It’s that time of year again when men all over the country are sprouting mo’s. Most are in aid of Movember and the rest are just asked if it’s in aid of Movember. Either way, this can only mean one crucial fact; Tache of the Titans is back.

Movember is a great cause focussed on raising awareness of men’s health issues. Tache of the Titans aims to add even more benefit to the cause by allowing anyone who is taking part in the month long campaign to go head to head against other mo bro’s. One Tache to rule them all!

Tache of the Titans has had an upgrade for this years bouts. We have added ‘groups’, which basically means that you can once and for all prove who out of your family, friend or work colleagues has the ultimate mo on the go. The actual process is the same as before. All you need to do is simply upload a photo of your tache (Face tache only…!) and you will be entered into a head to head bout against another Titan. All of the votes cast go into a clever league table based on the percentage of bouts won.

The competition won’t actually take place until the last week of November, which allows an essential mo maturity time so that everyone can look like Tom Selleck by the time the ’bouting’ begins…in theory.

In the meantime we hope you can all push past the homeless looking stage as quickly as possible and upgrade to the prestigious “I need a tache comb” status.

Good luck gentlemen, we salute you.

Blonde is five years old today.

We shall be partying tonight (#nopartyforoldmen).

Meanwhile, there is barely contained anticipation for the pre-party speech that Blonde MD, Pete, will be giving to celebrate this important anniversary and to fire us all up for the evening.

Pete is best known as a caring husband, a loving father, a talented musician, and a digital heavyweight. But he is also a great orator.

We share herewith the contents of this morning’s internal all-staff email thread. (Which was NOT an attempt to wind Pete up).

Phil : Don’t know about you but I can hardly concentrate because I’m looking forward to Pete’s pre-party speech so much.

Rob : Been looking forward to it for weeks.

Andy : Heard it was amazing. Really can’t wait.

Phil : 96 Karma on EdTwinge (Tearjerker league table). Good job he’s not childish enough to pick on people who try to wind him up eh?

Emma : How is he going to top last christmas?

Ricky : Rumour has it, it’s much better than this:

Nick : I reckon it will be as powerful and inspiring as this:

Rob : Might be a little more shouty, I’d say.

Matt : More like this I reckon….

[Embedding of *that* Gwyneth Paltrow speech "disabled by request" unfortunately.]

Ricky : I’d rather it was like this:

Nick : We’ll be so psyched up afterwards the the bar tab will be destroyed in under an hour!!

Nick (again) : I think we’ll have a change of tack from Pete today actually. Usually funny and caring, I reckon we’ll see a new approach to motivation:

[Embedding of *that* Full Metal Jacket sequence also disabled by request.]

Jen : My maiden name is Pyle. This scene has always had a particular resonance with me, particularly as I used to get bullied for having such a silly surname. I really hope Pete doesn’t ask me to choke myself on his hand on front of everyone tonight.

So no pressure then Pete.

And, no, we won’t be sharing Pete’s speech in public. It will barely be safe for our work. Which means it certainly won’t be safe for yours.

Thursday’s child is Charlie, one of our creative team.

Charlie is obsessed with Thursdays and apparently has a wardrobe full of identical Thursday T-shirts, which, to be fair to him, he only ever wears on Thursdays.

Unlike the pack of colour-coded and day-of-week-monogrammed socks I was once given. Making the effort to wear Monday’s socks on Mondays was always a bit too anally retentive for my liking.

According to the rhyme, Thursday’s child “has far to go.” And certainly we told Charlie that he would go far when we were at the phase of more or less saying anything to get him to join Blonde.

According to Google, there are lots of other interesting things about Thursday’s Child.

It is a song by David Bowie.

It’s also an American organisation (with a slightly disturbing website) that provides support for endangered teens.

It remains to be seen whether Charlie will name a child after his favourite day of the week. But in the meantime he has dedicated his blog to it.

Yay it’s Thursday.

Charlie, Andy and Paul have co-created Tache of the Titans as an out-of-hours hobby project.

It’s a fun site that will hopefully help to promote the cause of Movember, the month-long, mass-participation charity event in which people grow moustaches to help raise awareness of men’s health issues.

Anyone that is growing a moustache for Movember can upload a photgraph of their hairy pride and joy (upper lip based hairy pride and joys only!) and take part in the Tache of the Titans.

This involves an addictive series of head to head voting bouts with other taches.

These bouts are used to generate a tache league table, which is based on the percentage of bouts won.

We have also added a simple weighting system that acts to stop new entrants jumping straight to the top of the table after only a few bouts.

The launch of the site coincides with there being exactly one week of Movember left to run. Hopefully even the most hormonally challenged tache growers will have something vote-worthy to show for their efforts by now.

The site has a prominent link to Movember, and allows individual participants to promote their personal Movember charity links.

You can donate to men’s health charities here.

And watch this space to see which is the “One Tache To Rule Them All.”

Nice piece in The Sun highlighting celebrity involvement in the IRN-BRU Can Clan. As detailed in the earlier post on this subject, Can Clan is IRN-BRU‘s inimitable, fun take on this year’s Homecoming celebrations – a free music event on Glasgow Green on 13th September, including a cancan world record attempt, and the world’s largest online cancan.

And so it began one cold January morning during a hunt (a friendly chase really) for social entrepreneurs. But as the weird and wonderful ways of the Web work -  several hyperlinks later and I’ve found myself somewhere else entirely.

http://sociability.org.uk/ (Andy Gibson’s thoughts on Mind Apples and how to preserve our mental health … it’s good stuff.)

http://www.unltd.org.uk/index.php (a charity which supports social entrepreneurs – incredibly comprehensive and clearly very dedicated to the cause.)

And http://multichannelthinking.blogspot.com/ (Some interesting thoughts on the retail market … how sad to think that in a recession we’re doing ourselves more damage by not co-operating, thinking collectively and actively collaborating).

Come on people, lets get it together.

Sincerely,

Doogie Howser.

We were batting around some Coors Light ideas in London yesterday. For reasons that I won’t go into, the “other Phil” and I were both simultaneously reminded of this clip. Genius. They don’t make them like this any more.

I was forwarded a link to view a bizarre/funny Wonderbra campaign on Deila Smith’s home page – something to do with melons and pancakes on pancake Tuesday?? After being a day late to follow the link, thinking the ad might still be there, I click on the link anyway only to find a McDonalds ad! This is also followed by a promotion for Deila’s latest book on “How to Cheat at Cooking” right underneath it – brilliant!