Morning:
9°c
Two weddings and a funeral for Walcott
If the story of the undergraduate Michael Heseltine sketching out his path to Downing Street on an envelope ever struck you as odd, consider Theo Walcott. In an Observer feature about precocious sports folk, this delightful young chap remembers drawing "a timeline for the rest of my life" as a 10-year-old schoolboy. "I drew pictures of me as a professional footballer. I imagined I'd drive a nice car, have a nice house, and win the World Cup with England." So far, so good. "I'd have two wives," Theo goes on, "one would die so I would get remarried. I haven't told my girlfriend Mel that bit yet." Probably just as well. Most etiquette guides advise holding the revelation of your future wife's demise until the wedding breakfast at the earliest, if not towards the end of the honeymoon.
Hear the one about Eboue's handball?
As for Theo's guv'nor, it becomes harder than ever to judge whether Arsene Wenger is football's leading satirical humourist or an applicant for an extended holiday of the kind provided by section 28 of the Mental Health Act. On Friday we touched on him ridiculing Mark Hughes's faulty vision over Emmanuel Adebayor's infamous stamp. On Saturday, Mr Wenger saw no evil intent in Emmanuel Eboue's handball ("a reflex") against Wigan. This selective vision business has become so boring that I've decided to believe that Wenger is the most talented comedian produced by France since . . . er, can anyone help? There must be one . . . since whoever, and I promise never to refer to it again. Until the next time.
At the end of the day, pundits do make sense
Students of footballese, rejoice at a birth. Taking its place alongside "eyebrows" and "lollipops" in the lexicon of cliche is "stonewaller". Where for a year or two every blatant spot-kick offence has elicited a knowing "that's a stonewall penalty!", it now entices the more elliptical "Stonewaller". In truth, this makes no sense, a stonewaller being one who tediously blocks attempts to penetrate the defences - a Geoffrey Boycott, for example, or the Anglo-Hungarian punch-blocker known latterly as Aussie Joe Bugner. But sense and football commentary/punditry have never made easy bedfellows, and we welcome stonewaller with open arms.
Abramovich finds a way to sink the paps
The Ryder Cup's main rival for the title "World's Most Treasured Biannual Sporting Event" is upon us. Yes, it's time to celebrate the launch of Roman Abramovich's latest largest yacht in human history. Most details about the claustrophobic, 557ft Eclipse - the brace of pools and helipads, the missile-resistant hull, the cutesy little submarine - will be familiar to fans of Roman's understated taste in maritime accoutrements. The novelty is the anti-paparazzi laser technology, which senses a snap is about to be taken and fires a disabling laser beam at the lens. It appears the system works only against digital cameras. Time will tell whether the paps have the wit to frustrate the device, which apparently cost several hundred million, by using a Kodak Brownie instead.
