Andy's Glasses

Fantastic goal was scored on Sunday by Cheik Tiote, the Newcastle midfielder. Stunning goal. Goal of the day/month/season type goal. And then it wasn’t. After careful consideration (we don’t got no tv replays in our national game) and discussion it was decided that it was not a goal. Someone was offside. Not Tiote, he was a mile away from the very crowded goal area. But someone else. Who, whilst apparently neither ‘active’ nor ‘interfering with play’ was deemed to have had some, presumably subliminal or telekinetic, effect on the event and the goal was thus disallowed. Oh dear.

His manager, Alan Pardew, after the (losing) game, said that the goal should have stood. No surprise there. Manager always make excuses and as they go, this was a good one. But the surprise was his reasoning. Which was that ‘football is entertainment’ and therefore something as wonderfully entertaining as that goal should have been allowed to stand. Well I personally find it ‘entertaining’ when Arsenal players suffer studs-up, boots in the throat tackles. But players still get sent off for perpetrating such actions.

So at what point to rules/regulations/protocols give way to the great god that is ‘entertainment’?

I shall confess, at this point, that I’m not a great opera fan. In fact, having been but once in my life to see that (shit) artform, (Rigoletto, Vienna Statsoper, 1985), it scared me away. Fat people in fancy dress screaming at each other in a Italian, fortunately with German subtitles(?), simply didn’t move me like career-threatening tackles on Arsenal players does. Ok, well it moved me to tears, it moved me to want to leave, and it moved me towards other artistic expression in my life. Like pole-vaulting.

But now this may change.

In an opera staged in Germany, the singer Danielle De Niese, (typical Aussie name) has performed in some opera or other. Dressed not in the Elizabethan, high-necked, sixteen-petticoated, floor length burgundy velvet monstrosity, but in a leopard print leotard. Writhing round on stage like Rhianna. Like Beyoncee. Twerking like Mylie. Hip-thrusting (I’m making this up a bit now, the fantasy has taken on its own momentum), spinning little tassels on her chest, licking things, sliding around doing the splits…

Whatever.

But at the opera!!! A leotard!!!!

And you know what? She’s right. They’re right. The producers, directors, costume decider people. Because opera is the dullest, most tedious, boring, tragic of all the performing arts. Its like watching England play cricket, but with less white. Its like baseball without the spitting. Its like living in Norway. So to spice it up a bit may get more people engaged, more people interested, keen to learn a whole new classical musical world. Increase the entertainment value. And see bare flesh gyrating.

My only question is whether I’m allowed to watch it, if its ’empowerment’ of women, like Beyoncee, or if its banned from my life as yet another perverted low form of smutty ‘objectification’ of women, like lap-dancing.
I’m still struggling with that one. Same actions, same clothes, one is a feminist statement the other a vile act of submission to misogynistic and chauvinistic pornography.

But either way, its certainly entertainment.

Happy friday

A xxxx

China is making big efforts in improving its image. As well it needs to. Its an awful place. Corrupt, overcrowded, full of poor people, under a brutal regime, no human rights, forced to eat dogs, cats and slugs, and it produces more carbon than the rest of the world put together.

But its rich. Very rich. So rich that is ‘People’s Liberation Army’ (the government) has a fleet of cars that cost £8billion. That’s a lot of Jaguars. Shitloads of Bentleys. A multitude of Mercedes. But no longer. They’re selling up their motors and told to drive round in Chinese cars only. Did you know China made cars? No, neither did I. Though most of us are not privy to what happens in China anyway. Its never been the most open of nations.

The making of cars should come as no surprise really; they manufacture everything for the entire world. Though apparently these cars, Geely and Chery and BYD are ‘somewhat less sophisticated than their European or Japanese counterparts’.
They’re shit. In other words. I’m thinking a Flintstones car with boy-racer stripes down the side and chrome alloys. But you don’t fuck with Chinese high command. Well you can do, but only once.

They’re also trying to improve their green-ness. As their nation burns more coal and gas than any other they’re making efforts to do the right thing. They have nuclear energy and they’re building wind farms. As you’d expect, loads of wind farms in loads of out of the way places (most of China is ‘out of the way’; out of my way at least). I saw them on tv. Massive windfarms, all done with economy and speed, sitting there waiting for the wind to blow. Ahhhhh, just putting up metal windmills won’t do it then, you need wind. Hmmmmmm…

We have wind farms here too. How do you grow wind? Eat a curry? Sorry. You don’t, you ‘harness’ it by putting up mostrous, ugly, outrageously expensive, immense steel windmills and hope the wind blows. And then you pay those upon whose land those windmills sit more outrageous expense to host them.

One fracking site of 4 hectares (no idea, I think a hectare is the square on the hypotenuse divided by the cost of a Chinese car, in Euros, but don’t quote me) will generate more energy than all the windmills in Britain. At a fraction of the cost. And then its good English fuel, paying good English taxes, employing good Rumanian workers to do the sucking out bit.

Furthermore, it will get rid of some of that awful English countryside and replace it with buildings and car parks and good things that are pleasing on the eye.

It is apparently written into council by-laws that spitting in public is subject to a maximum fine of £500. As it should be. So after watching Match of the Day on Saturday, I’d like Wayne Rooney to pay his £25,000, John Terry £48,500 and all the other to cough up (errrrr) their fines appropriately.

And if they fined them for swearing too, that would be just fucking brilliant.

Happy thursday

A xxxx

Poor Valerie Trierweiller. Upon hearing of her partner’s love affair with Julie Gayet, she felt as if, according to a friend, ‘she’d been hit in the chest by a high speed train’.

She should live in England. The trains are never high speed, if they turn up at all.

But this explains why certain women choose to protect themselves from such metaphorical trauma. And how they do so is with air bags.
If a train hit Pamela Anderson in the chest, or Jordan, or Heidi Montag, it would simply bounce off; back the way it had come from.
So the lesson is: if you suspect your husband of having an affair, increase your chest size to FF immediately. Only massive lumps of silicon can save you.

But the sorry tale of French rumpy-pumpy has descended into a somewhat more cynical place. Where Ms Trierweiller, almost as horrendously unpopular in her own right as her useless Monsieur Le President ‘husband-ish’, has to decide how to react to his confessions of infidelity. Already the first unmarried woman to inhabit the Elysee Palace as the First Bimbo, her position there was always a little tenuous. So if she decides to shut the door and never return to the two-timing little shit, she gives up rather a lot.

State funded assistants, security guards, limousines and drivers, private jets, allowances for clothes, croissants, foix gras and untipped cigarettes. It would all go. All the things that perhaps influenced her decision to hook up with the ugly little bald man in the first place when she had, for some years, been conducting relationships with both Hollande and the leader of a Far Right party as well.
Playing the middle ground. The French way.

Hollande confessed to Valerie, as all real men must do. Out of honour, out of decency, out of doing the right thing, the honest thing.
And because he knew that the next day it was going to be all over the papers.

He only stayed with Julie overnight because there was no room on Le First Scooter for a third person to go anywhere. Security guard up front, Francois on the back, where would Julie sit? On the handlebars?? If the economy there was better they’d have a little Citroen and the problem would be solved.

So now he must decide.

The French, being French, are all very familiar and comfortably accepting of dalliances among their high command, but they need to know their leader’s intentions purely so they know how many old tarts and slappers they will be funding in the coming years. It has become a budgetary consideration.

Hollande needs to grow some balls and make his choices.

Where is the number for that silicon implanter?

Bon Mardi

A xxxx

It seems that the world of football punditry is being taken over. By Scousers.

Jamie Carragher hung up his boots last year, put on a suit and open-necked shirt (protocols for the trade) and sat in the Sky studio making noises that no-one could undersand. Well, Stevie Gerrard could probably understand him, maybe Wayne Rooney, but very few who grew up south of the Wirral stood any kind of chance. Yet they refuse to employ sub-titles.

Yesterday they had Jamie along with his fellow ex-Liverpool teammate Didi Hamaan. A German. Ahhhhh, I thought, at least Germans speak proper English. And he does. Almost. Because he speaks it with a very strong Liverpudlio-Krautish accent. And its the Scouse that stands out in his speech patterns. His years at the club had resulted in the horrible Liverpudlian stifling his natural Germanic so he sounded like Paul McCartney doing a Hitler impersonation. Badly.

Another sorry hybrid is Jan Molby. A Dane. A very Great Dane now he’s stopped his training. And Danes speak really good English. Unless they happened to have spent 12 years at Anfield, as Jan did, rendering his speech a lot more Cilla Black than it is Michael Laudrup.

Why is ‘Scouse’ so toxic? Why does it saturate all other types of accent?
I think the answer is that in Liverpool the natives aren’t aware they actually speak English at all and unless you strangle your vowels, drop most of your consonants and pull strange mouth and facial expressions as you talk, they don’t understand you.

But I don’t wish to detract from my new book. Coming to a bookshop near you very soon.

After reading (well, looking at the pictures of her in a bathing suit that was an extreme testament to her waxer) extracts from Cameron Diaz new book: How To Have a Fabulous Body Like Mine, You (previously) Fat Fucker, in 96 easy steps, all of them Really Painful; I’m bringing out my own. Well everyone else is doing it. The obsession with waifness, with fitness, with body beautiful, with size zero continues in every paper every day, normally opposite articles on how to get your children to stop obsessing about their body image, how to prevent anorexia, how models shouldn’t be stick thin, blah, blah fucking blah.

So here’s an extract from my book (£7.99 in all really bad bookstores… if you can still find a bookstore, otherwise £1.17 on Amazon).

Day 1.
Eat food. Lots of it. Fry-ups, Mars bars and chips. Ok, have an apple if you must. But don’t skimp on the carbs and get plenty of added sugar or you’ll be asleep by 2pm.

Day 2.
Repeat as above.
Exercise routine: walk to the pub. Stay for at least 3 hours. Walk back. Staggering counts double. Like your vision.

Continue for 6 weeks and just hope that a fabulous genetic make-up and a bizarrely hyperactive metabolism prevents weight gain.

Its THAT simple.

Bit like me.

Happy monday

A xxxx

Its a faith thing. Trust. Belief. Devotion. Hope.

But mainly trust.

Unfortunately, God wasn’t available when AVB was sacked so we’ve got Tim Sherwood instead. Same difference.

Obviously Tim is not the holy of holies, he’s not the Divine Creator of All Eternity!, he’s not the Master of the Universe. I appreciate all that.
Furthermore, the real God would never support Arsenal.

But Tim’s what we’ve got, so we must trust him. And I really really believe that.

We’ve had shitty managers, we’ve had good managers, we’ve even had some truly great managers at Spurs, but when they’re with us I want to keep them. Because what I really believe in is the managerial system. That you (the club; I often forget that I don’t actually get a vote even though I’m the most important fan EVER) employ a man to run the team and then you let him do it for the very reasons you selected him, in the way he said he would. And you don’t hinder the manager, nor compromise his autonomy by appointing a ‘director of football’, an ironic title because they have precious little to do with the actual playing of the game. And when you have a chairman as active in all transfers as Daniel Levy, the last thing needed is someone else trying to justify an exorbitant salary and his place in the world.

So, much as I dearly loved Glen Hoddle, adored Martin Jol, loathed Jacques Santini and George Graham, worshipped Bill Nicholson and Keith Burkinshaw, I am totally indifferent to Tim Sherwood as a person. Yet I’ll stand by his every move because I am loyal and supportive to ‘the Manager’ whoever that incumbent may be. I’m like a fucking labrador in a Spurs hat.

So we won yesterday. Brilliant. Struggled to beat the bottom team in the league. But who cares? Free points is free points. We’ll take ’em to the bank.
Unspectacular? So what. Unconvincing? I’m convinced. Undeserving? You don’t always get what you deserve, and that can be for the better as well as worse.

Sam Allardyce is in a ‘skin-of-the-teeth’ situation at West Ham, David Moyes having a very shaky start at Man United, I’m worried for Gus Poyet’s sanity (never started from a high baseline in the first place) and about 6 managers have already gone this year.

Have some faith. Have some trust.

And have a lovely Sunday. I hope the ice melts in time for your tennis game, unlike mine.

A xxxx

They found 14,000 people worldwide and asked them who they most admired.

I didn’t even come in the top 96. Bastards.

Bill Gates came top. Obama was 3rd or 4th, the highest Brit was Stephen Hawking in 16th, his wheelchair came 17th.

Amoung Britains, the Queen was first, again there was no mention of me, but Cameron was very very low, after Ronnie Biggs, Emanuel Adebayor, Del-Boy and Angela Merkel. Ed Milliband didn’t make the list at all. Apparently his own wife voted for David Milliband.

Very few women were on the list. Which is odd. But depends who’s voting and how you define ‘admiration’.

Amoung Russians Putin came out on top. Surprise. Amoung North Koreans 98% voted Kim Jung Un as number 1.
2% were exectued at dawn.

My top ten:

1. Me (cos I’m worth it)
2. Me Dad (cos he’s amazing)
3. Larry my Tai Chi instructor (only cos if I don’t put him in he knows 977 ways to hurt me very very badly)
4. Jennifer Lawrence
5. Gylfi Sigurdsson
6. Kim Jong Un (funniest man alive)
7. Jennifer Lawrence (I know, but why not?)
8. Batman
9. Nick Clegg (2nd funniest man alive)
10. Francoise Holllande

Yes, the French president just sneaks in as a (very) late entry. My list yesterday morning wouldn’t have included the sorry socialiste under any circimstances, the man who’s done more for France than any man since Hitler invaded in nineteen forty-something. A president so useless, so clueless, so inept and disastrous that they’re considering bringing the guillotine out of mothballs.

But yeterday they published photos of him going round to his lover. On a motor scooter. Sadly (and for a rather sad man to start with, that represents new levels of sadness) he was on the back of the scooter, riding pillion. Tart.

Yet this is not his ‘lover’ in a Valerie Trieweiller kind of way; she’s more his ‘main bitch’, with whom he lives. Well, with whom he lived, until yesterday at least. This is a new ‘other woman’. The position held by Mdme Trieweiller when Hollande was married to Segolene Royale. You keeping up with this???

New bird is Julie Gayet who is French. And married to an Argentinian. Who is probably, in turn, shagging someone else’s wife, to keep up moral standards in the Gallic nation.

French presidents have a serious history of mistresses and lovers. Its possibly worth taking the job for that alone. At least they do it properly. No nation does adultery better. When John Major decided upon his constitutional right of a ‘friend with benefits’ he chose Edwina Curry. The man was fucking clueless in every respect.

So respect for Hollande. At least he’s got hisself a nice babe.

Happy saturday

A xxxx

Thomas Hitzlsperger is gay.

He ‘came out’ the other day, having now retired from professional football due to health reasons. If playing for West Ham can be considered ‘professional football’. I don’t know how you’d describe what the Hammers do currently, but ‘football’ would not readily be the term that springs to mind.

Thomas didn’t come out whilst still playing the game. Whereas a real man would have done. I think that needs a moment to ponder.

Its only the fourth time this has happened in football.

Justin Fashanu came out then killed himself tragically.

John Terry and Frank Lampard have been lovers for years.
And now Tommy the German.

The entire Arsenal football team, and most of its supporters are famously gay too, but haven’t collectively ‘come out’ just yet.

So Tommy Hitlsperger. Why is it a big deal, front page news, messages of support, write-ups, comment. Why does it even justify mention? When the gay rights act was passed in 1847, (just a few years before Oscar Wilde was imprisoned for sodomy, so maybe the dates need attention), when gay marriage is just upon us, when equality rules the land, equal opportunity for all and a legislative lack of discrimination to all mankind except Romanians?

Because its football.

Actors can be gay. In fact they should be. Singers, lawyers, accountants, certainly management consultants, designers (can’t get the qualification otherwise), and don’t even start on the clergy. Its about freedom of sexuality. As opposed to free sex which is different, very rare and worth keeping quiet about.

So why not in football?

Because football is an anachronism. Its in a time warp. One in which racism still exists and needs constant monitoring and vigilance; where sexism is rife and where sexuality is viewed through the eyes of, basically, an unevolved caveman whose had 7 pints of Stella. A world where fighting is acceptable behavior, where abuse and swearing are the lingua franca, both on the pitch and off.

Though really I think the issue here may also be more a pragmatic one. As it is with that other bastion of knuckle-dragginess, the army. And its all about close proximity, extreme physical contact and showering together. Management consultants seldom get to partake of this activity but footballers, and rugby players too, often do. And that’s the bit where it gets a bit ‘eeuuuw’. Even for an ultra-post-modern, neo-metrosexual uber-mensch like me, who should know better.

Football needs to come into the 19th century (we’ll work out the rest slowly, slowly) and get over itself. Macho is so 1973.

Happy friday

A xxxx

New Years here. In case you missed it while I was away. Its a time for making (hollow) promises, for resolutions destined never to make it til February, for turning over a new leaf. And, like all new leaves, it will turn brown, fall off and be swept away with one of those horrible 2-stroke blower things at the hands of a Lithuanian called Guri.

And this years prominent resolution would appear to be ‘weather’. Nothing more, no explanation; just ‘weather’. Lots of it.

We left Mexico in a deluge of biblical proportions, a massive tropical storm, of which there had been many in our brief stay there. And we returned to an England under a continuing bombardment of its own storms. Flooding, river banks bursting, water, water everywhere.

Whilst America has frozen over. Just like in the movie ‘The Day After Tomorrow’, a big freeze. Hell hath indeed frozen over. And where’s Jake Gyllenhall when you really need him?

Here’s my New Year’s Resolutions: (I’ve tried for goals that are achievable):

Increase my alcohol consumption to meet government minimum standards
Eat more sugar
Eat more chocolate
Exercise less
Be more of a slob
Watch more sport on tv
Get lots of chocolate

Though if you do buy chocolate, don’t get it in the Duty Free.

Bottle of vodka; 18 quid in Sainsburys, 12 quid in the Duty Free. Bargain.

200 cigarettes (for those of YOU who still use such things) 35 quid in the D/free, or £600 in the local shop. Bargain.

But a pack full of Kit Kats; £14 in the Duty Free, probably about £2.60 in Tescos.
Big bar of Cadburys, retail price £2.50, sells in the Duty Free for $47

So is there some kind of ‘reverse duty’ on chocolate, some kind of subsidy? so that removal of duty actually increases the cost? Is that possible? Is that legal? Its certainly immoral to charge more for chocolate than is absolutely necessary.

And the most important resolution of all this year: IGNORE ALL DIETARY ADVICE.
The 5-2 has become the 4-3.
Sugar will still kill you but they’ve found more, hidden everywhere, secret sugar, like a midnight feast lying under the bedclothes waiting for parents to sleep. Bottled water contains 14 teaspoons of sugar. Fresh air; 19 gms per cubic litre, its everywhere. An epidemic. Sugar is the new heroin, the new antichrist, its communism for the new millennium.

I just ate a banana. Better go find a stomach pump.

Happy thursday (thursdays contain 12 gms more sugar than tuesdays, proven fact. Avoid them!)

A xxxx

“Chelsea don’t harbour divers.”

Thus spake Jose Morinho, everyone’s favourite Portuguezer now that poor (not very) old Eusebio has gone to play in the great stadium in the sky.

Odd then, that sixteen Chelsa players have been booked in the last 3 games for ‘simulation’. I think the problem is that players in general but Chelsea players specifically, have no idea what ‘simulation’ means so they keep on diving, thinking its something else altogether.

FYI; simulation is nothing to do with a clitoris.

But never mind because Chelsea’s finances have never looked better. Brilliant year they had, making such a massive profit (errrr, a loss of £49 million) that they are well within the ‘Fair Play’ rules and regulations. Great stuff, long may it continue.

If you can make such an incredible loss (due to the twin evils of the modern game: overpaying for players, overspending on wages) which the Fair Play rules were set up specifically to combat, and be declared ‘ok’ and ‘sound’, then why fucking bother the pretence at all. Cos its all bollox and Abramovich just keeps writing out cheques.

Eusebio was our favourite footballer not because he was brilliant, not because he scored shit-loads of goals for club and country, not because of the honours he won. No, he was ‘one of the best ever’ because of the spirit in which he played the game. Maybe it was a zeitgiest thing and current players lack both the conduct and comraderie and also the enjoyment of the game itself (as opposed to the riches it can bring). Ronaldo may be a better player, scorer of more goals, winner of more things, but he’s a vain and selfish preening ponce of a poseur who thinks ‘Humility’ is a new fragrance by Calvin Klein.

Meanwhile, Adam Lallana used to be such a nice boy. Until about 4 weeks ago when he got an England call-up and turned himself into a hybrid of all the worst parts of Wayne Rooney and Ronaldo. So the ref told him so, and now faces investigation by the FA. Which is actually funny. Players, like Rooney, can constantly be seen calling refs all kinds of truly vile, foul and insulting things. All Mark Clattenberg said was ‘you used be a nicer guy’. And Lallana ran off to his agents, in-house lawyers, image consultants and advisers to see if action could be taken against such horrific persecution. Though the good news for Adam Lallana and Southampton football club is that they share this week’s ‘Tosser of the week’ award. So congratulations to them.

We don’t talk about cricket, we wil NOT mention Spurs and, out of the goodness of my heart, I won’t speak of West Ham either.

I’m coming home, England, and I really missed you. Like a… er…. hmmm…

Happy monday

A xxxx

I love sports. But hate exercise. In that I like doing things that involve others in a sporting situation but doing it on my own is like some form of mastubatory unfulfilment. I think its the trash talk I miss. I find it most unrewarding to sit in front of the mirrors at the gym insulting myself. And ‘exercise’ is just another way of saying ‘repetitive boredom’. All about discipline. And who needs that?

So I don’t go.

Normally.

But these aren’t normal times.

I’m on holiday. Until monday at least. So there’s no tennis. I did swim in the mornings then acquired a dastardly Mexican ear infection, so other than walking along the beach daily there was very little to counter the vastly increased food and drink intake.

So we went to the gym. Which is very much like an English gym except the instructions are in Spanish. And there’s tortillas in little dishes around the place. If only.

I went on the cycle machine; that was fine, if really, mind-numbingly, shout-out-loud fucking boring.

I went on the cross trainer. And it made me cross. So that must be working then.

And I went on the worst of all, the devil’s own workout tool; the running machine.

I set it on 7 miles an hour, or kilometres per taco, or nuclear decompositions per Iranian Presidency, and jogged at a nice leisurely pace. And jogged, and jogged. For 6 hours solid. Though my watch told me it had actually been 3.2 minutes. I watched the tv screen. Football. Zenit St Petersburg vs Vienna. Great. My favourite teams. But ‘any port in a storm’ and it was a welcome distraction. Zenit scored. Great goal. Wow, fab.

And I’m laid out on the floor on my nose behind the running machine.

No-one told me that even when a goal is scored, its probably best not to slow down or stop running.

And have you noticed how many really overweight people there are in gyms? Loads of them. Therefore gyms actually make you fat. So I’m not going any more. Its detrimental to my fitness. I’ll just end up a great fat bastard with a broken nose.

Last day of holiday,

the sun is calling

Happy monday

A xxxx