Friday 4th May

Right, I actually had to do some work today (although I use the term loosely). I was going to have to go and shoot a few pieces to camera for the UKTV live show, due to go out on Sunday.

First of all, James and I hit up the Acropolis. We weren't allowed to actually film on the site...but James knew a good spot at the bottom of the hill where we could get both the famous ruin and myself (the less-famous ruin) in shot.

After getting that in the can, we headed back to the Olympic stadium where we caught up with Mr Basketball himself, Ian Whittel.

For those who don't know, Ian is the man. He writes about basketball for (amongst others) The Times, ESPN, UKTV Slam and does some stuff for Sky Sports. He knows all the top suits at the NBA, the Euroleague, the BBL and really knows his stuff. As well as being the UK's number 1 basketball journalist, he also does a brilliant job of promoting the British game to these important people - reminding the powers that be that we do actually play ball here in the UK, and that we do have a Great Britain team.
Trouble is, he is a sarky fucker...and from the moment he laid eyes on us at the arena until the end of the trip he was ripping on us (well...mainly James, actually) at every opportunity!

So, to the basketball. The first game was Unicaja Malaga against CSKA Moscow. Even though there were plenty of fans representing both teams (around 1,000 for each club), they were far outnumbered - and massively "out-shouted" - by the 12,000-odd local Panathinaikos fans. The Greek faithful were going absolutely bananas...and this wasn't even their game!!! I have never experienced a sporting atmosphere like it.

Anyway, after a close three quarters, CSKA put their foot down in the fourth to take the game by 12. The actual on-court action was, in the end, pretty uninspiring, to be honest.

Next up was the big one - Panathinaikos v Tau. Needless to say, the already intense atmosphere stepped up a few notches - not only because the crazy Greek fans were backing their team to the fullest, but because, on paper, this game really could have gone either way. Everyone knew that CSKA would beat Unicaja...but this was going to be a tough one to call. I had simply been warned: "If Panathinaikos lose, prepare to run or hide".

In the event, the game was terrible. Tau absolutely stunk it up (they managed to score just 21 points in the entire first half) and ended up losing by 14.

The game didn't end till late, so by the time we got back to the hotel it was time to go out on the piss. James and I hooked up with a girl called Marie (who works for the company where I make the show, and had flown out to pick up our tapes and take them back to London for editing) and hit the town.

After some reasonably serious drinking, we went to get some food. Now, in England, if you wanted to go eat at 2am, your only option would be to take your chances with something like Dallas Chicken. Not in Athens. Pretty much every restaurant was still open (and busy) so we ended up having a full-on, slap-up meal until about 3am (accompanied by this old dude, on the table next to us):

After that, we hit up some club (that was playing the worst music on earth), where Marie had the brilliant idea of making us all do 4 shots of Tequila (to go along with all the double vodkas). I ended up doing press-ups on the dance floor. The less said about all that, the better.