I can make you hate (32 page)

The worst thing about the ongoing kerfuffle over superinjunctions is that it keeps forcing me to contemplate the extracurricular activity of men who kick balls around lawns for a living. Since I’m not into sport, I simply don’t ‘get’ the deification of footballers. I can see they’ve got a demanding physical task to do, and I can appreciate that some do it better than others – but that’s the extent of my understanding. When they’re not at work, what’s so interesting about them? Seriously, what?

It’s like living in a world in which half the population has. inexplicably decided to worship Shire horses. But, as if that wasn’t 
strange enough, they’re not content to simply admire the animals’ ability to pull brewery wagons: they also want to know what the horses get up to back at the stables. And when Dobbin goes on a hay-eating binge, or tries to mount a donkey, not only will they voraciously read all about it, they’ll judge him for it. They’ll phone HoofTalk FM to pontificate on air about what a bad horse he is. In behaving like a simple horse, Dobbin, who is richly rewarded with nosebags and thoroughbred fillies, has committed the ultimate crime: he’s set a bad example to their children.

I don’t have kids, but I know enough about parenting to state the following with confidence: any parent who is genuinely concerned that their child’s worldview might be hopelessly altered by the unruly behaviour of a footballer has failed as a parent.

Footballers, we’re told, should be role models. A few months ago, Wayne Rooney swore into the camera during a live televised football match, and the world briefly reacted as though he’d burst into a toddler’s birthday party and brutally molested a duckling.

The general consensus was that he was being a bad role model to the nation’s kiddywinks. Rubbish. He was being a brilliant role model. He’d just scored a hat-trick – thereby excelling in his chosen field – when a cameraman (who, by all accounts, wasn’t supposed to be standing that close to the players) poked a lens in his fizzog. At which point Rooney demonstrated an entirely healthy instinctive disdain for the cameras, for the media, and ultimately for all the hoopla surrounding his primary task, which is kicking balls into nets. He’d just scored a goal and everything else could, quite literally, ‘fuck off’. Good for him.

Conversely, anyone who took to the airwaves to huff and whine about Rooney being a poor ‘ambassador for the game’ was an abysmal role model for children. Remember, kids – it’s not how you play the game that matters, but how prosaically servile you are in front of the cameras.

The ‘role model’ argument is often tied to another popular bone of contention about prominent sportsfolk: their bank
balances. During last week’s
Question Time,
one member of the audience expressed her disappointment with Ryan Giggs, explaining that his off-pitch behaviour was of particular concern because ‘we pay his wages’. Presumably she works in the human resources department of Manchester United.

Athletes earn astronomical sums because that’s how society has chosen to reward them. It’s wonky and demented, and I don’t understand it, but that’s the way it is. Corporations, the media and the public have somehow conspired to create that environment. They designed, dug and filled the ornamental fishpond: now they complain when the goldfish shit in the water.

Ah, yes, right, yes, right, but … footballers aren’t content to rake in obscene amounts of money just by kicking balls around. They sign lucrative sponsorship deals and advertise soft drinks and razorblades. And in those commercials they’re depicted as nice guys. But now we know they’re not nice guys! They traded off their image! It’s a lie! They owe us! They owe us!

No they don’t. They owe the sponsors, maybe, if they signed a contract promising to behave like Saint Agnes of Rome. If you, the consumer, are suggestible enough to buy a particular brand of aftershave just because a footballer sploshed it round his cheeks on a billboard, you should take a long hard look at your own malleability. And if you now feel wounded and deceived because he was smiling on the poster, not shagging or snarling, then you’re far too fragile for this world. Newsflash: adverts are set in a parallel fantasy realm. That Go Compare tenor? Not only is he miming, that moustache isn’t real. Oh, and meerkats aren’t Russian. Please stop quaking and remain calm.

Given all the above, what is the indignation about footballers’ private lives really all about? Either an outlet for envy and resentment – they’re paid too much and celebrated too keenly – or perhaps just a subconsciously adopted psychological position used to excuse our own basic prurience. Let’s be honest: we’re judgemental and nosy. We want to hear all the juicy details so we
can experience the cathartic rush of being enraged by them, like a cuckolded boyfriend demanding a second-by-second account of his girlfriend’s infidelity.

Given the alternating streams of adulation and rage flung in their direction, I’m amazed footballers retain their sanity. They exist in a bizarre dimension of banknotes and blowjobs and furious mobs. And all they’re supposed to do is kick balls into nets. It’s impossible to pity them – but to actively resent them? That’s madness. Like shaking your fist at a Shire horse.

It’s incredible how quickly we humans can develop a languid sense of entitlement over even the simplest of things. For instance, I’ve spent hours of my waking life in TV comedy writing rooms, which usually consist of about four or five people seated around a table coming up with gags. That’s the idea, anyway. The reality often resembles a bizarre group therapy session in which a small cluster of faintly dysfunctional individuals have been encouraged to exorcise their collective anxiety by discussing appalling notions in the most flippant manner imaginable.

You’re supposed to remain locked in said chamber until the script is complete – all of you sitting there, breathing in and out and perspiring, with the windows permanently closed, which is why writers’ rooms quickly develop the fetid aroma of a becalmed submarine. But it’s not quite a hermetically sealed environment. Human beings have to be kept fed and watered, which is why, at periodic intervals, a runner will enter the room to ask if anyone wants a coffee or a can of Coke, to take lunch orders (I have no idea what comedy writers ate before the advent of Nando’s), or, if things are really dragging on, to take dinner orders too.

All very cosy. But here’s the funny thing: after a few weeks of this, you become hopelessly infantilised. Cans of Coke, for instance, are often stored in a fridge about fifteen seconds’ walk from the writers’ room. Yet rather than leaving the room to fetch one yourself the moment you’re thirsty, it quickly becomes second nature to wait until the runner appears and order it from them. Not because you think they’re a waiter, nor even out of sheer laziness, but because you’ve genuinely on some level ‘forgotten’ you’re capable of locating and opening the fridge yourself. In other words, you’re spoiled.

I bring this up because the other day I went online to post a Spotify playlist for people to listen to (if you’re visiting from 1903, Spotify is a service that streams music to your computer – think of it as an infinitely huge jukebox. Although being from 1903, you won’t know what a jukebox is either. Sorry. Guess you’ll just have to fend for yourself).

Anyway, some people listened to it, some people didn’t – but some objected to the mere mention and use of Spotify. Spotify, they said, was like Nick Clegg: it had promised one thing, only to turn round and do another. It offered free music for all (supported by ad breaks, like commercial radio), only to recently scale this back to ten hours of free music per month. The reason for the scaleback? Presumably an attempt to make the whole thing financially viable – by encouraging more people to subscribe. Subscribers pay about £5 per month and can listen to as much music as they want, without any ad breaks. If they go up to £10 they can also listen to music on their phones, even while offline.

In 1986, when I was fifteen, a twelve-inch single cost roughly £2.99 – the equivalent of just over £6 today. And unless you were loaded, you didn’t just buy records willy-nilly. You chose carefully and coveted what you had. (You also taped loads of them off the radio for nothing, but that often required the will and patience to sit through Bruno Brookes.)

Anyhow. I’m not claiming five quid a month is insignificant:
it’s more than many can afford. But in this case it’s bloody cheap for what it gets you. The problem for Spotify is that no one wants to pay for anything they access via a computer – and when they do, there’s a permanent level of resentment bubbling just under the surface. Hence the anger about ‘only’ getting ten hours of free music.

Look at the App Store. Read the reviews of novelty games costing 59p. Lots of slaggings – which is fair enough when you’re actively warning other users not to bother shelling out for something substandard. But they often don’t stop there. In some cases, people insist the developers should be jailed for fraud, just because there weren’t enough levels for their liking. I once read an absolutely scathing one-star review in which the author bitterly complained that a game had only kept them entertained for four hours.

FOUR HOURS? FOR 59P? AND YOU’RE ANGRY ENOUGH TO WRITE AN ESSAY ABOUT IT? ON YOUR £400 IPHONE? HAVE YOU LOST YOUR FUCKING MIND?

Yes. Of course they have. Because it’s human nature. Like a runner who fetches us cans of drink when we’re thirsty, technology has left us hopelessly spoiled. We whine like disappointed emperors the moment it does anything other than pander to our every whim. If the internet gave free backrubs, people would complain when it stopped because its thumbs were sore.

I ranted about precisely this on Twitter the other day – using that precise line about back rubs – and a couple of people told me to shut up because I was annoying them. Since Twitter is a) free and b) only displays commentary from those you chose to follow, this, too, is madness – like tailing someone down the street only to complain about the tune they’ve chosen to hum.

And even now, because these words too will appear on the internet, I know someone, somewhere, will be formulating a complaint in their head because I’ve reused my ‘free internet back rubs’ tweet in this article. They’d read it on Twitter last week, and 
now they’re dismayed to have to read it on their computer again today. Your Majesty is displeased. I’ve let myself down but more importantly, I’ve let them down. As has everything that provides anything other than perpetual complimentary delight.