The Leisure Review: World of Leisure

Friday 1 June
Leeds United’s creditors meet to discuss proposals for the club’s future, among them Leeds City Council’s leisure department, which is owed £124,121. The David Beckham Show returns to Wembley as England play Brazil in yet another opener for the new stadium. “I’m happy to have been part of such a historic night,” he says modestly. Government figures suggest that only 4% of men take up the option for additional paternity leave available to them. The Damian Hirst Show continues with the exhibition of his £50m sculpture, For the Love of God, which at first glance to the artistically gauche appears to be a diamond-encrusted skull.

Saturday 2 June
Peter Mandelson visits the restored Festival Hall, part of the 1951 Festival of Britain organised by his grandfather, Herbert Morrison. Mandy loves the building and concedes in a roundabout way without actually saying anything definite that the Dome was a complete mess. Frankie Detorri settles everyone’s nerves by winning the Derby at his fifteenth attempt. His by-now-traditional flying dismount fails to amuse the bookies.

Sunday 3 June
In his TV documentary on Salvador Dali, art critic and noted vowel-strangler Brian Sewell recounts memories of an afternoon the youthful Sewell with spent the great surrealist. Details include a naked Sewell, outdoor statuary and Dali, who took photographs and “fumbled in his trousers”, all of which is guaranteed to improve the box office for Tate Modern’s current Dali and Film exhibition. Cancer Research UK’s Race for Life encourages over 100,000 women to take part in 24 One Big Day events around the country. The British rowing squad take four gold medals in the first round of the world cup in Austria and lead the world rankings for the first time.

Monday 4 June
Edinburgh’s Assembly Hall welcomes several hundred 70-odd year-olds as part of the Scottish Mental Survey which began in 1947 and is being continued now that the original documents have turned up. Preliminary study of the results suggest that not smoking and keeping fit can be good for your IQ. The business pages report the sale of the David Lloyd fitness chain by Whitbread to London & Regional for £925m, putting the David Lloyd and Next Generation club chains, both started by the Lloyd family, under the same ownership. Lord Coe unveils the new brand image for London 2012, failing to get to the end of his first sentence before the criticism kicks off. It seems ministers are to throw themselves into the ‘what is culture’ debate by introducing the concept of ‘Britishness’ to the citizenship process. However, sweating on the Tube will not be part of British culture for much longer if trials to cool the Underground system with ice under the seats do the business. The Local Government Association urges councils to combat illegal raves this summer to prevent “irreparable damage to the countryside”. To the amusement of many but the surprise of none, Prince Charles appoints 22 year-old Clare Jones as his official harpist. A recount of creditors’ voting gives Ken Bates control of Leeds United. Again. High Court action is promised.

Tuesday 5 June
A new government alcohol strategy is to pick on someone their own age by targeting not the habitually criminalised teen but the middle-aged home binger. Meanwhile, a study of youth trends from the Nuffield Foundation finds that close friendship among teenagers is declining. One in five sixteen year-olds have no best friend. Northern Ireland is to relax its ban on smoking in the workplace to allow artistic performances to include smoking; expect a lot of impromptu performance art in pubs. While it now seems that the 2012 logo can induce fits among those prone to epilepsy, there is better news for grafitto lovers everywhere with the announcement that the redevelopment of a building in Bristol will preserve a Banksy, titled The Mild Mild West. According to human rights group the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, over two million people have been moved to make room for the Olympics over the past twenty years; three quarters of the total are in Beijing. In what may prove to be a major career boost for Darren Gough, the Chinese national curriculum is to include daily waltzing as part of the anti-obesity campaign and as professional cycling’s dirty linen gets ever more sordid, Ken Livingstone focuses on the positive aspects of the Tour de France’s arrival in London next month. “The Tour offers Londoners a great opportunity for a wonderful weekend,” says the mayor. Construction unions warn of delays and strikes similar to those seen at Wembley if the Olympic Delivery Agency does not specify the use of direct labour for its contractors.

Wednesday 6 June
Scotland Yard does its bit for the national heritage by revealing the contents of crime boss Terry Adam’s mansion when he was nicked in 2003: a shed load of antiques and art works stolen from museums, private collectors and galleries. Sick of continually having to scrimp and save to pay the rent, the Premier League is to join a legal action against YouTube to prevent copyright infringements. They will be working with Elvis Presley, apparently. Freddie Shepherd agrees to sell his 28% share of Newcastle United to Mike Ashley for around £37m. He will, however, stay on as chairman.

Thursday 7 June
A DCMS report highlights the central role of sport in creating national identity and raises the prospect of the return of the home soccer internationals. Not until we get our goal posts back, says some one at Wembley (probably). The International Indian Film Academy Awards, described as the Bollywood Oscars, open in Yorkshire and some 30,000 visitors are expected with 500 million viewers for Saturday’s ceremony at the Sheffield Arena. In a new twist in the housing market, a Dorset house goes up for sale with a provision in the deeds that the new owners continue to host the monthly book club that meets there. Frank Gehry, architect of the Bilbao Guggenheim, is to design a children’s playground for New York’s Battery Park. He will be donating his time free of charge but may well have to go home early for his tea.

Friday 8 June
It seems Chippenham’s invitation to a number of national Olympic committees to consider the Wiltshire town as a base for the 2012 Olympics has attracted the interest of North Korea. The North Korean’s expression of interest wondered whether Chippenham might like to cover its athletes’ costs while they were visiting. “It was a bit cheeky of them,” says Sandie Webb, head of Chippenham’s 2012 consortium. Olympic news continues with skateboarding reportedly being considered for inclusion as an Olympic sport, while Austria and Switzerland flout the FIFA elevation requirements by holding a quick kick about on the Jungfraujoch at 3,500m, reminding everyone that it is only a year until the European soccer championships. Three people are killed at the Isle of Man TT, including a rider, a steward and a spectator. More than 200 people have died during the hundred-year history of the race.

Saturday 9 June
The General Teaching Council calls for the abolition of school exams for everyone under the age of sixteen. The fourth annual World Naked Bike Ride features a number of British outposts. Lesley Brain (sic), a contestant in the latest of the cultural phenomenon that is Big Brother, quits the show on the grounds of boredom (hers rather than ours).

Sunday 10 June
Biennale di Venezia opens with Tracy Emin leading the British exhibition. Darra Singh, chair of the Commission on Integration and Cohesion, suggests community service should be a compulsory part of the school curriculum. Lewis Hamilton wins the Canadian Grand Prix, taking the title in only his sixth Formula One race. The Commonwealth Games Federation evaluation commission make positive noises regarding Glasgow’s bid for the 2014 Commonwealth Games during its visit to the city. The final decision will be announced on 9 September.

Monday 11 June
Reports suggest that Scotland Yard is reviewing its policing resources in preparation for 2012. We’ll need more firearms, seems to be the general flavour. Members of the IOC meeting in London are told by the TUC that merchandise for the 2008 Beijing Games is being produced by, among others, poorly paid children working fifteen-hour days. The first part of the restoration of the Reggia di Venaria Reale, the seventeenth-century garden outside Turin that was said to have inspired the design of the gardens at Versailles, is opened to the public. The €200m project is expected to be complete by 2011. Bingo group Gala Coral predicts that the smoking ban in England will mean the closure of around a dozen of its bingo clubs and the loss of one hundred jobs. Broadway’s enthusiasm for British theatre is reaffirmed by numerous awards at the Tonys. While Stoppard’s Close to Utopia is taking a record seven awards from the New York theatre glitterati Peter Randall-Page’s seventy-tonne sculpture, The Seed, is lowered through the roof at the Eden Project.

Tuesday 12 June
New equality legislation proposed in a government consultation paper could end the ability of golf clubs and other private members’ clubs to discriminate against female members. Jamaican police commissioner Lucius Thomas says that Bob Woolmer was not murdered after all. The BBC is to undertake a review of expenditure on talent, meaning that some of its top stars’ salaries will be under scrutiny. The IOC delegation visiting London make the journey from St Pancras to the Olympic site in Stratford in 5 minutes 45 seconds on the high-speed rail link and, in a boost to the hopes of street sports everywhere seeking to become the next “fastest growing sport in the country”, a Methodist chapel in Cornwall reports increased congregations since it installed a skateboard ramp. Freedom of information news Stateside reveals that the US military machine asked for $7.5m to develop a biological weapon that would turn opposition troops gay. Inspired stupidity from the Dan Dare days of the 1950s we assumed until the story reveals that the project was still being discussed in 2002. A workman in Rome manages to breach a water pipe that had survived the last 2,000 years without accident and stop the water flowing to the Trevi fountain and the Fountain of the Four Rivers.

Wednesday 13 June
The Cornish National Liberation Army picks Jamie Oliver and Rick Stein as its targets in its fight for something or other. Supporters of the right to roam wake up to the news that Ann Gloag has won the legal right to bar ramblers from woodland near her Perthshire castle. Pinewood Shepperton, the company running TV and film studios, report reduced revenues but confidence for the second half of the year and the horror stories continue with an early day motion introduced to Parliament calling for HM Revenue and Customs to investigate the recent deal to buy Leeds United FC.

Thursday 14 June
Ofcom, the media regulator, suggests Channel 4 might like to consider its public service remit and have a good long look at itself. George Shearing, Battersea-born 87 year-old pianist extraordinaire, is among those named as gong-winners in Her Majesty’s latest list of patronage. Carry on like this and Ian Botham will be next. The DCMS withdraws Charles Darwin’s home from the list of potential world heritage sites and the California Coastal Commission knocks back the proposal to build a golf course on the Monterey peninsular, even though Clint Eastwood is among those fronting the cash. Patrick Imbardelli, head of Asia Pacific operations for the InterContinental Hotels Group, resigns after revelations that he had lied about his qualifications on his CV. With Wimbledon looming, tennis talk gets trashy. “I think it’s been a pretty bad culture in British tennis,” says – who else? – Roger Draper. He goes on: “My buzzword this year is going to be ‘ruthless’.” Start the clock.

Friday 15 June
A fifteen-month investigation by Quest into professional football transfers concludes that there may well have been a few dodgy deals. Osprey panic over: the pair at Loch Garten have new eggs after a bit of a paternity issue. A Sydney court decides that a restaurant review was defamatory and cyclist Ivan Basso finds himself with a two-year ban as a result of the fallout from Operation Puerto, which has opened the lid on doping in the peloton, pulled it off and emptied the contents of the container all over the floor. Basso’s defence – essentially, I tried to dope but hadn’t quite got round to it by the time I was nicked – is found to be inadequate.

Saturday 16 June
Cumbria police, it seems, are investigating a hate crime when a group of teenage girls in Cumbria may well have directed anti-Scottish taunts at members of the Annan Juvenile Pipes and Drums band. Australian swimming Olympian Brooke Hanson ends up in hospital in Melbourne after getting an electric shock from a spa pool, which makes a change from a skin rash.

Sunday 17 June
Wimbledon champion Pat Cash offers his opinion on the merits of professional tennis. “It’s a really nasty, bitter environment where everybody is in it for their own thing.” Blimey! Shadow sports and Olympic spokesman (go on: have a guess…) Hugh Robertson MP suggests that Gordon Brown should be “dramatically slashing the bureaucracy that so often strangles sport”. He cites the CCPR as an example of sporting bureaucratic sanity. Lewis Hamilton wins another grand prix. That’s two! David Beckham proves that he doesn’t write his own scripts by coming up with a plot twist of the highest quality. He gets substituted in his last game for Real Madrid. Some 27,000 people complete the London to Brighton charity bike ride, all of them off their tits on a heady cocktail of performance enhancing… hold on, that’s next month.

Monday 18 June
A YouGov survey on behalf of Arts Council England seems to suggest people prefer immediacy to history. Or something. Bernard Manning, professional controversialist, dies at the age of 76. The Commons public accounts committee estimates that £500,000 a year could be saved in Whitehall by listening to civil servants instead of spending £2bn a year on consultants. Cunard is to sell the QE2 to Dubai for £50m; a future as floating hotel beckons. Alexi Lalas, president of LA Galaxy, lets light in upon magic by suggesting that the FA Premiership is inferior product. “There’s this delusion that the Premiership is great,” he says.

Tuesday 19 June
Royal Ascot starts, the second such event since the £200m redevelopment of the main stand and the first since an extra £10m had to be spent to overcome the problem of a lot of people not being able to see the track. Sir John Tusa is confirmed as the new chairman of the Victoria and Albert. A cornerstone of British culture is put under threat by a new code of practice for the drinks industry that seeks to end speed drinking. Channel 4 launches what is promised to be a wide-ranging review to search for a “bold new vision”. Environment minister David Miliband unveils a plan for a UK coastline path while China is to make the path of the Olympic torch slightly smoother by building a road up Everest, according to the national news agency. Even more unlikely, the Mighty Sven is being lined up for the Man City job but he doesn’t seem to be sure.

Wednesday 20 June
The Wellcome Collection opens, the UK’s latest national museum. It’s the first permanent home for Sir Henry Wellcome’s collection, the compulsive collector and medical innovator who died in 1936. Directors of Britain’s leading museums and galleries write to The Guardian in support of the policy of free admission. Their correspondence follows a hint from the Conservatives that free admission might not be part of a Tory manifesto, a hint that was swiftly refuted by Tory HQ.

Thursday 21 June
The Glastonbury hordes mobilise under leaden skies and threatening forecasts and the Commons public accounts committee puts the cost of ‘right to roam’ legislation at £52m, twice the original estimate. In a press interview Roger Draper admits to harbouring a vision of stopping all LTA funding to see what would happen. “My job is to disrupt the status quo and make it as uncomfortable as possible,” he says, threateningly. Philip Pulman’s Northern Lights is named as the best children’s book of the last seventy years by the organisation that presents the Carnegie prize for children’s literature.

Friday 22 June
Look out: the Spice Girls reunion is on. The London art market ends a record-breaking week of sales, during which Christie’s Europe has taken £237m. Thierry Henry is off to Barcelona, trousering only slightly less than Christie’s as part of the deal.

Saturday 23 June
Ricky Hatton wins his 43rd professional fight in Las Vegas. Royal Ascot comes to an end with attendance figures down 12% on last year. Could throwing your money away on horses be going out of fashion?

Sunday 24 June
The Dome, as we’re not allowed to call it, reopens as an entertainment venue. The centrepiece is a 23,000-seat arena that will host plenty of enormo-gigs before the arrival of the gymnastics competition in 2012. Gordon officially becomes Labour leader, promising a “change from the old politics”. Italy opens its first women-only beach and in Madrid thousands of people queue to join the fun at Londonize, a market place featuring many of the Portobello Road’s finest hawkers. GB finishes fourth in the European Cup athletics in Munich. Meanwhile in Amsterdam two British eights finish in the top three in the second round of rowing’s world cup competition.

Monday 25 June
The Commons culture, media and sport committee report warns that cuts in government cultural funding to pay for the Olympics could have a profoundly damaging effect on museums, libraries and archives. Wimbledon 2007 begins without a roof of any kind on the Centre Court and without Andy Murray, who is injured. Help the Aged publish a survey that suggests the cost to the NHS of falls among the over-65s as a result of uneven pavements is £1bn. The Seminole Indian tribe, which has never formally surrendered to the American government after the Indian wars of the 1880s, announces a plan to expand the Hard Rock Café chain of restaurants, which it has recently purchased. At culture question time Richard Caborn promises government action to prevent professional football becoming “billionaires’ playground”. Is anyone missing football? Couldn’t we be allowed a year off?

Tuesday 26 June
The Work Foundation publishes a report lauding the impact of the ‘knowledge economy’ – the leisure industry to us – with a foreword by Tessa Jowell. The Unesco world heritage committee meeting in New Zealand decides that the Tower of London and Westminster Palace will not be going on the ‘at risk’ register and Shaun Woodward, minister for ticket touting, announces plans to stop this sort of thing for the ‘crown jewels’ of sports and music events. The Bargello museum in Florence will be cleaning Donatello’s statue of David over the next eighteen months in full view of the public.

Wednesday 27 June
Gordon Brown finally gets his feet under the table downstairs at Number 10. Ms Jowell, no doubt shifting nervously in her seat, announces a plan for the lottery expenditure on the 2012 Olympics to be repaid by the sale of 68 hectares of land in the Olympic park. She’s OK-ed it with Ken. The Art Fund averts what some were describing as the biggest heritage disaster in decades by putting together a package to purchase Dumfries House and its unique collection of Chippendale furniture, made specifically for the house, from the Marquis of Bute, also known as former racing driver Johnny Dumfries. Prince Charles is among the benefactors stumping up the £45m sale price.

Thursday 28 June
Day two of The Broon. James Purnell gets the culture, medial and sport slot, while the uber-Blairite Tessa Jowell gets shunted downstairs to a ministerial berth covering the Olympics, London and the South East. Richard Caborn’s run as longest-serving sports minister comes to an end when he is given the role of PM’s ambassador for the 2018 FIFA World Cup bid. Government officials listen sympathetically to representatives of the Queen who explain that Her Majesty requires an extra million of public money to repair the stonework at Buckingham Palace. The government officials apparently explain that Her Majesty may well have to whistle for it, bravely blaming not the fact that the Queen might be able to afford the work herself but, of course, the London Olympics. The FA and Tesco unveil a £5.5m youth coaching project. Tim Henman goes out of Wimbledon and suggests that the world of British tennis has been far too accepting of mediocrity. “We need to be a little bit more ruthless,” says the snake-eyed master of the understated fist-pump celebration. Meanwhile, Roger Draper’s war on the LTA continues and now he is considering changing the organisation’s name. The Tennis Council, anyone?

Friday 29 June
England prepares for the smoking ban that arrives in the next couple of days. David Wild, a Hull resident who spends seven or eight hours a day in the pub, is not happy. “I smoke 100 to 120 cigs a day,” he says. “The ban will kill us.” Gerry Sutcliffe, MP for Bradford South and the goalkeeper in the All Party Parliamentary Football Group XI, is unveiled as minister for sport. He will be an under-secretary of state, a junior role to that of his predecessor who was a minister of state. A vacancy at the England and Wales Cricket Board is created by the election of David Morgan as president of the International Cricket Council. Bill Morris, former trades union leader and ‘cricket nut’, could be in the frame. Mark Cavendish is to start the Tour in London, making the 22-year-old Welshman the fifth Briton in this year’s peloton.

Saturday 30 June
Ian McKeever, a 37 year-old DJ from County Wicklow, summits on Mount McKinley in Alaska and breaks the record for climbing the highest peaks in each of the world’s seven continents. It took him 156 days from start to finish, putting everyone else’s New Year resolutions firmly into perspective.