Articles of Faith Read online

  DB: Arsenal have the advantage of being geographically closer to Tottenham than either West Ham or Chelsea so they could even manage to do it. The people that we have to hate locally are QPR and Fulham who are not up to scratch for hating because they’re too small.

  RB: It’d be no fun hating QPR or Fulham. Of course West Ham fans ‘Hate Millwall, hate Millwall’. I know to the ICS fraternity that would be like hugely relevant and I think there’s been deaths involved it’s been taken so seriously. But for a bog-standard football fan that sort of hatred becomes kind of spurious and irrelevant, because other than the occasional cup tie, there is no chance to play out that confrontation. I’m not gonna ever go to New Cross to express my hatred to Millwall.

  DB: It’s a very interesting thing though, particularly for me and you as football fans because I never could do that. I was never very bothered with hating anyone, actually I used to vaguely hate Arsenal when George Graham was their manager ‘cos they played really dull football and beat us and that was annoying, but when they started playing really brilliant football I thought, ‘Well I don’t hate them anymore because there isn’t anything to hate,’ any more than any other team that played Chelsea. And actually I sort of appreciated the fact that Vieira and Henry are brilliant players and I quite respect them, and I can’t bring myself to hate them just to confirm my identity as a Chelsea fan. And similarly you, the part of you that is a bit hippy and a bit karmic and who hates Mourinho.

  RB: And is attracted to him.

  DB: Yeah.

  RB: This is not a sanctioned emotion of a West Ham fan.

  DB:…about José Mourinho, I believe I texted you to say something about you and your issues with stepfathers.

  RB: Yeah.

  DB: With Avram Grant I think that was a general mass psychosis. Although clearly Avram Grant wasn’t as good a manager as José Mourinho – the absolute hatred of him both from Chelsea fans and generally, he was thought of as useless by everybody despite getting us to the European Cup Final. I think the mass psychosis was about how we had this really cool, really dynamic high-status but somehow charming and lovable perfect kind of modern father figure, but paternal but actually quite modern and cool and handsome and all the rest of it, and then this sort of silly old frog-like bloke took over.

  RB: (Laughter)

  DB: And it was a terrible revulsion – who is this man supposedly looking after us now and even you felt it from West Ham, even though I think you had deeper psychological issues.

  RB: Yeah.

  DB: You have father issues which we won’t go into.

  RB: Yeah, let’s psychoanalyse that particular problem. A whole nation did say, ‘You’re not my real dad.’

  DB: Yeah, they said ‘You’re not my real dad,’ exactly. (Laughter)

  RB: You can’t tell us what to do, you can’t take us to the European Champions League Final.

  DB: Exactly, especially with that face. I’m going to have to go, Russell.

  RB: All right then.

  DB: Because I have to go and see a play, so I would love to talk to you more but I can’t really.

  RB: All right.

  DB: So um…

  RB: That’s fantastic, thank you David. Thanks for ending it, leaving me with that chilling image of my problems around patriarchy.

  10

  My cathode carnival with Sir Alex turning green

  I’m still in Tuscany writing my autobiography. Who would’ve thought that writing a book that covers the expanse of your entire life would be so time consuming? It’s nearly finished now and it’s jolly good. A cursory glance, not that I’m suggesting that’s the manner in which it ought be read, reveals that football has been little more than a pain-in-the-arse recruitment officer for disappointment and despair ever since it sauntered into my life in the early 80s.

  I was old enough to understand the concept of football for the World Cup in Spain ’82 but it wasn’t till Mexico ’86 that I became fully able to contend with the hopelessness and vindictive failure that our nation is expected to tolerate during international competition. England seem to do better when I either harshly criticise them or stay out of the country and ignore them.

  ‘Michael Owen seems to be responding to the English press like the child of an unreliable, alcoholic parent’

  The only portals to information accessible to me here are day-old newspapers – I now pretend that the days are synchronised and ignore calendars to avoid feeling out of touch. The internet simply will not work here, our lying ‘butler’ Sam, who I mentioned last week in his capacity as a goon likely to get me bumped off by Tuscan mafiosi, claims that Italy does not have the internet while maintaining eye contact and chuckling.

  The TV, when operable, is about as reliable as the butler and last week we watched the world-famous greens of Manchester United finally hit their stride against Wigan. We’ve got an expressionistic telly that gives you its own bonkers interpretation of colour and in its bonkers cathode carnival red equals green. All the colours are subverted and shuffled, a lot of them randomly – the Wigan players turned out in a strip that would please only Benetton – but it is quite consistent in its red to green ideal. On our TV the United shirts and Sir Alex Ferguson’s face are both the same hue of shimmering jade, like the scales of a marlin. I’m starved of reliable media, the papers are late, the internet doesn’t exist and the television is increasingly Dadaist.

  This means that I am an ideal case study for Chomsky’s ideas on the manufacture of consent. My emotions are tossed around on a tabloid sea of vituperation and rumour. One paper announces that Frank Lampard will soon be leaving Chelsea, another that Kaká will be arriving. Is that an example of how a Premiership club’s PR operations are run? If one paper has a story of a departing hero another must be fed one of an imminent superstar arrival?

  Poor bloody Michael Owen; he seems to be responding to the English press like the child of an unreliable, alcoholic parent; nothing he does is good enough and it’s impossible for him to pre-empt how his actions will be received. I’m glad he’s back from injury and so keen to play, and that recent international results have meant that he’s been reinstated as our football Jesus.

  The last two positive results ought to have been taken as evidence that England perform well when adhering to a team ideal rather than facilitating individuals. Perhaps it’s because we still live in a monarchic culture that we crave a talismanic figure to praise and condemn and struggle to appreciate the importance of a balanced team. I hope this pervasive tendency doesn’t diminish the likelihood of Gareth Barry’s inclusion; judging from what I’ve read, he is the very kind of player that could help England evolve.

  Of course, all of my opinions are gleaned from day-old news, for all I know I could’ve overslept or been drugged and missed another few days or even weeks, and England might already have beaten Estonia and Russia. Perhaps Sam the Butler savant has been printing all these papers himself and has created for me an insular wonderland. I did read that Sven-Goran Eriksson is having sex with a dustbin man – that seems unlikely – and that Britain is in the thrall of an alleged terrorist called ‘Osama Bin London’. Absurd. These things can’t be true.

  Well, whatever the hell it is that’s going on over there, good luck England and Michael and Gareth. And if Sven is tucking into a bit of rough while a punning fundamentalist causes havoc I might stay here another couple of weeks and watch the games on TV. Come on you greens.

  11

  Who’s to blame for my impotent rage?

  Desolate. The evisceration makes analysis appear futile. Vivid recollection torments the fastidious mind, unwilling to relinquish detail. The un-penalty – I frantically write optimistic headlines in my mind, Robinson Redeems Himself With Heroic Save – then the disappointment. The familiar cosy acceptance of yet another defeat.

  Whilst we were one up for that unrealistic hour I felt the defeat gestating in my belly with every tick-tock of the inevitable clock, like when West Ham led Liverpool 2
–0 in Cardiff last year; the score seemed absurd. I was relieved when Liverpool got one back because the single goal advantage was more manageable.

  This sense of foreboding and tragic destiny is now our only comfort as we confront the likely absence of our national side from next year’s championship. I find it hard to condemn Steve McClaren. My facile rage rains impotently on his cadaver as furious blows rendered in a dream. It’s not his fault, I may as well rail against my cat for his inability to cook authentic Thai food.

  ‘When have we ever had a handsome England boss? Glenn Hoddle? Kevin Keegan?’

  McClaren was never the man for the England job, yet I too joined the illusion after the three consecutive 3–0 victories. I conjured tableaux of trophies held above his head, glowing with triumph in addition to the glow it perpetually maintains. Even in this, a time of terrible defeat, the McClaren bonce glows on, a beacon of gleaming mediocrity.

  It’s too soon for me to become giggly and receptive to the possibility of a romance with José Mourinho or Martin O’Neill; Mourinho won’t take it, he’s too dashed handsome – when have we ever had a handsome England boss? Glenn Hoddle? Kevin Keegan?

  I don’t know if I can summon up the gusto to hope for Israel to produce a result, I’ve reached a familiar point where, through self-pity, I can see little point in progression: ‘We don’t deserve to qualify.’

  I still cringe at the memory, decades old, of an infant chastisement – whilst out with a school friend and his mum I carried on in my typical picaresque fashion, flicking rubber bands and pocketing gobstoppers. I was told off by my mate’s mum. Naturally I was shocked and unnerved, as is always the case when a foreign authority exercises control, and I collapsed into tears. Later, when the dust had settled, consolation chocolate bars were offered. ‘I don’t deserve one,’ I sobbed, not entirely sincerely but with litres of sentimentality, sentimentality; the unearned emotion. Perhaps England need another wilderness period.

  Like in 1994 when we didn’t travel to the States for the World Cup. I hate it though, it’s rubbish when England don’t qualify; watching the games through a transparent pain of regret and bitterness. I can’t focus, every kick and whistle a taunt, an indiscreet reminder of our absence. Who can we blame? The pitch?

  Those bloody plastic pitches. When QPR and Luton used to have them it was a constant source of resentment, spoken of through clenched teeth. ‘That bloody AstroTurf,’ we all agreed, ‘it’s bad for the game.’ I don’t remember, in those days of the old First Division, the sides in question watering their plastic pitches though; that’s a bit baffling.

  Surely one of the advantages, and may I stress unfair advantages, of having a plastic pitch is that you don’t have to water it or talk to it or fertilise it; the whole caper reeks of foul play. We could blame the referee for the penalty, which was palpably outside of the box, but then Wayne Rooney’s goal was offside anyway so we can’t even be righteously aggrieved by that unfair decision.

  The FA, can we blame them? I suppose so but what’s the point, lovely old doddering sods they are, just trying to get through life. They’ll be penalised as much as anyone by the financial implications of not qualifying. Sponsorship and advertising money all nonsense now.

  We shall spend next summer trapped in our impoverished nation, peeping through a crack in the curtain as the rest of Europe indulges in an orgy of sport with our national game; swarthy Italians, sophisticated Frenchmen or possibly even joyful Scots caressing and fondling our balls because we don’t know how to look after them. Never have I felt more irritated by my inherited indifference to rugby.

  12

  First rule for life in the lounge: no swearing

  Tony Cottee requested that I be his guest in the lounge for West Ham’s last home game against Sunderland. In this context ‘being a guest in the lounge’ is not like it would be in Lady Windermere’s Fan where one would sit demurely exchanging epigrams with toffs. No, what it entails is appearing on a low-budget chat show, where you stand – that’s right, stand, I said it was low-budget – and are interviewed by Tony before an audience of West Ham fans tucking into their nosh.

  One suspects that the sedentary diners have paid handsomely for this unique afternoon of entertainment and I was determined not to let them, or Tony, down. Cottee is a hero of mine, occupying a place in my affections so formative that it is almost impossible to view him objectively. He exists in a realm shared by childhood pets, Worzel Gummidge and Morrissey; a realm that precedes rational judgment, for the retina of my consciousness was scorched by his image before the facility to analyse had evolved.

  ‘I’m still a bit angry with the tennis player lady post-pubescently. Why didn’t she put knickers on?’

  Like when I first saw that poster of the tennis player lady scratching her bottom it made me feel angry as at that early stage I didn’t know how to be aroused. Actually, I’m still a bit angry with her post-pubescently – why didn’t she put some knickers on if she knew she was going to be playing tennis? It’s flouting the sport’s conventions.

  When I think of all the bother Andre Agassi endured at Wimbledon just for wearing those colourful cycling shorts it makes my blood boil. At least he didn’t turn up on Centre Court nude from the waist down dragging himself along the baseline like dogs do to scratch their arses. It’s one rule for the rich and one for the poor.

  So with all that borne in mind you can imagine it was important I didn’t disappoint TC. He runs the executive lounges at Upton Park with the same febrile tenacity that he ran West Ham’s attack in the 80s, and he stoutly issued me with instructions: there are two lounges, we do them consecutively, Tony does the quiz and player of the month (my current heartthrob Mark Noble) then brings me out for a chat.

  He asks me five questions – ‘No pressure, it’s just a laugh’ – then we repeat the process in the second lounge. Oh, and ‘No swearing’. Simple. Here are just some of the blunders I managed to jam into my five-minute interview in lounge one:

  a) I said that I thought Dean Ashton would be influential even though Dean is currently out with a knee injury. Damn. I’ve been away for weeks in Tuscany with no internet or papers writing my autobiography. I was oblivious. I’m so sorry;

  b) I implied that in the legendary partnership between Tony and my beloved Frank McAvennie, Tony was a goal scrounger while Frank did all the running, deftly comparing it to the onstage relationship between myself and the show’s esteemed host;

  c) To illustrate the nature of man’s curiosity I evoked an analogy in which I queried whether the audience would open an envelope which contained a photograph of Her Majesty The Queen’s vagina.

  And, finally, d) I said ‘fuck’. Before we embarked on the second lounge Tony’s main note was ‘watch the swearing’, he was quite firm about it, then during interview two, which was better, as I went to relay my royal analogy Tony expertly steered me into some chat about Billy Bonds.

  And then to watch the match. I sat with Tony, his mate John and his lovely dad Clive to witness West Ham’s flattering 3–1 victory against the ‘Black Cats’ (I struggle with that nickname as it was only issued as the result of a poll in a local paper in Sunderland and I query whether or not actual Sunderland fans use it conversationally. Or if they’re too self-conscious thinking maybe they should’ve gone down a less obvious route of talismans for ill fortune in a blatant affront to their rivals Newcastle United’s nickname ‘the Magpies’) more shy about chanting than usual and profoundly touched that a man whom I used to study with awe as a child as he hustled defences and keepers and scored now sat beside me watching the team we both love.

  13

  East will always be east for lovers of freedom

  EAST EAST East London. EAST EAST East London. It’s a simple enough chant, a peculiarly forceful and evocative ditty only relevant in the minute context of Upton Park for West Ham’s home games and for tiny allocated corners elsewhere when away. I mention it only in an attempt to popularise the lyric as the two ‘EAST
S’ that precede ‘East London’ were immolated by a copy reader at the publisher of my forthcoming autobiography My Booky Wook – serialised in this paper a week Monday.

  I was describing my early visits to the Boleyn ground with my Dad, and put’…on weekend trips to EAST EAST East London…’ as a coded message to the claret and blue army. This was taken by the copy reader as evidence that she was dealing with the absent-minded doodlings of a mental patient and she swiftly exorcised the sentence of its charm so it reads simply ‘…trips to East London…’

  ‘The only way to run a club is as a dictatorship. Witness the top flight’s Stalin and Mao, Ferguson and Wenger’

  Now of course my autobiography, like the homework of a recalcitrant berk, was handed in about 20 seconds before the book was due to go to print meaning there was no time for this error to be corrected. I suppose this lady, having read a substantial portion of the booky wook by this stage, had due cause to suspect she was not editing the work of an infallible literary force and having weathered a torrent of evidence of insanity took this to be a kind of needless outburst of Touret-tic orienteering lingo rather than a sweet nod to a menacing chorus. These things happen. A trivial, accidental injustice that has speared its way into the malignant core of my creativity and lanced the tumour of furious perfectionism that festers therein. These things happen. I suppose it doesn’t really matter – it wasn’t the defining sentence of the book – but it’s difficult to quarrel with one’s own feelings, and I feel browned off.