RIP Paul the psychic cephalopod

So, farewell then, Paul the Psychic Octopus. The eight-tentacled, three-hearted cephalopod – whose FIFA World Cup 2010 predictions entertained us last summer as Capello’s Heroes limped out of the competition at a much later stage than they deserved – has died and gone to invertebrate heaven.

Paul was born – or rather, hatched – in an aquarium in Weymouth, but his natural wanderlust soon took him further afield.

At an early age he moved to Oberhausen in Germany and found a berth in the Sea Life Centre.

There, Paul accurately predicted the outcome of several Euro 2008 football matches  by choosing which of two boxes, labelled with the flags of the competitors, to open first. Inside each box was a tasty mussel or oyster as a reward.

Paul really hit his stride with this year’s World Cup, though, when he correctly foretold the result of every single match of Germany’s World Cup campaign.

 The football establishment closed ranks against him and lesser pundits such as Lineker, Hansen, Shearer, Tyldesdley and co shook in their collective boots.

Paul’s predictive skills were questioned in academia as well as the world of sport. Chris Budd, Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Bath, was quoted by the BBC as saying that Paul’s success rate was no better than you’d get from tossing a coin.  “Mathematics can be spooky,” he said. You’re not wrong there, professor.

Be that as it may, all gritty rationalism got swept under the carpet when Paul hit the jackpot by predicting Spain’s triumph over the Netherlands in the final.

Paul was subsequently invited to make a victory tour of Spain, but his owners declined the offer, presumably fearing that the octopodophagous Spaniards might get carried away with the excitement of their win, and devour him in a stew of his own ink.

Not everyone was delighted with Paul’s predictions. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, claimed he was a tool of “western propaganda and superstition”.

And a hit squad from the Oxford English Dictionary was dispatched to Bath to deal with a certain blogger who was going round indiscriminately inventing words like “octopodophagous”.

Paul’s management team put him out to grass after the World Cup. But even now, before the mourning is over, conspiracy theorists are claiming that he actually died before the final in Soccer City, and that his last, most glorious, prediction was made by a double.

Why can’t they let the dead rest in peace? Paul was a true aristocrat among football pundits. (He had the blue blood to prove it – caused by haemocyanin, a copper-based respiratory protein, fact fans.) His memory should be left unsullied. De mortuis nil nisi bonum and that sort of thing.

Who now remembers Leon the porcupine, Mani the parakeet or Apfelsin the African red river hog, all of whom tried to emulate Paul’s predictive feats and failed?

No-one, that's who. Paul was the greatest. We shall never see his like again.

Eight Things You May Not Have Known About Paul the Psychic Octopus

1. He was psychic.
2. He is dead.
3. He had EIGHT TENtacles. Spooky.
4. I predicted his demise in July 2010.
5. He was born in Weymouth, UK but emigrated to Germany.
6. Actually, he wasn't born. He hatched.
7. He had three hearts. One for everyday, one for Sundays, and one just in case another was broken by a lady octopus.
8. He knew more about football than most of the telly pundits put together.

RIP Paul the Psychic Octopus. We'll miss you.

And an extra ninth thing: he was called "Paul" because of its phonetic similarity to "Poulpe", which is French for Octopus. Or Pulpo, which is Spanish for Octopus. (I have no evidence for this whatsoever, but it sounds convincing.)

Large Hadron Collider goes to Glastonbury

Have you ever had one of those mornings when inspiration refuses to come?

When words – never mind whole sentences –  flow from your brain to the tip of your typing finger with all the grace and alacrity of Emile Heskey chasing a through ball?

When ideas are as rare as English women tennis players after the first round at Wimbledon?

(And yes, we know the men won’t do much better either. So don’t bother writing in.)

When your vvv is as www as an xxx’s yyy in the middle of a zzz with two qqq’s? (Fill in gaps later.)

If you’ve ever tried to get words on to paper for a living, the chances are that you know the feeling.

So what do you do to get the creative juices flowing again, to lubricate the brain/paper interface, and to ensure that the remaining two legs of this week’s outpouring are at least half literate?

Well, whatever you might think after this week’s Budget from the Black Lagoon, the answer is not cider. Especially not at 9.15 in the morning, mister Osborne sir.

No, if you need a dose of inspiration, just look eastwards, to the Franco-Swiss border, under which runs the giant torus that is the Large Hadron Collider.

Yes, we’ve been there before. Usually when the good old LHC has inexplicably broken down because a pigeon has dropped a chunk of quantum baguette into its insides.

This time though, it’s different.

Because a radio news report earlier this week suggested that the boffins in charge of the LHC are trying to get it started on the road to musical superstardom by converting its heretofore silent subatomic womblings into sounds.

It’s rather like when you buy a new computer. It comes with all sorts of fancy toys that you never get round to using – film editing software, website creation tools, the first level of a game that stretches the graphics card to its limit and crashes just as you’re getting the hang of the controls.

Instead you use it as intended – for emails, web browsing and writing to the bank explaining how you’re going to pay back the money you borrowed to buy it in the first place.

But one lazy day your discover that hidden away under the bonnet is a full 32-track recording studio, with instrument samples, graphic equalizers, flangers and other  incomprehensible sonic effects.

A few minutes fiddling – a cowbell here, a horn stab there – and you’ve got a hit on your hands.

Or nor. What you’ve actually got is an out-take from Hot Chip.

But what does all this have to do with the LHC? Well, its everyday work (renormalising Higgs bosons, mixing quark-gluon plasma) was  getting a bit dull, and it needed its own creative outlet.

And now the LHC has found that outlet: the music within itself.

So be warned. If you’re at Glastonbury  this weekend, and 1,600 superconducting magnets appear on the Pyramid Stage, then you’re about to hear the sound of protons colliding at the speed of light.

A bit like Kraftwerk, by all accounts. But without the tunes.

World cup fever starts here

Not long to go now. From the moment that the very first driver clipped the very first cross of Saint George flag to the roof of their car, there has been no escaping it.

Yes folks, it's the World Cup. Or to give it its full name, the 2010 FIFA World Cup South AfricaTM .

It starts on June 11, little more than three weeks away.

And if all goes to plan England will lift the gleaming golden trophy out of its official Louis Vuitton travelling bag a month later on July 11.

How can we be so sure? Well, two city types at JP Morgan bank have done a bit of quantitative risk analysis and come to the conclusion that the fixture schedule gives England their best chance of a win since 1966. And seeing what a great job city analysts have done on the economy over the last couple of years, who could possibly disagree with their predictions?

1966, though. The year when football stayed at home. The year when some chancer nicked the Jules Rimet trophy and left it in a South London hedge, where it was found by Pickles the wonder-dog. (Who, for trivia fans, met his end soon afterwards, choking on his lead while chasing a cat. A true hero.)

1966, the year of World Cup Willie, the first and cheekiest World Cup mascot. The year when the merchandising really got going.

Four years later, the contest moved to Mexico. In those days people could still afford petrol, and Esso cashed in on cup fever by producing a collection of 30 coins depicting the members of the England squad and crafted of the finest aluminium.

Woe betide any 1970 parent who went to a Shell garage to get their petrol. Small boys in those days had no interest in collecting tokens for glass tumblers. They had a brace of Alan Mullerys, five Gordon Bankses, three Martin Peters and no Bobby Moore OBE, and Esso was the only place they could complete their collection. Except in the murky waters of the school swapsies market, which was already flooded with those Captain Scarlet bubble gum cards that you could arrange into a giant jigsaw.

Such was the rare quality of the Esso coins that a complete set of 30 now sells on ebay for at least £6.50. What a return on your dad's original investment in petrol: not even enough to put a tenth of a tiger in your tank.

Still, there's one thing to be grateful for. At least the powers that be at FIFA have scheduled England's fixtures to avoid any clash with the Weston Village Open Gardens day on Sunday, June 13.

Our first-round tussle with the USA is just one day before that, and it would have been a pretty bad show if all Mrs D's horticultural efforts over the last months had come to nought because everyone was at home or in the pub watching England's glory boys on their first step to international triumph. There is justice in the world after all.