World Cupdate

As you're no doubt aware, over the past few decades Christianity has finally been overthrown as the primary religion of England. In fact traditional religion as our grandparents knew it has been sidelined altogether, and in its place we have an uprising of cults vying for attention. Pick up your nearest paper and you'll doubtless see evidence of the 2 largest: Pointless Celebrity and Sport. The proletariat line up and pick sides. Followers of the former are generally identified by their Heat magazine and hen night screeches, while the latter fly the flag of their favourite Roman soldier for reasons they do not understand.

And what of the non-believers? Keen to assimilate every last semblance of free thought, the cults hold regular recruitment drives. The Cult Of Pointless Celebrity attacks on 2 fronts: packing naive young women into theatres where they are brainwashed by the masterful acting talents of Sarah Jessica Parker, then picking up the stragglers in their homes via 24 hour footage of idiots in a living room, effectively creating a mirror feedback loop.

The Cult of Sport on the other hand hold regular tournaments in which their leaders demonstrate their prowess for spitting, shorts-wearing, and burning money. Every 4 years one particular such event comes along called The Soccerball World Cup. The wise retreat to their Anderson shelters and enter a 6 week long hibernation. Unfortunately being only a couple of years old, my house is not equipped with such 1940s luxuries. Instead I have been holed up in my studio. When the Footyball Game comes on I ensure it doesn't penetrate my cranium by creating a protective wall of drums, guitars and composition. I hope that, having survived so far myself, I can help the future generations avoid a Robert Neville fate by sharing these tools of defense with you.

By following this link you can hear the very latest Widdleman VS The World Cup weapons: Germany 0 1 Spain and Uruguay 2 3 Netherlands. You can also pick up the recent England 0 0 Algeria (soon to be a Great Men track called Spectators At An Execution) as well as dipping into old favourites including a Rugger World Cup track featuring Tom Hanks on guest vocals.

Essential provisions for surviving the cults.

Cooking with Great Men : Risotto Pizza

As regular readers will know, Great Men have a close relationship with Ulterior, particularly brothers Benn and Paul. While Benn is busy working on our album down in That London, Benn's Brother is part of the Beeston Strike Team - we're kind of like the Algonquin Round Table. One of our staples is the Awesome Night, which generally involves awesome food, awesome beers, awesome company, awesome music and awesome videos.

For some time now, Benn's Brother has been threatening to combine some of his favourite foods: pizza and risotto. This week, I challenged him to make it happen at an Awesome Night.

Ingredients

2 onions

3 cloves of garlic

1 chilli

3 sprigs of rosemary

2 handfuls of arborio rice

1 generous glug of white wine

Olive oil

1 litre of vegetable stock

2 deep pan margherita pizzas

Parmesan

Rocket

Salt

Black pepper

Van Halen - Van Halen

Frank Zappa - Zappa in New York

A young Tom Hanks

Beers

At this point you're probably thinking "Are these the most rock and roll guys, like, ever?".

Method

1. Put Van Halen on the stereo.
2. Chop your onion, garlic, chilli and rosemary up and get it sweating in the olive oil in a frying pan.
3. Get the pizzas cooking in the oven.
4. Add salt, pepper and rice to the pan.
5. Once the rice is starting to go translucent at the edges, add a generous glug of wine.
6. By now Van Halen has probably finished, so put on Zappa in New York. Pay particular attention to The Black Page drum solo.
7. Once the wine is being taken in by the rice, start adding the stock. Continue to add the stock gradually as it is absorbed.
8. When the pizzas are a couple of minutes away from completion, take them out and depress the cheese covered centre by about a centimetre, leaving the deep pan ridge around the outside. This is what we call Gastronomic Architecture.
9. When the stock is all absorbed and your risotto is nice and gloopy, ladel it gratuitously into the pizza reservoir you've created.
10. Grate a generous layer of parmesan on top and season with black pepper.
11. Return to the oven until the parmesan is crisped.
12. Plate it up and put a good handful of rocket on top of each.
13. Serve with a can of beer and a DVD of Joe Versus The Volcano.

Warning: This may kill you.

If you try out our Awesome Recipe, please let us know how you got on. Have you got any other cool ideas for recipes? Variations on a theme include Risotto Calzone and Jambalaya Pizza.