The Saturday List 384 - My top ten ‘I told you so’s’

 Everyone hates a smart arse. Everyone loves being a smart arse. Having written a blog for 14 years, I’ve had the pleasure of saying ‘I told you so’ a fair few times. Generally being proven right has come with a cost and the only real satisfaction has been to be proven right. Here’s my top ten.

1. Having spent nearly 14 years opposing the a One Barnet programme, the council are now getting rid of Capita. If only they’d listened.

2. When BBC Radio London revamped their schedule and put Jo Good on the graveyard slot and took Robert Elms off the weekday mid morning slot, I said it would be a disaster, it was. The station has lost nearly a third of its listeners.

3. In January, I predicted that Liz Truss would become Tory polo leader and it would all go horribly wrong. It did.

4. When Barnet Council closed Friern Barnet Library, I said it was a monumental error. It was and they reopened it.

5. When the Barnet Tories chose Dan Thomas as leader in 2018, after Richard Cornelius lead them to a stunning victory I said they were mad. In 2022 they were thrashed by Labour.

6. In 1983 Nat West Bank refused to give me a business loan to buy equipment to help build up my Mill Hill Music Complex studio. They said I couldn’t demonstrate a demand for the services. The studio is still in Mill Hill, Nat West aren’t.

7. In 2004, I told a friend who ran a major label to check out Amy Winehouse, he said she was not a mainstream artist.

8. In 1997 I bumped into Michael Portillo on a train to Edinburgh. He was at school with my accountant Mike Diner. He told me that rail privatisation would destroy the stranglehold the unions had on the industry. I told him he was deluded and the unions would adapt.

9. During the Brexit campaign, our local MP refuted a claim I made that Brexit would make it uneconomical for mid tier U.K. bands to tour Europe. He said ‘sensible arrangements could easily be put into place’. they’ve not been.

10.  When The Barnet Times dispensed with my services as a local blogger, following pressure from local Tory Councillors Brian Coleman and Robert Rams in 2008, they celebrated ‘the end of Roger Tichborne’s blogging career’ by 2014 the blog had had a million views and Coleman and Rams lost their seats on Barnet Council