well,firstly,god DID give me life. as i lay on the tarmac in the same position as portrayed on 90 bisodol,my friend thought i was dead. i was in a coma. anyway,i had a feeling even before the head njury that i was a bastard. and for the past five years i’m pretty certain that demigod Nigel is my father.
i did a spotify search for ‘nigel’ earlier this morning…..the results were quite shocking!!
making plans for nigel,XTC[who also wrote Dear God,and senses working overtime nigel,Mental as Anything[which any NHS professional will say i am!] nigel-fucking legend, kevin bloody wilson nigel,christophe beck[christ’s back??!!??] nigel,helpcat nigel,beth stelling follow da leader,nigell the chief, nigel beaham-powell when jesus say yes,nigel lewis
and finally…. crucifixus,by nigel short,antonio lotti,and tenebrau.
the above were some of the results when i put ‘Nigel’ into the search box on spotify!!! VERY ‘telling’??!!
26 March 2016
this leaden paul
“What DO we know about Nigel?”
(Other than that his future is as good as sealed)
26 March 2016
Hendrix TATtoo
Nigel/Naidzal is an english masculine given name derived from the latin Nigellus….Nigel is commonly found in records dating from the middle ages….however it was not used much before being revived by 19th century antiquarians for instance sir walter scott published The Fortunes Of Nigel and sir arthur conan doyle published Sir Nigel….Nigel was a common name for boy’s born in england and wales from the 1950’s to 1970’s….
26 March 2016
Brumbiscuit
First name of a very regular contributor to this site.
Out of 30 boys entering senior school in 1972, only one was called Nigel out of 30 in my class.
26 March 2016
EXXO
@H-Tat
Not true I’m afraid, as covered in the Neil thread. The Latin scribes of Normandy needed a Latin word to translate the Norse versions of the Irish Niall which were trendy among the Norman (=Norseman) ruling classes, and probably tried to invent a false etymology for ‘Nigellus’ to legitimise it. Nigel and Neil both come from ‘Niall’.
26 March 2016
EXXO
Actually on re-reading what you put, H-Tat, it’s all correct, but incomplete, ‘cos yes the English version does come from the Latin version … which comes from the Norse version of the Irish version.
26 March 2016
featureless tv producer steve
My dearly-departed and much-missed yellow labrador was called Nigel, but I got him and christened him long before I was introduced to our Mr. Blackwell.
@Exxo thanks for the correction…Sadly I pinched it from Wiki… That’s why my threads are full of Bull-S*#t sometimes….
26 March 2016
Hendrix TATtoo
@F.T.V.P.S ….Is that a man-kini he’s wearing?….
26 March 2016
dickhead in quicksand
@FTVPS – definitely a case there for “Play one the drummer knows”.
26 March 2016
nige
Can I just place on record my continued hatred of that xtc song. Thankfully I had left school before it was a hit.
26 March 2016
featureless tv producer steve
@HT – Haha, but no, he’s just shirtless. That’s his guitar strap you’re seeing.
@DiQ – How could the drummer be expected to know all the songs, having been with the band for only a few months?
27 March 2016
Hendrix TATtoo
@Nige….you were lucky…my mate in school was called Gordon should of seen the s*#t he got in school in 78…https://youtu.be/LTKORcr1jhY
28 March 2016
nige
I remember it well. Someone else released “Gordon’s not a moron” afterwards I believe but I don’t recall it troubling the top 40 too much
28 March 2016
EXXo
Seems unlikely that it will happen now this ‘storm season’, but given what Katie did – diverting a few flights from Gatwick, postponing some matches in Surrey, blowing a tree onto the Clapham omnibus and clearing away neglected trampolines throughout Cambridgeshire – I’m now not too bothered if the stupid fucking ‘Storm Nigel’ does happen, just to get it over and done with and forgotten about for the rest of eternity. It seems unlikely to threaten the Southampton gig.
28 March 2016
EXXO
No future in British Steel.
29 March 2016
bobby svarc
The Villa job is going to help him
30 March 2016
this leaden paul
I can’t see it doing much for his ‘anger management issues’, or whatever euphemism we’re using this week…
30 March 2016
Bobby SVARC
Pearson Out!
27 May 2016
Nige
He probably will be out if Derby aren’t 20 points clear of the rest by boxing day the way that club do things.
28 May 2016
EXXO
Yees @ myself in post 15 above but especially in other threads last winter, last year’s unused names are not being re-cycled by the Met this winter so there may not even be a Storm Nigel in my lifetime, which is a relief.
In other non-news, as a Nigel who often looks after a dog called Monty Dog, I was always struck by Monty Don being on telly with a dog called Nigel. Heard him on the radio the other day say he’s now got a second golden retriever called Nellie too (do not google this if you want to avoid quintessential Daily Heil colour supplement images).
Whenever Monty Don pops up by the way I always like to tell people that this means ‘dumpling underpants’ in Turkish. Almost true.
3 October 2016
Peter mcornotholgist
Anyone recall Green Nigel ? Occasionally appeared on Tiswas .
21 October 2016
Brumbiscuit
Ay, David Rappaport, who is now probably lacking a cranium…
22 October 2016
dr desperate
Reading Attila The Stockbroker’s autobiography, ‘Arguments Yard’, in which he describes recording his first Peel session in 1982. One of the poems was ‘Nigel Wants To Go To C&A’s’, which he had previously performed on The Tube. When he put the band (“Birkenhead’s extraordinary surrealist beat combo”) on at the Barn Theatre, Southwick in 1999, Nigel told him that he and his brother had been watching the programme, and described the hilarity that ensued. He concludes, “that particular Nigel is an absolute bloody genius”.
14 January 2017
EXXO
If you follow click-bait You’ll know I’m just the chick-bait. I’m on the Isle of Mana Don’t need no family planner. She’s on another planet I’m Nige the lonely gannet. Her life is gltitzier and glitzier While I’m just left in bits here
Now reading Dave “Haçienda” Haslam’s autobiography ‘Sonic Youth Slept On My Floor’ in which he describes how Duran Duran’s bassist in his teens changed his name from Nigel to John, “a step on the route to becoming a person he wanted to be”. Obviously I cannot comment on the wisdom of taking this step.
15 March 2019
EXXO
Seems to have worked out for him.
15 March 2019
Pirx the purist
My mother was never able to explain why she gave me – a working-class kid in an industrial village – such a poncey name. I’ve always disliked it, but couldn’t be arsed to change it. I view it as one of those things one learns to live with, like eczema.
Come to think of it, it might have been better had I been called Eczema. It would merely have been irritating in another sense, and at least you can get ointment for that.
31 March 2019
cream cheese and chives
@ Pirx the Purist Amongst the Peters, Ians, Stephens, Neils and Davids of the mid60s, our neighbour who was a Nigel drew a lot of quiet sympathy because he was also given Robin as a middle name. He would switch from one to another quite frequently but neither ever really sat comfortably with him. Strangely, we would often adopt different names when playing games. I always longed to be Martin.
1 April 2019
Pirx the purist
What made it worse for me was that I was never given a middle name to fall back on. For a time (aged about 7) I gave myself the middle name ‘Peter’ after a friend of my father’s who I liked.
1 April 2019
EXXO
Talking of sea nymphs (in another thread), today marks 56 complete orbits of Apollo’s chariot since Mrs. Harwood, the Thetis-widow-midwife, was called.
18 July 2019
dr desperate
Or to put it another way, Happy Birthday Nigel.
18 July 2019
Alice van der meer
I shall raise a glass tonight, assuming I can find something over 5%.
18 July 2019
EXXO
Anyway, as i was saying …despite sometimes the draconian editing of this site by its owner, which he is entitled to do of course, but which is occsionally a bit intolerant and disrespectful of certain aspects of ‘HMHB culture’… it is on record that our man spends his birthday ignoring all else but the TDF, so it was good to see that today’s birthday stage was a fairly lively one, compared to some tedious July 18th stages in recent years. Some classic climbing breakaways, but with few enough participants that all bases could be easily covered and profits guaranteed on the exchanges.
18 July 2019
cream cheese and chives
Nigel based playlist? I wonder what that might entail exactly.
Bretforton? I spent two nights two miles from there two weeks ago, so I’m f*cked if I’m going back there for a free pint whatever’s on the playlist. There’s a malamute breeder near there where they howl all night too.
Anyway by now Idiots and Pigeons might have fulfilled his threat and spawned the first Nigel in 4 years.
Indeed. Raising a glass here to the 57th anniversary of Mrs. Harwood’s dash to Brackenwood Drive. Must be weird for him that he isn’t watching the Tour on his birthday, but at least the timing of being able to go into Wales again, on bike or otherwise, was pretty good.
18 July 2020
BOBBY SVARC
I tought he was older than that.
19 July 2020
EXXO
Pearson out.
19 July 2020
EXXO
I notice that, apart from being allowed at last to go to the land of his father’s grandfathers, another present received by Mr. B on Saturday was a new Tranmere manager, even if it was budget version that didn’t need to be spotted at the offy in Rock Ferry. They need to get someone in that club that knows where and how to sign a good footballer, or several.
20 July 2020
dr desperate
Monty Don wasn’t the only one to have a dog called Nigel.
Good Dog Nigel Arf, Arf, he goes, a merry sight Our little hairy friend Arf, Arf, upon the lampost bright Arfing round the bend. Nice dog! Goo boy, Waggie tail and beg, Clever Nigel, jump for joy Because we are putting you to sleep at three of the clock, Nigel.
(John Lennon, ‘In His Own Write’)
3 January 2021
dr Desperate
Major opportunity missed on the Wall round of tonight’s ‘Only Connect’.
1 February 2021
EXXO
WTF is Nigel Bond? That episode contained a record number of things I’d never heard of, even when the answers were given. WTF is ’76 Trombones’? The Apartment is one of my favourite films, but HTF would anyone know what songs were in ‘The (fucking) Music Man?’ Even when they explained some stupid obscure shit they left other stupid obscure shit unexplained. WTF is a ‘DINK’ as an acronym?
Cokeheads, cokeheads, cokeheads.
Or some other explanation for their fuckwittery.
1 February 2021
gipton TEENAGER
I used to know it as DINKY -Double Income No Kids Yet.
2 February 2021
dr Desperate
I recall ‘Seventy-Six Trombones’ as a staple of Radio 1’s ‘Junior Choice’ in the 70s, in a version credited to Michael Bond (no relation to Nigel, the senior snooker player whose nickname is apparently ‘Basildon’).
2 February 2021
dr desperate
First name of New Zealand-based Irish actor Sam Neill, which makes his real name Nigel Neill. Changed to Sam at school because he felt Nigel was “a little effete for a New Zealand playground”. On an Australian talk show in 2004 he said, “You know, if you’re called Nigel – and if there are any Nigels out there, they know of what I speak – you’re just an absolute prime target for being picked on. “
27 April 2021
EXXO
I think NB’s response at a gig to ‘Idiots and Pigeons’ (the person who used to post with that alias one here) will always stick in my mind: “he’ll get bullied at school,” which yes would be expected in recent decades (and it really has become a joke name in Australia, a by-word for a social leper). But Neill’s comments are interesting, given that he’s talking about the best part of a generation earlier than ‘peak Nigel’ and that his playgrounds, according to what we read, were privileged 1950’s NZ ones. I can’t help wondering if he has retrofitted the explanation and really changed it just to have a cooler name in wider a teenage social context?
27 April 2021
Michael
Be gentle with me, I’m new-ish to the site (but not to the music). Just wondering what’s with the NB57 (have also seen NB10 somewhere on the site)? My best guess is it’s a piss take on CR7.
30 June 2021
Chris The Siteowner
Nigel came 57th in a Liverpool Echo poll of the “100 Greatest Merseysiders” in 2003, and occasional contributor here Taylo claims to have subsequently come up with the “NB57” nickname, which certainly stuck. When the paper re-ran the poll in 2014, there was a bit more interest in voting from these parts, and Nigel soared to number 10, just above George Harrison, so the nickname was updated…
As far as I can see, the first mention of “CR7” was in 2006, so perhaps the Madeiran Maestro launched his ‘brand’ as a tribute to Mr B.
30 June 2021
EXXO
Well, yes and no, because Taylo claimed (entirely credibly) to have invented EC7 (and therefore CR7) on the United message boards.
30 June 2021
EXXO
It was pretty instantaneous as I recall that there was that vote in 2003 and then within 24 hours or so, as we all reacted to the news from the Echo website, Taylo had coined “NB57” on the HMHB Yahoo Group (which from around 1999 was the first HMHB message board of a kind), citing the Red Issue fan site where he referred to players as EC7, etc (with CR7 signing a few months after that).
30 June 2021
EXXO
Ironically, nobody during the last 11 months has asked if he’s called NB57 cos he’s 57, which he isn’t but he is, for another two and a half weeks.
30 June 2021
michael
Thanks Exxo and Chris the Siteowner – interesting stuff! I did at first think it might be a reference to NB’s age but then realised that it probably wasn’t as NB10 wouldn’t fit (I know they’ve been around a while but even so….)
1 July 2021
dr desperate
Happy Birthday NB58 (and good luck Mark Cavendish in his attempt to break Eddy ‘Half Man, Half Bike’ Merckx’ record).
18 July 2021
EXXO
Cael pen-blwydd hapus i’r bardd.
18 July 2021
EXXO
I haven’t had time to keep up with the Tour v. closely this year, just kept an eye the hated INEOS/Brailsford outfit continuing to struggle. Heard Mollema had won a stage and meant to catch up with the details of that before celebrating it on here. NB57 must have been happy for his slight lookalike.
That was after a brief resurgence, with a whole 9 Nigels last year.
18 October 2021
EXXO
The ONS doesn’t tell us when there are 0, 1 or 2 in any given year, just less than 3. But we do have an article from 2017 telling us that the reports of 0 were false that year. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-41430087
1963 5529 1970 2469 1980 413 1990 125 2000 25 2010 18 2015 9 2016 Officially less than 3 – reported in some papers as 0 2017 1 or 2 – falsely reported in some papers as 0 2018 Officially less than 3 – reported in some papers as 0 2019 9 [NINE] 2020 Officially less than 3 – reported as 0
When you look at the shape of that curve you can’t really pin anything on Farage, but the chances are he was partly responsible somehow for the 2019 mini-surge.
I was looking yesterday, as one does, for prices of fishing boat trips out of Littlehampton, and noticed that one boat’s website had Farage pictured proudly holding his catches on trips with them, just captioned as “Nigel,” no
I did once explain to a friend why I expectorate needlessly when I pass the Scott memorial in Edinburgh (might not do this again though what with Covid, etc). For it is ultimately his fault. But then again, without him I could have been another one of those 1963 accountancy names (I won’t specify the others in case any of you are named Jer*my, R*ger, etc).
18 October 2021
EXXO
Dunno what happened with that unfinished sentence there after “Nigel,” I just avoided the rest of the sentence as I will avoid that particular fishing vessel.
18 October 2021
Lord leominster
NIGEL Planer played NEIL the hippy in The Young Ones, 1982. Coincidence? I think not.
18 October 2021
dr Desperate
Many happy returns, @Exxo! Sorry not to meet up with your bro at the Azed 50th Anniversary lunch yesterday (especially as he’d won last month’s clue-writing competition and would have been presented with the Victor Verborum Cup by Azed himself).
29 May 2022
EXXO
Cheers Doc. S.J. has been elusive recently, but good to hear he’s still a regular winner of such honours. I don’t have much tolerance for clues that depend on those archaic old elements like “jolly” = “RM” meself. See you soon in Leeds!
30 May 2022
EXXO
Got to the bottom of the Doc’s no-show, Doc! Apparently Mrs. SJ managed to knock herself out on a bicycle shed roof, serious concussion ensuing.
” “Nigel the Gannet” is the true story of a gannet in New Zealand, who briefly became an international media star when he died of old age next to the concrete decoy gannet he had chosen as his mate. Though the press spun his story as a lonely one, the song celebrates Nigel’s choice of solitude over social life, suggesting that he knew the difference between being lonely and being alone all along. For the B side, The Burning Hell took a crack at a cover of the excellent Half Man Half Biscuit song “Lark Descending,” recorded outside in the woods of Eastern Canada with the help of a solar-powered recording studio trailer.”
28 June 2022
EXXO
Thanks Karrie – another outstanding cut from a brilliant outfit (who I know ‘cos Marc Riley’s always so keen on them and I’ve been meaning to see them live – maybe in Manchester in October). The “French peacock” line is simply exquisite.
I haven’t heard the B-side yet but I assume “recorded outside in the woods of Eastern Canada with the help of a solar-powered recording studio trailer” is a very subtle hat-tip towards the sleeve notes for ‘the Referee’s Alphabet?’
And it’s their second double-bird-sided “single” in a row after the equally brilliant ‘Bird Queen of Garbage Island’ (featuring a hi-vis jacket) was coupled with a cover of ‘Make a Little Bird House in your Soul.’
And, by the way, “pass the wine, fuck the government, I love you” is surely the best waltz love song line that can’t be played on the wireless.
28 June 2022
dr desperate
Happy Birthday, NB59!
18 July 2022
EXXO
Yes, hope the bard had a good one and didn’t listen to the opinionated weather forecasters. Mind you the only thing they didn’t warn us about was not to leave our bikes in sun traps, and so I hope the chief didn’t have the burst inner tube issue that I did yesterday.
This time in 1963 was considered a bit of a heatwave, but the highest temperature in the UK that summer was 28 point something at Littlehampton on July 22nd. That’s what it was in LIttlehampton yesterday when I spoke to my mum there, and the conversation turned to how the roles were reversed at the moment and how much hotter it was on the Wirral (which my folks have recently left – again).
So I googled the temperatures on the Wirral yesterday and noticed that if you added together the temperature at that moment in Celsius at Birkenhead Lake Park Canada*, Birkenhead New Zealand and Birkenhead Australia, it totalled exactly the temperature in BIrkenhead, Oblong of Dreams (36)
*Or Birkenhead Rock, South Africa, of HMS Birkenhead notoriety, which had the same temperature as the Canadian spot at that moment. (16).
I tried to post something about the chief’s birthday yesterday without banging on about the temperatures, but failed. I assumed I would think of something else to mark the occasion before midnight, but nodded off after the football and slept fine for about 10 hours, thank you forecasters.
19 July 2022
EXXO
Martha & the Vandellas big July 1963 US hit ‘Heatwave’ wasn’t even released in the UK. Meanwhile the Chiffons’ ‘He’s so Fine’ peaked around the week I was born and out of the charts in early July.
Fitting somehow that Gerry & The Pacemakers were number one at the bard’s Brunanburh birth, replaced in his first week by Frank Ifield. Then Elvis, the Searchers, Billy J Kramer and the Beatles by the end of the summer.
19 July 2022
EXXO
At the end of the big freeze in March 1963, Cliff Richard’s ‘Summer Holiday’ and the Shadows ‘Foot Tapper’ exchanged the number one spot a couple of times. Then in the nine months between April 11th ’63, and 3rd January ’64, when Cliff had his next number one, five different Merseybeat acts (and nine songs only) held the number one spot in every week except that one Frank Ifield week in July and that one Elvis the following week.
19 July 2022
EXXO
Slight correction. Frank Ifield knocked Elvis back off the top for another week in August. So 3 non-Merseybeat weeks at number one out of 42.
19 July 2022
Paul F
As a Scouse-born child of the sixties it’s hardly surprising that a Scouse band were at the top of the charts on the day of my birth. Despite them also featuring a McCartney, that band were not the obvious ones.
19 July 2022
EXXO
Funnily enough I ended up on MM’s twitter feed this afternoon. Can’t even really remember how I got there, nor how I got to a website where I learned that PM lived briefly as a very small child two roads from where I grew up. Just by our cub scouts HQ in Wallasey. Never seen that in any biographies. Good job he never stayed there. Guess if they’d stayed he’d never have met Lennon.
19 July 2022
Hendrix-tattoo
Malcolm McClaren once asked Frank Ifield would he like to do a duet with Sid Vicious for the upcoming Great Rock ‘n’ Swindle album. But unfortunately Sid died and it didn’t happen. The song Malcolm wanted them to sing was I remember you (You Fuckin’ B*****d) True story.
Happy belated 59th birthday Nigel…
20 July 2022
EXXO
Watching promising young Dutch centreback Nigel Cello Lonwijk (born 2002) just now, I remembered his fellow countryman Nigel de Jong (b. 1984) a few years back saying his mother had liked the name because of early eighties Nigels such as Kennedy and Mansell. I note de Jong burst into the Ajax first team just weeks before this other Dutch Nigel’s birth, and that because of De Jong, Nigel was a more popular name by percentage of male births in the noughties than anywhere else in the world, accounting for almost one in every twelve hundred Dutch males born in the mid to late noughties.
25 September 2022
EXXO
Then a further train of thought that because both of those Nigels belong to the vast array of Dutch-Surinamese football talent that first flourished in the Rijkaard/Guillit/Seedorf/Davids era, and because Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink’s nephew Nigel has recently taken up citizenship in the land of his father’s birth and been banging in the goals for Suriname, maybe that land in turn, a colony given to the Dutch in return for New Amsterdam / New York, will become the final outpost of the Nigels? Statistics not yet available.
The largest ever gathering of Nigels I’ve been in was at half-time at prenton park once when Mr. B introduced me to Nigel Adderley.
25 September 2022
Brumbiscuit
Dr D’s gathering made BBC Midlands Today today. Might even be on iPlayer.
25 September 2022
EXXO
How far is that from you, Andy? We often go fishing fish at Offenham. NIce spot out of season. As I mentioned above (re the 2019 gathering of Nigels at the same pub) there’s a malamute breeder near there that means when you’re fishing late in the evening you can more or less hear wolves howling not far away.
25 September 2022
Brumbiscuit
It’s about 25 miles from me. In Pears territory, not Bears. Bishop’s Bowl Fishery is a stone’s throw from me. I’d never heard of it, but my angling workmates tell me it’s well known.
25 September 2022
quality janitor
According to the totally legit and not at all made up for a laugh NewsThump Nigel now is the new Adolf.
You’ll be glad that my Nederlanden Nigel fact was read out on the wireless today while Nigel from the Nigefest was on, though they managed to miss out the Suriname speculation. Nigel from the Nigefest says he may advertise his next triennial event in Holland.
That is a bit uncanny for me, as I have no recollection of that and you’d think someone in school might have mentioned it even though we were sixteen by then. I can therefore fairly certainly pin it down to the fortnight I was away on a Shakespeare course in late November 1979, or the week or so afterwards when I was being persecuted for a vodka-induced incidents which had on the Shakespeare course. That would also have encompassed the Friday of my brother’s 18th when it was all about the ale, but I still had very poor and unhappy brains for drinking.
29 November 2022
EXXO
a vodka-related incident which had transpired on
29 November 2022
dr desperate
Spot on, @Exxo, it was Episode 8 from Series 24, aired on 16/11/79. Coincidentally, the whole programme will be available on iplayer for the next three weeks, with MPFN at [38:14] and Sparks (q v) at [9:00]. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001fgqk/crackerjack-16111979
29 November 2022
dr DEsperate
Happy Birthday, NB60!
18 July 2023
EXXO
Pen-blwydd hapus i Nigel. Long may you get more use from your Senior Railcard than from your free prescriptions.
18 July 2023
EXXO
Kinell forgot it’s free Merseyrail and buses at 60 too. Lucky bastards.
18 July 2023
IRISH NIALL
Breathlá Shona Dhuit a Nigel.
As a man who has also recently hit a big birthday I can enviously observe NB appears in better shape at 60 than I was hitting 30 or 40, much less 50.
I might also note my surprise at googling the etymology of the name. I did so as many, many years ago at college in Cork a young lady I quite fancied (I’d no luck alas) who was also studying sculpture would teasingly/mockingly/jokingly refer to me as “Nigel” and on rarer occasion “Nigellus”. She would do so in an only partly affected “anglo” accent (she’d have been from a similar southern anglo-Irish background as say Graham Norton) and might say “Ah Nigel, you’ve decided to join us -and before midday. Good for you”
I’m sure I corrected her at some point that the names Nigel and Niall were utterly unrelated. Only to now find, and not for the first time, that I may be full of shite.
What is Nigel in Gaelic? Gaelic: Niall “An Anglicised version of Nigellus, a Latinised form of the Gaelic Niall, with the possible meanings “cloud”, “passionate”, or “champion”.”
@IRISH NIALL And Neil. All connected. Champion and character of mint quality, I once read.
18 July 2023
BAD LOSER
Many happy returns to NB57+3. If his birthday brings him a fraction of the joy his music has over the years, he’ll have the great day he deserves.
Sadly the weather is rather grim up here if a long bike ride was in his plans.
18 July 2023
quality janitor
Many happy returns Mr B.
18 July 2023
paul F
As long you’re not a “twirly”, Exxo.
18 July 2023
dr DEsperate
(06:31 – 09:29 Monday to Friday, except Bank Holidays.)
18 July 2023
EXXO
In an entirely coincidental personal first, a Saudi student just called me “Niall” and said he had thought the “g” in Nigel might be silent.
18 July 2023
Pirx The Purist
Llongyfarchiadau, Mistar B! (oddi wrth Nigel arall).
(I wondered when I logged on why people were wishing me a happy 60th a full thirteen months or more after it happened).
18 July 2023
Irish Niall
@Exxo: An Iraqi doctor once told me that a phonetically identical “Niall” was a fairly common given name for men in his part of the world. Likely completely different spelling in either latin or arabic alphabet mind -may well tie in with your Saudi student thinking Nigel had a silent G.
19 July 2023
EXXO
Ah, OK, that makes sense. The name نائل in Arabic could be transcribed in our script as Nayal, Nayel, Nael, Nayil, Na’il, etc, and I reckon that’s how your Iraqi doctor would transcribe ‘Niall’. Whereas ‘Nigel’ is usually ناجل but there’s no reason my student will ever have seen the name before.
19 July 2023
dr DEsperate
Addition to the Dogs Called Nigel list (see posts 7, 21 and 43 above): former mad-sidey wearer Guy Martin’s Labrador, named after Nigel Mansell.
24 July 2023
dr DEsperate
Medium-range from the Met: Britain will be battered with heavy rain and strong winds this weekend as the remnants of Hurricane Nigel arrive from the Atlantic.
20 September 2023
dr DEsperate
(The headline in today’s Times of London is “After this week’s downpours, make plans for Hurricane Nigel”. See what they did there?)
20 September 2023
EXXO
Currently frittering out in mid-Atlantic with, predictably, no plans to break the US.
But for today at least, there’s calm in my eye.
20 September 2023
Brumbiscuit
Just spent the evening of Hurricane Nigel in Nigel’s Fleece Inn watching the very talented Rant. http://www.rantfiddles.com No Nigellas, though…
Next Nigel Night is not until 2025, apparently.
25 September 2023
EXXO
That reminds me we haven’t yet congratulated Nigel B’s old Noctorum Athletic team-mate Nigel A on his first win as Tranmere manager on Saturday.
Archie dream walker
well,firstly,god DID give me life. as i lay on the tarmac in the same position as portrayed on 90 bisodol,my friend thought i was dead. i was in a coma.
anyway,i had a feeling even before the head njury that i was a bastard. and for the past five years i’m pretty certain that demigod Nigel is my father.
i did a spotify search for ‘nigel’ earlier this morning…..the results were quite shocking!!
making plans for nigel,XTC[who also wrote Dear God,and senses working overtime
nigel,Mental as Anything[which any NHS professional will say i am!]
nigel-fucking legend, kevin bloody wilson
nigel,christophe beck[christ’s back??!!??]
nigel,helpcat
nigel,beth stelling
follow da leader,nigell
the chief, nigel beaham-powell
when jesus say yes,nigel lewis
and finally….
crucifixus,by nigel short,antonio lotti,and tenebrau.
the above were some of the results when i put ‘Nigel’ into the search box on spotify!!! VERY ‘telling’??!!
26 March 2016
this leaden paul
“What DO we know about Nigel?”
(Other than that his future is as good as sealed)
26 March 2016
Hendrix TATtoo
Nigel/Naidzal is an english masculine given name derived from the latin Nigellus….Nigel is commonly found in records dating from the middle ages….however it was not used much before being revived by 19th century antiquarians for instance sir walter scott published The Fortunes Of Nigel and sir arthur conan doyle published Sir Nigel….Nigel was a common name for boy’s born in england and wales from the 1950’s to 1970’s….
26 March 2016
Brumbiscuit
First name of a very regular contributor to this site.
Out of 30 boys entering senior school in 1972, only one was called Nigel out of 30 in my class.
26 March 2016
EXXO
@H-Tat
Not true I’m afraid, as covered in the Neil thread. The Latin scribes of Normandy needed a Latin word to translate the Norse versions of the Irish Niall which were trendy among the Norman (=Norseman) ruling classes, and probably tried to invent a false etymology for ‘Nigellus’ to legitimise it. Nigel and Neil both come from ‘Niall’.
26 March 2016
EXXO
Actually on re-reading what you put, H-Tat, it’s all correct, but incomplete, ‘cos yes the English version does come from the Latin version … which comes from the Norse version of the Irish version.
26 March 2016
featureless tv producer steve
My dearly-departed and much-missed yellow labrador was called Nigel, but I got him and christened him long before I was introduced to our Mr. Blackwell.
He was named after this other Nigel: https://s.yimg.com/fz/api/res/1.2/p4W493wOqnMfEL2m7TK36A–/YXBwaWQ9c3JjaGRkO2g9NDE2O3E9OTU7dz01NTA-/http://cdn.ustatik.com/_img/news/other/10%20tufnel.jpg
26 March 2016
Hendrix TATtoo
@Exxo thanks for the correction…Sadly I pinched it from Wiki…
That’s why my threads are full of Bull-S*#t sometimes….
26 March 2016
Hendrix TATtoo
@F.T.V.P.S ….Is that a man-kini he’s wearing?….
26 March 2016
dickhead in quicksand
@FTVPS – definitely a case there for “Play one the drummer knows”.
26 March 2016
nige
Can I just place on record my continued hatred of that xtc song. Thankfully I had left school before it was a hit.
26 March 2016
featureless tv producer steve
@HT – Haha, but no, he’s just shirtless. That’s his guitar strap you’re seeing.
@DiQ – How could the drummer be expected to know all the songs, having been with the band for only a few months?
27 March 2016
Hendrix TATtoo
@Nige….you were lucky…my mate in school was called Gordon should of seen the s*#t he got in school in 78…https://youtu.be/LTKORcr1jhY
28 March 2016
nige
I remember it well. Someone else released “Gordon’s not a moron” afterwards I believe but I don’t recall it troubling the top 40 too much
28 March 2016
EXXo
Seems unlikely that it will happen now this ‘storm season’, but given what Katie did – diverting a few flights from Gatwick, postponing some matches in Surrey, blowing a tree onto the Clapham omnibus and clearing away neglected trampolines throughout Cambridgeshire – I’m now not too bothered if the stupid fucking ‘Storm Nigel’ does happen, just to get it over and done with and forgotten about for the rest of eternity. It seems unlikely to threaten the Southampton gig.
28 March 2016
EXXO
No future in British Steel.
29 March 2016
bobby svarc
The Villa job is going to help him
30 March 2016
this leaden paul
I can’t see it doing much for his ‘anger management issues’, or whatever euphemism we’re using this week…
30 March 2016
Bobby SVARC
Pearson Out!
27 May 2016
Nige
He probably will be out if Derby aren’t 20 points clear of the rest by boxing day the way that club do things.
28 May 2016
EXXO
Yees @ myself in post 15 above but especially in other threads last winter, last year’s unused names are not being re-cycled by the Met this winter so there may not even be a Storm Nigel in my lifetime, which is a relief.
In other non-news, as a Nigel who often looks after a dog called Monty Dog, I was always struck by Monty Don being on telly with a dog called Nigel. Heard him on the radio the other day say he’s now got a second golden retriever called Nellie too (do not google this if you want to avoid quintessential Daily Heil colour supplement images).
Whenever Monty Don pops up by the way I always like to tell people that this means ‘dumpling underpants’ in Turkish. Almost true.
3 October 2016
Peter mcornotholgist
Anyone recall Green Nigel ? Occasionally appeared on Tiswas .
21 October 2016
Brumbiscuit
Ay, David Rappaport, who is now probably lacking a cranium…
22 October 2016
dr desperate
Reading Attila The Stockbroker’s autobiography, ‘Arguments Yard’, in which he describes recording his first Peel session in 1982. One of the poems was ‘Nigel Wants To Go To C&A’s’, which he had previously performed on The Tube. When he put the band (“Birkenhead’s extraordinary surrealist beat combo”) on at the Barn Theatre, Southwick in 1999, Nigel told him that he and his brother had been watching the programme, and described the hilarity that ensued.
He concludes, “that particular Nigel is an absolute bloody genius”.
14 January 2017
EXXO
If you follow click-bait
You’ll know I’m just the chick-bait.
I’m on the Isle of Mana
Don’t need no family planner.
She’s on another planet
I’m Nige the lonely gannet.
Her life is gltitzier and glitzier
While I’m just left in bits here
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/02/nigel-lonely-new-zealand-gannet-dies-concrete-replica-birds
2 February 2018
dr desperate
Now reading Dave “Haçienda” Haslam’s autobiography ‘Sonic Youth Slept On My Floor’ in which he describes how Duran Duran’s bassist in his teens changed his name from Nigel to John, “a step on the route to becoming a person he wanted to be”.
Obviously I cannot comment on the wisdom of taking this step.
15 March 2019
EXXO
Seems to have worked out for him.
15 March 2019
Pirx the purist
My mother was never able to explain why she gave me – a working-class kid in an industrial village – such a poncey name. I’ve always disliked it, but couldn’t be arsed to change it. I view it as one of those things one learns to live with, like eczema.
Come to think of it, it might have been better had I been called Eczema. It would merely have been irritating in another sense, and at least you can get ointment for that.
31 March 2019
cream cheese and chives
@ Pirx the Purist Amongst the Peters, Ians, Stephens, Neils and Davids of the mid60s, our neighbour who was a Nigel drew a lot of quiet sympathy because he was also given Robin as a middle name. He would switch from one to another quite frequently but neither ever really sat comfortably with him. Strangely, we would often adopt different names when playing games. I always longed to be Martin.
1 April 2019
Pirx the purist
What made it worse for me was that I was never given a middle name to fall back on. For a time (aged about 7) I gave myself the middle name ‘Peter’ after a friend of my father’s who I liked.
1 April 2019
EXXO
Talking of sea nymphs (in another thread), today marks 56 complete orbits of Apollo’s chariot since Mrs. Harwood, the Thetis-widow-midwife, was called.
18 July 2019
dr desperate
Or to put it another way, Happy Birthday Nigel.
18 July 2019
Alice van der meer
I shall raise a glass tonight, assuming I can find something over 5%.
18 July 2019
EXXO
Anyway, as i was saying …despite sometimes the draconian editing of this site by its owner, which he is entitled to do of course, but which is occsionally a bit intolerant and disrespectful of certain aspects of ‘HMHB culture’… it is on record that our man spends his birthday ignoring all else but the TDF, so it was good to see that today’s birthday stage was a fairly lively one, compared to some tedious July 18th stages in recent years. Some classic climbing breakaways, but with few enough participants that all bases could be easily covered and profits guaranteed on the exchanges.
18 July 2019
cream cheese and chives
Nigel based playlist? I wonder what that might entail exactly.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/pub-landlord-planning-world-record-19572090
6 September 2019
EXXO
Bretforton? I spent two nights two miles from there two weeks ago, so I’m f*cked if I’m going back there for a free pint whatever’s on the playlist. There’s a malamute breeder near there where they howl all night too.
Anyway by now Idiots and Pigeons might have fulfilled his threat and spawned the first Nigel in 4 years.
6 September 2019
EXXO
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/264333774958?var=563928994997
30 September 2019
dr desperate
Happy Birthday NB57.
18 July 2020
EXXO
Indeed. Raising a glass here to the 57th anniversary of Mrs. Harwood’s dash to Brackenwood Drive. Must be weird for him that he isn’t watching the Tour on his birthday, but at least the timing of being able to go into Wales again, on bike or otherwise, was pretty good.
18 July 2020
BOBBY SVARC
I tought he was older than that.
19 July 2020
EXXO
Pearson out.
19 July 2020
EXXO
I notice that, apart from being allowed at last to go to the land of his father’s grandfathers, another present received by Mr. B on Saturday was a new Tranmere manager, even if it was budget version that didn’t need to be spotted at the offy in Rock Ferry.
They need to get someone in that club that knows where and how to sign a good footballer, or several.
20 July 2020
dr desperate
Monty Don
wasn’t the only one
to have a dog
called Nigel.
Good Dog Nigel
Arf, Arf, he goes, a merry sight
Our little hairy friend
Arf, Arf, upon the lampost bright
Arfing round the bend.
Nice dog! Goo boy,
Waggie tail and beg,
Clever Nigel, jump for joy
Because we are putting you to sleep at three of the clock, Nigel.
(John Lennon, ‘In His Own Write’)
3 January 2021
dr Desperate
Major opportunity missed on the Wall round of tonight’s ‘Only Connect’.
1 February 2021
EXXO
WTF is Nigel Bond? That episode contained a record number of things I’d never heard of, even when the answers were given. WTF is ’76 Trombones’? The Apartment is one of my favourite films, but HTF would anyone know what songs were in ‘The (fucking) Music Man?’ Even when they explained some stupid obscure shit they left other stupid obscure shit unexplained. WTF is a ‘DINK’ as an acronym?
Cokeheads, cokeheads, cokeheads.
Or some other explanation for their fuckwittery.
1 February 2021
gipton TEENAGER
I used to know it as DINKY -Double Income No Kids Yet.
2 February 2021
dr Desperate
I recall ‘Seventy-Six Trombones’ as a staple of Radio 1’s ‘Junior Choice’ in the 70s, in a version credited to Michael Bond (no relation to Nigel, the senior snooker player whose nickname is apparently ‘Basildon’).
2 February 2021
dr desperate
First name of New Zealand-based Irish actor Sam Neill, which makes his real name Nigel Neill.
Changed to Sam at school because he felt Nigel was “a little effete for a New Zealand playground”. On an Australian talk show in 2004 he said, “You know, if you’re called Nigel – and if there are any Nigels out there, they know of what I speak – you’re just an absolute prime target for being picked on. “
27 April 2021
EXXO
I think NB’s response at a gig to ‘Idiots and Pigeons’ (the person who used to post with that alias one here) will always stick in my mind: “he’ll get bullied at school,” which yes would be expected in recent decades (and it really has become a joke name in Australia, a by-word for a social leper). But Neill’s comments are interesting, given that he’s talking about the best part of a generation earlier than ‘peak Nigel’ and that his playgrounds, according to what we read, were privileged 1950’s NZ ones. I can’t help wondering if he has retrofitted the explanation and really changed it just to have a cooler name in wider a teenage social context?
27 April 2021
Michael
Be gentle with me, I’m new-ish to the site (but not to the music). Just wondering what’s with the NB57 (have also seen NB10 somewhere on the site)? My best guess is it’s a piss take on CR7.
30 June 2021
Chris The Siteowner
Nigel came 57th in a Liverpool Echo poll of the “100 Greatest Merseysiders” in 2003, and occasional contributor here Taylo claims to have subsequently come up with the “NB57” nickname, which certainly stuck. When the paper re-ran the poll in 2014, there was a bit more interest in voting from these parts, and Nigel soared to number 10, just above George Harrison, so the nickname was updated…
As far as I can see, the first mention of “CR7” was in 2006, so perhaps the Madeiran Maestro launched his ‘brand’ as a tribute to Mr B.
30 June 2021
EXXO
Well, yes and no, because Taylo claimed (entirely credibly) to have invented EC7 (and therefore CR7) on the United message boards.
30 June 2021
EXXO
It was pretty instantaneous as I recall that there was that vote in 2003 and then within 24 hours or so, as we all reacted to the news from the Echo website, Taylo had coined “NB57” on the HMHB Yahoo Group (which from around 1999 was the first HMHB message board of a kind), citing the Red Issue fan site where he referred to players as EC7, etc (with CR7 signing a few months after that).
30 June 2021
EXXO
Ironically, nobody during the last 11 months has asked if he’s called NB57 cos he’s 57, which he isn’t but he is, for another two and a half weeks.
30 June 2021
michael
Thanks Exxo and Chris the Siteowner – interesting stuff! I did at first think it might be a reference to NB’s age but then realised that it probably wasn’t as NB10 wouldn’t fit (I know they’ve been around a while but even so….)
1 July 2021
dr desperate
Happy Birthday NB58 (and good luck Mark Cavendish in his attempt to break Eddy ‘Half Man, Half Bike’ Merckx’ record).
18 July 2021
EXXO
Cael pen-blwydd hapus i’r bardd.
18 July 2021
EXXO
I haven’t had time to keep up with the Tour v. closely this year, just kept an eye the hated INEOS/Brailsford outfit continuing to struggle. Heard Mollema had won a stage and meant to catch up with the details of that before celebrating it on here. NB57 must have been happy for his slight lookalike.
18 July 2021
GOK WAN ACOLYTE
Nigel appears to be on its way out as a name
https://twitter.com/hwallop/status/1450040818446839810?s=20
(personally I blame F*r*ge for its decline)
18 October 2021
transit full of keith
Not enough Keiths to fill a Transit, either.
https://twitter.com/hwallop/status/1450053607471128580
18 October 2021
Chris The Siteowner
That was after a brief resurgence, with a whole 9 Nigels last year.
18 October 2021
EXXO
The ONS doesn’t tell us when there are 0, 1 or 2 in any given year, just less than 3. But we do have an article from 2017 telling us that the reports of 0 were false that year.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-41430087
1963 5529
1970 2469
1980 413
1990 125
2000 25
2010 18
2015 9
2016 Officially less than 3 – reported in some papers as 0
2017 1 or 2 – falsely reported in some papers as 0
2018 Officially less than 3 – reported in some papers as 0
2019 9 [NINE]
2020 Officially less than 3 – reported as 0
When you look at the shape of that curve you can’t really pin anything on Farage, but the chances are he was partly responsible somehow for the 2019 mini-surge.
I was looking yesterday, as one does, for prices of fishing boat trips out of Littlehampton, and noticed that one boat’s website had Farage pictured proudly holding his catches on trips with them, just captioned as “Nigel,” no
I did once explain to a friend why I expectorate needlessly when I pass the Scott memorial in Edinburgh (might not do this again though what with Covid, etc). For it is ultimately his fault. But then again, without him I could have been another one of those 1963 accountancy names (I won’t specify the others in case any of you are named Jer*my, R*ger, etc).
18 October 2021
EXXO
Dunno what happened with that unfinished sentence there after “Nigel,” I just avoided the rest of the sentence as I will avoid that particular fishing vessel.
18 October 2021
Lord leominster
NIGEL Planer played NEIL the hippy in The Young Ones, 1982. Coincidence? I think not.
18 October 2021
dr Desperate
Many happy returns, @Exxo!
Sorry not to meet up with your bro at the Azed 50th Anniversary lunch yesterday (especially as he’d won last month’s clue-writing competition and would have been presented with the Victor Verborum Cup by Azed himself).
29 May 2022
EXXO
Cheers Doc. S.J. has been elusive recently, but good to hear he’s still a regular winner of such honours. I don’t have much tolerance for clues that depend on those archaic old elements like “jolly” = “RM” meself.
See you soon in Leeds!
30 May 2022
EXXO
Got to the bottom of the Doc’s no-show, Doc! Apparently Mrs. SJ managed to knock herself out on a bicycle shed roof, serious concussion ensuing.
3 June 2022
carrie anne
Re: Post No.25
Lonely Nigel has now been memorialised in song:
https://youtu.be/ST4BCEu88po
” “Nigel the Gannet” is the true story of a gannet in New Zealand, who briefly became an international media star when he died of old age next to the concrete decoy gannet he had chosen as his mate. Though the press spun his story as a lonely one, the song celebrates Nigel’s choice of solitude over social life, suggesting that he knew the difference between being lonely and being alone all along. For the B side, The Burning Hell took a crack at a cover of the excellent Half Man Half Biscuit song “Lark Descending,” recorded outside in the woods of Eastern Canada with the help of a solar-powered recording studio trailer.”
28 June 2022
EXXO
Thanks Karrie – another outstanding cut from a brilliant outfit (who I know ‘cos Marc Riley’s always so keen on them and I’ve been meaning to see them live – maybe in Manchester in October). The “French peacock” line is simply exquisite.
I haven’t heard the B-side yet but I assume “recorded outside in the woods of Eastern Canada with the help of a solar-powered recording studio trailer” is a very subtle hat-tip towards the sleeve notes for ‘the Referee’s Alphabet?’
And it’s their second double-bird-sided “single” in a row after the equally brilliant ‘Bird Queen of Garbage Island’ (featuring a hi-vis jacket) was coupled with a cover of ‘Make a Little Bird House in your Soul.’
And, by the way, “pass the wine, fuck the government, I love you” is surely the best waltz love song line that can’t be played on the wireless.
28 June 2022
dr desperate
Happy Birthday, NB59!
18 July 2022
EXXO
Yes, hope the bard had a good one and didn’t listen to the opinionated weather forecasters. Mind you the only thing they didn’t warn us about was not to leave our bikes in sun traps, and so I hope the chief didn’t have the burst inner tube issue that I did yesterday.
This time in 1963 was considered a bit of a heatwave, but the highest temperature in the UK that summer was 28 point something at Littlehampton on July 22nd. That’s what it was in LIttlehampton yesterday when I spoke to my mum there, and the conversation turned to how the roles were reversed at the moment and how much hotter it was on the Wirral (which my folks have recently left – again).
So I googled the temperatures on the Wirral yesterday and noticed that if you added together the temperature at that moment in Celsius at Birkenhead Lake Park Canada*, Birkenhead New Zealand and Birkenhead Australia, it totalled exactly the temperature in BIrkenhead, Oblong of Dreams (36)
*Or Birkenhead Rock, South Africa, of HMS Birkenhead notoriety, which had the same temperature as the Canadian spot at that moment. (16).
I tried to post something about the chief’s birthday yesterday without banging on about the temperatures, but failed. I assumed I would think of something else to mark the occasion before midnight, but nodded off after the football and slept fine for about 10 hours, thank you forecasters.
19 July 2022
EXXO
Martha & the Vandellas big July 1963 US hit ‘Heatwave’ wasn’t even released in the UK. Meanwhile the Chiffons’ ‘He’s so Fine’ peaked around the week I was born and out of the charts in early July.
Fitting somehow that Gerry & The Pacemakers were number one at the bard’s Brunanburh birth, replaced in his first week by Frank Ifield. Then Elvis, the Searchers, Billy J Kramer and the Beatles by the end of the summer.
19 July 2022
EXXO
At the end of the big freeze in March 1963, Cliff Richard’s ‘Summer Holiday’ and the Shadows ‘Foot Tapper’ exchanged the number one spot a couple of times. Then in the nine months between April 11th ’63, and 3rd January ’64, when Cliff had his next number one, five different Merseybeat acts (and nine songs only) held the number one spot in every week except that one Frank Ifield week in July and that one Elvis the following week.
19 July 2022
EXXO
Slight correction. Frank Ifield knocked Elvis back off the top for another week in August. So 3 non-Merseybeat weeks at number one out of 42.
19 July 2022
Paul F
As a Scouse-born child of the sixties it’s hardly surprising that a Scouse band were at the top of the charts on the day of my birth. Despite them also featuring a McCartney, that band were not the obvious ones.
19 July 2022
EXXO
Funnily enough I ended up on MM’s twitter feed this afternoon. Can’t even really remember how I got there, nor how I got to a website where I learned that PM lived briefly as a very small child two roads from where I grew up. Just by our cub scouts HQ in Wallasey. Never seen that in any biographies. Good job he never stayed there. Guess if they’d stayed he’d never have met Lennon.
19 July 2022
Hendrix-tattoo
Malcolm McClaren once asked Frank Ifield would he like to do a duet with Sid Vicious for the upcoming Great Rock ‘n’ Swindle album.
But unfortunately Sid died and it didn’t happen. The song Malcolm wanted them to sing was I remember you (You Fuckin’ B*****d)
True story.
Happy belated 59th birthday Nigel…
20 July 2022
EXXO
Watching promising young Dutch centreback Nigel Cello Lonwijk (born 2002) just now, I remembered his fellow countryman Nigel de Jong (b. 1984) a few years back saying his mother had liked the name because of early eighties Nigels such as Kennedy and Mansell. I note de Jong burst into the Ajax first team just weeks before this other Dutch Nigel’s birth, and that because of De Jong, Nigel was a more popular name by percentage of male births in the noughties than anywhere else in the world, accounting for almost one in every twelve hundred Dutch males born in the mid to late noughties.
25 September 2022
EXXO
Then a further train of thought that because both of those Nigels belong to the vast array of Dutch-Surinamese football talent that first flourished in the Rijkaard/Guillit/Seedorf/Davids era, and because Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink’s nephew Nigel has recently taken up citizenship in the land of his father’s birth and been banging in the goals for Suriname, maybe that land in turn, a colony given to the Dutch in return for New Amsterdam / New York, will become the final outpost of the Nigels? Statistics not yet available.
25 September 2022
dr desperate
I thought you were going to mention this event, which took place last night.
(I didn’t really).
https://thefleeceinn.co.uk/events/nigel-night/
25 September 2022
EXXO
The largest ever gathering of Nigels I’ve been in was at half-time at prenton park once when Mr. B introduced me to Nigel Adderley.
25 September 2022
Brumbiscuit
Dr D’s gathering made BBC Midlands Today today. Might even be on iPlayer.
25 September 2022
EXXO
How far is that from you, Andy? We often go fishing fish at Offenham. NIce spot out of season. As I mentioned above (re the 2019 gathering of Nigels at the same pub) there’s a malamute breeder near there that means when you’re fishing late in the evening you can more or less hear wolves howling not far away.
25 September 2022
Brumbiscuit
It’s about 25 miles from me. In Pears territory, not Bears. Bishop’s Bowl Fishery is a stone’s throw from me. I’d never heard of it, but my angling workmates tell me it’s well known.
25 September 2022
quality janitor
According to the totally legit and not at all made up for a laugh NewsThump Nigel now is the new Adolf.
https://newsthump.com/2022/09/21/latest-baby-name-survey-shows-nigel-is-the-new-adolf/
26 September 2022
EXXO
You’ll be glad that my Nederlanden Nigel fact was read out on the wireless today while Nigel from the Nigefest was on, though they managed to miss out the Suriname speculation. Nigel from the Nigefest says he may advertise his next triennial event in Holland.
26 September 2022
Hendrix-tattoo
Crackerjack…
https://youtu.be/n5LrRlR2Epo
28 November 2022
dr desperate
See post 10 on the Peter Glaze page.
29 November 2022
EXXO
That is a bit uncanny for me, as I have no recollection of that and you’d think someone in school might have mentioned it even though we were sixteen by then. I can therefore fairly certainly pin it down to the fortnight I was away on a Shakespeare course in late November 1979, or the week or so afterwards when I was being persecuted for a vodka-induced incidents which had on the Shakespeare course. That would also have encompassed the Friday of my brother’s 18th when it was all about the ale, but I still had very poor and unhappy brains for drinking.
29 November 2022
EXXO
a vodka-related incident which had transpired on
29 November 2022
dr desperate
Spot on, @Exxo, it was Episode 8 from Series 24, aired on 16/11/79.
Coincidentally, the whole programme will be available on iplayer for the next three weeks, with MPFN at [38:14] and Sparks (q v) at [9:00].
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001fgqk/crackerjack-16111979
29 November 2022
dr DEsperate
Happy Birthday, NB60!
18 July 2023
EXXO
Pen-blwydd hapus i Nigel. Long may you get more use from your Senior Railcard than from your free prescriptions.
18 July 2023
EXXO
Kinell forgot it’s free Merseyrail and buses at 60 too. Lucky bastards.
18 July 2023
IRISH NIALL
Breathlá Shona Dhuit a Nigel.
As a man who has also recently hit a big birthday I can enviously observe NB appears in better shape at 60 than I was hitting 30 or 40, much less 50.
I might also note my surprise at googling the etymology of the name. I did so as many, many years ago at college in Cork a young lady I quite fancied (I’d no luck alas) who was also studying sculpture would teasingly/mockingly/jokingly refer to me as “Nigel” and on rarer occasion “Nigellus”. She would do so in an only partly affected “anglo” accent (she’d have been from a similar southern anglo-Irish background as say Graham Norton) and might say “Ah Nigel, you’ve decided to join us -and before midday. Good for you”
I’m sure I corrected her at some point that the names Nigel and Niall were utterly unrelated. Only to now find, and not for the first time, that I may be full of shite.
What is Nigel in Gaelic?
Gaelic: Niall
“An Anglicised version of Nigellus, a Latinised form of the Gaelic Niall, with the possible meanings “cloud”, “passionate”, or “champion”.”
See also:
Nigel
Gender Male
Origin
Word/name Niall -> Njáll -> Neel, Niel, Nihel -> Nigellus -> Nigel
18 July 2023
Neil
@IRISH NIALL
And Neil. All connected. Champion and character of mint quality, I once read.
18 July 2023
BAD LOSER
Many happy returns to NB57+3. If his birthday brings him a fraction of the joy his music has over the years, he’ll have the great day he deserves.
Sadly the weather is rather grim up here if a long bike ride was in his plans.
18 July 2023
quality janitor
Many happy returns Mr B.
18 July 2023
paul F
As long you’re not a “twirly”, Exxo.
18 July 2023
dr DEsperate
(06:31 – 09:29 Monday to Friday, except Bank Holidays.)
18 July 2023
EXXO
In an entirely coincidental personal first, a Saudi student just called me “Niall” and said he had thought the “g” in Nigel might be silent.
18 July 2023
Pirx The Purist
Llongyfarchiadau, Mistar B! (oddi wrth Nigel arall).
(I wondered when I logged on why people were wishing me a happy 60th a full thirteen months or more after it happened).
18 July 2023
Irish Niall
@Exxo: An Iraqi doctor once told me that a phonetically identical “Niall” was a fairly common given name for men in his part of the world. Likely completely different spelling in either latin or arabic alphabet mind -may well tie in with your Saudi student thinking Nigel had a silent G.
19 July 2023
EXXO
Ah, OK, that makes sense. The name نائل in Arabic could be transcribed in our script as Nayal, Nayel, Nael, Nayil, Na’il, etc, and I reckon that’s how your Iraqi doctor would transcribe ‘Niall’. Whereas ‘Nigel’ is usually ناجل but there’s no reason my student will ever have seen the name before.
19 July 2023
dr DEsperate
Addition to the Dogs Called Nigel list (see posts 7, 21 and 43 above): former mad-sidey wearer Guy Martin’s Labrador, named after Nigel Mansell.
24 July 2023
dr DEsperate
Medium-range from the Met: Britain will be battered with heavy rain and strong winds this weekend as the remnants of Hurricane Nigel arrive from the Atlantic.
20 September 2023
dr DEsperate
(The headline in today’s Times of London is “After this week’s downpours, make plans for Hurricane Nigel”. See what they did there?)
20 September 2023
EXXO
Currently frittering out in mid-Atlantic with, predictably, no plans to break the US.
But for today at least, there’s calm in my eye.
20 September 2023
Brumbiscuit
Just spent the evening of Hurricane Nigel in Nigel’s Fleece Inn watching the very talented Rant. http://www.rantfiddles.com No Nigellas, though…
Next Nigel Night is not until 2025, apparently.
25 September 2023
EXXO
That reminds me we haven’t yet congratulated Nigel B’s old Noctorum Athletic team-mate Nigel A on his first win as Tranmere manager on Saturday.
And here he is in an inspirational mood this morning on the ever-inspiring Oblong of Dreams
https://twitter.com/TheNigelAdkins/status/1706205961537441949?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
Onwards and upwards.
25 September 2023