My 10 favourite sentences from The Premier League Handbook (1992)

A book fell off my shelf yesterday. It was a guide to the first-ever Premier League season, which was also the first year that I was aware of the existence of football. I don’t remember the old First Division, league games on ITV, Italia ‘90, Sweden ‘92. Never saw Lineker play, never saw John Barnes play well. No, actually I have one memory of Gary Lineker, and it’s of him missing – and I mean really atrociously missing – a penalty against Brazil at Wembley. That, for me, constitutes the career of England’s greatest striker since Kerry Dixon.

A younger Richard Keys, in those more innocent times when Rupert Murdoch was just a chummy little Aussie who we were all delighted wasn't Robert Maxwell. I say we. I was six, I didn't give a shit.

So that’s where it started for me, and – well, you really don’t expect things to have changed much, for all change since then has surely been gradual and observed. But things have changed. Jack Wilshere was six months old when this went to print. He’s changed loads.

More trivia: one of the contributors to this book was Boyd Hilton, now the TV editor of Heat and all-round gay egg.

1. “Old Trafford. Capacity: 36,000″
2. “Of course, ticket prices are still a significant source of income. Stamford Bridge will be the most expensive ground to watch Premier League soccer – the cheapest adult seat will now cost £20″
3. “Oldham lack the financial muscle to compete with the Big Five”
4. The multiple references to Sky’s “space-age gadgetry”, culminating in:
5. “Tension will be heightened by a clock running constantly in one corner of the screen”
6. “After each match, Joe Kinnear asks his players to vote for the worst member of the side. Last season, the offender was despatched to see Uncle Vanya at the National Theatre (‘the most boring play running in London’)”
7. “There’s still plenty of quality at Tottenham. Dean Austin has the class to vie for a full-back slot in Graham Taylor’s international squad”
8. “Chelsea: Strikers: Tony Cascarino, Dennis Wise [??], Graham Stuart, Eddie Newton, Joe Allon, Andy Myers”
9. “Arsenal: Midfielders: David Hillier, Ray Parlour, Paul Davis, John Jensen, Jimmy Carter, Perry Groves”
10. Players that were still playing: Gordon Strachan, Peter Reid, Ray Wilkins, Cyrille Regis, Trevor Francis, Bryan Robson

Hallowe’en, revisited

I took the overnight bus down from Edinburgh, which was a silly thing to do. It brought a spangly, pulsating weekend to an end with ten hours of fetid squalor. I could have spent the journey reliving happy memories, but consumed as I am with a hateful, vengeful wrath that few on this earth have ever experienced, that’s not really in my nature.

I spent Saturday night dressed as a beautiful if slightly licentious woman. I’d put a picture up, but the one photo I possess of the evening would utterly ruin me professionally, financially, socially and legally. It was a good night. I shot a baboon. Or something. Sunday passed without incident.

Shortly before 7am this morning, then, I stepped shivering into the grey light of Victoria coach station. I was looking forward to a cup of coffee, a fried breakfast and a shower. Coffee and breakfast negotiated, I infiltrated the Telegraph’s plush shower rooms, took off my jeans, and discovered – and there’s really no way to sidestep the issue – that I was wearing a pair of lacy green knickers underneath.

Moreover, I was being watched by five people. One of them I think I recognised as the Head of Circulation.

I muttered something about having been to a party and locked myself in a shower cubicle for 45 minutes.

Another poem. Sorry.

I will put something good up soon. I promise. Meantime, verse.

All Over
by Jonathan Liew

Gabriel Agbonlahor was looking quite nervous.
(As first lines to poems go, it’s unconventional.)
Biting his nails almost down to the cuticles.
Twiddling his sparse wisps of hair into at least eight tent pegs.

This did not escape Capello.
Nothing escaped Capello.
Except that time Wayne Rooney gave him that home-made fudge after dinner in Andorra
And then sprinted into a waiting taxi with the short burst of pace that makes him one of the world’s most feared strikers.
That time he escaped Capello.
(It was not fudge, Capello recalled, gnashing his teeth still.)

Still.
A pep talk was required.
The Italian sits his weary little ass down
Next to Gabby,
Are you all right, my son?
It doesn’t sound quite right coming out of a foreign mouth.
When people from other countries say ‘son’, they generally mean ‘son’.
For it to mean something else is a quite uniquely British
Um.
Thing.

You are one of the brightest and best, Fabio opines.
You are golden, my child.
Soar and conquer.
Quench the thirst of a nation.
Oh, and Nesta’s not as quick as he was.

I’m not worried about that, Agbonlahor replies, his twiddled hair looking faintly ridiculous and upward-sticking.
I’m worried because I can’t open my kit bag, and there’s something in it, and it’s ticking.

The door will not open.
Stuart Downing pounds a fist against it.
Fat lot of good that’ll do.
Move to one side, a deep voice says.
I’m taking a run-up.
Who else?
It’s Heskey.

Heskey lies concussed on the dressing room floor.
David James has managed to prise Agbonlahor’s kit bag open.
Yup. It’s definitely a bomb.
There’s three minutes and forty-two seconds remaining.
One of those annoying times which you’re never quite sure whether to round up or round down.
Anyway, says Capello. This isn’t ideal.
What with the doors locked and all, there is a strong chance we will not be making it onto the pitch today.
He clears his throat a little uneasily.
He is aware inspiring words are required of him at this stage.
Words that will mark the occasion.
Only his translator went back to the bus to get his Maeve Binchy.
It’ll have to be the personal organiser.

Capello taps some words into his personal organiser.
Great players you are, an American voice drones. Pleasure to me it have been.
Capello feels certain that’s not correct English.
He puts the personal organiser back into his pocket.
We must play football, he tells his squad.
We were born to play, and we will die to play.
(Little slip of the tongue there.
Don’t think they noticed.)
Pass me the bomb, he orders Wes Brown.

Rooney has already cracked open the post-match champagne.
Defoe holds out an angled flute.
Ninety seconds left. Brown passes it to Lescott.
Lescott to Gerrard.
Gerrard back to Lescott.
Lescott finds Walcott on the right hand side.
Walcott sends it high
Crouch gets his head on it.
Ow. Fuck sake.
Milner picks up the loose bomb.
Gareth Barry with it now.
Still Barry.
Barry takes it forward.
Barry still has it.
He’s got…
Some people are on the piss.
They think it’s all over
It is now.

The main difference between Natasha Bedingfield and Brian Close, former England cricketer

Jonathan wades into the size zero model debate. OH YES

Technically, size zero should mean someone who doesn't have any physical dimensions whatsoever. What if you find someone who's smaller than size zero? What size would a rabbit be?

Consider the sumo wrestler. Sumo wrestlers lead a highly regimented life, devoted almost exclusively to the pursuit of a body shape necessary for them to compete at a high level. They are not allowed to eat breakfast, while lunch consists of a huge portion of meat stew washed down by copious amounts of beer, and are ordered to sleep immediately afterwards so as to maximise weight gain. As a result, the life expectancy of a sumo wrestler is around 60, heart attacks are common, and in later life they often develop arthritis as their extra bulk plays havoc with their joints. All of this rather puts the supermodel culture into perspective.

Messing with your body for financial incentive is nothing new. The size zero phenomenon is simply a product of market forces. Taking our righteous ire out on a poor stack of ribcage and fabric is like trying to combat a spate of burglaries by launching a crackdown on possessions. Sort of. It’s not a perfect analogy. Anyway, let’s press on.

In the interests of disclosure, I should point out that I’m a size 12. Thin, but with deceptively broad shoulders. But the arguments against size zero are as nebulous as they are multifarious. I’m speaking purely from personal experience here, but I do not find myself surrounded by a cascade of women captive to their quest for a 24-inch waist. People can generally tell the difference between ‘beauty’ and beauty. If you want to ‘ban’ size zero women from your magazine in order to focus on ‘real women’ with ‘identities’, then knock yourself out. But don’t try and tell me you’re doing it for the environment, because you’re not.

So there you have it. In conclusion: shut up.

That argument really disintegrated.