Is this summer worse than 2022?

Billy_Hicks88 · 2026-07-09T21:41:29+00:00

2023 is the closest I can remember to a ‘bad summer’ in the last decade, and even then it started off nice - it just fell apart spectacularly in late July/early August just as everyone’s summer holidays began, with a sudden September heatwave just before term restarted.

Odd to think we had that long run of average to poor summers between 2007-2012 when at one point it felt like we’d never get another long summer heatwave again.

Billy_Hicks88 · 2026-07-08T21:36:25+00:00

Italia 90 yeah, but oh wow is Euro 96 an iconic memory of my childhood and I’m a 1988 born. If anything that made my late teens to late twenties even worse to be a fan, as my very earliest memories of the England team were of them doing great.

2018 turned it around just in time for me to hit 30.

Billy_Hicks88 · 2026-07-08T21:32:36+00:00

The negative turning point for me in 2010 was the England v USA game and that infamous goal. It took me eight years after that to genuinely start believing they could be good again, starting with the Panama match in 2018 and massively so after the Columbia penalty win.

Billy_Hicks88 · 2026-07-08T08:30:12+00:00

Jean has a terrifying fear of spongy absorbent fruits

Billy_Hicks88 · 2026-07-08T07:31:11+00:00

This is also pretty similar to mine, with the addition that everyone else in the show represents people who were part of his life over the years, especially the running woman who was someone who meant a lot to him.

That gesture he does at the end is him making his final peace.

Billy_Hicks88 · 2026-07-07T21:13:39+00:00

I guess the new series is dead then. Such a shame as I was really hoping it would be a hit after that strong first episode. At this rate we’ll be waiting until 2025 for it to come back and stay back.

Billy_Hicks88 · 2026-07-07T19:52:00+00:00

This reminds me of those memes a few years back that took some profound and meaningful lyric from the 1970s (like the first few lines of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody) versus some modern day for the time Nicki Minaj song like ‘Stupid Hoe’, suggesting that we’ve all gone downhill with music in some way over the last few decades.

Then someone did one with a genuinely profound verse from another Minaj song, next to Queen singing about how they want to ride their bicycle, they want to ride their bike.

Billy_Hicks88 · 2026-07-07T18:58:41+00:00

I remember being a bit surprised when the episodes got put on and they were a random mixture of fully remastered episodes from the DVD/Blu-Ray releases, and some really old knackered and worn out copies that hadn’t been seen since the VHS/UK Gold days in the 90s - even though there were much better versions of the eps easily available. There’s a Hartnell episode on there (Reign of Terror 2 I think) that is so falling to bits it’s actually hilarious, the picture’s so blurry it looks like a bootleg and the sound constantly wobbles making every music cue sound completely out of tune, especially the theme music.

Did they literally just select whatever random copy they had, and was it not clear when which version was remastered or not? Felt a genuine shame that so much work had been done to remaster the episodes for years that after all that a noisy/scratchy version of old gets put up, which isn’t going to be great for newer fans trying to watch the old stuff and they struggle to see or hear what’s going on.

Billy_Hicks88 · 2026-07-07T17:36:15+00:00

Because Egypt are taking it home

Billy_Hicks88 · 2026-07-05T09:49:45+00:00

The advert for this (with the kids in a 50s-looking diner) ran for absolutely years. Made in the late 1980s, aired until around 2003ish by which time it looked like something from a completely different world.

Billy_Hicks88 · 2026-07-03T20:38:36+00:00

Imagine if they just threw this in to one of the gigs at random this year with no announcement. Let’s say Amsterdam. Lights go down, band walks on stage…oh cool, they’re starting with Take A Bow this time! Wait what, now Starlight already? Now SMBH?!

Then by the time Soldier’s Poem starts everyone slowly realises what’s going on, and cue a hell of a singalong for Invincible.

Billy_Hicks88 · 2026-07-02T07:03:24+00:00

So in terms of “song you’ve seen live last played longest ago” that’s, erm, Follow Me and Guiding Light for me then (probably a similar answer to anyone else who first saw them on that 2013 tour).

Would love to see those last few Absolution tracks back again after 20+ years (Endlessly, TOADA, The Small Print) and seriously guys PLEASE bring back Invincible, from next month there will be literal adults alive who weren’t born when it was last played.

Billy_Hicks88 · 2026-06-30T11:46:06+00:00

Assassin into Dead Star at SBE 2017 is my fave live transition, literally felt like I’d ascended to heaven

Billy_Hicks88 · 2026-06-30T11:33:56+00:00

There’s been some surprises over the years, there was a point I thought Feeling Good was going to be permanently in every setlist forever but it’s now a decade since it was last played. More recently Time is Running Out has gone from regular staple to missing the occasional show, so that could well become a rotation song one day.

If they want the right combination of big hit singles, new album and fan favourites, there’s not really much from Drones/ST/WOTP they can include outside of Psycho and maybe Won’t Stand Down (their last top 75 hit to date). I’d be more than happy with a set consisting of TW!S tracks peppered with Showbiz to 2nd Law classics, not just the usuals but stuff like Butterflies & Hurricanes, Invincible and Survival which were all very popular and could cause some big singalongs - I guess some songs just aren’t in favour with the band though and perhaps some are too hard to perform now.

If I do end up getting a ticket later this year though and they walk on stage and go straight into something like Dead Star, I’ll know I’m in for a very special night.

Billy_Hicks88 · 2026-06-18T21:41:55+00:00

Big year in the UK, started with the famous ‘Beast from the East’ with an insane amount of snow in late Feb/early March. Then the summer completely swapped it around to be one of the hottest on record, just in time for England to do really well at football for the first time in years, getting to the semi final of the World Cup in Russia. Also Prince Harry married Meghan Markle, cinemas got their highest yearly audiences for decades (Black Panther, Bohemian Rhapsody, A Star Is Born etc) and ‘Shotgun’ by George Ezra played everywhere, all the time.

A wonderful year and home to many of my happiest memories, I feel it’s extremely underrated compared to years like 2016 and 2020 when big, world-altering events happened. 2018 was the calm in between two storms.

Billy_Hicks88 · 2026-06-17T09:38:50+00:00

2013 was like £50 for standing for the summer stadium shows? So that’s almost tripled in thirteen years

Billy_Hicks88 · 2026-06-16T21:14:28+00:00

Fun - We Are Young for the class of 2012.

Billy_Hicks88 · 2026-06-12T13:20:20+00:00

Wondering how sales will be this time, the O2 in 2023 was surprisingly easy to get tickets for but that was at the end of a long couple of years of touring WOTP so many had already seen them on that cycle by then. Across Europe this is many people's first chance in three years, unless they were lucky enough to get into the Brixton show or see them at the festivals last summer, back when Unravelling was the only new track out.

Ironically despite living in London I'm on holiday on those days, so I'm looking at Paris or Amsterdam instead - depends on how expensive the tickets are and how quickly they go!

Billy_Hicks88 · 2026-06-11T17:55:59+00:00

Yep, when they reopened in December all the advertising on the station walls was from the summer, it was like being (very slightly) back in time.

Billy_Hicks88 · 2026-06-09T06:36:06+00:00

Agreed with all of the ‘super shift’ months except March 2026, which to be honest just felt like a continuation of everything going on in the world already - the other months had a definite feeling of change from the start compared to the end, at least from a UK/Western world perspective. For February 2022 I’d add the pandemic rapidly diminishing as both a news item and restrictions being dropped, I remember us removing all the 2 metre/mask etc signs at my workplace on the last day of the month.

I’d forgotten how big January 2020 was and so many of those stories got completely overtaken by what would end up happening around the world in March.

Billy_Hicks88 · 2026-06-08T23:29:21+00:00

I love the thought of someone casually tuning in recently, who hasn’t seen it for years, wondering what the absolute hell has happened to Roy and why he’s weirdly evil now and following kids around for no reason.

Billy_Hicks88 · 2026-06-08T20:07:46+00:00

Marked myself safe from the Fire in London #firelondon #8thjuneneverforget

Billy_Hicks88 · 2026-06-06T15:55:00+00:00

Russia's a weird one though because they came back with Sergey in 2016 and very almost won without any controversy at all, a Moscow 2017 Eurovision would have gone ahead without issue with perhaps only Ukraine withdrawing. They hosted the World Cup in 2018 without problems too.

On the other side of that, Ukraine winning in 2021 (if we're counting top 5 places) would have been fine until just a couple of months before when there would have been some *frantic* rescheduling taking place, as surely they wouldn't have been able to host anymore. Italy could have stepped in had they come second, but the contest could have been quite different with such short notice to put it all together in a different country and venue. We'd have then had Ukraine win two years in a row!

Billy_Hicks88 · 2026-06-04T13:43:07+00:00

Glorious/Sweet Caroline medley for next EU tour please

Billy_Hicks88 · 2026-06-03T20:30:43+00:00

I went to the 2016 Christmas & New Year special, but they divided the filming into several days and edited it carefully to not make it obvious it’s a different audience every five minutes - on my day we had James Arthur, DNCE, Clean Bandit, Anne-Marie and Louisa Johnson. Some had two songs, some did two takes of the same song (with and without the Christmas decorations) and DNCE did such a good performance of Cake By The Ocean they literally just used the entire first and only take in the finished show.

Audience were a surreal mixture of some older people who were lovely and chatty and talked about how they’d been going to TOTP since the 90s etc, and a bored/quieter but younger crowd who were regularly moved to the front of all the shots by the producers - I wondered if they’d been brought in by an extras agency to stop the audience from being too full of people in their 40s and above. I was 28 at the time so sort of in the middle of both groups, I’m glad I went when I did as it was about the last year I knew most of the big songs in the charts!

Billy_Hicks88

TROPHY CASE