Now here’s an interesting thing. Last year in England, Culture beat Sport, by 92 to 36. Yes almost three times as many millions of people visited our theatres, museums and music venues than attended mainstream sporting events. Its possible that many of the same people did both. Greedy people. Families of ticket touts. Its even possible that one person was counted at a million different events, just to up the votes. Like a Tower Hamlets mayoral election. However, there are many ways to look at these seemingly, er, appalling? errr exciting?? errrr catastrophic numbers and interpret them.

Some say that whilst our sportspeople have sadly let us down tragically of late, with World Cup debacles, cricket and rugby losses and a failure in the darts in Sheffield, we’ve always been totally world class and premiere league at ‘dull’. We might grow shitty footballers but our historians are second to none. So for those who find the thought of Lancashire versus Warwickshire unworthy of a visit for 3 whole days in a rainy period in June, there’s always the Cleethorpes and Wheeltappers’ Museum of Stuff, currently exhibiting their stunning collection of pre-Victorian horse brasses from Derbyshire. And how many people would look at thier tickets for Sunday’s match beween Chelsea and Manchester City and think; ‘naah, fuck dat, I’m gonna go see the Neanderthal cave paitings at the British Museum’? Many, I think. The lure of all that history and culture is simply too great to resist at times. (There are others among us who would opt for voluntary, unnecessary root canal dentistry without anaesthetic than ever go to Chelsea, but we are sick people. With fucked up teeth).

There is of course another way to look at the figures. 92 million visitors to culture, only 36 million to sports. Which I personally see as a total failure of this so-called ‘culture’ to actually become part of mainstream culture. Because football is on the tv. All the time, every moment of the weekend is filled with matches from all the divisions, with hilights, with French, Italian, even German football. So the real, true, dedicated sports fan never ever needs to get off his fat arse and leave the lounge. His only cultural concern is whether his wife bought him sufficient beer and whether his pizza(s) will arrive before the second half starts. That’s a true fan. That’s a man of the times. Or a woman, perhaps, but she’d be a bloody hefty one.

Whereas the failure of so-called ‘cutlural events’ is that you actually have to move somewhere to see them. Thus in reality there were 785,000,000 games of sport watched by, mainly, drunken slobs, with only the sad 36 million with broken tvs who actually needed to go to the grounds. 92 million attended museums and theatres because they’re not on the telly and there’s no choice. They don’t even have an ‘app’ that can show you Chagalle’s greatest, currently at the Iron Brew Gallery in Aberdeen.

Culture needs to step up. Needs to get gambling involved. Should be accessible from your ipad. Then it can compete with football. Until then, pass the Doritos and if you want to eat all the guacamole, buy some yerself!!

Happy friday

A xxxx