The North is better than the South. In the North, girls compensate for being ugly by developing eating disorders and staying under sunbeds until they get a tumour; in the South, they just put on a pair of oversized sunglasses. In the North, men put things in their pockets, not into man-bags, and they don't talk to each other either. And, most importantly of all, the North has the National Time Trial Championships, while the best the South can offer is a bit of poncing around at somewhere called Hillingdon. Well, that and the Tour de France.

Sadly, we moved to London, where the streets are paved with gold (apart from in West London, where they appear to be paved with dog shit), so we were unable to attend the TT champs. But we did manage to send a correspondent to follow it for us. Eyes and ears everywhere, like Josef Stalin.

Everybody's favourite British rider stood on the top step of the podium -- the popular Matt Brammeier of Profel, who won the U23 event. It was a typically classy ride, winning by 50 seconds over just 29 kilometres. This is good, because we've been looking for someone to write about all the time since Valverde's name became a bit tainted. From now on, we're a Tom Boonen, Jens Voigt and Matt Brammeier fansite.


And that skinny, grumpy guy won the seniors' event, meaning he won't be seen wearing pringle lycra in road races, time-trials or individual pursuits until at least June next year.