I love the way the French do it. They either seem to get to the final of the World Cup or completely implode in the group stages and start losing to crap teams. They fail with such panache. One player calls the manager a ’son of a whore’ and gets sent home. The other players rebel and refuse to train in response to the board’s action. A member of the coaching staff nearly has a physical fight with the captain. It’s brilliant!
What happens to England? John Terry makes some very veiled criticism of Capello and he’s quickly slapped down and no more’s heard about it. Come on boys! If you’re going to underperform, do it in some style. Flounce around, have some fights, punch Beckham and then lose to Slovenia. Instead we’ll probably sneak through and get beaten on penalties in the early knockout stages.
It’s just like the end of the 18th century. The French have a revolution and get rid of their royal family while we have a bit of a moan about inequality, some republican pamphlets are distributed, but there isn’t even a decent riot. (I’m not totally sure of the accuracies of my historical generalisations as learning about this period at school coincided with my first proper relationship with a girl. I picked up what I could in between daydreaming out the window and waiting for the weekend so that I could see her again).
I would like to point out that I’m not advocating republicanism by the way. The British Royal Family do amazing work, not least by putting struggling comics on the Royal Variety performance and giving their careers a lift.
I’m not going to watch the Slovenia game. I could pretend this is me taking a stand against this ridiculous sport but I’m actually doing the warm up on Rob Brydon’s new series and the first show is being filmed that day. Rob’s got some amazing celebrity guests and some great stand ups appearing on the show (one of them’s me!). I’ve watched him rehearsing and worked on some of the stand up myself but what is really great about Rob is his interaction with the audience and his guests. I find that being funny off the cuff is something I only really excel at when I’m in the mood but Rob does it even under the greatest pressure (I realise I’m sucking up to him but, along with the Queen, the man has helped my career enormously in the last year and a half!).
Anyway, good luck for tomorrow England. I just hope that if the boys are going out they do something so truly depraved and shocking that it makes the trip worth it for all those travelling fans.
