Nogger's Blog

10/06/11 -- My mates at Agrimoney.com, which incidentally is my second favourite website in the world, report that Canadian farmers are "to abandon an area of land the size of Belgium" in this story here today.

I was devastated when I read that, as at first I thought it said that they were going to abandon Belgium, not an area of their own land the size of Belgium. If ever a country want's abandoning then they're it. Have you ever been to Belgium? I have and it's rubbish.

I did have MrsN#1 in tow mind, so it was never going to be an enjoyable experience was it? She was devastated to find that the place wasn't packed with rugby players to "befriend".

In fact it was just full of Belgians as I recall, what a disappointment that was. They can't even agree on what language to speak over there you know. It's a bit like Wales but without the hills. Suppose you got Wales right and laid it out on a table and ironed it flat. Well that's Belgium. Forget about Anglesey, we don't need that bit for the purposes of this experiment, so just throw that bit away.

I've just Googled the top ten most famous Belgians, as the only one I could think of one off the top of my head was Everton's Marouane Fellaini (for taste reasons we'll exclude the bloke who kept his daughter imprisoned in the basement for all those years). I suppose that there must be a composer and a painter in there somewhere, but I just can't think of one right now. So here we are, your official top ten Belgians as provided by famousbelgians.net, yes it is a real website, I'm surprised that you haven't heard of it:

1. Eddy Merckx, five times winner of the Tour de France (OK, heard of him but didn't know he was Belgian)
2. Adolphe Sax, inventor of the saxophone (Who?)
3. Herge (Georges Remi), the creator of TinTin (Yes, what a load of rubbish that was - the look that inspired Jedward)
4. Audrey Hepburn, actress (Didn't know she was Belgian, did you? That explains why she was a miserable cow)
5. Plastic Bertrand, punk/rock singer (Scraping the barrel here and we're only halfway, He probably works at McDonalds in Bruges now)
6. Peter Paul Rubens, baroque painter (Not bad - for a Belgian)
7. Rene Magritte, surrealist painter (Two painters, I stand corrected)
8. George Lemaitre, astronomer who invented the Big Bang theory (Never heard of him. Anyone can invent a theory can't they. I've got a theory that Virgin Media are shit, well that's more a fact to be honest with you, but you get my drift anyone can make one up, it doesn't make you famous)
9. Albert Claude, the first biochemist to isolate a cancer cell (Noble work I'm sure, but still never heard of him)
10. Leo Hendrik Baekeland, the inventor of bakelite (The last scrape of a very poor barrel)

There you go, that's the creme de la creme of Belgians, with Plastic Bertrand at their musical pinnacle. A more shamefully motley crew I think it would be hard to find, and a country well worthy of going into Room 101.

Oh, if Agrimoney are second who's top? GrainPortal.com obviously.