1983: born in the wagon of a travellin show.

i was an unremarkable child. though i’m told i did unnerve the midwife slightly. the story goes that whilst she was preparing to smack my arse i emerged reciting “pi = 3.14159265″.

apparently i similarly irritated my father who when i was just 9 days old, foolishly asked me what i would like for breakfast to which i replied “3.14159265 pies”. he never spoke to me after that.

happily, life took a turn for the better when

1985: at about the age of 18 months i stumbled across a discarded copy of the ft.

from that day i read voraciously and began to show a little more intellectual promise.

so when, at the age of two, on my third day at primary school the central heating broke down and all other attempts to repair it had failed, improbably i was called upon to help. as i recall i had it running perfectly in barely 90 seconds using nothing more than a glass eye from a teddy bear and a half-eaten penny chew, whilst solving two rubik’s cubes with my other hand.

despite generous applause from all quarters i still refused to sit up straight or drink my milk.

1987: at four i entered and was accepted for the bbc’s prestigious mastermind quiz. although i managed to bag a satisfactory 78 points in the general knowledge section, sadly my fate had already been sealed in the specialist subject round where having narrowed my options to two, namely ‘the life and works of max beerbohm’ and ‘anoraks i have owned’, i had foolishly selected the latter.

not surprisingly, at such a tender age i had owned no more than two, so the question-master quickly ran out of ammo and i was left impatiently twiddling my little pink thumbs till the two minute buzzer sounded, the overall outcome being my defeat by a margin of just one point at the hands of three-an-a-half year-old heidi hole from cleckheaton who had the foresight to answer on the obviously more favourable subject of ‘babygrows’.

my feckless choice of subject vexes me to this day. incidentally, trailing a poor third in the contest was 31 year-old ernst blowfelt, a draughtsman from ormskirk. not surprisingly he chose to answer on ‘draughts’.

given his west lancashire upbringing one might have expected him to have sat in a few but his performance was dismal. it further transpired that in readiness for the general knowledge round he had been boning-up on military history. what a sap. but i digress, soz.

july 12: invented fusion cooking.

1988: at six i was the talk of the street when, skipping ‘o levels’ out of boredom i passed eleven subjects at ‘a level’, (all at a-star obviously) in a day. by this time i was devoting my evenings to helping make ends meet by offering private tuition to second and third year mit stragglers.

1989: a tedious four-month sojourn to melbourne university followed where without opening a single book i gained a first-class honours degree in crass-pig-ignorance. (i was denied a distinction having failed to attend crucial modules on ‘chuckun another shreemp on the baarbee’ and ‘pourun a coldie’).

nonetheless my reward was dinner at the savoy grill with madonna and sean penn, which i must admit i did not enjoy as the atmosphere was strained to say the least and i was on pins the whole evening. for the record, madonna is useless at small-talk.

departing australia since there was nothing else they could teach me, i was in the process of applying for funding to study at harvard when out-of-the-blue, man u called: “would you like to join the first team squad for training with a view to signing a lucrative contract?”

i was sure i could do better and decided to wait for other more tempting offers and let the reds sweat.

as it happened, after my bedtime story that evening, i was drifting into a contented sleep when ‘tap, tap, tap’ on the bloody window pane! you’ll never guess who it was. only (apologies to the late peter cook) luis felipe scolari begging me to dig him out of a hole at palmeiras. not surprisingly i told him to bugger-off and contact my agent at a more reasonable hour.

so imagine my surprise when the following day, whilst i was putting the final touches to my draft paper for a comprehensive and lasting settlement in the middle east, and the big brazilian was nursing his bruised ego at his hotel, a begging letter arrived from real madrid.

i left it a couple of days before opening it, and another couple before faxing them a grudging acceptance, but to be honest i’d always preferred the playing surface at the Bernabeu and they were offering me twice as much as man u.

and so to spain where, while the rest of the squad were out eyeing-up crumpet, i was able to leverage the downtime between training sessions and matches and utilising the pleasant and spacious bernabau canteen, wrote a 50,000 word dissertation entitled ‘advanced masters in bullshit’ for which i was awarded harvard’s prestigious post-graduate degree in applied mendacity, emerging as a fully-certificated pathological lying git in a record three weeks, whilst practising throw-ins with the jam roly-poly.

1991: during a long weekend back in civilisation i was mooching the royal box at ascot when who should stroll in but mikhail gorbachev in the company of the lovely raisa.

always a sharp dresser, mickey was sporting a trademark savile row suit, but on this occasion teamed, not with the customary armani silk tie, but a short, admittedly beautifully-crafted italian kid hide tether. i could see at a glance that he was near the end of it.

when, i puzzled, had i last seen him dressed this way?

ah yes! it was in 1986 on the front steps of the hofdi house in reykjavik as he emerged, spitting blood from the last session of the abortive ‘start’ talks.

by chance i had been appointed to reagan’s advisory team and although sadly able to contribute little during the open forums, as the microphones were all four feet above my head, i was able to negotiate the solution in private, shortly thereafter.

but i digress, again, soz, again.

sensing that the tether was on this occasion dangerously tightened, on the flimsy pretext of a quick anglo/soviet slash, i drew gorby into a sideroom: “whats the prob mickey?” i enquired gently. and it all came flooding out.

russia was going to hell in a hand cart. “no shit sherlock” i intoned sympathetically and while i ordered another round of double remy martins on his tab, the great man let rip his litany of woes.

well, obviously he had the misfortune to have been born in soviet russia, but hey, shit happens.

but to endure forty years among poisonous party apparatchiks and lick-spittles, working his way assiduously to the pinnacle of the oligarchy only to find the whole ill-thought-out mess imploding on his watch. shit!

in nearby romania, golf-buddy nicky ceauşescu and his ravishing wife elena had all-too-recently been summarily tried and shot dead for objecting to the absence of applause at their latest serving of totalitarian drivel.

meanwhile, at home, normally-docile citizens were beginning to demand more-regular supplies of sausage to dunk in their vodka! what the hell’s a guy supposed to do?

“take a chill-pill mickey” i said: “whizz down to your dacha in the crimea and keep your head down: i’ll give you a bell when i’ve sorted it”.

well, to cut a long story short, i made a couple of calls and a few days later mickey waltzed back to moscow, handed over the nuclear button to yeltsin and everything was ginger-peachy.

1992: tiring of the superficial and over-rewarded world of professional football i enrolled for a stanford university correspondence course, and just six weeks later i was awarded a doctorate in quantum mechanics with a chocolate brownie and large fries.

emerging blinkingly from the cloistered word of academia i applied to join mi6. naturally i was accepted but left after just nine days as i couldn’t stand all the lying.

1993 to date: barman, ring’o'bells, streatham, n. london (own bow-tie and cocktail shaker).

1986: third place at the world chess championships, bangkok losing in the semis to boris betterthanme who was crushed in the final by victor shitot and sadly shot himself that night.

1988: won the womens high board competition at the seoul olympics but was later disqualified for cross-dressing.

1988: six weeks at starfleet command teaching klingon as a foreign language.

1989: single-handedly wrapped the pont neuf, paris in a drab grey fabric one night after a skinful of creme de menthe and a bad kebab.

1989: unlocked the berlin wall liberating the entire population of the gdr with a key from my auntie maggie’s old wardrobe.

alas and alack, it occurs to me that the duration of my silence has coincided almost precisely with that of the world cup.

well somebody’s granny (perhaps even mine) once told me “if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all”; so with england’s performance in mind i have taken that advice.

and i propose to keep it that way rather than think about it and risk being sick on my shoes.

get a grip losers.

damning video footage hit tv screens today which purported to show baby-faced scottish snooker genius john higgins negotiating his price for losing four frames of snooker in forthcoming games.

the revelations, published by britain’s news of the world paper, if proven to be true, whilst not exactly mould-breaking in the history of snooker would surely have career-ending implications for the genial “wizard of wishaw”.

let’s hope that these deeply unsavoury allegations are proved on thorough investigation to be unfounded.

indeed higgins, snooker’s world-ranked number one and 2009 world champion and his manager pat mooney who was also present at the meeting with ukranian “businessmen” where the alleged frame-fixing deal was recorded have issued strong and it has to be said not entirely implausible denials of any wrongdoing.

in a nutshell, they feared for their personal safety. who could blame them?

still the whole thing neither looks or smells good to me but let’s remember that at this time these are no more than untested allegations.

nonetheless, the question remains: why were they there in the first place?

the striker cuts through our defence,
what’s happened to their common-sense.
if only we had played a sweeper
it’s goodnight if he beats the keeper

who’s number one, but now looks bigger,
close-up, a bloody scary figure.
“to hell with getting smacked again,
i’ll take a dive and get a ‘pen’.”

he trails a leg, he waves a bit,
then falls down like a sack of shit.
see how he writhes, and looks distressed,
how sad! the ref is unimpressed.

just waves him up, and gives a warning.
(the linesman can’t stop himself yawning)
and still he’s asking for the ‘pen’
“i’ll likely never walk again!”

and though he pleads for the award,
the arbiter is getting bored.

oh no, a card is coming out,
he’s gob-smacked! what’s all that about?
the stand arises in ovation,
he’s been sent off for simulation.

not before time muppet. and don’t come back neither.

although he may not be the ultimate by any single measurement, as a package of skill, commitment, awareness, speed, strength, determination and a sheer willingness to go the extra mile, rooney is peerless.

it goes without saying, therefore that his value to manchester united goes beyond money. a player of his stature is impossible to replace, like-for-like.

so we’re all agreed: rooney’s a genius! but let’s try to remember that he’s also human. so, what do we do when wayne goes lame?

well because players like him don’t grow on trees to go out and find one is tricky to say the least: to say nothing about the cost and difficulty of liberating them from their existing obligations. at short order it’s impossible, not to mention outlawed by the league.

which brings us to the thorny subject of tevez.

if tevez did not want to play for man u, and who wouldn’t, i’ll pass my fags round! and as, effectively, a free agent it would surely have been well within the means, even of the glazer-strapped regime to have retained his invaluable services.

for the benefit of the slow-of-wit (not you surely?) i simply pose the question:-

what are manchester united short of for the remaining five games of the season?

who said carlos tevez? i’m with you!

over ‘ere son – on me head

and we qualified without dropping a single point, 24 from 8, and with two matches to spare. now i grant you we emerged unscathed from a bunch of no-marks who would have struggled against our womens team but let’s not be churlish. a win is a win is a win.

in all fairness, who could fault the team’s record under the enigmatic Fabio Capello. i grant you the great man’s english is practically impenetrable to the native speaker but we don’t pay him to give lessons in elocution, now do we? and as fortune would have it our trusty squad, linguists to a man, seem to have understood which way the maestro wants them to kick it.

but i must concede i’m slightly less bullish about the finals next year, when, fresh (knackered surely) from the exertions (we are talking about football here, aren’t we? oh go on then let’s pretend it’s hard work for another minute otherwise i won’t know what else to write) of the 2009-10 domestic season our heroes will find themselves sweating in the heat of the dark continent as the gloves come off against the likes of italy, brazil, spain and germany.

still we can take comfort from the thought that most of the top players we hope to face in the later stages of the competition will have had similar build-ups to our own players, if only because most of them play their club football in the english premiership!

i’m almost sure there’s a pearl of wisdom glistening somewhere in this pile of drivel but, do you know, i just can’t be arsed to dig it out.

make an effort yourself, for once, muppet.

where to, froggie. somewhere where you would finally have “to see it” kicking and screaming if necessary?

i refer readers who have the honesty to “see it” to my earlier doggerel on the sickening subject of simulation in football.

they, like me are happy to call it cheating. and no doubt some rather-less polite names.

bonnet de douche mes amies.

what? oh shit, it was all a bad dream. in fact, after a series of lack-lustre test performances, these colonial ne’er-do-wells have been rightfully dispatched by their english betters back to the antipodes, there to ponder on the copious shortcomings which have led them to eat their words, unbarbied. very tasteless i’m sure.

as i recall, i remarked to a less-astute observer (are there any others?) midway through that magnificent final day “ponting has the look of a man who knows the game is up”.

to be fair to the little snapper, albeit through gritted-teeth (and on this occasion agreably battered lips) ponting took defeat like a man, and the great sportsman that he is. (at least i assume that’s what he did. the batting legend speaks at such a prodigious rate that i suspect, probably due to the poor health service development in his home country he was vaccinated with a sewing machine needle).

but i digress.

to tell the truth, in circumstances where common-sense would have seen more-educated nations repairing to their bungalows for extended bouts of wound-licking, these plucky if ill-advised, post botany bay, convict-bred also-rans have it seems, made the foolhardy decision to remain in the uk with only the prospect of further ignominious defeats in the upcoming one day series.

one has to admire their pluck, if not their intellect!

cheer-up diggers!

see ya! wouldn’t wanna be ya

oh but they go on and arse this lack-lustre opposition from down-under. down-and-out more like.

bring’em on for the third test! where’s your bowlers you bunch of girls? left ‘em all back in ramsey street? easy street more like.

ship out diggers, the dingoes are pissin’ on your swag.

(none intended, obviously)

ta-ta!

could somerrdy point me tooow the bar twenty20 wages?

ayythankyoo.