BRITISH NIGERIAN BORN ANTHONY OGOGO WINS BOXING BOUT DESPITE MUM'S BRAIN HAEMORRHAGE AND SISTER GOING INTO LABOUR TODAY.

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Olympic boxing: Anthony Ogogo overcomes Junior Castillo Martinez

By Ben DirsBBC Sport at the ExCel Arena

Anthony Ogogo got the Great Britain boxing team off to a winning start at London 2012, comfortably beating Junior Castillo Martinez at the ExCel Arena.

The 23-year-old middleweight, from Lowestoft in Suffolk, recovered from a slow first round against his awkward Dominican opponent to advance comfortably, by 13 points to six.

Ogogo faces top seed and reigning world champion Ievgen Khytrov in the last 16.

Richie WoodhallOlympic bronze medallist and boxing commentator

"Fantastic performance from Anthony. He boxed well and got through it. The right-hand left-hook was the best combination throughout and he deserves his victory. He's got the opening contest out of the way and that will please him. I'm so pleased for him because he has been through so much personally outside of the ring."

Irish pair John Joe Nevin and Darren O'Neill also advanced on day one.

With Hull bantamweight Luke Campbellreceiving a bye into the second round, Ogogo was charged with igniting his country's boxing campaign.

And having overcome so many obstacles in order to get to London, Ogogo's overriding emotion after seeing off Martinez was relief.

"It was really nerve-wracking coming out first," said Ogogo, whose Olympic dream wasnearly wrecked by a shoulder injury and whose mother, Teresa, suffered a brain haemorrhage six weeks ago.

"I've worked so hard to get here and you can only imagine what it's going to be like, so I was a bit tense in the opening round before settling down a bit in the second.

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“I can't wait to ring my mum up and tell her. My sister also went into labour today, so it's been a great day for the family!”

Anthony Ogogo

"I can't wait to ring my mum up and tell her. My sister also went into labour today, so it's been a great day for the family.

"The draw's not been very kind to me. I've got the world champion next, the Ukrainian, but in front of this crowd I feel like I can beat anybody.

"I've never boxed [Khytrov] before and it's going to take a momentous effort but I feel I've got it in the locker to beat him."

Fifth-seeded bantamweight Nevin, from Mullingar in County Westmeath, comprehensively outboxed Denmark's Dennis Ceylan to win 21-6.

Nevin, twice a World Championship bronze medallist, is part of a six-strong Irish team looking to improve on a tally of three medals in Beijing.

The 23-year-old faces Kanat Abutalipov in the next round after the Kazakhstani beat Wessam Salamana, one of only 10 Syrian athletes competing in London, 15-7.

Nevin's 56kg rival Campbell will have to wait until the evening session to discover whether his opener will be against Jonas Matheus of Namibia or Jahyn Vittorio Parrinello of Italy.

Irish middleweight O'Neill, a European silver medallist in 2010, beat Nigeria's Muideen Akanji 15-6 and faces Stefan Hartel of Germany next.

Joseph Diaz of the United States had the honour of winning the first bout of the tournament, the 20-year-old southpaw outpointing Ukraine's Pavlo Ishchenko 19-9.

Diaz's reward is a bout against Lazaro Alvarez Estrada, the top seed and reigning world champion from Cuba, who received a first-round bye.

Meet the British Nigerian taking Hollywood by storm

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - British TV star Richard Ayoade is fast becoming a Hollywood name, but even as he makes his major US movie debut alongside A-list comic actors Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn and Jonah Hill in "The Watch," he is still coming to grips with his rising fame.

"The Watch," in theatres on Friday, follows four neighbourhood vigilantes - Stiller, Vaughan, Hill and Ayoade - who try to keep their community safe from an alien invasion.

In recent weeks, Ayoade, 35, whose role in British TV comedy "The IT Crowd" made him a star overseas, has been thrust into the US media spotlight on eye-catching billboards with his three "Watch" counterparts. But the actor (whose name is pronounced eye-oh-ah-day) uses self-deprecating humour when discussing the huge promotional pictures of him and his co-stars, saying he must've been placed with them "for symmetry."

"I've never really been in a proper film, and I don't think they knew I hadn't been in a film before," Ayoade told Reuters.

"I think someone must have dropped out. Also, I'm always exceptionally cheap and (Stiller, Vaughan and Hill) are expensive, so they probably spent all their money," he joked.

While he may be a relative unknown in the US, Ayoade's distinctive afro hair, thick-framed glasses and clipped style of speech have been embraced by British audiences for his quirky comedic style in "IT Crowd," which enjoys a cult-like following.

"Cult is a polite word for unpopular, and niche is not something that attracts large investors," Ayoade said. "Hopefully after this, ('The Watch' cast) all learn to be a bit more niche. I think I can bring some commercial failure to their careers, which they're in need of."

RISE TO FAME

London native Ayoade began his rise on TV in 2004 playing publisher Dean Learner in British comedy "Garth Marenghi's Darkplace," a spoof horror program that was based on Ayoade and Matthew Holness' stage shows.

After stints in "The Mighty Boosh" and "Man to Man with Dean Learner," the actor's career took a big leap forward when "IT Crowd" was launched in 2006 with Ayoade playing Maurice Moss, an overly intelligent but socially awkward bespectacled nerd.

More recently, he has broken with acting to mount his directorial debut with 2010 coming-of-age film "Submarine," which he adapted from Joe Dunthorne's novel of the same name. The independent film was received well by critics at festivals, ranking 87 percent positive on review site RottenTomatoes.com.

"It's depressing if you get bad reviews and weirdly unsatisfying if you get good ones because you don't believe them all. Most things I've done have had a mixture of bad and good," he said. "Inevitably, something will divide opinion on some level, and there's not much you can do about it."

After working on "The Watch," Ayoade jumped straight into his next project, adapting and directing Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novella "The Double" with a cast of young stars including Jesse Eisenberg and Mia Wasikowska. In fact, Ayoade seems as intent on a career behind the camera as in front of it.

"I'm really not an actor. I've been around actors and it's really hard what they do. Jesse and Mia are incredible actors, and I would not sully the term by including me amongst them," Ayoade said.

Despite his self-deprecating jokes, Ayoade made a good impression on his "Watch" co-stars. Stiller called him "incredibly talented" and Vaughan told Reuters he was "hilarious, just a really great guy, really smart."

However, Ayoade doesn't see himself moving to Tinseltown any time soon, blaming his inability to drive, calling the sunny weather "confusing and unsettling" and saying he lacked the ambitious drive often associated with Hollywood stardom.

"I went to a Catholic school so most ambition was beaten out of me at age seven. Ambition seems to be tied in with some revenge on the world, which I don't really have," he said.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte; Desking and Andrew Hay)

culled Reuters

Background

Ayoade was born in Whipps Cross, London^[3], the only child of Norwegian mother and a Yoruba-Nigerianfather, but the family moved to Ipswich in Suffolk when he was young.^[2] Ayoade studied at St. Joseph's College^{[citation needed]} in Ipswich and later studied law at St Catharine's College, Cambridge (1995–1998) where he won the Martin Steele Prize for play production^[4] and was president of the Footlights from 1997 to 1998.^[5]

culled Wickipaedia

Nigeria's Segun Toriola won in men's Table tennis singles preliminaries

LONDON (Reuters) - Nigeria's Segun Toriola beat Canada's Andre Ho 4-1 in the Olympic men's Table tennis singles preliminaries at the 2012 London Games on Saturday.

Toriola won at ExCeL in London to reach the next round.

Results Table

Segun Toriola (Nigeria) beat Andre Ho (Canada) 9-11 11-5 11-6 11-5 12-10

Kim Song Nam (North Korea) beat Timothy Wang (U.S.) 11-5 11-4 11-7 11-4

Andy Pereira (Cuba) beat Yoshua Shing (Vanuatu) 11-2 11-2 11-3 11-3

Justin Han (Australia) beat Mawussi Agbetoglo (Togo) 9-11 11-7 11-1 8-11 11-8 11-9

Ibrahim Al-Hasan (Kuwait) beat Saheed Idowu (Congo) 11-3 8-11 7-11 13-11 11-6 11-6