The King Is Dead, Long Live The King Singers

<< Checkmate, or as it's known in modern parlance, 'You're fired'

It's back to Iran today, but purely by coincidence - I don't have any more ill-informed views on their system of governance to offer just yet. Instead, I'm looking at a more light-hearted subject, although perhaps not to those who play it. I'm talking chess, which in many ways is symbolic of the battles at the heart of global politics, with the masses as mere pawns, pushed around by really big hands... OK, I won't go down that road. Here's the fact:

The term 'checkmate' comes from the Persian phrase 'shah mat' which loosely translates as 'the king has been ambushed'.

It is claimed by many sources (including the notoriously unreliable rag that is Servite Housing's weekly e-newsletter) that 'checkmate', preferably followed by a swift Countdown-style sip of water (you know, when they get the conundrum), actually means 'the king is dead'. Unfortunately it doesn't - 'mat' comes from the verb 'mandan' which (again, loosely) means 'abandoned' or 'ambushed'. Although if he has been abandoned and ambushed, he'd have to be a bloody good King to avoid becoming dead as a consequence.

I can play chess reasonably well, and it is really my last experience of taking part in a knockout competition. For an overweight, apathetic slob, I'm pretty competitive when there's a title to be won - hence my love of Mario & Sonic at the Olympics, where I'm not ashamed to admit I've brought home the gold on a pretty regular basis. Sadly, I've never found a real-life pursuit I'm good enough at to enter competitions in, so I'm stuck with a semi-final place at the Rowde School Junior Chess Club knockout cup competition.

I was pitted against a kid called Wayne who baffled everyone by being relentlessly average at everything, except for chess, which he was amazing at. Nowadays we'd have picked up on the glaring signs of advanced autism, but this was a simpler time. I was the rank outsider versus the Bobby Fischer of central Wiltshire, with a shot at glory within my grasp. He crushed me like an insect. I have never returned to the sporting arena since, despite my third-place play-off victory against a 6-year-old with white hair who seemed to be breathing through the top of his head.