I ask because if you knew someone who was in the habit every Saturday of stuffing all their pockets full of fivers and tenners, calling into the pub for a quick five pints, as you do, and then, with gay abandon (er, that's 'gay' in the old-fashioned sense), wandering into an establishment often run by a sleazy foreigner notorious for relieving people of huge amounts of their hard-earned dosh whilst offering dross in return, you would feel impelled to step in and caution them, or at least, to call social services and urge them to intervene, even perhaps to slap on a restraining order, or better still, have them sectioned. But alas, in this cruel Tory world no-one cares and so Saturday after Saturday footie fans in their infantile imbecility get drunk, get chiselled - and their team gets beaten!
Footie is not so much the Theatre of Dreams as the Theatre of the Absurd. Take this week's nonsense as an example. A comedy in five acts:
Act I: 'Payne Looney' contradicts his manager leading to rumours of his dissatisfaction and a rift with his boss, 'Fergie the red-nosed manager', a man who can eat six wasps at a go and frequently does.
Act II: Club HQ, staffed with young PR men in shiny suits but no ties because they have only just learned how to tie their shoe laces but not their ties, issue an authoritative statement that no rift exists, 'Payne' is ecstatically, not to say, deliriously, happy and any lying ratbag from Canary Wharf who says different is probably in the pay of Manchester City Football Club which, 'as any fule do know', is owned by a bunch of towel-heads, nudge-nudge, know wot I mean?
Act III: 'Fergie the Ferocious' appears like the baddie in a Chinese opera, all fangs and jerky body movements, and in a voice like a ruptured bagpipe tells us that 'Payne Looney' is an ungrateful, greedy, Scouse git.
Act IV: The American owners are woken up in the middle of the night and informed of this emergency and, once they have been reminded which team it is they own ("Oh, jeez, ya mean that Limey outfit where they speak funny") they instantly agree to pay 'Payne not-so-Looney' a zillion pounds a week - "cos, what the hell, it ain't our money, it's only what we borrowed and what those suckers pay at the turnstiles!"
Act V: In strict compliance with the definition of classical comedy, all the little mix-ups are straightened out. Thus, 'Payne's' lovely Scouse missus is ordered to get a wheel-barrow to take home his weekly pay-packet every Friday night because otherwise 'Payne' will not be granted his once-a-week conjugals! He appears before the cameras, hand in hand, with 'Ferocious Fergie' who now appears to have a couple of dozen wasps in his mouth which is just as well lest he smile and frighten the horses. They both swear undying love whilst patting each other on the back - and it was all the fault of a trainee stage-manager that they were armed with stage-daggers at the time - er, they were stage daggers, weren't they?
Footnote: There is huge applause when a fat man in a loud pin-stripe suit and two-tone brogues comes on stage to take a bow and it is realised that he, as the agent, has been pulling all the strings of what turns out to have been a puppet-show after all.
If only I had known more footie fans when I was trying to flog off my old bits of 'shrapnel'.
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