Stitch-up a mate with MTV

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Don't forget to tell them AngryBritain.com sent you!

Preview: This is England '86

THIS IS ENGLAND '86

A brand new four-part serial coming to Channel 4 in September

It’s 1986 – the year Maradona ends England’s world cup dreams in Mexico; the year Top Gun is the highest grossing film; the year over 3.4 million Brits are unemployed and the year Shaun (Thomas Turgoose) is leaving school.

On his own again after the gang was broken up by Combo’s (Stephen Graham) terrifying acts of violence, hapless Shaun is a magnet for trouble. Then a chance encounter reunites him with Woody (Joe Gilgun), Lol (Vicky McClure), Smell (Rosamund Hanson) and the others and soon the past is forgotten. The gang are back together and they’re all looking for love, a laugh, a job and something that resembles a future.

Shane Meadows said: “When I finished This Is England I had a wealth of material and unused ideas that I felt very keen to take further – audiences seemed to really respond to the characters we created and out of my long standing relationship with Film4 and Channel 4 the idea for a television serial developed. Not only did I want to take the story of the gang broader and deeper, I also saw in the experiences of the young in 1986 many resonances to now – recession, lack of jobs, sense of the world at a turning point. Whereas the film told part of the story, the TV serial will tell the rest.”

Channel 4 Head of Drama, Camilla Campbell, said: “Film4 has a longstanding relationship with Shane, and so I’m thrilled that a filmmaker of his calibre has decided to make his TV debut for Channel 4. I can’t wait to see the characters reunited in 1986 and watch their stories unfold over four hours of television. With all it has to say about the way we live now as well as the way we lived then, this is a darkly funny and utterly compelling British drama.”

Catch This Is England '86. Tue 7 Sept, 10pm, Channel 4 - www.channel4.com/thisisengland86

Win a years FREE Bike Insurance with MoneySuperMarket.com

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Click this link to enter the comp and good luck!

http://bit.ly/af1jq3

#WIN - 3 Course Meal with VIP Hospitality

In association with City Warriors White Collar Boxing, we are delighted to offer you the chance to win an exclusive pair of ringside tickets for their 'Models Fight Night' in aid of The Redwood Lodge Children's Home on Thursday 23rd September at The Troxy, London

This fantastic prize includes a 3 course meal, wine on the table, waitress, service and tickets to the after party. This is a black tie event.

To enter simply follow @CityWarriors on Twitter and RT this message:

'I've just entered the @CityWarriors Models Fight Night Competition by following and RT'ing this message http://bit.ly/Eom9b'

or simply write on the Facebook wall with 'Enter me in the Models Fight Night Comp'

http://bit.ly/cXVzeG

Competition open until Thursday 9th September and winner will be picked at random on 10th September allowing plenty of time for posting the tickets!

For more information please visit http://www.citywarriors.co.uk/

Oh, and we will be there too!

All the lazy ladies, now put your hands up

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Alive, well and living on Twitter

As it turned out following my initial excitement sadly, Froyo 2.2 didn't agree with my Nexus One. It started doing some odd things, it would randomly move between screens, the battery life was reduced by around 30% - one day in particular I took it off the charger at 10.30 am and it was dead by 4 - and worst of all, it absolutely refused to connect to my work's Exchange server, meaning I couldn't pick up my work email.

My Nexus One was effectively a very pretty paperweight.

I trawled the very helpful Vodafone forums and Google but it seemed I was alone with my oddness, and some might say not for the first time. Vodafone's forum moderators suggested a few things to try but sadly none of them resolved the issue so it was escalated internally to them via their excellent Twitter customer team @VodafoneUK.

Within a few hours one of their techies 'Andy' had called and he promised to go off and see what could be done without me having to send the phone back avoiding any inconvenience. 'Andy' apparently has contacts in high places at Google so if he couldn't fix it, no-one could.

So today, I received another phone call from the lovely 'Kirsty' on their web relations team. She basically broke the news that I had broken the phone while upgrading it. Well, actually that's not what she said at all, she said I clearly had been unlucky with the upgrade and it hadn't gone as it should have. While chatting to her I told her that I was very reliant on email, twitter and a phone who's battery lasted the day and that although a replacement Nexus One would be lovely, I really wished that I had gone for a BlackBerry having never been let down by my previous 8900.

To my absolute delight 'Kirsty' said that as I was only just outside their swap-out period that on this occasion she would swap the Nexus One for a new Blackberry 9700, and change the contract to a BlackBerry plan. Not only that, but it would be delivered to me on Monday, and all I needed to do was box up the Nexus One and send it back to them once the new phone was up and running. In other words I wouldn't be phone-less for any period of time.

Ultimately, even though I was unlucky with the upgrade to Froyo, (Many others have no complaints and are enjoying both their N1's and the new 2.2 features), as a 'Power' user running AngryBritain.com mostly from my phone during the day, I probably chose the wrong one to replace my previous BlackBerry. There's nothing wrong with the Android phones and they really are a very cool alternative to Apple's offering, but for me sadly, it just hasn't worked out this time.

Vodafone really would have been quite within their rights to tell me to bugger off and make me take a replacement Nexus One with 2.1 but they didn't, and it's this 'over-and-above' Customer Service that needs to be celebrated.

Great customer service is all too rare in Britain today and it's heartening to know that it is still out there alive, well and apparently living on Twitter, and to @VodafoneUK I am truly grateful. They can now consider themselves to be genuinely a part of 'Team AngryBritain' helping us build a better Britain.

So, if you're in the market for a new phone you could do a lot worse than jump on Twitter and follow @VodafoneUKDeals and @VodafoneUK. Tell them AngryBritain.com sent you.

Vodafone UK - AngryBritain.com salutes you.

The Shallow Factor