Adam Johnson is a bit of a tosser, really. He joins that (somewhat massive) club due to improprieties of a very naughty nature.

The Sunderland (and, apparently, England) winger ‘groomed’ a ‘child’. And then either did or didn’t involve in some kind of sexual activity with her, depending on who you believe and how you define ‘sexual activity’. Its all a bit Clintonesque at that point, with lines drawn and then blurred in very indistinct places.

So Sunderland sack Johnson, as they had to. Eventually. They should have sacked him last year when they found out he’d been ‘snogging’ an underage girl.

This sort of thing is rife. Particularly with ‘superstars’. Like Adam Johnson. Who, whilst being no Lionel Messi, nor Brad Pitt, nor even Tony Blackburn, is sufficiently in the private eye to attract followers, devotees, people who have his poster on their bedroom wall and swoon whenever he falls over running down the wing at the Stadium of Light.

So Johnson would leave the club after a match to find hosts of kids screaming his name and calling for autographs, selfies, any kind of attention, recognition or memorabilia. And these kids are vulnerable. They perceive glamour and want to associate with it. They create heroes and demigods and basically prostrate themselves before them. And they are naive.

So whilst these screaming fans don’t all stand around waving their Id cards, passports or birth certificates around, they are there to meet, to speak to, to associate with, ANYTHING, with their gods.

And it must be very difficult for these ‘stars’ who, in the case of footballers, are generally not overly bright or self-controlled, to protect themselves. And I don’t mean by wearing a condom, that’s too late.

A decade ago Graham Rix, the former footballer and then Chelsea coach, went to prison for having sex with a ‘child’. She was 15, she’d stalked him at a London hotel, she looked 21, acted 31 and I reckon, in all honesty, ‘he didn’t know’.

Adam Johnson did know. She told him. Many times. And yet he courted her, despite the pregnant girlfriend at home, or perhaps because of the pregnant girlfriend at home, and groomed her for the sexual activity that may or may not have then followed (the case continues). He even looked up ‘the legal age of consent’. WHO DOESN’T KNOW THE LEGAL AGE OF CONSENT??? Doesn’t he read any newspapers? Any article about the BBC over the last 30 years would have told him that. Yet the fact he even looked makes him cynical and abusive.

Jimmy Savile, Rolph Harris, Greville Janner, Adam Johnson. Add in Tony Blackburn and they have a 5-a-side team.

Happy Friday

A xxxx