If Carlsberg made Sundays …

24 years of hurt. It's like how Manchester United fans felt when they first won the Premier League. More on them later though.

Yesterday was pretty much as good as it gets for a proud Kiwi who is also a Liverpool fan and likes comedy, so I thought I'd share it and see if anyone else can beat it for a day.

I was up bright and early, fished out my All Black jersey and was glued to the sofa to watch us play the French in the World Cup final.

I’ve never been the world's biggest rugby fan but 15 years away from New Zealand has certainly made me more interested in how the All Blacks do as a proud Kiwi and I was even finding myself singing along to the words of the dreary dirge that is our national anthem God Defend New Zealand (not the Maori words though, sadly we were never taught those when I was at school) and cheered a particularly good All Black Haka – although I was disappointed that the ABs didn't do the iconic Ka Mate.

There followed 80 minutes of nerves as we were – frankly – out-played by the French and every Australian I know started texting and tweeting me messages about choking (naturally I usually retort when this happens with an Ashes-related jibe or mention the underarm incident – incidentally a distant relative of my Mum's was the batsman who faced it), but as the best team in the tournament and the only unbeaten one we definitely deserved to win. The hall carpet's a bit worn today though!

As Sean Fitzpatrick always says 35 times in every sentence on TV, all credit to the lads. Skippered by Richie McCaw they finally ended our hoodoo:

[Image from Getty Images / The Guardian - hope they don't mind me using it!]

Speaking of the TV coverage, wasn't the commentary awful? (in my own personal opinion of course!) It was summed up in the final for me when the ITV commentator said that McCaw was "the closest thing to royalty in New Zealand". Apart from the Queen (as head of state). Oh, and the Maori King of course. What nonsense!

Have heard plenty of stories of partying from friends and family, which is quite impressive given that the country shuts down at 8pm daily and the game didn’t finish until almost 11pm on a Sunday night.

But the day just got better. Liverpool played really well on Saturday so I was disappointed with a draw even if I did have Craig Bellamy as first goal scorer, but Sunday's football was as good as it gets.

I sat down in front of the TV to watch the Manchester Derby once my nerves had recovered from the rugby, and accordingly spent most of the next 90 minutes laughing heartily at the screen as Manchester United had a player sent off and shipped 6 goals to City at home, who you'd have to fancy to win the league now.

Even funnier than the United fans emptying the ground before the game was over (to be fair it's a long way back to Bournemouth and Bangkok on a Sunday afternoon) was the look on Gary Neville's face on TV afterwards:

[Image from Twitter user @PascalZidane]

Genius! Can't think of a more deserving man.

Chelsea having 2 players sent off and losing at QPR added to the comedy factor that could only have been bettered if Fernando Torres was one of them.

Once that was over it was time to head into town, meet my oldest mate Russ for a brilliant curry and then off to see Reginald D Hunter live at standup comedy, and he was really very, very funny indeed.

Can you beat that for a day?

Air New Zealand's marketing genius

Well we did it! France were definitely the best team in the final but somehow New Zealand won the World Cup in Auckland this morning, which is fair enough to the best team in the tournament - as we clearly were.

Given that the game finished just before 11pm on a Sunday night New Zealand time, hopefully the national tradition of the 8pm shutdown didn't happen and people could get out to celebrate all over the country!

I was very impressed by a cunning piece of marketing (which was clearly pre-prepared) that I had sent to me less than an hour after the final whistle by Air New Zealand (I'm on their mailing list having previously flown with them):Very clever indeed, Air NZ! It's not the first time they've jumped on the rugby bandwaggon though ...

My kind of wordcloud

Some people seem to think that wordclouds are becoming a bit passé, but personally I still like them and think they're a great way of displaying a lot of text in an easily digestible way that pulls the trends about what the text contains really well.

I was reviewing some recent (from the last few weeks) feedback from customers yesterday about our Digital Home Support service (more info on that here) which goes down really well with our customers that take advantage of it, and I thought I'd share the feedback of several hundred of them summarised as per below:
It certainly brightened up my day :)

Beer or kebab? How about both?

I actually like lots of things about working for a Virgin company, and yes I'll freely admit I'm biased.

One of the things I do appreciate is the challenging convention, doing things differently and not taking ourselves too seriously - hence I laughed when a colleague sent on this image this afternoon of some of the regional advertising we've done in Southampton to support the area's cable network expansion:Click on it for a larger image ... I'm sure it will make you smile. Very amusing indeed :)