Afternoon:
8°c
Poor Rangers appear to be on wrong track
High drama at Queens Park Rangers on Wednesday evening. A few hours after news broke that delightful co-owner Flavio Briatore had abruptly left the Renault Formula One team, the club held a charity do (sadly in his absence) to raise funds for their local community work. Whether this was coincidence or evidence of a lively sense of mischief I'm not sure, but the event involved teams racing Scalextric cars. There is no word of any dodgy-looking crashes, but if suspicions arise the investigation will be placed in the dainty hands of that equally enchanting co-owner Bernie Ecclestone. What manner of gruesome horror has befallen those poor, benighted Superhoops?
Football nut McGowan gives false impression
In an unwontedly intriguing interview in the Sun,
Ronnie Ancona relates how her romance with telly
co-star Alastair McGowan ended thanks in part to his football fixation. “He was obsessed with the facts and figures, and would spend hours pouring over results of teams I'd never heard of,” recalls the actress. “He was also mildly fanatical about reading the scores on Ceefax. It was like a nervous tic. All those wasted Sunday mornings — he couldn't do anything until he'd devoured all the facts and figures . . .” What Ronnie fails to appreciate is that she is describing a psychiatric disorder. It even has a technical name, not least because I've just invented one. Alastair McGowan suffers from spautism. Judging by these quotes, I'd put him at the less severe, Aspergersy end of the spautistic spectrum, so Ronnie should consider herself fortunate. Imagine what life is like for those lumbered with men who spend untold hours gazing at lists of US PGA winners and early-round results from 1970s tennis grand slams. If you can't imagine it, ask my wife.
Harry and his nephew in kiss-and-tell shock
Still with the Sun, I'm much enjoying the TV advert in which Ian Wright, Harry Redknapp and a goatee-bearded Terry Venables (shave it off, Tel; always best to age with grace) appear in artsy sepia spouting hurriedly memorised contentious opinions. Having said that, the last line is a shocker. “Badge-kissing?” intones Harry sardonically. “Load of absolute tosh!” Couldn't agree more, yet what distresses here is that the world champion badge-kisser is, of course, Frank Lampard Jnr, who happens to be Harry's nephew. And they seemed such a loving, close knit kinda family.
Wenger and Hughes are really two in 100
Following his comments about Emmanuel Adebayor's stamp on Robin van Persie's cheek, old concerns resurface about Arsene Wenger. “Ask 100 people,” he declared, auditioning for the Les Dennis post should ITV revive Family Fortunes, “and 99 will say it's very bad and the 100th will be Mark Hughes.” No pressing need to labour the irony in the Alsatian satirically pin-pointing the
selective vision of rival managers, but for a supposedly intelligent guy Wenger's capacity for unwitting self-parody defies belief. Then again, let's take care not to risk mocking the afflicted. Staggering lack of self-awareness is one of the more obvious symptoms, after all, of spautistic spectrum disorder.
