Richard Kay

Well life in London has become pretty boring: work, run, pub and The Wire being the general order of things. In fact apart from various rumors involving footballers and failed drug tests, which may or may not come out in the press over the next week (YHIHF) my life has gone back to being unbelievably dull and monotonous, a bit like this blog! So anyway in a fug of angst I joined Twitter. I seem to feel a constant sense of panic that I'm missing out on modernity and technological revolution, so I start writing blogs and getting twittered up, living my life out in the technological stratosphere! Twitter is a good idea, in that you can, in many cases, stalk famous/talented people you admire/lust after and if they are sad enough to spend longer than 5 mins a week on it you can follow every boring meander of a day's eating, drinking and (in the case of Amando Iniucci) making amazing comedy television. The thing is its just like the application on Facebook where nobs write status updates like: 'Nick is feeling loose and eating apples.' Clearly as a general rule people who update their status pages on Facebook about anything other than football are generally fuckwits. All this suggests everyone on Twitter must be a flid, but ultimately they are not and its a lot less annoying seeing what Sven Vath and Newt Gingritch, to name but a few, are up to, than the class of 2002's prime wierdo is eating/fucking/watching/listening to. My first day enjoying 140 words of meaningless shite rather than writing a page of funny but lugubrious witticisms for my blog, saw me flicking through Twitter trying to find important celebrities and organisations that I either respect or despised. I found some heroes: Stephen Fry (Britain's most popular 'Twitterer'), London Electricity (wicked podcasts mate), Plastician (best dubstep dj in the world), The Guardian (beautiful champagne-socialist newspaper mostly read by guilty millionaires living in Hampstead and depressed teachers), Charlie Brooker (funny fucker) and of course FC United of Manchester. 

The original Manchester United went right down in my fucking estimations when they then immediately sent me a follower request from the fucking Megastore tweet pages. Truly they are a cancerous organization, and for me as a fan to say this is pretty depressing. Sadly a lot of other people I really hate had very 'unupdated' Twitter pages. I wanted to see how renegade flapjacks like N-Dubz, George Osbourne and Richard Littlejon manage to live with themselves. Do they eat normal food? Have friends? Ponder the reasoning behind their nasty characteristics? Or God forbid write blogs!?

One guy who really is a complete fuck and didn't even feature on Twitter was Richard Kay the Daily Mail columnist on all things royal, banal, petty, boring and cuntish. In a way his column is so nauseating its entertaining, and by the way the only time I ever see it is when my Grandma comes to stay and leaves her Daily Mail lying around. (Keep your enemies closer...blah blah blah!) Some might think Richard is a sort of soft and pointless target for my ire but this is a man who has for many, many years earned a very good living writing a completely shit column about minor royals and an odious 'elite' class of British people who go to Polo tournaments, have mental breakdowns and generally act like normal people would if they were inbred/worked in the city/went to an all boys public school or owned half of London. If anyone exemplifies the total drudgery and talentless baseness of modern, credit crunch Britain then surely it is this unbelievably boring shitebag.

Looking at some of the guff he has chosen to write about today (25/06/09) underlines the unbelievable amount of space his boring gossip wastes in a major national newspaper. Whilst innocent Iranian's are being shot in the streets of Tehran, the British Tax payer is being fleeced by its own government and Pakistan lies on the brink of Civil War with the Taliban this fuckhead is talking about John Nettles retiring from Midsummer Murders and Princess Michael of Kent air kissing Fergie at a charity bash. Seriously what the fuck?!!

The fact that many thousands of people obviously read and enjoy this pointless rubbish makes life feel a bit futile.  If you read and enjoy my pointless rubbish then that in part compensates for Richard's sad, lonely readers!

Until next week....mwah!

p.s oh and please could Wimbledon fuck, fuck, fuck right off...people in facepaint, women from the home counties screaming and loads of general cunts wondering around drunk on strawberries and Pimms, it is a cringeworthy event that seems to act as a magnet for people like Richard Kay and the tragic characters he stalks via his column. 

Tracy Emin, Jay Jopling, Nick Roeg and other people!

My title for this blog is in much the same style as one of the only other blogs I bother to read: 'Confessions of a Correspondent' Andy Mitten's highly amusing weekly updates on the 442 website.  As a United fan and founding editor of United We Stand, one of our better fanzines, Andy's job basically involves traveling between Manchester and his second home in Barcelona and writing various football related articles for Spanish and English newspapers. His average week might see him interview Lionel Messi for 442 at Barca's training ground before flying to Manchester for a mid-week champions league games, having a laugh with his good mate and United legend Paddy Cerrand, filling off some copy and interviewing David May for his new book on United in the 90's, before finally returning to Barcelona in time for their Saturday evening derby with Espanyol. As a result all his blogs have envy inducing titles like: 'Partying with Xavi, Rooney and Dennis Irwin in Tiger Tiger Manchester and shaking hands with Pele in Geneva.' 

Anyway I said last week I wouldn't talk about football so I won't. Since getting back from South America I have desperately been trying to get some money back in the bank and have rejoined the catering company that I have worked for on and off for about three years. Now this company, which will remain nameless, is one of those London based organizations that work the top end clients, think along the lines of big summer parties for the wealthier City firms and all those major celebrity wankathons like the Serpentine bash in Hyde Park and the Gorbachev Charity Ball where you get the cream of the cuntish crop rubbing shoulders together over plates of slow roasted Partridge and an endless supply of terrible Grey Goose cocktails invented by David Furnish. Regardless of the occasion theses events always seem to involve filling a room with aging rock stars, depressed hedgefunders, annoying Sloane Rangers, pretentious YBAs (who are mostly Old British Millionaires now), fawning media types, gay fashionistas and a generous sprinkling of random twats and hangers on, giving them good champagne, letting them hoover up as much coke as they can in the luxury portaloos and then forcing them into posing for pictures with Geordie Greig the editor of Tatler. Obviously pre-credit crunch London couldn't get enough of this kind of shite but this summer looks to be a lot more austere and many of my company's clients have had to reign in their budgets or stop their parties altogether.

So last nights job at the Luis Vuitton sponsored opening of Tracy Emin's show at The White Cube in SW1 was a good opportunity for both my company to make some much needed dollar and London's rich and famous to get their botoxed faces back in Tatler and the Daily Mail's showbiz column. Ok so it wasn't exactly the Bacchanal mash up I was hoping for, the White Cube can only hold about 120 people for a night like this and it was a faintly serious evening involving a dreary 45 minute talk from Tracy Emin on her 'work' but nevertheless I served drinks to some interesting people and drew a number of important conclusions from the evening. 

First and foremost lets deal with the woman of the hour: Tracy fucking Emin. Now I don't want to come across as some kind of internet nerd who uses the anonymity afforded by the web to snipe at the rich and famous but in this case I really must say that the woman is a complete waste of fucking space. For starters she looks like a fucking bag lady, and really for someone with as much money as her she could seriously do with a bit of plastic surgery. Also how has such a talentless person ended up doing as well as she has? Now I'm not a completely clueless twat when it comes to modern art and some of the YBA's are pretty good especially the Chapman brothers but Emin's show last night just seemed to involve some neon lighting and a lot of 'sexual angst combined with a latent fear of never being loved.' Nothing she seemed to be trying to say was in any way original, interesting or provocative it was just an expensive version of Now magazine. Also she was fucking miserable, fucking rude, wore a shit dress and generally acted like a complete cow. Someone should tell her to fuck off back to Margate.

Ok so who else can I have a pop at? Well actually most of the other well known faces were pretty interesting, even talented  characters and did nothing of much interest. Nick Roeg, the esteemed British director of seminal classics including Performance and Don't Look Now turned up, politely took a drink and then looked bored for the rest of the evening as he was forced to look at Emin's pictures and listen to her drone on and on. Others in the room included Dylan Jones the editor of GQ, Jefferson Hack the lad who knocked Kate Moss up, Ben Whishaw the acclaimed young actor, loads of fit milfs, loads of old rich men and Jay Jopling the founder of White Cube. He looked pretty depressed with life and complained when he couldn't get into the toilet. Oh yea Princess Michael of Kent turned up looking like she had had a pint of Botox injected into each temple and I wondered about asking her to banish Emin back to Kent but I doubt Princess Michael knows much of the Thanet area living as she does in Belgravia and she actually seemed rather enamored with the shite on display, so I decided against it. 

So that was about it, I still don't understand the point of these occasions, everyone looks either bored or upset, the whole process cost a fortune and you end up having to pose with Geordie Greig; who turned up late looking flustered and disappointed that he still had to sit through ten minutes of Emin babbling on about beds, lights, fucking and the artistic pain of looking like an alcoholic tramp. 

Until next time. 

Ronaldo finally fucks off and I renew.

Well the circus has thankfully drawn to a welcome close. It's been three years coming and the continual onslaught of press speculation every summer had run its course and tried my patience for the final time. Unlike many idiots who follow United I'm not going to criticize Ronny, he has been a great servant to the club and certainly one our greatest ever players; which is no mean feat when you look at the calibre of our teams down the years. What is clear from the whole affair is that money has probably ruined football forever, Ronaldo is still very young and very immature, Madrid are a despicable outfit bankrolled by the Spanish establishment who can't face Barca running away with the title next year and United are now effectively a selling club. Not that I feel pissed off or embittered by the whole situation!

Anyway most people expect United to sign one of three from Benzema, Ribery and David Villa, I on the other hand expect at most two forays into the transfer market for a cut price Valencia from Wigan and perhaps a new central midfielder. The rest of the 80 million will be 'deemed' unnecessary by Ferguson and will instead go to financing the £63 million debt the Glaziers ran up last year. Whilst I hope that in some part I'm wrong I would rather this awful scenario happened than for United to jump headfirst into an inflated transfer market and deny the promising youngsters we have coming through our ranks a place in the first team next year. Of course I want to retain the title, especially with Chelsea improving their squad and the Vermin remaining dangerous but if it required United copying Madrid and paying stupid money for bellow par players, the sense of victory would feel hollower than it did this season!

On an even more depressing note I have given into my pathetic addiction to United and renewed my season ticket, without even knowing if the club will move me as I have requested! I seriously think that this season will be my last under the Glazier regime, with continual price hikes and a rejection of loyal fans for new, moneyed day trippers I'm not holding out much hope for the atmosphere this season. Fuck it, at the moment football has lost any allure it once had for me personally, I can't help but hope that the whole system crashes and clubs are forced to rebuild from the bottom up. If this would get rid of the clueless twats who follow my club I would gladly sacrifice United's success for a couple of seasons (so long as the Vermin were also fucked!)

Anyway I'm focusing as much time as possible on my writing now so trying to forget about football is definitely a good thing to do. Stay tuned to the next blog to hear how an upcoming job interview goes. I have a feeling it will be amusing! And I promise not to talk about football! Maybe. 

Ok so I'm back in England after 5 months of traveling around South America. It feels fucking weird to be back, perhaps the strangest thing is sleeping in a comfortable bed with extended periods of darkness and silence, as opposed to spending entire evenings in hostels being woken up by drunken Irish and odd Germans.
Anyway I got back into normal life pretty quickly with a Sunday Roast and a quality pint before bed at 4 in the afternoon. The following day, a Monday, I went to a preview of 'Looking for Eric' directed by Ken Loach at the London School of Film followed by a Q and A with the producer Rebecca O'Brien. I'm pleased to say that it was pretty good, not fantastic but not shite. As a United fan and Cantona devotee I was impressed by the accurate depiction of nuanced fan culture and the true Mancunian spirit upon which Manchester United was built. A quick glance at the IMDB website depressingly reveals that one disgruntled viewer has labeled the film as 'awful' because in his eyes it wrongly depicts United as a working man's team. Its sad to say but today most people associate United with business, with greed, with Korean fans armed with cameras and with the death of football. To a large extent they are right. As Loach's film perhaps unwittingly reveals, the older generation of United fans, who stood by the club during the barren decades that were the 70's and 80's now can't afford to go. Traditions and passion have been replaced by corporate boxes and replica shirts, whilst many fans have finally decided to leave United to the cuntish Glaziers and their horrible grasp of basic economics.
Without wanting to ramble on for hours and sound like an angry grandparent 'Looking for Eric' was a film that really brought home to me the problems facing not just modern football and Manchester United but Britain as a whole. Many people of my generation (18-25) can't find solace and escape in the simple joy of going to a live football game. Everything has become so dominated by money, media hype and envy that young people today are blinded by the bright lights of wealth and glamor rather than the simplicity of being with your mates, having a sing-song and getting pissed. Of course there are many more important nuances to life than this but the point Loach is making is clear: priorities and culture has changed, where once the football fan was portrayed as a working class hooligan they are now more than likely to be a corporate free loader, munching on prawn sandwiches and drinking champagne.
Enough complaining about football, I'm currently weighing up the pro's and con's of renewing my United season ticket and I'm erring to ending the love affair and trying out some FCUM games next year. Until next week, GS. !!

Ok so a week after the debacle that was both my first drunken foray into the world of blogs and United's awful performance against Barcelona, I am pleased to report that I am fully recovered from the cruel intensity of absolute disappointment and hopefully sober enough to make coherent sense! Feel a deep sense of nostalgia today, tinged with excitement as I'm about to finish 5 months of traveling through South America and am currently making my last pit stop in the amazing place that is Miami South Beach before flying home to London in 2 days.
Anyway it was a pretty interesting last few days in Columbia as I wanted to make the most of everything the country has to offer in an extremely short amount of time. With 3 Dutch lads and a mate from Sheffield in tow we had some pretty exciting times up on the North Carribean coast in and around the very cool colonial town of Cartegena. To cut some long and probably fairly boring stories short we (in no particular order) visited a strip club/brothel with some of the most beautiful girls I have ever seen (we looked but didn't touch promise!), jumped in a volcano full of mud, drunk 21 litres of Rum between 5 of us in 4 days, watched Wolverine in a vast American style Shopping Mall (both were a total pile of wank) and generally behaved very badly!
The highlight of that last week however was not the incredible tropical vista that met our bloodshot eyes every morning and surprisingly nor was it the draw dropping beauty of Columbian women...no it was in fact a truly amazing man from Grimbsby. You see the morning we decided to visit the local mud volcano that I mentioned earlier, a young lad called Dan from the North East of England also decided to tag along. Considering he hadn't slept for two days, had been drinking pretty much consistantly for 48 hours and had clearly shoved enough coke up his snounty nose to floor Steven Tyler at the height of his 1980's pomp, this was probably not a good idea on his part. I will now take you through a detailed timeline of what ensued over the next 24 hours.
8:00 Everyone climbs on tourist bus. Atmosphere of quiet weariness, a bit like Manchester City's Wastelands on matchday. Broken by a strong Northern accent as Grimbsby Dan climbs aboard fag hanging out of mouth, large beer in hand still fresh and buzzing from a night on the tiles.
9:00 Dan has passed out after regaling our Columbian guide and the rest of the coach to 45 mins of Grimbsby football anthems. ie. 'We piss on your fish.' People finally able to relax.
10:30 Coach arrives at mud volcano, Dan is first off the bus wearing nothing but a pair of back to front Unbro shorts.
11:00 Time to jump into the mud. It's a bizzarre experience further enhanced by Dan bombing into it, nearly sinking and then shouting loudly about getting mud in his eyes.
12:00 Time to get out. In front of perhaps 50 Columbian school children and 100 tourists and locals Dan's shorts slip down his ankles as he climbs from the mud. Cue shocked horror and looks of total amzement from the kids as Dan instead of pulling them straight up does a couple of spins and puts his arms in the air Elvis style.
12:15 Local women take us down to a small lake to scrub the mud off, its not as dodgy as it sounds unless you include Dan asking one to 'Give him a nosh.' Luckily his Grimbsby vowels make about as much sense as his football chants.
12:45 Time to chill and enjoy the views ect and get some much needed water down our parched throats. Dan buys three beers and gets back on it.
13:00 Local women who washed us come looking for their 50p tip. Dan has spent all his money on beer and instead offers them this gem: "Hmm you wan't a tip...never eat yellow snow." Once again the irony is lost on them.
14:00 Reach a local beach where we have lunch. Dan throws up twice, orders three more beers which he pays for with a fake twenty peso note. Goes around everyone on our bus asking for a cig. Cue more football songs and a long, twiseted tale about him going all the way back from Global Gathering three years ago naked.
15:00 Back to Cartegenia we relax by the pool. Dan disappears for six hours.
21:00 Out on the local bar strip Dan is spotted. He is struggling to walk and is in the company of two Columbian tramps carrying a half-full bottle of Aguacaliente (Columbia's version of Ouzo.)
22:00 (Friend back at the hostel continues the story as we were elsewhere.) Dan returns to the hostel barely able to talk, walk, breathe or blink. He jumps on a sunbed and talks to himself for about twenty minutes.
22:20 Dan decides to go for a walk upstairs to the roof terrace. Trips back down the stairs, cutting the back of his head and knocking him out.
23:00 Local police arrive. Study Dan as one would study a creature in the zoo. One kicks him, the other prods him. Both agree he needs hospital treatment but they sure as fuck ain't going to take him.
23:30 Dan is put into a taxi to the hospital with a charitable American. They return thirty mins later because the hospital don't treat drunks.
00:15 Dan crosses the road and buys another beer. Comes back and drinks it lying in a hammock. Then proceeds to shit and piss himself simultaneously.
01:50 Dan is found by a member of staff babbling to himself in his own mess.
02:30 Member of staff has managed to get Dan out of his clothes and into a shower.
03:00 We return from town to see said member of staff cleaning shit off the bathroom sinks whilst a naked Dan is sprawled unconsious on a sunbed.
05:00 Dan is ejected from the hostel.
So that was the highlight of my weeks folks! After months on the South American gringo trail suffering the endless stream of English public school boys, European hippies, ex-Israeli soldiers and wierd old people I finally come face to face with a man who reminds me of what makes both Britain and package holidays to Ibiza so fucking brilliant. Now absolutely can't wait to get home and enjoy a whole seething world of Dans!!