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
