Andy's Glasses

this is a picture taken of the wall in my study. I’ll take pictures of the rest of our walls in due course, riveting that they are. But this one is special. As you can see. It has a photo (quite small) of The Family and a signed photo (quite big) of Pele and Jairzinho in the 1970 World Cup. This, some would think, represents my personal value system: little consideration and concern for the family but a massive love and devotion to football. If this wall truly did represent my values, Pele’s picture would obviously be much bigger, there’d be one of my car and if any room left, maybe a thumbnail of my nearest and dearest.

Anyway…
that photo of Pele not only shows the greatest footballer ever (ok, that’s debatable, but as it my page, keep your opinions to yourself) but as part of the greatest team that ever played the game (and that’s not even in question by anyone). And in the best World Cup ever.

Because there was 1966, which I remember, but only just, which was massive for England and the finals that we, as a nation, have yet to live down, nearly 50 years later. But 1970 was simply magical. Wonderful. Brilliant football, most of it played by the ‘ultimate’ Brazil team who won with such style, such panache, such silly names, that their achievement will never be overtaken. Until it is.

So can England win this tournament? I’d hazard a guess at ‘not a fucking chance in a zillion’ but there’s always some slim possibility. I like Roy Hodgson, and respect more than anything that he is actually prepared to drop Wayne Rooney if necessary. A sentence previously treated in the same light as: I’d murder my own mother, if necessary. I’d rape my own grandfather, if necessary. I’d vote UKIP, if necessary. Because so many managers have ‘built the team’ around Rooney. To bring out the best in Him. To accentuate His strong points. And then he puts away a kebab too many, lays on a few pounds, gets his head in the wrong place (up a grandma’s skirt) and generally tragically disappoints. Yes, he can be brilliant (that goal against Arsenal when he was 9 years old and wearing an Everton shirt), but more often than not he tragically disappoints, so a plan B is essential.

Is the World Cup still ‘the ultimate tournament? Now the Champions League is so massive at club level? Well if the World Cup is devalued in the eyes of the fans, its only because of what those moronic fuckwits at FIFA have done to it. Well, ‘moronic’ is being kind. ‘Corrupt’ is the alternative explanation for awarding the 2022 finals to Qatar. The single most ridiculous thing in sport, ever. Qatar is not a footballing nation, its just a stinking rich one. Its not a nice place. It averages over 40 degrees all summer, when the World Cup is played, and if Israel were to qualify, their team wouldn’t be allowed in. Unless they collectively used fake passports and pretended they were Koreans.

I am a little excited. Just a little. Mainly at the wonderful prospect of four weeks with endless football on tv. Assuming ‘Brazil’ is finished on time.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx

On Question Time the other night for the weekly Dimbleby political debate, were the usual Westminster luminaries (UKIP), losers (lib-dem), tossers (tory) and no-hopers (labour), plus A.N.Other. They always have one. Someone outspoken and politically savvy, maybe a journalist, political columnist, author, satirist, tv commentator or someone ‘worthy’. This week it changed. They chose someone unworthy. A bleedin footballer. Not just any footballer (they were greatly limited by the requirements of ability to speak English, the ability to string a sentence together without a dozen ‘ya-know’s and ‘at-de-end-a-da-day’s, and an IQ at least as big as their shoe size) but Joey Barton. One of the finest English footballers ever to have a disciplinary record (both in football and in the criminal courts) way longer than any honours he’s earned plying his trade. Yet despite the fact that Joey has been imprisoned for assualts, for violent conduct on and off the pitch, for the best sending off ever in a football match (at Manchester City when he was red carded for elbowing Carlos Tevez in the face, but on his way off the pitch found time to kick Sergio Aguero AND try to headbutt Vincent Company as well; credit where credit’s due here) and for being a provocative and aggressive fucker for all his career, I really like him.

Not just because I’ve always thought him an immense talent which, if he spent as much time working on it instead of causing trouble, would have seen him as one of England’s best midfielders of his generation. But also because he is actually rather clever and very funny. Not always intentionally so, but funny nonetheless. And never more funny than when you’re not merely being mildly offensive, but when you’re taking the total bollox that is political correctness and ramming it up the enormous arse of some fat tart who could use a good shaggin’ by a big black geezer who’s her uncle.

And this, unintentionally, was what Joey did. When asked why he thought UKIP had done so well at the elections, Joey made an illustration in his terms, in words that all ‘young’ people can really get their heads round. And he said: its like going to a club and there’s four really ugly birds and you think; well, this one’s not the worst, so I’ll give it one. That is the parallel. UKIP; the ugly bird that 30% of the population is prepared to vote for as a ‘charity mission’. Brilliant, Joey, just brilliant.

But footballers are no the only ones who really need guidance before being allowed to speak. Gwyneth Paltrow (blessed be her name, and the stupid names of her children) is so upset by people criticising her and being offensive about her that she has likened her role to ‘like being in a war’. Ok, good one, Gwynnie. So being a soldier on the front line with bombs going off and bullets firing all around; that’s like being a blond bimbo who drinks green slime and writes ridiculous rubbish her innane blog. Yep, I get that one too.

Whereas Charlize Theron likens the constant intrusions into her life by papperazzi and journalists and whomsoever, that she says ‘its like rape.’ The only difference being, presumably, that one is actually, er, ‘rape’, with all its evil, physical and psychological associated trauma, and a horrendous assault that lives with the victim probably forever; and the other is spending half your life being an attention-seeking self-publicist who has trouble turning it all off.

Ahhhh, its all so tragically fucking inappropriate, like farting in front of the Queen. Or being a UKIP candidate.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

I’m not a religious man. Though if people get pleasure from praying 6 times a day, good luck to them. Whatever floats your beard. But I do appreciate the value, historically, of a religious framework for society which, in days of old (like those frikkin Romans) generally defaulted to debauchery, hedonism, slavery and murder based solely on socio-economic lines. The rich had the fun, the poor got raped, beaten and subjugated into slavery. That’s why God invented football, to give the poor something to watch between beatings.

So a ‘Christian framework’ presented a moral code. The basics, upon which the western world developed its values. In fact a ‘judeo-christian’ framework, because the Moses got in first with the 10 commandments, 3 thousand years before Jesus famously turned the other cheek and invented mooning. Or whatever.

So religion set the morality; don’t murder, don’t commit adultery (unless you can get away with it and use a superinjunction), do not covet your neighbour’s wheelie bin and basically, don’t be a naughty boy or girl, within the value system we now employ. Easy peasy. And common sensy too. As life is to be revered. Help people to live, is the message, and you’ll be blessed. Which does beg a few interesting questions when state-sanctioned murder is allowed. Like death sentences for convicted criminals. Like warfare. And what about things that are worse than death? Like watching Spurs give up a 2-0 lead at home to Scarborough?

But generally, and in most cases: people do bad shit and its the job of the state to protect us, save us and punish them for their transgressions. That’s the way it works round here. Generally.

Yet elsewhere that ain’t the case. And more and more frequently I find myself deeply troubled by the plight of others, in foreign lands, where values are ‘different’. I can’t judge things by any values other than my own. Its who I am. And I want to understand that in other nations, other regimes, they come from a different starting point. The basis of which is not the judeoo-christian morality.

And they’re allowed to do whatever they like, because its their countries. Even though that understanding itself is pretty much unique to western thought. Western tolerance to others.

So in Pakistan a woman is beaten to death on the street. By a crowd. Led by her own father and watched by, among hundreds of other ‘spectators’, police and court officials. Who did nothing during the 15 minutes it took to murder this woman accused by her father of dishonour. She married a man he didn’t like. I suppose ‘grounding for a week’ wouldn’t quite fit then. The father, it now transpires, had previously murdered his other daughter in an ‘honour killing’ 3 years ago.

Whereas in Sudan, Meriam Ibrahim has just given birth to a baby daughter. In prison, whilst chained to the floor. Where she is awaiting the death penalty for adultery and apostasy. The ‘adultery’ is because she had a relationship with a man (her husband, in fact) in an unsanctioned relationship, ie one that wasn’t Islamic. Because Meriam was raised as a Christian and married another Christian. But due to having a Mulsim father, is an apostate. A denier of her faith. So will be hanged.

So just a couple of questions that spring to mind:

1. Why do these people hate women so much?

2. WHAT THE FUCK???????????

Happy Friday, here in the West

A xxxx

Mauricio Pochettino is the new manager at Spurs. Yay. We have a new boss. A new masterplan. A new broom. A new regime. A new methodology, a new paradigm, a new future, a WHOLE NEW FUCKING WORLD!!!!!!!!

Ok, sorry about that. But its new; let’s leave it at that. And I’m really excited, really pleased, really everything I should be about this appointment. Even though I’ve known 9 previous such appointments under Daniel Levy in the last 13 years of his chairmanship. And they all generally end the same way. With a 5th/6th in the league position, with the fans pissed off because we’ve been playing like Stoke, with everyone else seemingly impressed that we’re doing ok with our 1-0 wins and 0-0 draws and goal difference of 3 after 25 matches, and with the little bald chairman looking inscrutable and unimpressed.

So to Mauricio I say ‘welcome’ from the bottom of my heart. And to Daniel I say: ‘NOW FUCK OFF AND LET HIM MANAGE’. Because whatever happens, we need a long term strategy. We need to dispense with Baldini, not because he’s a worthless piece of shit, which he is, but because the role of Director of Football makes no sense to anyone other than Daniel Levy who is so loyal to that post within his organisation that even the great 100 million pound debacle of 2013 still hasn’t changed his thinking.
Let’s give Mauricio time and more importantly, let’s give him the power to control his own destiny, by letting him select the players to buy. Because he has to ensure they fit in every way and become part of ‘the plan’. Rather than Baldini’s more Cleggish approach involving headless chickens and throwing money down a toilet. “Hey, got any coffee coloured midfielders there? Gotta be really big, nice and slow, nothing too quick or exciting, more lumbering and leaden… ok, I’ll take half a dozen. Can you wrap those, please?”

One day at a time, Mauricio, just one day at a time. That’s what your contract says, even if its not in actual words.

Meanwhile, we may not win World Cups, but we can still top league tables, here in our small, modest little island. This time its the table for ‘fattest girls in Europe’ and we’re up there with a totally, pizza-hoovering, stonking 30%!!!!!
Yes, 30% of our girls are obese or overweight. Applause, applause. For a moment there it looked like those Greeks were going to lay on some extra moussakas, wrap them in pitta and deep fry the whole lot in hummus but sadly their economy’s so shitty they just ran out of chick peas, so we pipped them at the post. to claim victory. A spokesman for the British Fat Bastard Society said: “our girls done us proud, (chomp, chomp, chew chew), this took a massive sustained effort over years; victories like this don’t just arrive overnight, ya know. And our gels (bite, chew, chew) have had to make big sacrifices for this. They’ve sacrificed virtually all exercise and most healthy food for the last 5 years. They’ve supersized everything from Coke to their hips. And now they’re reaping the rewards with a result like this. Where’s the nearest heart hospital?”

Ahhh, happy thursday

A xxxx

I once played in a sunday morning tennis tournament which was a charity fundraiser. The sun even shone, great event, people playing tennis at Haberdashers’ School, cos they have lovely tennis courts and lots of ’em. Great day. I’m gonna say me mate Jane and I came 12th. Possibly 7th, maybe 23rd. Irrelevent other than for the obsessively competitive. Because it was a Sunday morning and no kids were around, we all parked up next to the courts. And after one of our matches we came to find a great throng of peoplage all around the cars. And there, parked up, top down, gleaming redder-than-red, was a Ferrari. I don’t know which model so I’ll say it was a Tossa-Rossa, which pretty much fits them all. And a smug man with a big grin (and probably a very small penis) was walking up to his car to… to… well, just to lay claim to it, I suppose.

Except the crowds weren’t actually around Turin’s finest. They were in fact gawping at the car next to it, which was also red, and a Bubblecar. One of those fabulous little 3-wheelers that arose in the 60s just to make chain-smoking Europeans look more eccentric in movies. And so cute, the front side opening outwards as the single door. Just fabulous.

And today I saw that in an auction there is one of the ‘other’ 3-wheelers up for sale this week. The Messerschmidt one. As in the German fighter plane of the Second World War, Messerschmidt. Because when the Hun finally realised that Johnny Englishman was not going to let him get away with his tricks and once Douglas Bader had jumped back into his Spitfire to send Bertie Bosch back from whence he came, the Messerschmidt factory had nothing to make. And yet, presumably, loads of parts left over. So they made some little cars. But short on design ideas, they just used the existing plane model but put wheels on it instead of wings. So these Messerschmidt cars actually had a cockpit, with two seats, one in front of the other, just like in a plane. Well, I suppose its just like in the old war films; Germans never actually speak to each other kind of conversationally, they just scream orders to be obeyed. So sitting like that is just fine.

I’ve always loved these old 3-wheelers, from a day before health-n-safety ruled our lives. Seat-beltless death traps. Where do I bid?

Amazing coincidence last night. Went out for a quiet curry with Mel, dinner plans having been cancelled at the last minute. Fine. Love a curry. Went to our local in East Finchley. Great place, dead quiet on a wet tuesday night. Food’s fab though. And we were duscussing the show Sunny Afternoon, the musical history of the Kinks, who I loved as if they were little German 3-wheeled cars. Because they were always a LONDON band. If not THE London band. Anyway, the show’s now moved from Hampstead to the West End, blah, blah, blah.

Then the door opened, I looked up and in walked Ray Davies. Of the Kinks. But much older. My jaw dropped, (probably spilled a bit of biryani, if I’m honest) and he smiled. Muswell Hill boys falleth not far from the tree, then. Amazing.

Happy Wet Wednesday (where does all this rain come from?????)

A xxxx

My wife has delicate feet. But, like really delicate. So she has ‘specialised shoes’. Shoes for every and any possible occurrence. Shoes for work, shoes for play, shoes for formal, informal, dress wear, shoes for walking (long distance), shoes for walking (muddy places), shoes for walking (places that aren’t long or muddy), and so it goes on, then we get to the ‘spares’. The reserves. Just in case shoes. For slightly wet tuesdays when working part of the day and walking medium to short distances on fairly dry ground whilst wearing green. Otherwise WHAT SHOES WOULD SHE WEAR????? Would be a disaster.

I’m not normally privvy to shoe-buying of my women. I’m deemed unworthy. Possessing a total of 3 pairs of shoes. Work. Jeans. Tennis. What else do I need? But yesterday, bank holiday, Mel and I decided to ‘pop’ into Sports Direct on the way to food shopping (I LOVVVE food shopping, almost as much as I hate shoe shopping, but we’ll get to that) to pick up ‘just a spare pair of shoes’. Sounded like a plan. Until we arrived.

Sports Direct is the brain-child of Mike Ashley and it has made him rich. Rich enough to buy Newcastle United football club where his is universally hated for being too rich, too fat, too southern and too Mike Ashley for their gentle, Geordieness. When he renamed the hundred year old stadium, St James’s Park, as: sports direct@St James’s, there were riots.

But his business, built on the old ethos of ‘pile ’em high; sell ’em cheap’ is a fantastic success. Its a modern type ‘store’ in which there are loads of uneducated sub-normal kids, taken straight from the special needs classes at all the schools where they have metal detectors at the gates, and all the parents vote UKIP, and they’re dressed in red, so can be easily identified. Also because they are generally dangerous. And they have walkie-talkies so they can… er… walk and talk. They don’t do advice, they don’t ‘help’ in any conventional shoppy way, they just get things that you need by screeching into their walkie-talkies to the mother-ship, where all the other shoe sizes are kept, either on Venus, or a satellite orbiting the moon.

And why I am considered a fairly bad shopper, whilst my wife is the Nigel Farage, the Real Madrid, the Jennifer Lawrence of the shopping basket, is because of our slightly different styles of shopping, to our individual approaches to purchasing.

I look, I find, (within my 30-second limit) I buy. If I don’t find, I leave. GAME OVER.

Mel examines every item on sale. Every single one. She is systematic, thorough, ruthless and microscopically efficient. Rack after rack of clothes, she doesn’t tire, nor get bored, nor lose focus; its commendable. And the reason we can not, should not, must never ever even if hell has indeed frozen over and I don’t have a coat, NEVER shop together.

So yesterday as we walked into (HELL!!!) the store, the size of an aircraft hangar, one wall of which is just sports shoes. Millions of them. Trillions. More shoes than there are grains of sand on a beach. More shoes than there are atoms in the universe. Every size, colour, style, design, every combination of those, every variation conceivable and inconceivable, they have them.

I recognised the look on Mel’s face as we entered. It said: there is THE perfect pair of shoes in here; for tuesdays, green/grey, medium walking, short-driving, orthotic-friendly, elevated heel, well padded… I just have to find them.

And in the mirror on the right I recognised the look on my face. Sheer fucking terror! Panic-rising! Pale, sweaty, nauseous-looking, manic-eyes darting round looking for escape (or death; either way),

I tried to be good. I tried to be supportive, but she knew the look on my face (terror), she could tell by my body language (retching), that the trip was doomed. Would need to be suspended until she could come alone. I felt bad, a bit guilty, but the relief as we left Sports Direct to the other 3,000 punters; that odd combination of Rumanians, Bulgarians and UKIP supporters who are their demographic.

Happy, relieved-to-be-back-at-work Tuesday,

A xxxx

Its a catastrophe! (for the LibDems)
Its terrible!! (for the European Union)
Its awful!!! (for the conservatives and even worse for Labour)
And its the end of the world!!! (for Nick Clegg)

Europe has spoken!! And, with one voice, it has said: WE DON’T WANT ‘EUROPE’. Well, ‘Europe’ can be there but just as a collective term for the continent, not as some kind of homogenous unit of Euro-ness. Not as some brotherhood of nations, all equal under one currency, except for Germans who are touch more equal than everyone else. And not as some kind of open-bordered wonderland in which the unemployed peasant scum from the Eastern reaches are given a warm welcome in every country until they can find one that will fund their every need and desire without any requirement of ‘work’. Or ‘Britain’ as its known.

UKIP basically stormed the European parlaimentary elections here. Massively. Similarly, in France, the (fucking) National Front stormed to Euro victory. Right wing parties winning was the theme across all of the Euro-voting and yet… and yet…

Greece; the most nazied-up, almost-swastika wearing Golden Dawned bunch of uber-fascists, in fact voted en masse for a very left-wing but very ANTI-EUROPE party.

So the trend in fact was not one of swing to the right (praise The Lord for small mercies) but swinging away from the European Union.

What Nigel Farrage and UKIP have to be admired about is for thier fundamental understanding of ‘the common man’. In most cases, very common, almost and oik. Doesn’t matter what we think of him cos rightly or wrongly, he gets the same vote as Mr Eton and Oxbridge. But he doesn’t understand quite as much and he gets bored much more quickly so has a limited attention span.
So its all very well for Grant Schapps, Conservative party chairman, to bang on about how ‘the message has been received loud and clear from these elections’ (the ‘message’ to his party being, effectively: FUCK OFF!!) so the Tories just need to ratify this and realign that and strategise the fundamental algorithms of euro-memberness.
And its all very well for the Lib Dems to say that they had the right message (stay in Europe) but unfortunately it was just a message no-one wanted to listen to. Because the message was too long, way too intricate, too complicated, and too Cleggish.

What Farrage realised it that less is more. That simplicity is all. That feed a man enough and he’ll be satisfied. He doens’t need a Roman feast of information. Especially when he’s a bit dim to being with.

So UKIP’s message was this:

There’s zillions of Romanians and Bulgarians coming HERE. To rob us, rape our pets, steal our homes, fornicate publicly, drink our booze and get handouts from the government in millions.

We need to have control of our borders to stop this travesty.

But we can’t if we are in Europe because they make the rules.

Ergo we need to leave Europe, take control of our borders, control immigration, save our Labradors from Bulgarian rapists. (Ok, now sing the first 3 verses of Land of Hope and Glory).

Simple message, small bits, single theme. So easy. And that’s what mainstream politics needs to learn. If you can’t simplify something; don’t use it. Or else you are seen as overcomplicating or really fucking patronising.

British politics may indeed improve as a result of this seeminly awful result. Assuming it recovers at all.

Happy (Black) Monday

A xxxx

I’m not a big tv watcher. Using Andy’s Calculation, there’s very little to watch. The Calculation goes like this:
99% of our 637 tv channels show 99% rubbish approximately (within 3 significant figures), 99% of the time. And I’m only interested in the remaining 1%. So we don’t ‘have the telly on’. Never. We turn it on to watch something, then turn it off again. Unless I’ve got the remote then I certainly have to check those other 636 channels just to make sure that there’s no ‘must sees’ on some lowly, deserted, obscure oldies channel. Something like Terminator 2, or Die Hard (the first), or a really cool music bio of a very old band, most of whom were dead by 1987 from drug abuse.

I say this not as some claim to superiority over those who wake up and turn the tv on from bed, then turn it off 18 hours later as their eyes are closing on the ending day. But its just what I am, what we do. Which does make me a bit superior, but only in a nice, pompous, sneering, holier-than-thou kind of way.

Yesterday, as predicted, there was a lot of rain. Interspersed with some (though very little) sunny bits. Just a few. The afternoon walk was cancelled, so I watched some of the QPR/Derby playoff match. Dull as dishwater. Terrible game. Went out for a while, listened to some of it on the car radio, the commentators fell asleep, woke up and spoke of their holiday plans for the summer. There was no football worth mentioning. Then QPR had a man sent off. That was the total excitement of the game until the 88th minute when (Spurs reject… and West Ham reject, and Fulham reject, and…) Bobby Zamora hit the one and only, hence ‘winning’ goal. QPR go to the Premiership. Harry Rednap returns.

Then we came home. And the heavens dids’t open. Fuck me dids’t they open. Hail, the size of hailstones! Ok, they weren’t exactly big but there were loads of them. Hundreds, at least, if not more. For ages and ages. “Well”, I proclaimed, “we certainly can’t go out in this!!” and promptly turned on the rugby. Which was wonderful. Brilliant game. Jonny Wilkinson signing off from the game in definitive style.

It was still pouring, then it stopped. Brilliant. We have the brother-and-sister-in-law coming round for a barbecue. Rain’s stopped. Great. Get it all ready. And we did. Prepared the requisite 4 times more meat than 4 people could ever eat under ‘normal’ circumstances, throw in some lettuce leaves ‘for the gels’ and fire up the barby. Then it rained again. Big rain. Lots of it. But all was not lost because the Champions’ League final was just kicking off. But dinner guests? And tv???? That’s simply not acceptable. Completely incompatible with accepted protocols of British decency, dining and hostage. Might as well spit on the Queen’s crown as turn the tv on at dinner.

The sun came out. Hoorah. We barbecued, Flinstones scale meat. Then after the feast we took our port and coffee and cigars (not really but its just the image; light up a stogie in our house and the smoke alarms would have the Fire Brigade here in 10 minutes but the anti-smoking lobby here in 6) and watched the end of the Madrid vs Madrid final. The injury time equaliser for Real. The extra time. In which Gareth Bale scored THE important goal. I don’t care that a couple of foreigners scored yet further goals, Gareth was the hero. The Spurs boy (if only) came good. One year away and he’s already won the Champions League. Bless him. He could have won it for Spurs. If he’d just stayed another 6 generations. Maybe.

Then we turned the tv off.

And then, after they’d gone I turned it sneakily back on for The Eagles Story (part 1).

Brilliant day. Brilliant night. Lucky I don’t like tv. Or rain.

Happy sunday, let the sun shine all day.

A xxxx

I hate the rain. Tennis just got cancelled. The lawn can’t be mowed. The car’s wet. And we won’t be able to do lots of ‘things’ like walking, gardening, all those -ings that get done on bank holiday weekends. Another bank holiday weekend. The fifth this week. So it seems.

But… and yet… though…

if ever you ‘simply have to stay indoors’, then today is most certainly the day. The most wonderful day ever. And not just day, but half the night too. Because today is officially, sports-not-to-be-missed day. Not played, of course, playing sport is for wimps. For watching.

Though a brief mention of ‘other news’ first, before the sportsfest begins.

Some (tosser) bloke has invented the ‘superfood’. Its called Soylent, after the old science fiction book (in which that version of Soylent ends up being made from slaughtered humans; fucking good advert that is) and is the complete and perfect food for humans. Just add the powder to water and create a beige sludge which, whilst not tasting essentially ‘good’ in any foody sense, will not make you instantly vomit like most other ‘superfoods’ that Gwynnie and Madonna currently use. And the balance of vitamins and proteins and goodness is so… so… so good, that all you need otherwise is some special oil which he provides for lipids and wonderful unfatty fats that caress your heart lovingly and clear your arteries and stroke your testicles. From within!

One question: by how many miles does this man miss the whole point of ‘food’?? I’d rather live on kebabs and McDonalds and die younger.

UKIP won lots of seats on councils yesterday. Lots. They provided their ‘earthquake’ in an almost-racist, near-xenophobic, slaughter-the-foreigners way. The whole nation turned to these saviours of British values. Except in London, where they were laughed off the polls and won very little. So as Tory Boy said to me last night at dinner: ‘the best reason yet for not letting people outside London vote’. And I must admit, with obvious respect for both the democratic process and to the inbreds, retards, gullible dimwits and uncultured residents of Burnley, Norwich, Halesowen and The Wirral, that I’m inclined to agree with him.

So, be in your seat by 3 o’clock for the Championship play-off final, the single most valuable football match in the world. Worth an estimated £80million to the winner who will then spend a year in the top flight as the real reward. Derby playing Queens Park Rangers, for which me mate Dave has made a 24-hour trip from Israel back here to, hopefully, go back tonight very very happy. Incredible that the match to decide who came third in the second division is worth way more than the Champions League final. Which is on at 7.45 on a screen very near you. Gareth Bale and Ronaldo versus Athletics Madrid, the wonderful underdogs. Oh my.

And in between, the Heikeken cup final with Jonny Wilkinson playing in French, with subtitiles, for Toulon against Saracens to decide Europe’s finest rugby team.

What a day this is destined to be.

Happy saturday

A xxxx

I generally avoid movies with the word ‘tomorrow’ in the title. I know; its a perfectly innocuous word, an everyday word, even an every-tomorrow word. But it has deep implications in the world of cinema. Because its a euphemism for ‘the future’. In fact it really is about the future, just normally not such a faraway future as it implies in any movie title. And it also implies some kind of apocalyptic event that is due to happen ‘tomorrow’. Unless:

doh, it can be avoided.

Tom Cruise puts on an ultra violent exo-skeleton comlete with nuclear armaments; such a lot of ‘stuff’ on such a small person.

Bruce Willis is sent into space with some other old men

Jake Gyllenhall saves the world from a deep freeze.

The aliens can be persuaded not to invade us but go to another planet instead.

The big movies for this summer (summer’s always a stupid time for movie releases; all blockbuster rubbish aimed at either children or adults who have a mental age of 12 or less). And this summer’s ‘bumper offerings’ include:
Tom Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow, when the world is gonna end if Le Petite doesn’t do some serious scowling to camera.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes; done that, been there, hated it the first time round, can’t imagine its improved with age.
Guardians of the Galaxy; don’t even ask.
Jupiter Ascending; true story of a poor girl who cleans toilets, who looks a lot like Mila Kunis, who is actually a princess from Jupiter!! Who’d’a thought?? Waits for Prince Charming, who has six arms (bit like Rolph Harris then) two heads and six penises; one on each toe. Its a porn film. Well, it would be if I’d made it.
And there’s yet another, inevitable, Transformers. The 19 sequels to the pretty cool original have all been tragically disappointing rehashes of the same old same old, but without Megan Fox, there is simply no reason to watch it again.

Back on this planet, almost, there’s Maleficent, the wicked witch from Sleeping Beauty, before she played for Wigan. Ok, its basically for Disney what ‘Wicked’ was for the Wizard of Oz. It explains why the wicked witch was oh so wicked. And stars Angelina Jolie, who for some reason I can never quite bring myself to loathe. Even though I know I should. Must be those lips.

And if that’s not fab enough!!!! there’s Expendables 3. I love a sequel. I love draining the dregs from an initially flimsy, pathetic and ridiculous premise and stretching it to new realms of the imbecilic in order to try and sell some popcorn. Schwartzenneger, Stalone, Harrison Ford, blah, blah, saving the world with Zimmer frames rigged with machine guns, and as much plastic surgery as you can get before Tomorrow.

But at Cannes this week… that’s in France… south thereof, they’ve been previewing the ‘other’ movies. The good ones. Made in foreign languages (though not if you’re foreign in the first place) for pretentious fuckers like me.

The Search looks fantastic, in a depressing, foreign kind of way, as does Two Days and One Night (but obviously no ‘tomorrow’) with the gorgeous Marion Cotillard.

So its not all bad. Just most of it.

Happy Frinday

A xxxx