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| Regrave - Sydney Olympian | The great Greek tragedian Aeschylus knew a thing or two about life on the edge and surviving at the outer limits. Fear, he said in "The Eumenides", is good at times; it keeps a watchful place at the heart's controls... | 134.86 |
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| Placid gospel of a very, very nice man | You've seen the advert. You probably belong to the organisation. You may even have the teeshirt. But what else do you know about that weird advert for the AA, which bills itself as the Fourth Emergency Service? | 146.30 |
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| New life springs from the ashes | It was the most uniquely affecting, year-defining Yuletide image. The human phoenix arising from those sad and shattered ashes of Ground Zero. That piercingly poignant, cheek-drenching picture of 16 proudly defiant mothers... | 194.74 |
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| Scots know how to make a grand exit | Funerals should be joyous celebrations of life. "Sausages are the boys", declaimed Billy Connolly from the pulpit, borrowing the Logan catchphrase, as the glinting spring sun cut through the Gothic pillars of Glasgow Cathedral. Gales of laughter. | 332.93 |
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| Where are our Holyrood heroes? | Scotland needs a Braveheart to stir the masses. The tartan bunting's on hold. The saltire flags lie hidden in the closet. Dancing in the street's in abeyance. Holyrood's second anniversary passes with neither bang nor whisper. | 277.86 |
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| To those who lived lives less ordinary | Tribute to departed greats. "STOP all the clocks, cut off the telephone", bewailed John Hannah, citing Auden in Four Weddings and a Funeral. Now I'll continue: "Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead/Scribbling on the sky the message/She is dead". | 267.50 |
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| Success? It won't last long. | COBH RAMBLERS don't spawn too many global legends, but Roy Keane, serial offender, malevolent retribution seeker, major driver talent, is a serious exception. | 215.86 |
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| Living with the madmen in our midst | Nine days on. The macabre images of Apocalypse Tuesday remain etched on our consciousness. Indelibly. Grotesquely. Cinematic Hollywood disaster movie cliche alchemised into surreal truth... | 261.59 |
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| After God made Ali, he broke the mould | "Forget what you think you know", blusters the promotional tagline as "Ali" fever grips the globe. Will Smith's reincarnation of the boxing icon, that peerless embodiment of magnetic athlete, cultural and even sexual reverence. | 213.03 |
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| A golden year in the world of sport | It was the year of watching wondrously. 2000: A Sports Odyssey. An annus mirabilis of athletic delight. A year of unprecedented pulsating sporting achievement. A year in which the hyperbolic pre-match billings were genuinely sustained... | 215.77 |
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| A Bard Name | It's Ramadram time again. Carousing global adulation. The populist Rabbie personality cult in full-kilted international swing. That romanticised facade of biographical irrelevancies, trivia, and erroneously glorified human weakness... | 223.75 |
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| Chapter and verse on auld lang syne | New Year is a time for quiet reflection on what's gone, together with optimism for what's to come. As Edward Fitzgerald dreams in "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam"... | 121.65 |
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| Ken Buchanan (The Herald) | A man can be destroyed but never broken, declared Ernest Hemingway, boxer and man of letters, of that old fisherman's heart-rending destiny in the Old Man and the Sea. Ken Buchanan, boxer, 54 going on a 100, could rewrite the script. | 143.16 |
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| Goalies' nightmares can haunt for life | Clean-sheet Nick's back between the sticks. Colgan Unconquered. Restored and forgiven following his brush with oblivion occassioned by that love Street gaffe, ill-timed injury and the sudden emergence of stalwart mountie Mike Francks... | 324.92 |
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| For movers and shakers... | Burns and Shakespeare could be your boss's best ally next time he faces a crisis at work. | 137.83 |