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.
