Slim pickings

Well look who it isn't. I do hope he wrote his own speech.

There's less of Ray than there used to be: he's cut down on not cutting down. There's a lot of it about.

Still, any Ray is too much Ray, at least where turning up at chess events as if he was some kind of respected figure is concerned. He still gets a few of these gigs: there was Gibraltar a couple of years back (he also gets to give talks there) though it may be a long time before he gets to open the British again.

Course another way to look at this is that Ray has to get on a plane before he can be reasonably sure that he's arriving somewhere where he can stand up in front of a microphone without somebody asking him embarrassing questions. There's something sad about this, though at the same time far too petty to qualify as tragedy. I guess embarrassing is a good way to put it. A much-diminished figure would be another.

It's a cheap gag, but Ray's a cheap guy. Cheapens everything he touches, opening and closing speeches not excluded. I reckon they could find somebody else to do it: we're looking at a new Ray, but he's still the same old fraud.