I bid you good day. I have returned refreshed from a sojourn to discover the source of the Zambezi. Whilst I was there I spent a delightful evening with the owner of a West Lothian football club, the name of which escapes me – Livingston, I presume.
Upon venturing deep into the remote jungle, I encountered a tribe who had no contact with the wider world for over one hundred years. They approached, and I, with great trepidation, held out my hand in peace. Their leader clasped it and pulled me close. With fevered brow he enquired, “How did Spurs get £85 million for Gareth Bale?”
SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR THE ACCIDENTAL RACISTS
If we think of England’s top league as a village, this week we have discovered its idiot. Perhaps the most interesting story has been Tottenham’s racist insistence that their nickname, The Yids, is not racist, despite it being obviously racist. Still they chant the word, loudly and proudly, despite Ledley King, Gary Lineker, The British Board of Deputies of British Jews, Kick It Out, The Football Association, and everyone in the world who isn’t a Spurs fan telling them to stop it. “But pray, it is a positive reclamation of a word that was once used against us,” they cry.
This, unfortunately is a proposition which cannot stand; otherwise we may be treated to the unfortunate and unseemly spectacle of abusive and ungentlemanly invective aimed at other minority groups being used “in a positive way” by people who really, despite their best intentions, have no agency over the term itself. How would we all feel about the Bradford Paki Army? Or the Brighton Faggots? If there are any Spurs fans reading this, re-read those nicknames and try and make them in any way acceptable for everyday use, where there are small children around. Quite hard, is it not?
In the brotherly spirit of football, I hereby humbly proffer a number of suggestions which celebrate Spurs connection to the Jewish community of north London without using a racist and derogatory term that recalls the unimaginable horrors of Europe in the middle of the last century. I have delved into my dictionary of Yiddish, a rich and wonderful language, which yields a glorious argot of linguistic, mouth-filling delight. Really, why should Spurs settle for ‘Yids’, when there are far more appropriate terms for them to identify with.
The Klutzes – This would have been most apt for your latest trip to the Emirates, where your expensively assembled team of lumbering goat-herds and cheats misplaced more passes than they completed.
The Sputzes – It’s Spurs, it’s Putz, it means ‘The Tottenham Fools’. It is perfect.
The Golems – Kyle Walker… Sandro… Chiriches… Andros Townsend… Jan Vertonghen… Roberto Soldado… “in Jewish folklore, a figure artificially constructed in the form of a human being and endowed with life.”
The Meeskeits – ‘The Uglies’. Anyone who has witnessed the horrors of White Hart Lane upon the lantern, before you’ve had the chance to avert thine gaze, will know precisely why this one will work.
The Chiam Yankels – ‘The Half-Wits’. Admittedly, this one would have been butter under the auspices of MENSA chairman Harold Redknapp.
The Farbiseners – ‘The Sour People’
The Durkhfals – ‘The Failures’
Or perchance the excellent composite Tokhes-Schmuck Durkfahls, which means the Bum Idiot Failures and sounds a little bit like Tottenham Hotspurs.
SMOKING
Young Monsieur Wilshère was caught puffing on an elegant and tasty stress-relieving cigaroon last week following our thoroughly enjoyable conquest of Naples. Good luck to the young fellow is what I say; at least we can say to that horrendous, bewigged, no-lipped monster clown Mr. John ‘Wanker’ Henry that the answer to his question is Gitanes.
Back in the days of Mr. Chapman of course things were rather different. The chaps smoked before, during and after matches, in the pub, in the parlour, in the pantry, in the bath, on the job, on the bus to games and in their sleep. Some of them tried to give up of course. Wilf Copping was on 400 Woodbines a day and tried to stop, so he fashioned a rudimentary device, which I believe is now known as a ‘Nicotine Patch’.
He had the club doctor dissolve eight pounds of prime rolling baccy in some alcohol, which he placed in a sack which was then tied tightly to his right leg. It didn’t work, unfortunately, and Wilf went back to his prodigious consumption of those harmless, indeed health-giving mood-lifters, living to a ripe old age of 37*.
I am making that up. He lived to 71 and died in Southend, which is of course the only polite thing to do if you’re ever there.
Toodle-pip, old eggs. See you upon the Twitter.
