I’m a bit quiet on this blog at the moment. You knew that. I’ll be pre-occupied with coverage of the 2005 Women’s Cricket World Cup on Cricketwoman for a while.

This is a great challenge, as the media coverage is shaping up yet again as being appalling. This is a case of Stop complaining about the media. Be the media.

Please drop in on www.cricketwoman.net and follow the action, join in the tipping competitions and argue in the forums. It’s an event that deserves far more attention than it gets.

The World Cup begins in South Africa on Tuesday March 22 with the final scheduled for Sunday April 10.

Sad news of the passing of Dave Allen in England on Thursday at the age of 68. For many years through the 1970s, Friday nights at our place was defined by watching either The Two Ronnies or Dave Allen At Large on the ABC.

Dave Allen was a wonderful, laconic, Irish stand-up comic, except that he did all his TV shows sitting on a stool, and generally drawing on a fag at the same time (that’s in the toxicity sense, not the Public School sense). For more than one reason, his show would never cut it in prime-time TV these days.

I’ll leave the obituaries to others. I’m intrigued to learn that he toured on the same bill as The Beatles before any of them became famous:

• The Observer, obit by Sean O’Hagan, 13.3.05
• The Guardian, obit by Richard Jinman, 12.3.05
• BBC Online obit with a stack of links
• Sun-Herald (Sydney), obit 13.3.05

From Australian Associated Press (via today’s Sydney Morning Herald)