Articles of Faith (4 page)

DB:
Y’know, I did have this complicated thing that I was going to talk to you about, but we’re just going to talk about football, right?

RB:
We can talk about the complicated thing as well as football if you want.

DB:
Well, yeah, can you include in that complicated thing the creation of comedy as rock and roll in Britain, that has led directly to your career?

RB:
I will – you may have noticed there is a rock and roll element in my persona. That is in no small part owing to David Baddiel, very much the John the Baptist to my Christ. Not only did you plant the seed for this comedy as the new rock and roll revolution, but this is a very specific favour you’re doing me now, as it was you who suggested that we talk about the time we went to the England Croatia game where England famously lost and they didn’t qualify for the European Championship.

DB:
Yeah, we have to talk about that although obviously my abiding memory is depression exacerbated by the amount of very attractive women in the area that we were in who came up and offered you their phone numbers at a time when you were supposed to be celibate as well, you’d made a public statement about your celibacy and yet in the…what’s it called…the corporate section of Wembley, not really a hotbed of sexual activity, still I would say about eight women came up, all of them very attractive, and offered you their phone numbers, some of whom you may or may not have slept with, we probably can’t go into that.

RB:
It was the only way I could heal the scars of that horrific defeat.

DB:
I probably wouldn’t have minded on some level because obviously I was aware that going out into the open air with you that might happen but it was a particularly bad time for it to happen because I get genuinely depressed when England don’t qualify or go out of major tournaments. So I feel I was particularly more indignant towards it than I might have been.

RB:
And to heighten this sense of defeat and failure, here’s a man enjoying the spoils of an idea of comedy that you’ve set up, right in front of your defeated face.

DB:
I tell you though, because when England, I’m trying to keep it to football…
when England went out of Euro 96, when I was at perhaps the very height of my fame in England because everyone was singing my football song, one of the things I particularly remember, being with my then girlfriend and Frank Skinner being there with his then girlfriend, who was half German, and Frank Skinner basically in his relationship with her never really recovered from Germany defeating England on that day. So I suppose a small part of me might have been thinking, how can he be thinking about sex at a time like this when he should be full of rage, that you can’t possibly be doing that. But you were doing that. I mean it’s all rubbish because I would’ve been thinking about sex had the women been coming up to me but…

RB:
Yeah.

DB:
I’m just following the line of thought really.

RB:
(Laughter)
I was particularly proud to be at that England Croatia match with you and the defeat for me was all the more bitter on account of it meaning there wouldn’t be a chorus of
Football’s Coming Home
. Oh, that would be amazing if that happened, oh they’ll see David and it will be really really exciting.

DB:
Yeah, there was actually a small chance of that I think because it was a very important game, the England fans don’t really sing it anymore. I’m not entirely sure why. Well one reason is because England never play well enough. It’s a strange football song in that respect in that it is only sung when England do well because
Football’s Coming Home
implies that we are doing well, that the trophy is coming literally to our house, and if England aren’t doing well it can’t really be sung. And England haven’t done well really for a long time and the only time I have heard it sung recently was when Germany played us and the German fans were singing it. Someone was with me and they said, ‘Oh, they’re singing your song,’ and I feel hollow inside because I didn’t actually put him right, I knew it was a German fan because Germany were doing well, and they said to me they’re singing it, but I just left it because I wanted him to think that people still sung our song all the time.

RB:
That’s heartbreaking. I’ve always thought that that song has a flaw in that it’s too triumphant thus restricting it to occasions of triumph, perhaps it could have done with a little more nuance…

DB:
That’s right, one of the strange things about the song is the reason it became a very big hit is that it was written in the spirit of melancholy because most other songs, England songs up to that point were, ‘We’re going to win it, we’re coming home, we’re off there to win it.’

RB:
Yeah.

DB:
When me and Frank talked about it we said, ‘Let’s write a song about what it’s really like being an England fan which is, oh we’re probably not going to win it but we sort of hope we are anyway.’

RB:
That is four more years of hurt.

DB:
Yeah, exactly, and it begins with you know ‘everyone seems to know the score, we’ve heard it all before, England’s going to throw it away, going to blow it away’, all that stuff is about, oh well, no one thinks we’re going to win but maybe we will anyway. But unfortunately the lines of triumph over adversity, ‘football’s coming home’, which is the epiphany following that thought, they can only be sung when England are doing well.

RB:
In a way David, yeah people wilfully took those lines out of context out of clear cockeyed optimism.

DB:
I should’ve stood up at Wembley every time they sung it and said, ‘No, you don’t understand, it’s a sweet, melancholy ballad about loss.’

RB:
(Laughter)

DB:
You’ve made it into a strident national anthem.

RB:
It was a Jeff Buckley-style lament on the futility of football.

DB:
Yeah. But anyway, what else do you want to know about football?

RB:
Wait a sec…well, I’ve got a very lovely linking device because West Ham’s song
Bubbles
is perhaps the only other song that captures the sort of sentimentality and pathos of being a football fan, as most songs do tend to be triumphant, and perhaps the team you follow, Chelsea, are a fine example of the kind of stripped-down refined success, lacking in magic but you know, under recent ownership, how do you define the romance of being a Chelsea fan for you at this time?

DB:
Well…to start…the song
I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles
, is that a West Ham song, or is it just an old song that West Ham sing?

RB:
I think it was, yeah I think it was co-opted.

DB:
So what is it about when it’s not about West Ham? I never know quite what it is…is it about someone who is blowing bubbles?

RB:
(Laughter)
It is quite difficult to find a literal connection, other than fortunes always hiding.

DB:
Yeah, it is. But we sing it. We sing it as an anti-West Ham anthem which is about beating up, I believe, West Ham fans. How does it go? ‘Tottenham always running, Arsenal running too’, yeah, that’s essentially the hooligan’s anthem of course, so we’ve absorbed your song.

RB:
I’ve heard the hooligan version David, and I’ll go for a similar emotion that you’ve experienced when Germans sing
Football’s Coming Home
. I think this is abuse of the lyrics from the intentions of the song.

DB:
Yeah, I think it’s a beautiful anthem, but to answer your question, I don’t completely agree obviously with the Chelsea thing because having been a Chelsea fan since 1970, the only thing about being a Chelsea fan if you were a Chelsea fan then is that you were actually reared on a very stylish but rather pale form of play, so something very romantic which was Peter Osgood, Alan Hudson and Charlie Cooke, and all those kind of players being brilliant and stylish and clever but not actually winning very much, they won the FA Cup and the European Cup Winners’ Cup but that was it. And then I went to Chelsea, I wasn’t old enough to go when I started supporting them, when I was eleven and they were shit. They had Micky Droy in their team and they were utter shit and I went for twenty years watching them be complete shit and thus I actually get quite annoyed, not as enraged as you do about your mum, and questions over her sexual endeavours but…

RB:
Even you mentioning it now is making me a bit cross.

DB:
Also I’m worried that the initial conversation won’t be in the book and so people will think well why on earth has he said that, that’s awful.

RB:
No, we’ll pick that out…

DB:
But what I get annoyed about is the suggestion that this sort of wealth has somehow just landed on Chelsea fans unfairly whereas in fact when it first happened, I thought well this is actually Chelsea going back to its roots, because I think Abramovich, in his heart he wants Chelsea to be a bit like the Harlem Globetrotters, he wants them to be an incredibly skilful, exciting, flair-based club which he hasn’t really chosen the managers to do.

RB:
No.

DB:
He’s got that slightly wrong, but I think that’s what he wants. And for Chelsea fans of my age there is a sense that we should be that club, you know, we should be this very flair, colourful club with lots of fancy dans like Peter Osgood playing for us, so I’m all for it. And I’m slightly fucked off that now that there are
Arabs at Manchester City who’ve got much more money than us.

RB:
That must be irritating.

DB:
That is irritating. I don’t want to complain about it…well, perhaps slightly.

RB:
Oh, go on.

DB:
I’ve heard Chelsea fans…

RB:
Go on, you were going to complain did you say? I’m listening…

DB:
I’ve heard Chelsea fans complain, and they could be accused of hypocrisy here, that the Arabs at Manchester City are going to ruin football with all their money.

RB:
(Laughter)
Difficult to feel sympathy for the fans of Chelsea.

DB:
Yeah it is, although it’s a strange thing, you know, I’ve earned a fair amount of money in my time and you must be earning quite a lot now.

RB:
Yeah.

DB:
But these are people who can offer £138 million pounds for Ronaldo, just ‘cos they sort of fancy it. How does that happen? How can people have that much money? It doesn’t really reflect so much on football as the general state of the capitalist global economy.

RB:
Yes that’s what I feel. I feel that in general when people talk about the commercialisation of football, just say well this is cultural, that it’s not something that is specific to football, it’s just that demonstrably the world is becoming more corporate and more commercialised so of course sport is going to also, it’s just a reflection of that.

DB:
Yeah, that is true and football is a microcosm of the extreme nature of the free market because as football gets more and more successful, which it has done over the last fifteen years, more money is attracted to it. There aren’t really any proper laws. The FA tried their best, but there aren’t any proper laws like there might be in a country, so as a result there is a free-market activity leading to £138 million pounds which could probably save the whole of Africa being spent instead on Ronaldo and his stupid over-white teeth.

RB:
I think you’re quite right – instead of looking at football and condemning the current climate and the amount of money that players are earning, people should look at the implications of that globally, what that demonstrably means for global human capitalism.

DB:
And they should also consider whether, if it is going to be a common,
global economy Ronaldo should at least not be going to a club whose greatest player in the past was Francis Lee ‘cos that in itself is an affront.

RB:
(Laughter)
Yeah, that is a peculiar poem of capitalism to go from Franny Lee to Ronaldo.

DB:
It is, that’s right, that is capitalism in itself, although somehow the movement from that fat bloke to that grinning pretty monkey is a remnant in some way of what Marx always predicted for our culture. I’m sure we’re now just talking, aren’t we?

RB:
Yeah yeah we did, I felt we drifted away from making a football book to actual views and feelings.

DB:
Ask me some other questions quickly about football.

RB:
Ok.

DB:
You’re quite a big England fan, aren’t you? That’s the thing that people often talk about, club and country. And I feel from some of my, well Frank and the one or two other actually working-class friends that I’ve got, although you’re actually working-class but you’re not in this category, that there’s something a bit poofty and middle-class about supporting England. I mean, Frank does support England but in his heart he will always say he’d rather West Bromwich Albion got into the Premiership than England won the World Cup.

RB:
Really?

DB:
Now I don’t know if I actually believe him, because I think he would go mental if England won the World Cup and West Brom have got into the Premiership and although he’s pleased, he’s not dancing naked in the street – a horrible image – but anyway he might do if England won the World Cup. So there’s a sort of sense that comes off hardcore fans that supporting England is what Johnny-come-lately fans do – with their love of Italia 90 and Gazza crying and the whole change that happened in football, rather than the hardcore club supporters.

RB:
That working-class affiliation, do you think it’s by association – the hooligan fraternity as well, I know England have always famously had a hooligan fraternity? That sort of class ownership of the sport is kind of interesting, I mean I would like to pick up on that ‘cos Frank is personally affiliated with the success of England. If England won the World Cup, I’d imagine it would be like twenty or thirty years in the future before it’s possible at all, you two would be pushed out on wheelchairs with Ian Broudie, it would be a personal triumph for you as well like a cultural and social one.