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.
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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