Thanks to the wonders of You Tube here are some videos you may like to watch.

Omid Djalili stand up routine, his take on how Israel was formed and his appearance on Top Gear.

And fun with Paul Merton on Have I Got News For You? We have The Angus Deaton Scandel, with the wonderful Boris Johnson and his Surreal Dream.

Dave Gorman on the Daily Show, talking about Obesity and celebrating the Queen’s 80th Birthday.

Black America Represent! We have Mr T’s music video ‘Treat Your Mother Right‘, Samuel L Jackson at the MTV movie awards talking about ‘Snakes On A Plane‘, and at the same ceremony we have Gnarls Barkley singing Crazy. Richard Pryor and Chris Rock stand up.

England rode their luck and are now placed on top of their group which makes qualification almost a certainty due to Sweden and Trinidad & Tobago’s 0-0 draw. The second half was very disappointing but I do think the heat played a part. England will not have to play another 2:00pm match again now so we won’t have the weather to blame if we’re lacklustre next time.

I watched the match round a friend’s house with a Freeview box and 4:3 CRT and the picture was really good. The Robin Hood pub had a 42″ widescreen Plasma which has a relatively good analogue signal stretched to fill the 16:9 and they played the audio too. The Hampton were willing to show the Trinidad match but the badly placed TV had a fuzzy and distorted analogue signal with no audio and loud music in the background. The Windmill’s new LCD TV was looking very good and is the best positioned set I saw that day. They have a SkyBox I believe but it’s still outputting 4:3 on a 16:9 TV – hopefully its a few setting buttons away. They promise the play audio for about half the group stage matches.

With this heat there was always a chance of some trouble occuring in Brighton when you add alcohol and football. I wandered past Gemini’s on the seafront yesterday to see some brilliant human beat boxes peforming to a very lively crowd. The whole of Gemini’s was up on its chairs dancing with the performers. From what I gather about 5 minutes later some guy decided to throw a chair onto the crowd and all hell broke lose. I’ve heard verbal reports of over 20 people arrested and tear gas or pepper spray used by police. Walking back again half an hour later gemini’s was empty with just a few police hanging around taking statements. I’ll check tomorrow’s dire local rag the Evening Argus to see if it gets a mention.

I also missed the World Naked Bike Ride in Brighton yesterday but for those of us missed out go and check out Fred Pipes’ and Shiny Sixpence’s Flickr photosets.

At last, the World Cup has started. One great game yesterday and one alright but we’ve had suprises already. So much for my outside bet on Costa Rica. If it wasn’t for a couple of well-timed German responses it could have been a different story. Remember, Labrokes are giving you three FREE £10 Bets on the World Cup so sign up if you fancy a flutter!

I wasn’t overly keen on the BBC title sequences, a bit dour for my liking and I’ve never been a fan of Handel’s See The Conquering Hero Comes. Their post-programme World Cup Extra thing wasn’t much cop either, as it was obscured by some ‘Your Shout’ visuals which really annoyed me. Why do they always think we care what Joe from Dunstable thinks about Gerrard’s backbone? But I enjoyed the chat between Alan Hansen, Martin O’Neill and Gary Lineker, and even Alan Shearer gave a good show. I missed the ITV title sequences but they could only be better. It’s all off to a good start though.

Of course I hope that we stuff the Paraguayans today, possibly by only a goal though. The World Cup songs haven’t inspired me yet but there is a track that really made me proud be to be English. If Wayne Rooney was totally fit I’m sure that this would be number one right now. Check out the Wayne Rooney song at Kontraband. Not sure if McCartney would have given them the rights to do this though. You might as well go and see the naked photos of his wife Heather Mills (NSFW).

I do know somebody who is watching this World Cup in High Definition. Yes, a friend of mine has the HD Sky Box but I’ve yet to check a match out on it yet. I’ll report back here as soon as I see it in action. But if you were thinking of entering the HDTV minefield then please read this article from The Register that will explain everything you need to know about what you need and when it’ll be available. Personally I think my 28″ widescreen Panasonic CRT I got for £280 does a much better job than many of the LCD and Plasma screens I’ve seen. I think i’m going to wait a few years before I adopt any HDTV technology. I still can’t get ITV on Freeview though so half the matches will be grainy and in 4:3 for the time being.

Oh, and I’ve added one more bet to my list. I put £1.00 on Brazil and Croatia not to qualify to the next round (100-1). Well you never know!

May was my busiest month ever at KingOfMyCastle.com with nearly 30,000 hits and 2632 unique visitors.

The 2005-2006 English Premier League fantasy football teams I had did really well. I won the old works league again, which was nice, and came around 6000th in the Telegraph Fantasy Football league which was in the top 5%.

I’m still having a love hate relationship with Google who had me at position 6 for the search term “John King Brighton” at one point but today I’m not even in the top 1000? At least MSN search loves me!

As you may be able to see this site is now sponsored by Ladbrokes. Well not quite but I am an affiliate which means if you want to place a bet on the World Cup or play some online poker then click through the little Ladbrokes icon at the top right of the screen please.

I’ve formulated my betting plan for this years World Cup. I’m going to spend a total of £100 on bets over the five weeks, all from money I won from last months Graham Dott win. Normally I’d bet a £5 on the winner but this extra money will allow me to have much more fun.

Here are some serious tournament bets:
France to win World Cup: £8 12/1
Top Tournament Goalscorer:
Luca Toni – £8 18/1
Frank Lampard – £2 50/1

And here are some of my current stupid outside bets:
Japan to win World Cup: £2 150/1
Iran to win World Cup: 50p 250/1
Trinidad & Tobago to win World Cup: 50p 750/1
No own goals to be scored all tournament: £1 16/1
Top Tournament Goalscorer Joe Cole – £1 100/1
Group B Winner – Trinidad & Tobago – £1 40/1

And here’s some crazy match betting:
9 Jun Costa Rica to beat Germany – £3 9/1
10 Jun Trinidad & Tobago to beat Sweden – £3 9/1
15 Jun Trinidad & Tobago to beat England – £3 10/1
18 Jun Australia to beat Brazil – £3 10/1
20 Jun Equador to beat Germany – £3 7/1
22 Jun Japan to beat Brazil – £3 11/1
23 Jun Saudi Arabia to beat Spain – £3 9/1

Thats £45 in bets leaving £55 for the rest of the tournament.

If you dont fancy betting with money then why not play a World Cup fantasy football game for free. I’ve signed up to play one with Yahoo here. My team name is KingOfMyCastle. Leave a comment below if you enter your own team.

I’ve been following some of the news about the Terrorist suspects caught in a dawn raid in Forest Gate. I grew up a few roads from there and I have extended family dotted all around that area. In fact only last Sunday I was showing my Mum this exact same street in Google Earth as my auntie lives there. As far as I’m aware the Bangladeshi, British and Pakistani community gets along fine there so I hope this doesn’t create any tensions. It just seemed like a strange coincidence when I saw this picture.