Drinking in York

Itchy investigate 3-D football

Blithe Spirit

Considering 3-D football has been going for a couple of weeks now, trying to find a pub that shows it is remarkably difficult. You would have thought the ability to offer our national sport in an extra dimension would be something worth advertising. So why aren't pubs frantically dusting off A-boards, alerting the press, or rounding up town criers?

After a series of clandestine meetings, Masonic handshakes and briefcase exchanges (and a fair bit of googling), Itchy tracked down a pub that has made the bold and historic step into the 3-D age. Its name: Blithe Spirit in Balham, London.

We climbed the stairs to Blithe's multi-screen sport lounge to find a room packed full of men in dark glasses. If we hadn't known why, this might have been a little surreal.

Some of the crowd had come straight from work so were dressed in suits. Add a pair of black Ray Ban-shaped shades to a dark suit and you have The Blues Brothers. And sitting down with The Blues Brothers to watch a game of football is certainly a different experience.

Apparently 3-D technology was invented in the 1890s, so it's fair to say that it's taken its time to reach our TV screens. But Itchy can say without doubt, it was worth the wait.

With 3-D you are made to feel like you are in the stadium. The view is slightly lower-set than with normal TV and activity in the foreground of the screen is genuinely layered. Better still, close-up shots enhance depth perception and really bring footballers to life.

As the players filed-out of the tunnel they virtually burst into the Blithe Spirit causing a room full of men in dark glasses to flinch. But like normal vision the further things are away, the less three dimensional they appear.

At some point in time all football will be in 3-D. Can you imagine – there'll be even less of a reason for Man Utd fans to make the trip to Manchester.

They say in ten years we won't even need the glasses, which will certainly placate the small but significant number of visually impaired who are forced to wear 3D glasses over their normal glasses. During the match we could have sworn we heard a cruel but rather amusing shout of ”Oi six-eyes!"

www.blithespiritpub.co.uk

Hamish Smith

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