The Albanian Connection

I’m an avid follower of BBC4’s devilishly difficult quiz show, Only Connect. I even tried to get a team together for this series, but to no avail.

Colin tackles the Wall

Imagine my surprise then, when Victoria Coren was introducing the teams in this week’s show, to see my old mate Colin on the Trade Unionists team! 

Colin and myself in Permet, back left and centre

I met Colin on a trekking holiday in Albania in 1996. We shared a keen interest in football, beer and irritating our lovely tour guide Matilda with our annoying questions, which were mostly about left handedness, beards and homosexuality under Enver Hoxher. 

I didn’t share Colin’s love of Sherlock Holmes and therefore didn’t get quite as enthusiastic as he did when he found a copy of Arthur Conan Doyle’s finest works in Albanian. But then again he probably felt the same about the Michel Platini biography (in Albanian) that I discovered in Sarander market. Sadly, when Geocities shut down, my website detailing my year of round the world travels was lost, but I’ve managed to retrieve most of the Albania section, which can now be found here.

 

 I haven’t seen Colin for years, but, as a result of his TV appearance, I’ve now managed to track him down on email and, hopefully, we’ll keep in touch a bit better this time.

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Hurrah for Victoria Coren.