Garry Potter And The Same Old Nonsense, David Backhim [the mitten read aloud txt] 📗

for playing for Manchester United, but they fail to recognise that he gave more service to Leeds than all the other Red Devils put together, yet he is more likely to endure boos than say Ronaldo or Rooney from Leeds fans. It is as if football players are not permitted to change clubs.
Why also do so many men (and women) jump on the bandwagon and swear allegiance to the most successful football teams? Northern Irish people like to suggest that their support of Manchester United is based on the fact that George Best played for the Red Devils. However, there are dozens of excellent servants of the Northern Ireland team who played for other lesser clubs, so why not support them? Billy Bingham played for Luton Town but you will struggle to find many Belfast folk supporting the Hatters, while the late Derek Dougan’s service at Wolverhampton Wanderers did not prompt many Ulster folk to pay homage to Wolves.
It strikes me that people cling on to the bragging rights of their football team to camouflage the obvious lack of success in their own lives: “my team is better than your team”, “my club is bigger than your club”, “our home crowds are bigger than your home crowds”, “we have more history than you”, “we have a better manager than you”, “we have a better goalkeeper”, “ we have better goal-posts”, et cetera , et cetera, ad nauseam.It is a sad state of affairs when a person relies upon the fluctuating fortunes of their football club to ensure a sense of personal satisfaction. Following the biggest and best football teams is a strategy adopted by under-achievers whose own lack of qualifications, career progression and income necessitates the desire to look to successful clubs to compensate for their own sense of failure.

SNOOKER LOOPY
I remember my mother uncharacteristically writing me a note so that I could be excused from primary school one January afternoon, not because of a dental appointment, but because Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins was due to play in a Benson And Hedges match on television. Oh we all were bewitched by the remarkable Higgins whose style of play was ahead of its time, as his quick fire potting procedure was eminently more watchable than the deliberations of his contemporaries. In a snooker landscape of Terry Griffiths, Ray Reardon, Cliff Thorburn, and Eddie Charlton, the Hurricane was the speed freak, who sent balls into oblivion in the blink of an eye. It was such a pity that ‘Hurricocaine Higgins’ (to quote Jimmy Greaves) failed to build on his World Championships of 1972 and 1982, as yet another Belfast prodigy started to make newspaper headlines, but not for sporting heroics.
If you liked Alex Higgins, you loathed Steve Davis, his nemesis. I too was initially swept along on the anti-‘Ginger Magician’ tide of emotion. However, whether or not Davis was Higgins’s polar opposite is questionable. In fact, to quote the old cliché, the Hurricane’s worst enemy or the person who most threatened his status among the snooker elite was the face staring back through his mirror. As for Steve Davis, he went from success to success in the 1980s, apart from unexpected reverses in the 1985 and 1986 world championship finals. As time marched on, my admiration for Davis increased. I myself was growing up and symptomatic of my increasing maturity was a respect for the prowess and apparent decency of likeable Steve. Mr. Davis found himself lampooned by Spitting Image as ‘Interesting’, but old ‘Interesting’ went on to star in ‘They Think It’s All Over’ as well as lend his considerable knowledge to the BBC snooker experts, so he did indeed prove to be very interesting. Only Stephen Hendry has probably eclipsed Steve Davis as the greatest snooker player of the television era.
It’s kind of weird how we all swear allegiance to one or two snooker or darts players while feeling distinctly cold about the other competitors. For example, I always had an irrational liking for Eric Bristow at the expense of his darts rival, John Lowe. Similarly, Stephen Hendry was one snooker player whom I never warmed to, for no apparent reason, yet like Davis before him, this Hearts football fan was a model professional and an outstanding player. Instead, I grew to like Jimmy White whom I initially ‘disliked’ again during my early ‘Higgins years’. Has there ever been a greater hard luck story in the whole of sport than the Whirlwind’s consistently spectacular near misses at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre each spring? I can still remember Higgins embracing young White in a 1982 world championship semi-final after the Ulsterman had come from behind to sneak home 16-15 with the help of one of the greatest-ever clearance breaks in the history of snooker. Most people of course still recall the pain of Jimmy’s ritual defeats at the hands of Stephen Hendry. What is all the more remarkable was that Jimmy idolised Alex and then eclipsed the Hurricane as world snooker’s most eye-catching competitor, while Stephen idolised Jimmy, only to prevent his hero from ever seizing the world crown. Jimmy White is unquestionably the greatest snooker player never to become world champion, and I think we can all relate to his heroic misfortune.
Fast-forwarding to the 21st century and I peculiarly like both the unflappable Mark Williams and the show-stopping Ronnie O’Sullivan which is all the more remarkable, considering that these two snooker greats have little warmth for one another. Oh all the memories: ‘the grinder’ Cliff Thorburn collapsing in unbounded delight at recording the world championship’s first-ever maximum break; the farcical 35th and final frame between the likeable Dennis Taylor and Steve Davis in 1985: the John Virgo impersonations of his fellow professionals; the personal feuds and mutual admiration, they all confirm that the game of snooker isn’t a load of balls after all.

SPIN
The art of spin extends far beyond the cricket pitch or Downing Street nowadays. Take a look for instance at the world of employment to see how both employers and employees, not to mention the self-employed, put a spin on their job title. No longer are factory fodder the factory workers of bygone days of yore. Now they are termed as operatives. Gosh I loathe that word ‘operative’ – it’s just a euphemism for ‘dog’s body’. Can you imagine a new episode of Blackadder in these apparently self-conscious times: “Please allow me to introduce Baldrick. He’s my operative.”
As if this stupidity isn’t bad enough, one finds that shop assistants are now designated as ‘customer service advisers’. Do me a favour. Worse still are the job vacancies that advertise for ‘telesales executives’. Executives? Are you having a laugh? They’re just a bunch of gobby, pushy twenty-somethings fresh from university. Most ludicrous of all however are the silly contestants on The Weakest Link who describe themselves as ‘a company director’. Fortunately that nice Anne Robinson quizzes them about their job title: “So tell me. This company of yours; how many employees does it have?” “Er, two.” “Two?” “Yeah, me and me brother.” “What, and you call yourself a company director?” “Yeah, well we still have a company and I help to direct it!”
Dear oh dear oh dear. Britain is overflowing with a growing army of people who have an exaggerated sense of self-importance who blag their way through job interviews and pub conversations with their inflated nonsense. As far as I am concerned (and I am concerned), there is a fine dividing line between spin and bullshit.

FRIENDLY FIRE
It must be doubly upsetting for grieving relatives of British military personnel to discover that their loved one was killed by that most outrageous of phrases: ‘friendly fire’. What is it with American armed forces and friendly fire? It’s bad enough that their airport security was not particularly secure back in September 2001 and that their intelligence before and after has not been especially noteworthy for its intelligence. Therefore, I think that I will pay a state visit to George Dubya Bush at the White House. I will probably be stopped en route by airport security who will demand to know what the hell I am doing in possession of an automatic Kalashnikov-47 – to which I will reply, “Oh don’t worry, I’m only being ‘friendly’.”

REGIME CHANGE
It became oh so fashionable in the final months of the Blair premiership to pour scorn on the Prime Minister for his counter-productive pursuit of war in Iraq. Of course Britain went to war on a false premise – namely the need to seek out and destroy Iraq’s imaginary weapons of mass destruction. Mr Blair and his neo-conservative buddies across the big pond were however effectively engaged in a struggle to effect a regime change, and in this objective, they have hardly departed from the conventional approach to almost any war. Take for example the two world wars.
When Germany invaded Belgium in August 1914, British statesmen and people alike were not tossing and turning in bed at night, worried about the neutrality of Belgium. No, Britain went to war against the Kaiser to topple him and end his expansionist ambitions which had frayed the nerves of Europe for more than a decade. The First World War, like the conflict in Iraq, was fought to achieve regime change.
Even more peculiarly in the Second World War, Britain began hostilities against Nazi Germany in response to its invasion of Poland. Britain in fact was so upset by the territorial violation of Poland that it acquiesced in the Soviet Union’s acquisition of the Polish state at the end of the conflict. So much for concern about Poland. Yes the Second World War too was fought not for the stated reason. It was another attempt at regime change.
Tony Blair, for all his flaws, has only put into practice the much-used formula of going to war for false reasons. Every conflict, almost without exception, is designed to achieve regime change, irrespective of what excuse any politician offers.

BETTING TIPS
Is gambling a mug’s game? Well, consider the following. Who backed Foinavon to win the 1967 Grand National at 100-1? Who had a punt on North Korea to defeat Italy in the 1966 World Cup finals? Who realistically thought that Sunderland would overcome Leeds United in the 1973 FA Cup final? As for Wimbledon’s victory against Liverpool in the 1988 FA Cup final, who saw that one coming?