An Angst To Grind

This latest Jeremy Clarkson row… I find the reactionary times we now live in utterly pathetic and more dangerous than those who are the target of the hysteria.
Emotional outcrys have become the staple of British news output. We’ve had a series of footballers being pilloried for what they have allegedly said, then Blatter was being told by sports journos and columnists that ‘he must stand down’ over his comments concerning racism on the football pitch, earlier this week we had a meltdown over the non-inclusion of any female athletes in the SPOTY list, and now Jeremy Clarkson is being vilified for what he said on The One Show.
The thing all these stories have in common is the media creating stories by peddling outrage. And with the Twitterati acting as judge and jury over every single faux pas made by those in the public eye, they are having a field day.
It’s the one thing I detest most about social media – Twitter having been taken over by this holier-than-thou crowd who act like a lynch mob in collectively slaughtering whoever it is who says something inflammatory, or remotely controversial, or whose behaviour is anything less than impeccable.
This, by the way, is not to condone Clarkson, or Blatter, or anyone else, but I think it is a far greater blight on the times we are living in that we have this baying mob of do-gooders, or people who get a kick out of criticising others, who are basically running amok.
The papers lap it up of course and are also to blame for grabbing hold of any potentially incendiary sound bite, and blowing it up out of all proportion. Where is the objectivity? Where is the cool, calm, rational analysis? Why do the public continually grab hold of these talking points and fall into the trap every time, ringing up radio shows to air their disgust?
The media have created an environment in which the public’s emotional response is pivotal in the ongoing story. This has all been going on for some time now and is being copied across all modern tv output. You need only tune into Deal Or No Deal and the way in which it delves into the contestant’s emotional back story each day, Edmonds ratcheting up the studio to join in with the epic significance of the game, so come the denouement one and all are overcome by emotion and sobbing uncontrollably.
One of the scariest offshoots in all this is the sense of entitlement is it breeding in the public. ‘I want this so much. It would change my life,’ and the way in which people think any kind of hardship and suffering in their lives is a green light for them deserving a shot at the big time, or the big pay-out.
I’m a huge sports fan but dread watching SPOTY now because it is dominated by musical montages created to build high emotion in the viewer; over-the-top, heart-string tugging, soundtrack-accompanying nonsense. The royalties Westlife must have racked up over the years for the use of ‘You Raise Me Up’… It’s cheap, cringeworthy, intelligence-insulting and so, so manipulative.
The biggest culprit of all, which was one of the pioneers in this era of emotional blackmailing of the viewer, is X Factor. This current series has been utterly shameless crowbarring heart-rending content in to help save Misha. We had the confected sob story between her and Kelly sharing in their troubled upbringings the other week. It was gratuitous and transparent but they do it because it gets the job done – Misha received the big sympathy vote this edit was aimed at achieving to keep her in the show.
Another contestant, Janet, refused to play ball and did not have the same sort of edit when her grandfather passed away recently. How refreshing it was to see this young girl maintain her artistic integrity. How admirable it was she didn’t want any of this to be shown. What did she get as a reward for such a fine, upstanding stance? She was thrown under a bus by the programme makers who kicked her off last Saturday after several weeks of vote-killing tactics finally paid off in getting Janet into the bottom 2.
From the Clarkson hysteria to Deal Or No Deal to SPOTY to X Factor’s Misha, there is a common denominator running throughout – the public’s servile role as emotionally malleable sheep who are no longer capable of looking at the bigger picture and whose default setting is to hysterically over-react. Troubling times indeed and a message I would like to personally convey to them all: get a grip, you emotionally retarded, reactionary eejits. Stop following the crowd, or how others are trying to force you to react, and start thinking for yourselves. Maybe a nice song might help one and all calm down and behave more rationally:

Test cricket has been a lifelong passion. My memory goes back as far as Boycott and Brearley opening the batting for England, and Boycs’ 100th first class hundred at Headingley in 1977.

As a school kid I recall waking up in the early hours and, with great trepidation, tuning into Test Match Special on a crackling transistor radio for live coverage of the last few overs of the day during an Ashes series Down Under. Praying England would be going well but then clutching my head with despair after Gower invariably hooked recklessly in the last over of the day and was caught on the boundary.

For the most part it has been a story of anguish and heartache, firstly at the hands of the great West Indies sides of the 80s, then having to cope with Australian domination through the 90s and early Noughties. There was brief euphoria, in 2005, during that epic Ashes series win, but now, in 2011, it feels like that moment I’ve been waiting for my entire life has finally arrived. An England test team that has been deservedly, and rightfully, crowned number one in the world.

It is the best England team I have ever seen. They are magnificent in all departments. And given the history of our test side, and the emotion I’ve invested over the decades, I find myself loving this side like a father loves a son.

It’s a side that has all bases covered. With perfect balance. And strength in depth in the seam department. And a world class spinner in Swann. And a run-scoring machine in Alastair Cook. And the flair of KP and Bell counter-balanced by the obstinacy of Trott. And the best wicketkeeper/batsman in world cricket in Prior. And a side that bats all the way down. And Strauss and Flower at the helm, ensuring no one gets ahead of themselves, and the team doesn’t rest on its laurels but continues to strive for improvement. And the mickey-taking camaraderie of Swann and Anderson representing everything that is right and marvellous about this England side. A side with a wonderful team ethos based on collective achievement; a team that is truly greater than the sum of its parts.

We’ve just whitewashed India 4-0, who arrived here, lest we forget, as the world number one. A side full of batting greats like ‘The Wall’, Rahul Dravid, who has batted longer in test match cricket than anyone else in the history of the game, and VVS Laxman, known as ‘Very Very Special’, and the Little Master, Tendulkar. Over the course of the series, England have broken their will; buried them into the dust as mercilessly as the great Australian sides did to England.

And yet, as I watched the final day of the last test at the Oval yesterday, there was a part of me that felt uneasy. There was a nagging sympathy for India. I wanted to see Sachin get his 100th hundred, as I was happy to see Dravid carry his bat in the Indian first innings. Yes, I wanted to see England wrap up the series 4-0 but I couldn’t help myself feeling sorry for India.

It’s bizarre. It’s as if it is not in our nature to be ruthless, cold killers. We are too nice to be dominant champions which makes me wonder, is there something in the psyche of the English whereby being number one in the world doesn’t sit entirely comfortably?

There has been a similar reaction among the cricket pundits, and the former test players. During this series, they’ve spent an inordinately long time dissecting and scrutinising England’s current success. I’ve heard every possible reason, bar England’s greatness, churned out as an explanation for the side’s supremacy.

‘India have arrived here under-cooked’, ‘India have under-performed’, ‘India are missing Zaheer Khan’, ‘India are past their best’. ‘The strength of the sides in world cricket currently isn’t very good’, ‘Bowling attacks aren’t what they were’, ‘Playing in the IPL has left Indian players tired’…

Any opportunity to undermine England’s achievement has been seized upon, while the England team continues to court criticism. Strauss is too conservative in his field placings and declarations. Alastair Cook plays too much for himself and scores too slowly. Eoin Morgan’s batting technique is utterly flawed. Stuart Broad spits his dummy out too often. Jimmy Anderson can only bowl well when the ball is swinging…

For fuck’s sake. I’ve waited a lifetime for this moment. Why do I have to have my joy sullied in this way? Not to mention the fact England’s cricketing success is buried away in the newspapers, as 10 pages of Premiership football coverage dominates the back pages.

When England won the Ashes in Australia last winter for the first time in 24 years, the same thing happened. Some of the former test players were keen to point out the Australian side was a shadow of the one that had McGrath and Warne in it, while the local media could only deal with the crippling blow of being hammered on home soil by the Poms by painting Ponting’s side as the worst ever in the history of Australian cricket.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m all for objective sports reporting. In comparison to the blinkered jingoism you see over there, it’s good we have more balanced coverage here, but even so, the criticism goes too far; the discussions belittling the current England team are too forthright, and too much to the fore.

Few gave England a chance in Australia last winter. Our bowling attack would be exposed, claimed the critics, yet we pulverised them, winning three tests by an innings. Ah, yes, but the true test will only come in the summer against India, those same critics stated. Now, we’ve thrashed India, it’s the exact same reaction. Well, India haven’t turned up in this series, they say. The REAL test will only come next summer, against South Africa, and when we play away on the sub-Continent. And so it goes on. It all points to a nation that struggles with the notion it is the best in the world.

Can we not just allow ourselves the thought we have a great England cricket team right now, period? Would the Australians, during all those years of Ashes domination, have been racked by the same inward-looking anxiety, and neurotic self-doubt, and gone around thinking, ‘Yeah, but we’re only winning cos England are no good’? No. They fucking revelled in it, and were convinced by their absolute brilliance, as we should be now.

So please let us all enjoy it. Some of us have waited over 35 years for this.

I won’t hear a bad word said against this team. This is a great England test side and it can dominate test cricket for the next six years or more. Shout it from the rooftops. Not with crowing arrogance but with genuine delight, and pride.

I got really excited to hear news bat sales are massively up on amazon.co.uk this summer.
Fantastic, I thought. The kids must have been really inspired watching our brilliant cricket team dismantling India and on the verge of rising to no1 in world cricket. They’ll all be heading to the parks to learn the art of a good forward defensive from their dads and their uncles.
Sadly, I was mistaken. It turns out they are buying them to tool up for the riots that have flared across Britain’s major cities. There has been feverish debate over whether police should be allowed water cannon and rubber bullets, and you have to ask, what chance does an old fashioned truncheon have up against a top-of-the-range Gray Nicolls in the hands of an ethnic rioter with the wristy flair of a Tendulkar or a Dravid?
But to be serious for a moment, and genuinely angry, it’s hard to figure out what to be more sickened by watching these riots develop, riots that have become increasingly bizarre. There are the disenfranchised, with a bee in their bonnet, fed up of being shat upon by the powers-that-be as the gulf in our have and have not society widens. Then there are the opportunist looters who are merely seeking a pair of Nike trainers or a whole new wardrobe courtesy of Diesel from the ongoing anarchy – and when they’ve got get-rich-quick z-listers, sports car-driving, WAG-screwing Premiership footballers, greedy bankers, and expense-fiddling politicians as role models, who can blame their avaricious mindset?
Also, a new group has emerged in the last couple of nights. What I will call, for the sake of simplicity, the anti-riot mob, protecting their businesses and communities from the rioters, yet having to join the riot to beat the bad rioters away. And not forgetting the police who were strangely absent as this initial drama unfolded, though not that strange for anyone who has tried to contact the police in recent years only to be left in a call centre queue while your property is being smashed up by ASBO kids in the middle of the night. But hey, that’s a whole different rant. Anyway, the police are having to tread carefully too what with CCTV cameras, 24-hour news camera crews and iPhone users honed in on their every move, and the media ready to lambast them when they go in too heavy-handed with their truncheons on the rioting black guy, as he could be part of the anti-rioting rioters, or just recording the unfolding scene so he can upload it on YouTube.
Even more confusing is that some of the bad rioters are cunningly disguising themselves as good anti-rioters. It’s like that moment you often see in thriller movies where the baddie smuggles himself away from the crime scene by faking his i.d. as a policeman, or janitor, or innocent bystander.
We also now have all the quarters of these cities forming their own battle fronts, so Sikhs have been defending the Sikh quarter from the baying mob. And Turks are defending the Turkish quarter from the baying mob. And, hang on a minute, who is actually left in the baying mob if all the ethnic minorities are busy barricading themselves in this way, keeping themselves safe? Makes me wonder if the whole thing isn’t yet another elaborate piece of white, middle class spin. Keep painting the oppressed minorities as the villains in our society while the real culprits in government continue to rape the public blind.
A night out in some of these London suburbs must be confusing as hell right now. What with the onlookers, the police, the rioters, the anti-rioters, and the tv crews trying to catch all the action and desperate to record as much anarchy and blood-shed as possible as back in the studio Kay Burley is wetting her knickers determined to ratchet up the level of rioting, amount of chaos, and number of casualties.
Apart from anything else, what kind of fucked up, voyeuristic world do we live in now? I wonder what would happen if Paris Hilton inadvertently strayed into a rioting hotspot. As the rioters grabbed her Chanel handbag, and tore off her Jimmy Choos, my money would be on any nearby photographer not bothering to help her but instead focusing on her under-carriage and trying to get as many shots as possible of her vajazzled, waxed snizz.
Look, I’m all for the populus taking their anger to the streets. It’s long overdue as we have been given ample reason in recent times to be storming Downing Street. But instead, we get it all horribly wrong and have the spectre of a feral under-class stealing New Balance trainers from JJB Sports.
The rabble-rousing rhetoric from Cameron in painting the rioters as evil criminals and calling them ‘sick’ is typical of this contemptible politician. He misses the point completely that the entire scenario, and all the things that are badly wrong in our ‘broken society’ have been brought about by him and a succession of self-serving megalomaniacs in no10 before him.
My message to the looters is simple: if you’re going to loot anything at least loot yourself a decent Slazenger bat and, crucially, head to Westminster to express your contempt, not Tottenham Hale.

Anyone see the last ever issue of the News Of The World? It was unbelievably self-righteous, pointing out all the wonderful things it has done over the years on behalf of the Great British Public by exposing corrupt individuals. It was a wonder Rupert Murdoch did not appear on the front page dressed in Superman’s cape.

There was no proper apology until you read the editor’s farewell on page 3 and tucked away towards the end of the piece he confesses, ‘Phones were hacked, and for that this paper is truly sorry’.

There is now criticism for those who are beating the tabloids with a big stick. They are accused of opportunism. It was hypocritical, apparently, for Steve Coogan to appear on Newsnight last Friday and accuse the NOTW of hacking his phone for the sole purpose of peddling tittle tattle about his personal life, when he uses that same press to promote his work. Ditto Hugh Grant. Personally, I saw nothing hypocritical about Coogan’s stance, and rather enjoyed his Partridge-esque condemnation of Paul McMullan. ‘Hitler was nice to dogs’. Ha, ha!!

There is a world of difference between exposing corrupt individuals working in government or the police force, and revealing the drug-taking or adultery, or other sleazy antics involving celebs and sports stars. And the means with which investigative journalists go about obtaining such information must remain above board. That’s a no-brainer, and The Guardian has provided a great example of this in exposing the phone hacking scandal.

Another argument wheeled out is the public are to blame for buying tabloid newspapers in the first place. The tabloid press simply reflect what the public want to read. The NOTW sells nearly 3 million copies, so those criticising it are automatically classed as middle class snobs also criticising, and sneering at, those who read it. This was the sort of bullshit line craggy Fleet Street veteran Carole Malone came out with in her last NOTW column yesterday, and ‘she tells it like it is’ apparently.

‘I know there are those who hate the News of the World, who hated our politics, our power, the kind of stories we ran,’ she wrote. ‘But they’re the people who hate the existence of ALL tabloids, who sneer at the people who read them, who dismiss everything they do as irresponsible and fatuous.’

You are wrong Carole. My problem is the world the tabloid press has helped to create. A world in which individuals like Katie Price prosper. A world in which individuals with no discernible talent are given a platform to pedal the sordid details of their lives.

At career interviews today, young girls are likely to say they want to be famous because of the glitzy, showbiz life they are relentlessly sold by the tabloids. There is enormous peer pressure on them to look like the Victoria Beckhams of this world, so they end up obsessed with body image and battling anorexia thanks to the coverage tabloids give over to these objectionable individuals.

I don’t sneer at the people who read the News of the World. I am concerned for them. I am disturbed by their exploitation. I am disturbed by the attitudes the NOTW and its ilk encourage. I am disturbed by the wrong turn our society has taken.

This is an era in which old media is slowly dying. The immediacy of the Internet gives the public all the news they seek, and for free. So the tabloids have had to conjure up a new way in which to sell their product. And this is what spawned the cult of celebrity.

There was a time not that long ago, a time I find myself looking back on with increasing fondness, when we didn’t have a clue who was married to England footballers. The very term ‘WAG’, another media creation, wasn’t in existence. We lived quite happily not knowing what the footballers got up to in their spare time.

Now we have this celeb-obsessed culture in which the tabloids claim they are providing a public service by telling us the latest goings on between Ashley Cole and Cheryl Cole, when really all they are doing is selling tittle tattle, created by them for them. It’s the same with all the other celeb rags.

The News Of The World appealed to the dark recesses of human nature; the same base instinct that makes us turn our heads to look at motorway car crashes. And the tabloid press has helped to fuel the shallow, voyeuristic, looks-obsessed society we now live in.

If this isn’t disconcerting enough, then you only need look at the bigger picture. Police chiefs were paid by NOTW journalists to hand over sensitive information. In return, the police subtly turned a blind eye to its illegal news gathering methods. And a former NOTW editor, on duty when phone hacking was clearly endemic at the newspaper, was next employed as communications director by the leader of the Conservative Party, now our PM. The sexing up of the dossier that justified the invasion of Iraq during the Blair years reveals the dangerous power such spin doctors wield.

So the police, the government and our biggest media owner were all complicit, and were seemingly happy to turn a blind eye to the corruption in their ranks. The police investigated phone hacking at News International but mysteriously failed to uncover the full extent of it. So why should we trust the police force to do a more thorough job this time around?

Behind all the smoke screens and news strands of this humungous story lies the scariest truth of all. What we have in this country is a corrupt clique of high powered movers and shakers who run the show like a mafia-style Masonic Lodge. This has created a state of play in which the leader of the opposition is afraid to rock the boat because he knows Murdoch will set the dogs on him, while Cameron acts like Murdoch’s lackey to ensure his ongoing media support.

Pre-general election Murdoch’s right wing press supported Cameron to the point of wheeling out Simon Cowell on the front page of The Sun to tell readers why he was the right man to lead the country, and went as far as attempting to portray Nick Clegg as a Nazi sympathiser. But this is nothing to worry about apparently because according to certain media authorities the public are not sheep and can think for themselves. Really? So why do newspapers like The Sun go to so much trouble to misinform their readers and push their right wing agenda?

This is a status quo that has clearly existed for many years dating back to the Thatcher reign. It is a ‘you scrub my back I’ll scrub yours relationship’ between the media owners, the police force and the government, and they have been running amok.

Our major institutions are institutionally corrupt. We have had bankers earning enormous sums whose avarice brought about the economic collapse. We have had politicians fiddling their expenses to feather their own five-star nests while claiming to act fairly on our behalf. And now this.

Murdoch stood on the brink of having the BSkyB merger approved – which would give him an even bigger monopoly on the UK media – while Cameron, News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks, and public relations guru Matthew Freud have all been chummying up together in Chipping Norton.

In essence, our democracy has been exposed as a sham. It has been compromised to such an extent you could argue we no longer live in a democracy at all. We have been consistently misled and information continues to be dubiously controlled to the point where you are left with the sinking feeling that, more clever information control will ensure very little changes. It’s a damage limitation exercise from this point on and after the fall guys are rounded up, rest assured it will be back to business as usual.

Given the widespread apathy in this country, those in power have little to fear anyway. The vast majority of people prefer to exist in a state of blissful ignorance, they refuse to take the red pill, and after briefly venting their fury, they will return to sticking their heads in the sand.

So, no need to have nightmares. Do sleep well tonight.

Working from home has lots of advantages. There’s the renegade thrill of pitching up barefoot to your office in t-shirt and shorts on hot summer days without fear of censure; no longer being a prisoner to fascist, take-your-turn, office tea-making regimes; and nothing can beat the satisfaction of pausing from work altogether to tune into the test match/Wimbledon/the 3.30 at Newmarket (delete as applicable). But among all the plus points, a dangerous intruder lurks nearby. I speak of course of daytime tv.
‘The DNA tests reveal… you are the father.’
Starting with, the detestable Jeremy Kyle Show. Kyle likes to cast himself as the ultimate moral arbiter for the feral chavs he hectors throughout the programme. Essentially, he vilifies and pillories stupid, poor people in the name of entertainment. It is cheap and distasteful on every level. Kyle is roundly applauded by a studio audience of, for want of a better description, council house pikeys, the very core audience of the show who help prop up this diabolical spectacle. And yet, it is this very sub-set of society that Kyle is lambasting and putting in the stocks to have rotten fruit thrown at them.
The faux sympathy and words of advice Kyle extends to them at the denouement of their sordid tales are as shallow and transparent as a Tory MP smiling for a pre-General election photo call on a Manchester sink estate. If anything, all it does is allow middle class twats like Kyle to look down their noses at the proles, while cleverly, and at the same time, keeping the docile masses in their place. My personal view is, Kyle must have a tiny cock and this is his way of making himself feel better.
Next up, This Morning.
‘It’s time to top up the tan and the bank balance… King Henry VIII had how many wives in total?’
That’s a taxing question by This Morning standards. They go on to chat about soap storylines and the latest reality tv news as if this is the be all and end all. There is a serious slot warning about the dangers of sunbeds in between Rusty Lee on the South Bank laughing like a drain.
Are people reassured and comforted tuning into this inane shit each day? If you possess a shred of intelligence you feel sidelined by such simpleton content. Perhaps I am just an extremely tasteful human being but all I see here are quizzes extorting money from viewers, fatuous talking points, and self-serving z-listers seeking to keep their profile in the limelight.
The cheap theme music wafting though the office can mean only one thing. Lunchtime hell lies ahead. Or, as it’s otherwise known, Loose Women. These awful, dried up, menopausal harridans talk candidly about their lady bits and whether it’s prudent to have some work done. The frank, confessional style of the show is apparently its biggest triumph led by grumpy old female-in-chief Carol McGiffin, who has the sort of sour, perma-frown that could delay the climactic scenes of a bukkake movie indefinitely.
I’ll be accused of being a misogynist but really, what kind of example are they setting for womankind?  ‘Oh, but they’re so refreshingly open, talking about their partners and their kids, and their drooping tits. They are one of us,’ female fans would argue. No they’re not, they’re just blatantly playing up to their audience.
Imagine a group of middle-aged men in the same scenario taking about their cocks and, in the same titillating manner, revealing their desire to hang out the back of Amanda Holden, while a live studio audience, consisting entirely of blokes, laugh along heartily? They’d be taken off the screens for slanderous sexism.
But this is apparently reverse discrimination; defiantly liberal, emancipated women, revelling in the opportunity for some salacious chat. The problem is that unlike, say, the original Sex And The City, it’s not remotely clever, or funny, or ground-breaking.
Come mid-afternoon if you’ve not given up the will to live, you get to choose between The Vanessa Show, The Alan Titchmarsh Show, and Fern. It is all so spirit-crushingly insipid. I’d like to live in a world in which the works of Proust and Sartre are streamed into UK homes during the day. Stuff that encourages enlightenment, introspection and intellectual betterment. But no. Instead we get to watch Louis Spence prancing around in a spangly orange shirt giving ‘Ooh matron’ looks to camera, while the people in the studio lap it up like they’re in the company of some modern-day Bertrand Russell.
Daytime TV schedules are like a portal into a terrifying netherworld in which zombies sit at home, willfully having their brains sucked out as an endless stream of self-serving fame-seekers fill the air with a torrent of vacuous drivel. Oh look, it’s lovely Brian Dowling. Oh look, it’s brave Kerry Katona. Oh look, my frontal lobe has just turned into mashed potato.
Thank heaven then for Countdown as at least it tests the old grey matter, with the delightful Rachel handing out the letters. But just when you’re congratulating yourself on getting the conundrum, Deal Or No Deal arrives.
This is like the Waco of afternoon game shows; a weird cult with Noel Edmonds cast as the David Koresh figure, leading his disciples in what he calls ‘The Dream Factory’. It has a language all of its own and is quite surreal. The studio audience are called ‘the pilgrims’. There is the ‘left wing’, ‘right wing’, ‘the death box’, ‘the power five’ and on a special occasions like Halloween they all get to dress up like complete eejits.
At the start of the show, they now go big on contestants’ back stories. They bring out letters and photos of loved ones, and recount heart rending tales about their recent bereavments and tough upbringing. What is it with modern tv and every fucker thinking they’ve got a divine right to have a shot at the big time, or a big win, because they’ve had it so tough in life?
You know what, I wanted to play football for England and be Kate Beckinsale’s boyfriend but do you see me on tv making a big song and dance about it? No, I have dignity. I sit at home sneering at you all instead.
If Noel’s ridiculous 80s Barnet, beard and gaudy shirts aren’t enough to send you round the bend, then his earnestness will. ‘This has been an unprecedented period in Deal,’ he says. ‘We have had games that are so emotional. You will be back for the final part of this game, see you shortly.’
What is guaranteed is before the end, they’ll all be sobbing uncontrollably as the contestant either wins big or spunks the lot. After John gives the usual sort of sincere yarn about how big a difference the money would make to his life, he says ‘No deal’. Now I really want him to win sweet f.a..
‘Blue, blue, blue, blue’ they all chant ahead of the critical box being opened.
Huge sighs of horror greet the appearance of 100,000. I sit there laughing my head off. My personal Schadenfreude runneth over. He ends up with 500 quid.
‘What a wonderful man,’ says Noel at the close of the show. ‘Great character.’ Greedy cunt, I say. Serves him right.
Daytime TV. What point does it serve other than to re-enforce this horribly dumbed down, emotionally retarded country we’ve created? It’s a graveyard for the soul. Its only saving grace, the gorgeous Rachel Riley, and living for the day the letters spell out ‘I love cock’.

This is something of a niche rant but it’s a subject worthy of significant ire nonetheless. The Eurovision Song Contest. Or more specifically, the small-minded, unintelligent, unfounded xenophobia that breaks out across the nation as soon as the UK entry starts to get some press coverage.

This year it’s Blue who’ll be flying the flag and no sooner were they announced as the UK representative than the doom-mongers took centre stage bleating about the rest of Europe hating us, and political voting scuppering any chance the UK has, and how come the Great British Public haven’t been given a say over who they want to take part?

Let’s answer that last one first. One reason it’s better to take the selection process out of the hands of the UK public is that the UK public have, year-in, year-out, exhibited woeful music taste, picking the worst songs and a slew of sub-standard performers. To be fair, the options have rarely been up to much courtesy of the Beeb’s lacklustre efforts on the Eurovision front but that’s another story.

Now onto my main gripe. You only needed to see the Blue interview on BBC Breakfast this week to see how deeply-entrenched the lazy and incorrect thinking is surrounding the ESC. There was Bill Turnbull coming out with the same old inaccurate nonsense about political voting counting against the UK’s chance.

For the last time, you clueless fuckwit, when the UK does badly in the ESC it has nothing whatsoever to do with political voting. It is simply down to our entry being shit. Fact.

The interview then ended on a ‘You must win’ note. This is not World War Two, Bill. We do not have to win and we have no divine right to win, either.

The BBC, in recent years, has taken a half-arsed approach to finding a UK song and performer, so ‘Your Country Needs You’ has been dominated by terrible songs, X Factor rejects, stage school types no one has ever heard of, and who struggle to hit a single note in key, and last year, a good-for-nothing, hopelessly outdated pop tune written by a dinosaur of the pop industry in Pete Waterman.

In 2007, when John Barrowman declared, ‘Oh yes, this is so Eurovision-y. it has to win’ – which was essentially the green-light for the docile masses to phone vote Scooch to victory – I could have lynched this second-rate hotel lobby performer. Not a clue.

The reason ‘Flying The Flag’ did abysmally in the final was simply this: it was a sub-Steps abomination of a pop tune that heaped shame on a country brimming with hugely talented singers and songwriters, not to mention such a rich musical heritage. Ditto that dreadful tune poor Andy Abraham had to sing in 2008 – ‘Even If’.

Look through the record books and you’ll actually discover the UK has done well when it has entered decent songs. Take the Andrew Lloyd Webber-penned ballad ‘My Time’ sung by Jade Ewen. It finished 5th in 2009. And the Jessica Garlick-sung ‘Come Back’. Third in 2002. But these FACTS do not fit with the institutionalised ‘they don’t like us, we don’t care’ posturing of the UK media.

If the powers-that-be at the Beeb spent a little time bothering to research the ESC, they would realise that its ‘Song For Europe’ process is completely flawed and out of touch with modern music. Go and have a look at how countries like Sweden, Norway and Germany find their Eurovision entrants. You might then finally wake up to what is needed for the UK to be competitive again.

And personally, I’d like to see the UK enter a song worthy of our musical talent, rather than these embarrassing token efforts that are so wide of the mark it’s not funny. Last year, there were some fantastic tunes sung by excellent vocalists – go to YouTube and listen to Tom Dice singing ‘Me And My Guitar’, and Anna Bergendahl’s ‘This Is My Life’.

The condescending attitude towards the ESC has been fuelled over many, many years by Wogan’s ‘let’s all laugh at Johnny Foreigner’ taunts from the comm box. Well, I for one am ashamed of the music snobbery in the UK encouraging us to look down our noses at the rest of Europe. And frankly, it’s time to wake up to what is the only platform left to unearth genuine musical talent that is not of the autotuned, manufactured Cowell factory variety. Lena’s Satellite was a stand out winner last year. A winner Germany could be rightly proud of. ‘Fairytale’ in 2009 was another gem. So how about giving this wonderful institution of European music the effort and attention it deserves?

The hope remains Blue have penned a decent tune that’s worthy of the UK name this year. But in future, do we really want Josh Dubovie types or instead, something like this, sung by Alyosha for Ukraine? It’s a no-brainer, surely.

Front page of The Guardian sport section, ahead of Murray playing in the Australian Open final:
‘Tomorrow will be his first grand slam without having to play Federer. He hasn’t had to play a five-setter against Nadal either. Instead he faces his old friend Djokovic whom he has beaten in their past three meetings. In fact, if Murray doesn’t break his duck and finally get Fred Perry off his back after 75 years of British failure he’ll be no better than a Scottish Tim Henman.’
Am I the only one appalled and ashamed by this? You might expect this sort of treatment from an hysterical and xenophobic tabloid but a respectable broadsheet? To belittle Murray like this, to make out it should be an easy match for him, a match he should win, is either incredibly ignorant or incredibly naive.
No wonder Murray says he doesn’t read the papers. How is it in his or anybody’s interest to put this sort of mocking spin on his failure thus far to win a grand slam title?
No one at The Guardian could have watched the tournament. If they had, they would have appreciated the sublime tennis Djokovic was playing. He destroyed Federer in straight sets.
We can look forward to similar stuff during Wimbledon fortnight no doubt. The tubthumping will be ratcheted up to fever pitch thanks to the Beeb’s embarrassingly partisan coverage. There will be ample references to Murray Mound and interviewing middle class fans wearing face paint who have come to cheer him on and informatively tell the viewers at home, ‘Yes, he’ll definitely win’, and there will be agonised faces from Sue Barker and co as they fret over his next opponent.
This achieves nothing, bar making the presenters and British public look foolish and encouraging more naysayers to dig their knives in when Murray, understandably, is beaten by 9-time slam winner Nadal, or 16-time slam winner Federer.
In truth Murray is the most outstanding British tennis player we have ever had. That’s why the comparisons to Henman are so crass. Henman never even reached a grand slam final.
So why does the press deem it necessary to get the insults in like this, before Murray has even played in the final? Would you see this sort of treatment from the US press or Australian press if it was one of their top players competing?
No wonder newspaper sales are going down the toilet when a top broadsheet resorts to this base level style of reporting. Shame on The Guardian and shame on those who jumped on the anti-Murray bandwagon as soon as he lost his third grand slam final.

Premiership football in this country is dead. Tune in to MOTD and it is so, so dull and uninteresting. Bland, ex-players going through the motions, nothing interesting to convey, coming out with the same old trite analysis of the day’s ‘big’ match. I’ve got a talking point for you: you are all as dull as shit and need to be more original. Discuss.

The greyness of the ex-players’ club post-match post-mortem is hammered home by their tragic, identikit Top Man smart casual attire. All open collar shirts and over-used cliches. It’s the footballing equivalent of a Women’s Institute coffee morning.

It doesn’t help that they are reporting on the most over-sold product ever in the history of UK sport. The Premiership. Ah yes, that glittering jewel of global football – if you are to believe the hype. It is so massive that any player at this summer’s World Cup would only be referenced in relation to their stint, or upcoming stint, at a Premiership club. All other players were off the radar, unless Chelsea or Man Utd happened to play against them once in the Champions League.

Fans have come away from the World Cup probably still only aware of Forlan in the Uruguay team, a side that reached the semi-finals because, as we were so regularly reminded, he once played for Man Utd.

We are told by these same pundits that for England to be successful they should play more like clubs in the Premiership. Right, of course. It’s so obvious. Play like Drogba and Essien and Anelka and Malouda and Berbatov and Nani and Vidic and Scholes and Giggs and Fabregas and Arshavin and Torres and Tevez and… oh, hang on, there don’t appear to be too many English players in this list. I think your argument may have just disappeared up a certain orifice where the sun don’t shine.

The eejit football fans who worship at the altar of Planet Premiership must have shit for brains. I used to love football but recently have grown to pretty much loathe it. The blanket coverage given over to it in the press doesn’t help. The more coverage, the more it is like a bare-naked choke (that’s a mixed martial arts move that leads to submission, or death) round the neck of the sport. Suffocating it, destroying it.

What we get with the Premiership is players with designer eyebrows, stupid haircuts and silly boots, prancing around the pitch in between getting done for drink driving in their flashy sports cars and roasting bimbettes, their sordid, off-the-pitch antics turned into a tabloid-selling soap opera. And aren’t other people bored of watching Nani/Drogba writhing around on the floor like they’ve been shot, shortly before the usual Fergie/Wenger assault on the fourth official and post-match tirade about how the best team lost, or nearly lost thanks to bad officiating? Why would anyone want to deify these impolite, amoral, overpaid individuals who take their place in such a thoroughly unsporting spectacle? It’s all got so, so tedious. So, so tasteless and corrupt.

The coaches have become as spoilt and over-indulged as the players. When they’re not whinging about their precious players being called away on international duty, they’re bleating about the introduction of laws to increase the chance of English players getting a run out in their sides.

The clue to the unpalatable hype and endless tripe that has engulfed modern football is in the names. Not just the foreign names that clog up the team-sheet but the names of the competitions. Once, it was simply the league title and the European Cup. Now, they have been re-branded courtesy of the marketing men, to make them sound that bit more exciting and glamorous because that is what the modern consumer wants, apparently, according to the fucking marketing men.

The way football has evolved is endemic of Sky’s approach to the game. That overly-dramatic voiceover man coming on during ad breaks to big up the next live game Sky is covering: ‘On Ford Super Sundayyyyyyyyyy… As Manchester Citeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee face… Chelseeeeeeeeeeee’.

Aren’t other football fans bored of this? Can they not see it’s a case of the emperor’s new clothes? Do others not find their entire love of the game has been sullied by this over-the-top coverage?

It’s surprising Andy Grey and Richard Keys are not yet appearing on our screens like something out of Tron, or Automan, in full, strobe body armour. Glowing suits that have various buttons for them to activate during half-time and after the final whistle. It’s only a matter of time. Their love of pointless gizmos in their overblown studio analysis is already beyond ridiculous. And available in HD don’t forget. Got to be HD, just to give it that bit more oomph.

Peel away all the marketing b.s. and the truth is the Premiership is a very uninteresting, totally predictable competition dominated by the wealthiest clubs. It is essentially Man Utd vs Chelsea with Arsenal trying to hang on to their coat-tails. Actually, scrap that. It’s Chelsea winning, Man Utd finishing runners-up, Arsenal third and the only hint of excitement the battle for fourth and relegation.

Not only that, but where’s the fun in watching a supposedly ‘English’ game that is so dominated by sides teeming with foreign imports, coached by non-English managers and owned by overseas investors? For all their Englishness the top clubs may as well be based in Abu Dhabi. Wealthy owners don’t aid the sport at all. They’ve turned it into a mockery where the biggest franchises monopolise the whole thing while racking up crippling debts.

What Sky has done with football is what Simon Cowell does with X Factor, and Tescos do with supermarkets – conning the public into believing their product is indispensible and the best around, but beneath all the spin and sales pitch, it is actually insubstantial and a total rip off.

This all shows how marketing ends up destroying. It will likely take others longer until the scales finally fall from their eyes. If at all. It seems people’s ability for independent thought has been completely eroded away in the modern age so they will continue to follow what they are told.

After all, as Sky well know – keep telling the public something is true and most will believe it. I’m telling you now the Premiership is shit but you won’t believe me because I don’t have a multi-million marketing platform to hammer home this truth. Personally, I’d rather shun the Premiership and watch this any day of the week:

I can’t help telling the truth. It’s like a nervous tick I have no control over. I’m like a Tourette’s sufferer when it comes to blurting out shocking, unexpected and brutally honest responses.
If a woman asks me, ‘Does my bum look big in this?’ I will likely respond, ‘Not only does it make your arse look fat but the whole outfit is hideous.’
Only if it is hideous, mind. I’m not mean-spirited, just honest.
It’s part of refusing to play ball with social nicety. The back and forth of polite conversation has always left me cold. Dinner party small talk. All that pointless ‘how are you?’ mallarky.
‘How are you?’ is a wholly unnecessary starter. Like popadoms.
If anyone asks me, ‘How are you?’ these days, then God help them.
‘Not great to be honest. Stuck in a rut, feeling like it’s Groundhog Day, my youth slowly ebbing away, and have you seen those fucking Halifax ads?’
I like to shock. I like to upset people’s sensibilities. I like to be contrary. It’s like my evil twin has taken charge, tapping away on my shoulder, demanding me to shun the polite and the twee in favour of a no holds barred response even if it is tactless. In fact, the more shocking and outrageous, the better, just to see people’s stunned reactions.
When I worked in an office I was regularly asked: ‘So what you got planned for the weekend?’
And London being London, especially working in the media, especially being in your 20s and early 30s, it was de rigueur to have a cool response up your sleeve. You know the sort of thing:
‘I’m going to this great new comedy club in Covent Garden,;
‘On Sunday I’ve got to drop by Notting Hill market to pick up my vegan yoghurt.’
‘If I have time I’m helping out in a soup kitchen in Charing Cross.’
It seemed like my co-workers were trying to out-cool one another with their responses in describing their fabulously interesting, quirky and action-paced weekends.
So when it was my turn, I got to thinking, fuck this for a game of soldiers, I’m not taking part in this futile contest. So I’d go the opposite way and exaggerate how drab it was likely to be.
‘No major plans but at some stage I will definitely try to find time to have a good, long wank.’
On a Monday this same ritual came to its logical conclusion.
‘Good weekend?’
‘Fantastic,’ I’d answer with monotone sarcasm.
‘What did you get up to?’
‘Erm… I watched a repeat of Bullseye on Challenge in which Stan and Margaret from Barnsley won a speedboat. Other than that… oh yeah, nearly forgot, I lay on the sofa blowing smoke rings at the ceiling.’
Oh yeah. I was a whole heap of laughs. As you can probably tell, me and office life were never cut out for one another and I was soon seeking my escape.
I may be an arch misanthropist but I maintain I had it right. There’s a deep joy to be found in telling it like it is. There’s also a deep joy to be found in slothful non-activity. Why live in denial, reassured by the busyness of your weekends?
I’m very much of the Denis Leary school of thinking: ‘Happiness comes in small doses folks. It’s a cigarette, or a chocolate cookie, or a five second orgasm. That’s it, ok?’
As you get older you become unafraid in telling it like it is; admitting your disappointment.
‘What did you think of Inception?’
‘I thought it was distinctly average.’
So next time anyone asks you how your weekend was, take a leaf out of my book and don’t be afraid to regale them with your largely uninteresting, uneventful existence. That, and suggest they go seek reassurance for their feeble lives somewhere else. Or better yet, just tell them to go fuck themselves.

This World Cup has been ruined. Not by England’s lame exit from the competition, or goal that wasn’t given, but by the circus that now surrounds sport’s biggest event.

Look back to World Cups of yesteryear and it was so much more about the football. And therein lay the beauty of it. Check out those old tv reels on YouTube and they are a thing of footballing joy. Simple, under-stated commentary – message to Tyldesley and co, ‘less is more’ – and great games. The football sold itself. There was a purity about the game back then that has been taken away.

There was no over-the-top hype back then, no endless product endorsement. Now we have ads starring Peter Crouch flogging Pringles, Dizzee Rascal and James Corden singing an abomination of a World Cup song, and games interspersed by stories about so and so footballer about to be signed by so and so Premiership team. This is abject commerciality that has come to define the modern World Cup and in the process sully it.

That pre-World Cup UNICEF game really took the biscuit. Ben Shepherd, Olly Murs, and some c*nt from Westlife whose name I don’t even know, all jumping on the World Cup bandwagon. Sorry, but the entire exercise was far more about re-enforcing their celebrity ‘brands’ than selfless charity to help poor, starving kids.

As for the coverage, memo to BBC Head Of Sport: cut out the overtly PC behaviour such as having Adebayor as a pundit purely because he is a black African footballer who fits the photofit. He has been less coherent than the vuvuzela. This is typical, patronising, middle class BBC thinking, ‘I know. Let’s get Adebayor, Seedorf and any other coloureds, sorry blacks, to show how we are embracing an African-hosted World Cup.’

And stop treating the World Cup as some kind of socio-political tour. The BBC World Cup bus. What is the point of that? We do not want to watch some Home Counties BBC reporter, invariably called Jake with a shirt collar tucked neatly under his sweater, keeping it real by visiting townships and Robben Island. This is not Blue Peter yet the BBC persists in addressing viewers like we are all about 8 years old.

The cliche-ridden platitudes of Lineker, Hansen and Shearer know no bounds. Hansen is like a stuck record droning on about two banks of four and irritatingly starting every sentence he utters with a gutteral, ‘Ermmmmm…’.

The BBC pundits are much like the England football players. Vastly over-paid, over-rated and consistently under-performing at this World Cup. The hyping of the England team prior to the Germany game was embarrassing, cock-eyed and more wide of the mark than an Emile Heskey shot on goal. The likes of Alan Shearer continue to propagate the myth that the England team are full of world beaters because they apparently play like world class footballers week in, week out in the Premiership… where they are surrounded by foreign players, Alan, who make them look better than they are, capiche?

Bizarrely, every world player is rated according to how he played in the Premiership – the ultimate barometer for the modern footballer if you are to believe the pundits. I think all this tells us is that your average BBC/ITV pundit only ever watches Premiership football so it is his one and only, parochial reference point.

The condescension shown towards less high profile competing nations, meanwhile, has been mind-boggling, the likes of Japan and Paraguay portrayed as plucky underdogs when the truth is they play the game just as well as England, if not better. The pundits are also incredibly lazy, clearly not having researched any of the World Cup qualifiers over the previous two and a half years, bar a swift crib off wikipedia. And what is this ’round of the last 16′ nonsense?

When Danny Baker came into the BBC studio and hit them all with some genuine insight they couldn’t cope. You could see Shearer’s face turn to panic, “Can’t compute, can’t compute. Can you just say, ‘It’s went in’ so I feel more at home.” They eulogise over Brazil, purring over every touch they make even if it is just a simple back pass to the keeper.

Clive Tydlesley, meanwhile, treats every game as a chance to inform viewers with his encyclopaedic knowledge of the game. The bloke is so in love with his own voice it is nauseating. He continues to over accenuate the words ‘Chabi Alonso’ to show off the correct pronunciation he has researched. He used to do the same when Veron was turning out for Man Utd, always referring to him as Juan ‘Seba’ Veron. Any football fan worth his salt knows all this stuff already, Clive, so please stop subjecting us to 90 minutes of your tedious, egomaniacal yapping.

The commentators also kept spelling out what a goal meant in a group game as if we had all just landed from Mars, and did not understand the basics of qualification, goal difference, and the vagaries of the draw.

Essentially, they are letting genuine football fans down. This is the populist, dot-to-dot approach to football coverage. Witness that over-exposed lump of play dough James Corden giving us his witty take on proceedings via his ITV post-match showbiz get together. Ah yes, just what i need after seeing England dumped out of the World Cup, a bunch of exposure-seeking celebs giving me their pointless ten penneth.

Ruined… absolutely ruined.