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International | Trending

Becky Swain’s 42-Second Coronation Street Cameo: How British Soap Became Global Soft Power
ByDaveslocker 12 September 2025

Weatherfield’s Latest Export: How Becky Swain’s Coronation Street Cameo Quietly Conquered the World By Ludo Voss, Senior Cynic-at-Large, Dave’s Locker Manchester—home of drizzle, industrial decline, and an implausibly resilient fictional postcode—has done it again. Becky Swain, the former head of learning at the Royal Shakespeare Company turned “script consultant” for Coronation Street, slipped into Wednesday…

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International | Sports

WrestleMania 43 in Riyadh: When Global Politics Body-Slams Sports Entertainment
ByDaveslocker 12 September 2025

WrestleMania 43: The Last Empire’s Circus Comes to Riyadh JEDDAH—If the Roman Empire had survived into the age of fiber-optic thongs and pre-show drone ballets, it would have looked exactly like WrestleMania 43. On a makeshift desert moonscape ten miles outside Riyadh, 82,000 pilgrims—half of them jet-lagged Americans clutching prescription heartburn medication, the rest a…

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International | Sports

How Benfica vs. Santa Clara Quietly Explained the Entire World’s Addiction to Spectacle
ByDaveslocker 12 September 2025

Benfica-Santa Clara: A Small Portuguese Match That Explains the Entire Planet’s Descent Into Spectacle by “Lisbon’s Least Optimistic Correspondent” On the surface, last night’s Liga Portugal fixture between Benfica and Santa Clara was merely 22 men, one ball, and 90 minutes of choreographed cardio. Yet on a planet where every toddler’s tantrum is live-streamed to…

Read More How Benfica vs. Santa Clara Quietly Explained the Entire World’s Addiction to Spectacle
International | Sports

Frankfurt FC: How a German Football Club Became the World’s Most Expensive Comfort Blanket
ByDaveslocker 12 September 2025

Frankfurt FC and the Global Art of Pretending to Care About Football By Our Man in the Departure Lounge, still clutching a boarding pass that smells of duty-free gin and existential dread Frankfurt am Main, 3:47 a.m. local time—the hour when even the airport’s pretzel ovens go quiet and the currency-exchange kiosks stare blankly at…

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International | Sports

Chuba Akpom: The Striker Sold Down the River Bosphorus and Other Tales of Modern Football’s Transfer Circus
ByDaveslocker 12 September 2025

The Rise and Mildly Inconvenient Fall of Chuba Akpom, or How a Striker’s Goal Glut Became Collateral Damage in Football’s Endless Transfer Carousel By Our Man in the Departure Lounge ISTANBUL—Somewhere between the kebab smoke and the Bosphorus haze, Chuba Akpom has discovered that fame, like Turkish tea, cools quickly once the cup is empty….

Read More Chuba Akpom: The Striker Sold Down the River Bosphorus and Other Tales of Modern Football’s Transfer Circus
International | Trending

Holly Willoughby: How Britain’s Breakfast-TV Queen Became a Global Soft-Power Export (and $1.3M Gilet Influencer)
ByDaveslocker 12 September 2025

Holly Willoughby: Britain’s Televised Comfort Blanket Exported to a World That’s Already Freezing If you have never heard of Holly Willoughby, congratulations—you have just proved you live somewhere beyond the gravitational pull of UK breakfast television, a place where the day begins without a saccharine smile and the faint whiff of mid-tier celebrity desperation. Across…

Read More Holly Willoughby: How Britain’s Breakfast-TV Queen Became a Global Soft-Power Export (and $1.3M Gilet Influencer)
International | Sports

Marseille FC: The Mediterranean Megaphone Where Geopolitics, Finance and Flare Smoke Collide
ByDaveslocker 12 September 2025

Marseille FC, or Olympique de Marseille if you’re trying to impress a customs officer, is less a football club and more a geopolitical Rorschach test smeared across the Mediterranean. From the Vieux-Port to a Singaporean hedge-fund boardroom, OM’s fortunes ricochet like a badly cleared corner kick, reminding the world that even sport is now just…

Read More Marseille FC: The Mediterranean Megaphone Where Geopolitics, Finance and Flare Smoke Collide
International | Trending

Guy Martin: The Last Honest Man on Earth, Exported at 200 mph
ByDaveslocker 12 September 2025

The World According to Guy Martin: How a Gravel-Voiced Lincolnshire Lorry Mechanic Became an Unlikely Global Metaphor By the time the sun rose over the Shanghai International Circuit last October, the Chinese state broadcaster had already looped the Isle of Man TT crash footage for the fifteenth time. Each replay was captioned—in perfect, soulless Mandarin—with…

Read More Guy Martin: The Last Honest Man on Earth, Exported at 200 mph
Analysis | International

Leopards vs Saints: The Global Talent Show Where Spots Always Win
ByDaveslocker 12 September 2025

Leopards vs Saints: A Global Game of Spots and Halos By Our Correspondent, filing from whichever airport lounge still has free olives The phrase “leopards don’t change their spots” is enjoying a vigorous second act on the world stage, now re-cast as a dark comedy in which the leopards wear bespoke suits and the saints…

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Analysis | International

Warriors vs Tigers: The Global Cage Match Where Everyone Loses, Including the Stripes
ByDaveslocker 12 September 2025

Warriors vs Tigers: A Global Power Struggle in Fur and Feathers By Our Correspondent, Somewhere Over the Himalayas (Wi-Fi permitting) The phrase “warriors vs tigers” used to summon images of medieval tapestry and museum dioramas: a spear-brandishing man in a loincloth, a striped cat frozen mid-pounce, both equally doomed to become taxidermy. Fast-forward to 2024…

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International | Trending

Selma Blair’s Cane Heard ’Round the World: How One Actress Turned Illness into Global Soft Power
ByDaveslocker 12 September 2025

Selma Blair and the Global Business of Being Ill By the time Selma Blair’s cane clicked across the red carpet at the 2019 Vanity Fair Oscar party, the world had already perfected the art of monetising misfortune. From Syrian refugees live-streaming their border crossings on TikTok to Tokyo office workers crowdfunding funerals, suffering is now…

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Current Events | Sports

Ipswich vs Sheffield: When the World Burned, Two English Clubs Argued Over a Ball
ByDaveslocker 12 September 2025

Ipswich Town vs Sheffield United: A Microscopic Battle in the Macrocosm of Chaos By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, Somewhere Over the Atlantic While cruise missiles rearranged the furniture over the Black Sea and central bankers in three continents rehearsed their best “we told you so” faces, 22 slightly winded Englishmen in polyester met…

Read More Ipswich vs Sheffield: When the World Burned, Two English Clubs Argued Over a Ball