone picked Harvey Price. Since he wasn't a valid pick I told the person who picked him and got a replacement. When the Deborah James picks were coming in I had never heard of her, so I looked her up. Podcast host, Sun columnist, author, well, that all checks out. Casting my mind back now I think I might have taken it that she already did some or all of these things before she was diagnosed with cancer, rather than doing all of these things because she had cancer. She's listed as "journalist" on the spreadsheet and this is what both Google and Wikipedia call her, and what I'm pretty sure they called her at the turn of the year. Thinking aloud, this is probably the sort of case the Terminal rule might be instituted specifically for. Someone who was notable and developed an illness is fine. But then, you can suffer from a condition your whole life and still be famous. Is a Paralympic athlete who was born without legs famous because they're ill? That's probably a bad example because not having legs isn't terminal the way cancer is. What about Marieke Vervoort - Wikipedia from 2019? She suffered from a degenerative muscle condition. If she couldn't go into para-sport nobody would have heard of her, yet there she was. Are there different levels of terminal illness? I'm not going to take away @Billy Jean King, @Bishop Briggs, @Indale Winton, @mathematics and @Moomintroll's picks because it's not right to do that now (and because Bishop Briggs would shout at me obv), but if it was December right now and people started sending me in teams featuring Deborah James, I don't think I'd accept her. I know we had some discussion on her in the past few pages but I'm open to everyone putting in their thoughts. I think a re-examination of this rule is probably useful for 2023 either way though.

Week 20 update Heehaw.

A very UK thing to finally have a good performance with a chance of winning only to be papped out by a mob because they're getting shelled

The longer the wait the worse the points.

The public all completely accurate so far. Australia was awful.

Great stuff for Moldova. Lunacy wins.

Getting pumped imo

Patsy Kensit/Lindsay Lohan/Geri Halliwell lookalike here for Sweden

Is that woman popular on the television here? f**k me

Exactly what I expect a Finnish TV personality to look like

I'm surprised to see Australia up so far.

Sweden being that high up is much worse than Greece

Big fan of Greek telly, suddenly.

Just have this guy do our song every year, we'll win one eventually.

Germans. Great group of lads.

Azerbaijan. Great group of European lads.

Ukraine. Great group of lads.

Ukraine. Great group of lads.

Is it public votes announced here and then the jury votes added later? Isn't this where Ukraine should be racking them up?