Articles of Faith (10 page)

Is it insanely narcissistic for me to contemplate that Morrissey is trying to communicate with me through the wearing of replica West Ham tops? The answer is, of course, ‘Yes’. ‘Yes it is. Why would you even need to ask?’ Well, because I’ve been courting Morrissey, of whom I’m a lifelong fan (if that life is about 18 years), for several months with the intention of persuading him to commit to a documentary where I interview him, follow him about and analyse his legacy.

‘I became rigid with dashed expectation as I awaited my name like it was the sixth Lotto Thunderball number’

He is aware of my devotion to the Hammers and seems rather fond of me; recently on stage at a handful of gigs that I was unfortunately unable to attend he introduced the members of his band before saying ‘and I’m Russell Brand’. When I heard tell of this I became all queasy and loopy and reckoned it to be the start of a beautiful friendship with a beloved icon. The knowledge of this name-check dramatically impaired my enjoyment of the performance I attended at the Camden Roundhouse this week (‘I don’t perform, seals perform…unfortunately’) as between each song I became rigid with dashed expectation as I awaited the utterance of my name like it was the sixth Lotto Thunderball number. The trepidation was so torturously unbearable that I nearly leapt to my feet and screeched: ‘I’m Russell and I need you to love me.’

Thankfully I just sat there all spurned, listening to the hardcore chant, to the tune of ‘’Ere We Go’, ‘Morrissey, Morrissey, Morrissey’. I once did a gig with Noel Gallagher and the similarity between the crowd there and at football was startling but I suppose somehow natural because of the obvious corollary of those two demographics, but would you expect to find a large terrace fraternity at a Morrissey gig?

I suppose I’m an unlikely member of both groups; alas on that occasion, unlike at Upton Park, I was unwilling to subjugate my identity into the throng but instead perched on my seat’s edge wringing my clammy fists like a meekly loyal housekeeper waiting to be listed in the Oscar acceptance speech of an oblivious employer.

At the point in his set where he introduced his band I became so agitated with futile hope that I kicked over my neighbour’s drink and locked hands with my companion so tightly that to escape she had to chew through her own wrist like a trapped fox. The fantastic set concluded, quite rightly, without any mention of my name, which has helped me to reevaluate my expectations of live entertainment. I won’t on Wednesday, for Liverpool’s visit to West Ham, expect Dean Ashton and Mark Noble to come out at half-time and sing ‘To All The Girls I’ve Loved Before’ without once breaking eye contact with me, and I think that alone will make it a more enjoyable evening.

So, with my unrealistic, egocentric dementia happily acknowledged we can return to the question posed at this article’s genesis. On the cover of his new single ‘That’s How People Grow Up’ Morrissey is wearing a West Ham Boys’ Club T-shirt – now he did once wear the same shirt nine years ago, before we met, before he would’ve had any awareness of my existence, unless he was a secret attendant of Grays School’s production of
Bugsy Malone
in which I dazzled as Fat Sam, but is there even the remotest possibility that his renewed interest in the garment could’ve been sparked by my own allegiance to the club? ‘No, let it go.’ Well, after the
show I asked him. Not outright like Paxman, more opaque and obtuse, like Columbo.

I had him cornered but not isolated; also present were the former QPR striker, now with MK Dons, Kevin Gallen and a bloke called Liam, who I think was a Millwall fan. I cagily asked Morrissey why he had taken to wearing the claret and blue, fingers crossed in pockets that the response would come ‘Because of you, darling boy’ but before Morrissey spoke Kevin said to him, ‘You’re a QPR fan ain’t ya?’ and Liam said, ‘I thought you liked Millwall?’

I saw this as a brilliant opportunity to recount an intriguing anecdote I once heard on the History Channel, told by an old German man who had once been a member of the Hitler Youth. (I know this is the second consecutive week that I’ve mentioned Hitler, I’m not secretly Nazi, I don’t know why it keeps happening, I think he was a wicked, wicked man. Wicked as in bad, not hip and edgy.)

It was along the lines of: ‘We the assembled ranks of the Hitler Youth were watching the Führer give a speech, and at the point he said “You young men are the future of the Fatherland” he looked right into my eyes and I knew he was speaking specifically to me. When I told the other members of my experience each of them said “No, when he said that he looked into my eyes.”’

Now I related this to demonstrate amusingly that all three of us had keenly believed that Morrissey was a follower of our chosen team but midway through I remembered
NME
coating him off and calling him racist.

To be clear Morrissey is not racist, and only a twit could make such an accusation. None the less I thought ‘Oh no, he’s gonna think I’m comparing him to Hitler’ – I mean he’s a vegetarian, artistic and very charismatic but it’s not a comparison I imagine he’d welcome. I began to flounder and back-pedal, trying to distance myself from my words even as they tumbled from my mouth, clarifying and mitigating like a drowning Hugh Grant. When I finished blathering Morrissey gave a world-weary sigh and turned to the other two gents – ‘Of course…this is what Russell does for a living’ he said.

Sentiment is adjudged by some ‘the unearned emotion’ – to mawkishly coo about some cute tot or bumbling pensioner whilst not having to wipe their bottoms or tolerate their gurgling. Hemingway said of his father: ‘He was a sentimental man and like most sentimental people he was also very cruel.’

This I understand as the slick transition between snuggling up to an adorable kitten, stroking its fluffy bonce, going ‘Aaah. Aaaah. AaaaAaAaaah’ till eventually you love it so much that only crushing its skull and feasting on its gooey brains will be a sufficient expression of that feeling. I used to cuddle my dog Topsy too hard and sometimes I want to kiss babies with such vigour that my childless status is a blessing to infanticide statistics.

Fabio Capello is neither sentimental nor cruel; he is, on the evidence of his decision not to select David Beckham, and his trophy-spangled CV, a football manager making choices informed by football realities.

Dear old Steve McClaren was like a beige moth flitted about on the farts and grunts of public opinion and media flatulence: ‘You don’t want Beckham? He’s gone. No Paul Robinson you say? He’s history. You want
Beckham back? One moment, I’ll pop off and get him.’ I think we, as a nation, could’ve tricked him into fielding a team of players’ wives in their bras, which I’d’ve been well into, especially now Cheryl Cole is on the rebound – she may’ve gone crackers during a goal celebration and leapt into the crowd like a cross between Cantona and Caligula and noshed off them twerps in that brass band.

‘99 is an ice cream with a Flake in it. Delicious. What’s 100? Just a lousy letter from the Queen’

Capello will not allow his squad to become emotional pornography where we squint and jostle through Beckham’s century, teary eyed by the achievement of a goal that is in fact abstract. I believe it was Lee and Herring that pointed out that the only reason we fetishise the number 10 is because we have 10 fingers and if we inhabited a planet of Dave Allens, where everyone had nine and a half fingers, we’d all be salivating at the prospect of Beckham achieving 95 caps, which he’s already done.

Although Capello has stressed that the door remains open to Beckham so he may yet acquire the cosmically meaningless accolade of 100 caps, I think he ought be contented with 99. Nine, I seem to remember from my poxy school days, is a magic number, doing all sorts of arithme-tricks and 99 is a type of ice cream with a Flake in it. Delicious. What’s 100? Just a lousy letter from the Queen, which I imagine is standardised and just says something like: ‘Well done for not dying, love the Queen.’ I’d rather have a Flake.

The general consensus throughout the media seems to be that Capello has made the right decision, many applauding his bravery and urging him to go further by axing Michael Owen. Wouldn’t it be even braver to immediately implement my excellent footballers’ wives scheme where on
Wednesday we’d see a flock of gorgeous harpies tottering out onto the hallowed turf? Plus I’m going to the Switzerland match and I might get myself a kazoo and sit with them oompah pah pah nerds and wait for Cheryl to go nuts.

Hey, I’m not making light of their situation, Ashley is a silly sausage but we all make mistakes – having a wife that beautiful might eventually make you go a bit stir crazy, like being chained to a Canaletto, he probably needed to break out and leer over a Rolf Harris as a kind of sorbet to rinse away the relentless glory of his wife’s fizzog.

Some seem agitated that Capello’s squad held few surprises, well he does have to pick from the rather limited genre of English footballers so there was always going to be an air of predictability about it. He can’t say, ‘Up front is King Herod partnering Ray Winstone and in goal is Taylor Coleridge’s The Ancient Mariner. Oh no – that’s a disaster, he only stoppeth one in three.’

I’ve seen Capello’s Hasselhoff-Grandma face at every football match I’ve watched on telly so he must have a fair idea of what’s going on and I think he’s got the right blend of experienced players and Aston Villa treasures. I’d like to have seen caps for Dean Ashton and Robert Green and maybe even Mark Noble but at least I don’t have to spend the next few days worrying that they’ll have their legs smashed in by England’s reckless training methods.

What do they do there? Cage-fighting? I think it’s an auspicious start for Fabio; perhaps Beckham will win his ultimately pointless century in a competitive game and we can all have a saucy emo-toss over something that matters.

I’m in Antigua in the Caribbean inhaling limitless beauty and enjoying the unstudied benevolence of the people who live here. Fred, a friendly bloke who works at the hotel and laughs at me or with me – I hope it’s the latter, it doesn’t do to be presumptuous – took me and my young consort to watch the Caribbean Twenty20 cricket tournament currently in full swing on the island. Cricket is obviously very popular here and this new variation on the formula has taken the West Indies by storm.

I don’t know much about cricket; my knowledge was mostly gleaned from a BBC drama called
Bodyline
, which recounted the Douglas Jardine versus Donald Bradman Ashes series, which must’ve been in the early 30s. Good it was. The trick was to throw the ball at the batsman instead of the wicket, which really spiced things up and I think it ought be reinstated nowadays or perhaps bowlers should be given pistols and shoot batsmen as soon as the match starts making the game even shorter, which I think would be a blessing.

‘They want to make as much money as possible whilst not actually appearing to be living incarnations of Satan’

The other thing I know about cricket is from them adverts where Ian Botham and Allan Lamb advertise chops because both their names have ‘meat’ connotations – Beefy Botham and, well, lamb. The whole silly business made my vegetarianism seem all the more brilliant. The two of ‘em scoffing down lumps of flesh, fat and rind between their gnashers going all rancid made me think meat is not only murder – it’s also halitosis.

This Twenty20 caper was a pleasant enough evening mostly because of the jubilant carnival conducted throughout the match (Dominica versus Barbados) – often the celebrations were entirely divorced from the on-pitch action. I saw one group of women gleefully gyrate and high-five
when Barbados got ‘a four’ and then repeat the ecstatic ritual when the same batsman was bowled out minutes later.

This tournament was devised by a Texan businessman who himself had little knowledge of cricket. He owns the stadium and the TV rights as well as having a lot of other commercial interests on the island. Clearly this man had motivations outside of altruism, business people always do. It’s how they define themselves – ‘Hello, I’m a businessman.’ They say.

This globe-trotting soccer circus proposed by Richard Scudamore (I’m suggesting Lucre-more, if anyone wants it, they must credit me) damned by Harry Redknapp as ‘unnatural’ and Gareth Southgate as an ‘April fool’ is another decision by the Premier League that does not have the interest of fans at heart. This is not surprising though is it? They are, once more, business people. They want to make as much money as possible whilst not actually appearing to be living incarnations of Satan. It must be a constant exercise in brinkmanship.

The idea of introducing 10 more games decided at random, with the exception that five top seeds will avoid each other, as Lucre-more points out ‘imbalances symmetry’ as if he’s a graphic designer and the fixture list is a logo for a firm of masseuses who specialise in oily hand-jobs.

It’s not that the idea is inherently evil, people in Beijing or Sydney or whatever would get the thrill of live English football, which is nice for them. I suppose what is offensive is that this idea exposes the naked commercialism that drives ‘our’ national game. Which may soon not be exclusively ‘our’ national game because Reading versus Bolton will be held on the seabed of the Cape of Good Hope.

Ultimately, though, this is not football’s problem; we live in a consumer capitalist society, look out your window – that’s consumer capitalism out there, as far as the eye can see. If it annoys you then we’ll have to have a revolution, which I’m well up for. It doesn’t matter if Hillary wins or Obama or McCain so let’s stop getting excited about people’s genitals, pigmentation and age; they are all tools of the consumer capitalist system that we tolerate and endorse with our apathy.

It will only get worse, they will always want more money, it’s the nature
of the beast, except it’s not a beast, it’s a machine, a machine designed to take our money and shut our mouths. The other day I was offered a million quid to do a car commercial, I turned it down because I know that once you take that money they own you.

One could argue that by working for this paper or British TV or companies like Universal I’m already compromised and that’s indubitably true. But this is the context we all live in and presently fundamentalism is beyond me. The possibility for change however is perpetual; they can change the Premier League but we can change the world. As long as corporately owned sports are elevated to carnivals by the people that attend them we have hope.