Читать книгу Scotland’s Jesus and My Shit Life So Far 2-in-1 Collection - Frankie Boyle - Страница 13

Sport exists because we’re so emotionally damaged and distant that we need a shared narrative to be able to relate to each other. You’ll have done that thing where you find yourself round someone’s house and the telly is on and you don’t know each other that well, but you interact by making shared reference to this third thing? Sport is just a larger societal version of that, playing pointlessly in the corner of the national imagination. A neutral conversation piece, a very basic way of making sure you’re not talking about politics or love.

There’s that old Nick Hornby idea of footballers being our chosen representatives on the pitch. I wonder if sport might not actually be about celebrating the worst in ourselves. Just as Star Trek can be seen as being about our suspicion that we would achieve more if we let our impulsive, psychopathic side (Kirk) dominate our rationality (Spock), so sport might be a fantasy about a life unburdened by intellect giving us the opportunity to bawl our approval for someone who – in a world of ever-increasing knowledge – has focused on running and jumping. We’ve all looked into the unknowing eyes of a dog and envied him for not being worried about anything past dinner, sex and exercise. It wouldn’t be so very different if you looked into the eyes of Jamie Carragher.

The cultural weight that sports are given is deeply irrational. The BBC drew up plans to deal with news stories during the Oympics – only major stories would interrupt the Games. That could have led to some interesting sports commentary if there’d been a tragic event not deemed major: ‘There goes the starter’s gun, which reminds me, if you have a child attending school in the north-east you might want to turn to BBC Two now.’

The marketing of sport with its cod nobility is just silly, really, and it’s remarkable how the reputation of things such as the Olympics survive the evidence. It’s been revealed that much of the 2012 Olympic merchandise was made by children in China. For them the five Olympic rings mean the ones around their ankles, wrists and neck that stop them straying from their workstations. Finally, Wenlock and Mandeville make sense – they were created in the nightmares of tortured Chinese slave children. They’re the physical manifestation of despair. You’ve got to respect the Chinese; they can get their kids to make soft toys with enough consistency to start a commercial venture. I can’t even get my kid to put on his shoes when I want to leave the house.

A florist even had to take down five tissue-paper rings as they breached Olympic trademark laws. Excessive? I’d rather not say as I’m currently being threatened with action for putting down my coffee mug a few times without a coaster.

There surely needs to be a handicap system to stop the same teams always topping the tables. I’d suggest competitors have to do events wearing their country’s previous Olympics medal haul. Then Team GB could be spurred across the line by what look like half a dozen glistening golden armadillos or, depending on the event, shimmering dead swimmers. Also, I don’t see why the last day of the Olympics shouldn’t be all the gold medallists playing dodgeball till we have an ultimate champion.

Seventy-six per cent of people say the Paralympics lifted the nation’s mood. It made me more depressed. I can’t throw a discus and I’ve got arms. David Cameron said the Olympics and Paralympics have had as much impact upon the national psyche as England’s World Cup victory in 1966. I think they’ve had even more impact, as Team GB and ParalympicsGB won without cheating. The big question is how on earth is Rio going to follow London 2012? My guess is by building some stadiums and holding some sporting events inside them.

Olympic Chairman Lord Moynihan says more state-school kids need to get into competitive sports. He’s right. We were always encouraged to do cross-country running in our school. Especially when we found out that the priest’s sandals had such poor off-road traction. So many memories: ‘You’ve left your bag at home? Well, you’ll have to do the lesson in your vest and pants then.’ It didn’t matter whether it was maths, English or history. My school was very sporty. One class friend even managed the 100 metres in under eight seconds. I always wonder if he’d been taught more academic stuff whether he might have got a job and not leapt off the top of the BT Tower.

The Olympics created a new batch of sporting celebrities. Jessica Ennis was given the keys to Sheffield, although she’ll have to wait until they find them. They haven’t bothered locking it for years in the hope that someone might steal it. I’m also a big fan of Mo Farah and the Mobot. As you can do it, then dip your torso in a bin-full of soapy water, before running down the street at the head of a trail of giant bubbles.

And what about Splash!, Tom Daley’s ITV show? It’s hardly the most exciting format they could have got from the Olympics, is it? I’m sure there’d be way more viewers for a celebrity version of Munich 1972. You probably expect me to be down on Splash! but I reckon most ITV shows would be improved if contestants had to jump off a ten-metre board. Though they have messed up a perfectly good format by including a pool. Tom Daley – bless him! – every time I see him near the edge of the pool I just want to put armbands on him.

Tom Daley’s an ideal trainer as he feels no fear, being just a composite of molecules assembled by the telepathic will of the nation’s lonely aging homosexuals. Tom doesn’t let anyone sponsor him. Part of his plan is to use his deals to help nurture athletes in poorer countries. That’s why he went with Nestlé, as their aggressive promotion of powdered baby milk helps ensure only the hardiest of sub-Saharan tots survive. Still, maybe Tom needs to make as much money as he can while he’s got the chance, or in years to come he’ll be on street corners offering to hurl himself into a paddling pool for loose change.

The title brought to mind that film where Daryl Hannah’s a mermaid. For obvious reasons I could never get my head round the mechanics of her lovemaking. I suspect the lights were out and her partner was actually just tossed off by a lobster that owed her a favour. In fairness, Daley’s show is just a bit of fun and gives ITV viewers something to do instead of banging on the side of prison vans outside courts trying high-profile cases.

Sir Paul McCartney blasted Stuart Pearce as an ‘idiot’ for leaving David Beckham out of the final Team GB football squad. Imagine being lectured on team selection by a man who chose Ringo Starr to be in The Beatles and mahogany as a hair colour. I’m surprised Pearce didn’t point out who the real idiot was when it came to choosing the right guy: Mark Chapman.

Say what you like about Beckham, but he really has lived the dream – the weird dream in which you’ve got a voice like a castrated parrot and you’re married to a skeleton. Beckham was the highest-paid footballer in Major League Soccer’s history. Mind you, the second-highest-paid player was paid in food stamps. Beckham finished his career in Paris. He even learnt some of the language, but when he tried asking for soixante-neuf in Paris’s red-light district he just ended up with five dozen eggs. Victoria didn’t want to move to China as she’d probably have ended up in a jar as a treatment for trapped wind.

Oscar Pistorius and his girlfriend were called the South African Posh and Becks. David, if you’re reading this then you know what you have to do next. Nobody who reads about the Oscar Pistorius case does so for a good reason. If you’re telling yourself that you follow it because you’re interested in how the media respond to it or because of what it says about celebrity you’re even worse than the rest of us ghouls. Just be honest about your unsavoury fascination and join us with your popcorn in Modern Hell.

Pistorius was apparently annoyed about having to give up his guns. You can understand his worry. Can you imagine being in a restaurant, going to the toilet and seeing the ‘engaged’ sign . . . but not being able to shoot the person inside? He held his own personal memorial service for Reeva Steenkamp. Presumably his way of softening the blow before he asked her family if he could have her legs.

Pistorius slept with a baseball bat and a cricket bat, which seems crazy when he’s got two false legs. She must have realised he was armed as they’re the only limbs he’s got. He says he wasn’t trying to kill an intruder, just make them eligible for the next Paralympics. The tragedy is that if he had no arms, this would never have happened.

All kinds of records could be set simply by letting him fire the starting pistol at the women’s 100 metres. Poor Reeva Steenkamp. Her last moments must’ve been like a scene from The Terminator. Still, a black woman in South Africa could get killed by a disembodied head and not make the papers. Pistorius said when he heard a noise in the bathroom he felt incredibly vulnerable and feared that it was a burglar coming to steal his huge arsenal of guns, rifles and various other weapons. The police found steroids in his house; he must have been on something if he was injecting them into his metal legs.

It seems in South Africa police trying to work out if someone is a murderer use the ‘it takes one to know one’ policy. In a dramatic turn of events Detective Hilton Botha was dropped from the case as he himself has been charged with seven attempted murders. You know what they say. It takes a thief to catch a thief. What they don’t say is that it takes a mass murderer to catch a murderer. Although that’s not a bad idea for a new BBC Four drama. Peter Sutcliffe time-travels back to Victorian London to find out who Jack the Ripper is. I’d watch it! The detective has been accused of bungling the investigation. Drugs he claimed were steroids turned out to be a herbal remedy. And the grisly cache of severed limbs he unearthed turned out to be Pistorius’s leg drawer.

The murder rate is so high in South Africa that it’s not uncommon for at least eight out of the twelve jurors to be convicted murderers. And for the judge to call a halt in proceedings so he can go out and kill. Pistorius has a good chance of getting off because this is his first murder. If he doesn’t, his next race will be to try to bagsy the bottom bunk in his prison cell.

• • •

In 2013 we said farewell to Sir Alex Ferguson. The hairdryer. So-called as he’d often give players a terrible shock by jumping in the post-match bath. You mustn’t underestimate Ferguson’s skill – to retain the attention of men so highly sexed they don’t even draw the line at relatives. The thing is, football is a hobby for most people so what’s he going to take up when he retires? A regional manager’s position at the Prudential?

David Moyes seems the perfect replacement – he looks like Sir Alex but from a parallel universe where football clubs are managed by six-foot frogs. Ferguson invented the phrase ‘squeaky-bum time’. There’s been a variety of responses from Man Utd fans, some exclaiming 什么他妈的?!, some leaving offerings of rice at improvised shines, while others simply stared wistfully at the double shadows cast by their binary suns.

Fergie’s seventy-one. Though in Scottish years that makes him 120. When he took the job the ground was called New Trafford. He’s getting on a bit – he’d reached that age where he’d enter the Champions League and then forget what he’d gone in there for. It’s quite difficult to monitor the health of a man who always looks like his liver is using his nose to signal for help.

Ferguson was at Man Utd for so long he’s being taught about modern society by the Ohio kidnapping victims. Must be quite strange to look at the world after spending most of your life with football players, to walk blinking on to a high street full of women who aren’t crying or running away. The first time he sees a woman without a fake tan he’ll probably ask how her leukaemia treatment is going.

When Wayne Rooney said he wanted to retire they just replied, ‘The one you’ve got hanging in the backyard is fine.’ In the end he was persuaded to stay at Man Utd. Then again, Wayne could be persuaded that if he unscrewed his belly button his arse would fall off.

Will Man Utd ever get rid of him? It wouldn’t take too much to lure him to another club. Probably just the manager patting his knees and going, ‘C’mon, boy!’ He could go abroad, although I’m not sure he’d cope with the pressure of learning a first language. He’s still impressive with the ball. Especially when you consider he’s suppressing the urge to bite it and shake it about till it goes flat. A transfer wouldn’t be easy for him to cope with as he’s only recently come to terms with Sir Alex trying to explain to him in 2010 that he wasn’t his real dad. Wayne’s not happy about having to play second fiddle to someone Man Utd have only just bought. Now he knows how Coleen’s felt over the years.

The Rooneys have bought a couple of racehorses. They agreed on horses, although initially Wayne was keen to buy a hare, as he’d noticed their repeated success at greyhound stadiums. Coleen’s told Wayne he should race their horses next year. But he reckons that’s not fair as they’ve got loads more legs than him. I’d rather see him stick to riding about on his tricycle. The thought of him on horseback is a terrifying portent of the rise of the planet of the apes.

Wayne’s been hogging the changing-room mirrors to admire his hair transplant. For the mirror and reflective glass community this is like their 9/11. Still, it’s progress. Only six months ago they had to turn it round when he entered so he didn’t lash out at ‘Bad Wayne who won’t stop copying’.

Coleen’s had another kid although the couple have had trouble conceiving. My sources tell me it’s because Wayne had to break his habit of always withdrawing and ejaculating into a roaring fire in order to destroy DNA evidence.

The Manchester derby was watched by 10 per cent of the global population! Children as far away as Indonesia and El Salvador watched these two great teams play, to make sure they get the stitching on the logos just right. Local derbies always cause resentment, mainly because it’s hard for fans to find a post-match prostitute they don’t recognise from the school run. A fan in Nairobi was stabbed to death in an argument over the match, presumably by someone who lived on the Salford side of Mount Kenya.

Liverpool player Luis Suárez got a ten-match ban for biting Branislav Ivanovic. I’m using this incident to teach my daughter correct behaviour, which is to always bite an approaching Chelsea player. Being lectured on morals while playing the Chelsea team must be like being told off for farting at a sewage farm.

In fairness to Suárez, having started off with racism it was always going to be tough to find something suitably unpleasant to do next. In many ways biting is his difficult second album. I think the fact that he’s being followed by Mike Tyson on Twitter will do him good. He may keep biting but he won’t call anyone a n**** again. Suárez was criticised for his behaviour by Graeme Souness. I’d be interested to know how many players would rather have been bitten on the arm by Suárez than booted in the nuts by Souness.

Ivanovic is known for his versatility, going well with chips as well as a light salad. He reacted as any Chelsea player would, by instinctively shouting, ‘Not where my wife will see!’ Of course, biting is the standard method of tackling in paraplegic football.

It’s sad we haven’t managed to kick racism out of football. Perhaps we should just try to move it over to table tennis. Still, I don’t think we’ll go back to the days when football hooliganism was the ‘English disease’. It’s lost way too much ground to chlamydia.

Paolo Di Canio insisted he isn’t a fascist. At least, I think that was the gist of the five-hour speech he gave from his hotel balcony. Apparently, the Sunderland board is thinking of laying down the law to Di Canio. Either renounce your political beliefs or get us a couple of wins against Newcastle. Pull that off on a regular basis and Sunderland would have gladly been run by Fred and Rose West. I’m joking. of course. No one can play at Premier League level with a lumpy pitch.

Di Canio finally denied being a fascist after three days of refusing to talk about his political beliefs. Well, if you’d held the fascist belief that white people are superior then three days in Sunderland should certainly cure you. Although it’s hard to look at people in Sunderland without considering that some form of eugenics might not have been a bad idea. It would have been terrible if a fascist had taken over a Premier League football club as they all prefer to keep their ingrained racism on a far more casual level.

Personally, I think that in Roy Hodgson the FA have made a great appointment. Because I’m Scottish. If they hadn’t managed to land Hodgson, the FA were going to go for a boiler-suit stuffed full of shredded newspaper with a balloon for a head. Roy struggles to get his tongue round his Rs and I worry it’ll impact on team selection. Good news for Walcott, Walker and Welbeck. But Wob Gween’s definitely out. If he leaves Rooney on the bench the stadium’s likely to turn into that scene from Life of Brian. Bwing on . . . you get the idea.

With the next World Cup England just need to focus on the positives that can be achieved. A twenty-three-man squad – that’s 4,600 duty-free fags, for starters. How do you make England hungrier for the opponent’s goal? Surely rubbing an old pair of knickers on the posts would be a start.

Scotland’s chances in the World Cup might be slim but at least we won the Homeless World Cup! A great performance when you consider that in the final they had a man sent off for fighting with himself and one of their players was a dog. Of course, England will be formidable opposition next year once Gazza’s eligible, but who would deny these guys their moment of glory? Only their estranged families.

Gazza’s out of rehab and he’s vowed never to drink again. People say some crazy things when they’re pissed, although, to be fair, he does look a lot steadier on his knees. Gazza’s flown back, and it’s said that the US air marshal who was sitting beside him was worried al-Qaeda might try to bring the plane down by sparking up a Zippo when Gazza burped. The real tragedy of Gazza’s situation is why did no one see it coming? Where were the signs? Gazza says he’s started having Botox injections. That explains why his forehead’s no longer conveying emotion, though not why his eyes and his voice aren’t.

It’s not fair to say that he’s fallen off the wagon. It’s more accurate to say that the wagon has been fitted with a fighter plane-style ejector seat and Gazza’s pulled the red lever. He wants to be on the next series of I’m a Celebrity. When asked about being covered in creepy-crawlies he said he was just praying they would have all gone by then.

My favourite moment was when he confessed he gave a driving examiner £25 to pass his test. Witnesses say it was actually a Snickers wrapper, and he gave it to a butcher who just spun him round a few times and pushed him out of the shop. It seems the instructor had already been won over by Gazza, as when they’d run out of petrol he’d kindly got the car going again by pissing in the petrol tank.

Such a sad decline. Newcastle United, Spurs, Lazio, Rangers . . . now he’s only fit for the Scottish First Division. His chances of drying out are currently so low he’s been made honorary Mayor of Atlantis.

• • •

A tabloid newspaper investigation last year revealed that a sizeable number of Premier League footballers were taking cocaine. I’d love to see Wayne Rooney doing coke. After a few snorts I imagine the inside of his head would look like the world’s bleakest snow globe. I’m against drugs in sport. We can’t let children see drug users being athletic; they might realise their parents aren’t too wasted to take them to the park.

Frankie Dettori’s failed a drugs test for cocaine. The thought of an Italian talking on cocaine is terrifying. He was tested after he did a circuit around a racecourse with a horse on his back. As long as the horse is clean what does it matter what drugs he’s on? His job is basically being small, sitting and hanging on. The only substance jockeys should be banned from using is superglue. Anyway, the Grand National is actually part of a conspiracy to produce snuff movies for the centaurs who own our banking system.

Footballers are sharing intimate photos of girls they’ve slept with. Though in Ched Evans’s pics it’s hard to tell whether the girl is having sex or planking. These sportsmen have to use BlackBerrys, partly because of the Messenger service and partly because the iPhone’s voice control means every time they talk about an arsehole they’ve just seen it rings Joey Barton. The sex ring was described as ‘sleazy’ – which is disappointing. I like my sex rings to be wholesome and homespun. People liken football to sex but sex is never that good – who’s ever had a miserable time in a nightclub only to bang a couple in, in quick succession, on the way out of the door?

But it’s not just footballers who are at it. In the depth of his troubles Tiger Woods claims he seriously considered leaving golf to become a US Navy SEAL. He’d quickly have become one of their top snipers using nothing more than a three-wood. Imagine Osama bin Laden looking out of his window on to what’s essentially the world’s biggest sand bunker only to see Tiger Woods taking a backswing and then a tiny white projectile getting exponentially larger until, thwack!, it smashed his fucking face off. Navy SEALs are experts in covert operations. Tiger wouldn’t have even needed any training. All he’d have had to have done was imagine he was in a strip club and the enemy combatant was his wife.

Maybe golf is just so fucking boring that Woods’s behaviour was unavoidable catharsis. Maybe all sport requires so much repetition that some form of sociopathy is inevitable. And most of these guys don’t even get to be winners. Most of them are just training to be fast enough to photobomb the back of a shot of Usain Bolt as he goes over the finishing line.

Golf might be boring but it’s not as bad as tennis. Lots of people camped outside the entrance to Wimbledon, as that was much more interesting than actually going inside. Wimbledon was first held in 1877 when someone had a glut of strawberries they needed to get rid of. Andy Murray cried after winning the final. It’s lovely to see a Scotsman crying where the scene doesn’t involve handcuffs, an empty bottle of flavoured vodka and his ex-wife’s recently kicked-to-death dog. I’m trying to remember the last time I cried. Coincidentally, it was also the last time I masturbated. To pinpoint it more precisely, it was this evening when The One Show did a feature on breast cancer. A British man hadn’t won Wimbledon for seventy-seven years but we have to remember that’s only because it was seventy-six years ago that people from other countries started playing tennis.

It can’t be easy for English people to know that Wimbledon has been won by the first Scotsman ever to pick up a tennis racket. Gerard Butler was there, smiling like somebody had deleted every film he’s made since 300 from his IMDb profile. Even Victoria Beckham was smiling, as if she’d just broken out of Arkham Asylum and was about to kill Robin. Having a Scottish tennis champion has certainly given us something big to live up to; we only had the discovery of penicillin and the invention of TV till now.

Andy’s been awarded the Freedom of Stirling. That’s like on your eighteenth birthday finding out your parents have had a key cut especially for you that opens the bin cupboard. People are calling for him to be knighted because he’s done something no other Brit has done for the past seventy-six years. But that could set a precedent. They’d have to knight the next person who was funny on Radio 1 and the next person to finger Susan Boyle.

Andy is set to earn £100 million. If I were in his position I’d buy up every tennis ball in the world, incinerate them and then enjoy my money safe in the knowledge that I’d never have to play that fucking stupid game ever again. For the first few years I’d be celebrating so hard that I’d turn up for every match dressed as a pirate and at the end of every set I’d lay my knob out on the baseline and demand Hawkeye took a picture.

Did you watch the Virgin London Marathon? Anyone who’s got Virgin broadband or used their trains will know that a marathon is the quickest way of reaching someone twenty-six miles away. How about those elite runners from Kenya? Their time was a little slower than usual as they were repeatedly stopped and searched by the Metropolitan Police. It’s weird to see people running through the streets of London without plasmas. I grew up in a place where if you saw a guy running in a Mickey Mouse costume he was a paedophile. We were sponsoring him to buy a vibrator.

Still, I think my favourite sports story of the year was that Sharran Alexander, the thirty-two-stone, six-foot mum from West London, is the entire British sumo wrestling team by herself. She’s hoping to fight in Japan this month but it depends on funding – and whether they’ve got biscuits over there. She says there’s not much that sportswomen of her size can do – it’s pretty much just sumo and allowing pole vaulters to land on you. She’s got to be the only top sports star who uses Stacey Soloman as their nutritionist. Apparently, the rest of the sumo team quit but brave Sharran has made sure they haven’t been missed, and the food budget remains as high as ever. I’d love to see her Rocky-style training montage – ‘Eye of the Tiger’ ringing out and sweat pouring down her face as she picks up her fourteenth Cherry Bakewell.