Adrian Chiles: Improv Workshop Gobshite

Ignore, if you can, everything to do with the actual event of the England/Poland football match, and what remains is hours of washed out ITV coverage. It seems that nothing good came from watching Adrian Chiles fill Tuesday night’s suddenly evacuated broadcast. The much-maligned anchorman is now unmoveable in his prescribed role of overpaid totem standing in stout monument to the lowest common denominator.

Memorably described by the comedian Stewart Lee as “a speaking toby jug filled to the brim with hot piss”, the truth is any given Twitter search for his name will throw up barbs of similar derision. Last night offered some explanation as to why – his floundering when removed from his comfort zone, his desperately avuncular reliance on comical prompts, his easily cracked veneer of professionalism when presented with a challenge.

Intermittent complaints about how the rain delay was affecting even those in the studio (Lee Dixon had only bought one suit! Had anyone thought to book hotel rooms for an extra night?!) were bought to a merciful end when the game was finally postponed. Chiles closed by paying tribute to his pundits for guiding him safely through the plane crash, thanking the tri-headed Wilson to his Chuck Noland – Dixon, Gareth Southgate and Roy Keane.

The lads

Dixon has perhaps been unfairly tainted with the smear of the same brush that coats Alan Shearer with a kind of manky vanilla. The former Arsenal full-back (famous, of course, for once letting Gaby Roslin cut his hair live on The Big Breakfast) defected from the BBC, one suspects, after the emergence of this footage, in which Dixon seemed to deplore either the interruption of Shearer, or the questioning of Gary Lineker.

Meanwhile, Southgate’s presence is a stabilising one, with a style loosely based on the notion of basic admin. He’s the man that pulls together the strands of debate in a manner suited to his intelligent and assured oratory abilities. He’s capable of looking at the broader picture too, showing a certain awareness as when he lamented the dearth of information relayed to the increasingly bored spectators stranded in the stadium.

But Roy Keane was the star of this non-show, bringing his inimitable brand of scabrous perception and scarcely concealed self-loathing. Though Ronan Keating once sang of his wife and/or dead mother that ‘you say it best when you say nothing at all’, he could just as well direct the same lachrymose balladeering to Keane. It makes for truly compelling television as he inwardly wrestles with his wavering self-respect, pretending to tolerate the frantic joking spread like caulk into last night’s ever-widening gaps.

This orangey paint effect diminishes not the incandescence of the fury in mine eyes.

He doesn’t want to be there, not really, and it’s written all over his face, clogged as it is already with the twin implications of rage and impatience. At one point everyone laughed at the Irishman’s joke about Gary Neville’s proclivity for whingeing. Keane, naturally, afforded himself no such privilege, burying the momentarily lapse in gravitas beneath further condemnation of the Polish FA’s slack roof-opening policy. He is not there for fun but to take things very seriously indeed, which is obviously what makes him so much fun.

Keane has admitted that he sees no future in television work, and views it as a stop-gap while he awaits the next opportunity in a curiously stalled management career. Perhaps this sense of transience is what makes him comfortable in doling out criticism, as with last night’s comments on Joe Hart. Rather than toeing the party line and following the VT-led pre-match narrative of ‘Hart – England’s new Shilton’, Keane raised the point that the young ‘keeper’s sense of bravado could perhaps border on arrogance, which in turn could be the reason behind recent mistakes. He likened him to Peter Schmeichel, who Keane admitted was “not very good technically”, and accused the Dane of similar spells of complacency throughout his career because he “thought he was the bees knees”.

He would qualify his comments on Hart by insisting that he didn’t “want to be seen as being too harsh on the boy”, stating that he was clearly a great player who simply needed to react positively to negative spells. But by offering such contrary opinion, and by freely mentioning specific details of his former team-mates, he was doing something just a little bit different. In punditry terms, perhaps this is a case of Keane also being “not very good technically”, by offering something a little more corrosive than the usual brand of bland antiseptic propagated by someone such as Shearer.

Keane could do worse than consider where he offers greater merit now – as a manager or as a television personality. As much as such introspection might gall a man of such fierce pride, Keane is a formidable and compelling presence on television, just as he was as a player, and that is a rare gift. Something that his befuddled anchorman sadly lacks.

England Euro 2012 Bingo – France

Tonight, England commenced their Euro 2012 campaign, and with it, England Euro 2012 Bingo. I will be marking off each England Big Tournament Cliché as and when I see them throughout their three group games and/or one (but certainly no more than one) knockout stage game. I will be using my special bingo pen, which bears the image of the most quintessentially English thing ever conceived, which is of course Stephen Fry wearing a bowler hat…

Naive optimism – This took literally seconds to emerge from the woebegone piehole that doubles for Andy Townsend’s pointless mouth. Professional sports commentator and Clive Tyldesley fan Clive Tyldesley asked, as the game kicked off, whether England could win the game. “Of course they can…” Townsend said, anxiously consulting the Post-It note reminding himself not to refer to England as ‘we’. Of course, in the end, England may well have done so, but with Tyldesley later giving it the full “Maybe this could be our year!” schtick when they took the lead, we can safely mark this one off.

England fans in chain mail – But of course. File also under excessive jingoism.

“We don’t see our kids when we want, we don’t see our kids when we want, WE’RE FATHERS4JUSTICE, WE DON’T SEE OUR KIDS WHEN WE WANT!”

Negative cultural stereotyping – Returning from the half-time break, Adrian Chiles gave us one of his match round-up summary things he’s paid literally millions of pounds to pull out of his everyman arse. He talks in his professionally chummy tone about how it started so well “and then the French had to go and spoil it for us.” BECAUSE WE ALL KNOW WHAT THOSE FRENCH BASTARDS ARE LIKE, EH LADS!?! THEY DON’T EVEN HAVE MARMITE, THE SCUM!

Blame the officials - Tyldesley worked himself into a state of tantric apoplexy, with each innocuous foul either given against/denied for England gradually establishing a veneer of resentment towards the referee who was clearly biased in favour of France. “Is he going to give that?”, he squealed conspiratorially, after a minor shove on Danny Welbeck. ”Well I think we know the answer is non.” Oh, Clive, you provocateur, you.

Close, but no cigar – It could yet be argued that Joleon Lescott’s opening goal may well have instilled a sense of false hope. The goal itself was the most exciting thing to have happened to Lescott’s forehead since it played host to SuperBowl XIX in 1985, irreversibly pulverising tissue and eternally changing the contours of his bonce. There was also time for the shock omission of the creatively bereft brass band. For the first time in 18 years, England’s struggles have not been set to the strained sounds of a bugled rendition of The Great Escape, as officials in Ukraine banned them from the ground. They are due to meet UEFA officials later this week, to discuss plans for the forthcoming Sweden game. No doubt they will argue their case with a solemn trumpet voluntary, a pounding arrhthymic bass drum beat, and a horde of fat men bellowing ‘ENGLAND!’ until their demands are met. In the meantime, recreate the ambience at home by shitting in a tuba.

Paul Ince’s Reminiscences: Baddiel and Skinner, 2006 World Cup podcast

In 2006, David Baddiel and Frank Skinner recorded a series of podcasts for The Times during the World Cup. The comic duo and longtime friends travelled to Germany for the tournament, recording their observations live during games, as well as in their hotel rooms. The shows were a mixture of live reaction and post-match analysis, with the two riffing on various comic tropes, and offering their opinions on England’s stuttering form.

There was a sudden shift in tone for one particular episode, which has become a valuable resource to me whenever England flatter to deceive, which is often. It is something that I have returned to in the past, and expect to turn to again this summer, despite the best intentions of one Roy Hodgson at the European Championships.

The podcast recorded on July 1st, the day of England’s elimination at the hands of Portugal, deserves greater recognition for the way it transcends itself, becoming more than just a knockabout comedy show. As David and Frank mourn England’s latest failure, they pick over the bones of the corpse with the same confused heartbreak of someone lamenting a former lover. They spend half an hour discussing not merely a football match, but a broken relationship. Sven-Goran Eriksson is the lover that they collectively puzzle over, as they balefully consider the state of his legacy and his imminent departure.

The podcast is effectively a time capsule that condenses the Eriksson era. Sven is the aforementioned ‘lover’, with Baddiel and Skinner musing over every last gesture, every last word, desperately trying to decipher meaning amid the chaos. The show is, from the stand-point of an England supporter, gut-wrenching, rueful, cynical, optimistic, existentialist, and plenty more besides. Above all, it is essential listening. It offered strange comfort not just in 2006, but in 2008 and 2010 too. I expect it will offer the same dark solace this summer, when I break the emergency glass for this, the best available remedy for England’s failures…

The podcast begins as the match does in Gelsenkirchen, Baddiel and Skinner audible in the foreground as they join in singing the National Anthem. The nervous optimism of the live match recordings is intercut with a more despondent post-match inquest, as joviality and hope is gradually eroded by the advancing reality of England’s elimination. The two timelines intertwine, offering a similar timeshift as if watching Memento, with Guy Pearce’s insomniac, memory-deficient cop replaced by an acerbic Brummy and a neurotic jew. This non-linear dynamic cultivates that nagging sense of ‘what if?’ that haunts you after your team has lost a crucial game. Baddiel, post-match, says that’s he’s already getting over it, and you wonder if he’s being honest. He asks himself how long he would’ve been joyful for had England won: “About…two hours?”. It seems like he’s just kidding himself, compromising the integrity of his hopes with emotional bargaining. He jokes that he would still be pissed off that the show’s producer has a bigger hotel room than him, even if England had won. Skinner disagrees, saying that an England win would be “the gift that keeps on giving”, that he’d remember it in the shower the following morning and feel great again, rather than just remembering “Ah shit, we’re out of the World Cup.”

When we cut again to the ground, the two continue joking, perhaps just to allay their nerves, but it’s akin to the early scenes in Titanic when the poor people party below decks, unaware of the disaster that awaits. Our hosts compare the two managers, with “wily old fox” Felipe Scolari likely to be on the lookout for weaknesses to exploit, while Eriksson is more likely to see “a woman with big tits in row G”. You don’t know whether to laugh or cry at this point, until a drained post-match Skinner cites Elvis Costello: “I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused.” It is worthy advice, and Skinner embraces it with enthusiasm. Baddiel tells of how he bumped into Victoria Beckham at half-time, and heard her say “Cheryl, can you take the boys to the toilet?”, with Skinner quipping that the Cheryl in question (the nation’s favourite cuckold and forgotten racist, Ms. Cole née Tweedy) would be the worst person to do such a thing.

Even a flippant story such as this carries some weight, representing the distraction and excess of the ‘WAG’ enclave at that tournament. It seems appropriate that the players’ wives would somehow feature in this podcast, despite having no direct impact on events on the pitch. That tackily-tanned harem with long legs and longer hair extensions made for fitting symbols of the attention-grabbing sideshow that served as an unwanted footnote to England’s risible campaign.

Mining the zeitgeist further, Baddiel laments the absence of Michael Owen, whose tournament ended after a knee injury against Sweden. He talks about how England made chances against Portugal, without having anyone available to take them, opining that we “still miss that type of player”. The type of player that Gary Lineker was for England, always popping up to score when a goal was required. Six years on, and England are still missing that type of player. Such a void will stretch ever larger this summer, when Wayne Rooney sits out the first two group games of Euro 2012 through suspension.

Rooney has previous when it comes to international red cards, of course, and the response to his stamp on Ricardo Carvalho makes for riveting listening. Skinner, like most England fans would have been at the time, is apoplectic: “And fucking Rooney’s been fucking sent off for fuck all!” he spits. “I can’t fucking believe it! What did he fucking do though? We’re being cheated out of this!” Skinner is the more emotional and impulsive of the two comics, and appears to have more in common with the archetype of the England fan. The assumption that England were being cheated is something that was likely to have been echoed in pubs across the land that day, even with the benefit of TV replays. Skinner ticks off another square on the England supporter’s bingo card by defiantly declaring it “time for the courageous England performance. Ten young men of England taking on Portugal and the fucking referee.” Several clichés that come with the territory of England at a major tournament are referenced, but the show doesn’t suffer for this triteness. It is oddly comforting to hear the thoughts such as might proliferate in the head of so many England fans.

The subsequent conspiratorial wink from Cristiano Ronaldo is addressed by Baddiel after the game, suggesting that he “Can’t see how [Ronaldo and Rooney] can go on playing together for Manchester United ever again.” The fact that they would, winning three Premiership titles, an FA Cup and a European Cup, makes for an effective reminder that sometimes things are rarely as melodramatic as they might seem immediately after a game, especially when that game is a World Cup quarter-final (Recently the Carlos Tevez situation at Manchester City has further proven that no bridge is every truly burnt). Baddiel goes on to discuss ethics in the game, and suggests that “Any chance of [young players] ever thinking in terms of something [being] okay to do ethically on the pitch is completely gone now.” Since then we’ve seen such incidents as the Luis Suarez handball against Ghana, Thierry Henry costing the Republic of Ireland a place at the World Cup, and countless other high-profile instances of cheating that suggest that Baddiel, sadly, may well be right.

The reign of Sven is summarised by Skinner, who complains that the Swede only ever picked the players that the papers demanded, as if the squad was decided by a press vote. Rather than concentrating on finding the right blend of players, Skinner continues, he stuffed the team with Galacticos that never looked like a proper team. I remember when he picked unheralded Charlton Athletic defender Chris Powell in his very first squad. This singular thinking was rarely to be seen throughout the rest of a tenure which can perhaps be surmised by the albatross that was the Steven Gerrard/Frank Lampard conundrum. Warming to his theme, Skinner extemporises by comparing the England team to a greatest hits CD. He says that he prefers proper albums as they represent the band’s creativity over a specific period of time, and that, while there may be a few fillers, it works better as an overall product. The England team of 2006, as through Sven’s entire reign, was England’s greatest hits album, without the unity, focus or vision required to transcend the sum of its parts. Baddiel agrees, saying that no-one ever picks a greatest hits collection as their best album, and by that same logic, few will ever hold Sven’s perennial losing quarter-finalists in any great esteem.

As Baddiel and Skinner prepare for the shoot-out, they adopt the “penalty stance” – arms around each other, heads bowed in grim anticipation. There is still time for some gallows humour, as the two men embrace with faces smeared red with melting face paint. “Since our face paint has made us look red,” Skinner says, “People are looking at us saying ‘Look at those two blokes from the dermatitis clinic showing a bit of unity.’”

I have seen the key moments of that penalty shoot-out several times since, but no amount of repeat views can recreate the sinking feeling of imminent collapse as well as Skinner’s guttural reaction to Lampard’s missed penalty. “Oh…he’s….Oh no, not again. Please not again. Please not again.” It’s a reaction that is almost lewd in its rawness, and it perfectly captures the horrors of a penalty shoot-out. In some ways, Skinner’s reaction to the first Portugal penalty miss makes for even more distressing listening. The optimism and elation of the moment is retrospectively recast as the cruelty of false hope. Portugal’s second miss is even more vindictive. Skinner doesn’t say as much, but you can read his thoughts clearly: nobody misses penalties against England, but for a team to miss two? England are going to win, this is our time. When I listen to this moment again, I ask myself whether I could’ve ever felt that myself at the time, watching at home. I’m certain that perhaps I did, but it seems impossible.

Skinner takes a turn for the maudlin when he tells how he had tears in his eyes at the thought that he doesn’t think he’ll ever see England win a major tournament in his lifetime. “I’m 50 next year and I honestly think time is running out, I just can’t see it happening.” Baddiel reminds him that he said the same thing after leaving the Stade De France after the 1998 World Cup final, before suggesting with all sincerity that a healthier lifestyle could be the way forward – “If you live a bit longer you might have more of a chance.”, he says, with no hint of irony or sarcasm. Unwittingly, Baddiel sums up the desperation of the England fan with some genuine, wholesome advice. Rather than hoping for a more tactically astute manager, or a brighter crop of young players to emerge, it seems that yoga and a macrobiotic diet offer a more likely route to triumph (Possibly heeding this advice, hydrophobe Skinner completed a swimming challenge for Sport Relief earlier this year).

As Owen Hargreaves successfully puts his penalty away – the only England player to do so – Baddiel and Skinner talk afterwards about how their perceptions of him had changed after the tournament. It has long been my contention that, had England beaten Portugal, that his performance in this match would have deserved the same canonisation as David Beckham’s against Greece in 2001. If anything, it would’ve warranted additional merit – England were expected to beat Greece in front of home support, whereas a team of ten men in a World Cup knockout match had far more to do. Beckham’s performance against Greece, full of apparently selfless running, may have provided a problem of its own that day. By seeking involvement in order to grab the game by its scruff, Beckham dispensed with positional sense in a way that may well have made it harder for England to form cohesive attacks on goal. Hargreaves would have covered similar ground against Portugal, but it was absolutely essential with ten men on the field, in a match where survival was paramount.

Skinner damns him with faint praise by lauding the typically English decision to name him man of the match “for basically just running out of his skin”, and not for anything technically cultured. “It’s alright, but it’s not going to win us the World Cup”. One might well adopt this maxim for Scott Parker this summer. Parker has made “running out of his skin” the bedrock of his game, and is the long-awaited successor to Hargreaves, but Skinner is right – more is required to win tournaments. This is not to downplay the importance of Parker in 2012, nor the importance of Hargreaves in 2006, but the point is valid. Either way, it is staggering to consider that, in all likelihood, this was the last a major international tournament would ever see of Owen Hargreaves.

“Hmm…perhaps if I steal his knee while he’s busy weeping?”

Skinner offers another theory concerning English football, by suggesting that the national game was irreparably damaged by Brazil winning the World Cup in 1970. Prior to this, England were a major power by playing English football, with “big stopper centre-halves, big, strong centre-forwards, some skill, but a lot of hard work, sweat and guts”. Then, after seeing Brazil in ’70, England underwent a shift in ideology. “We basically turned our back on our inheritance to try and play like continentals or South-Americans. You have to keep true to what your football self is.” Roy Hodgson, with his penchant for pragmatism, may well agree with such a philosophy.

There is further tactical insight from Baddiel, who says that, after five years, he couldn’t say what Eriksson’s style of play was. They discuss the misperception that England endeavoured to play defensive football when, in Skinner’s view, really it was just “failed attacking football.” Baddiel is angered by Eriksson’s assertion that he wouldn’t mind if England won playing ‘bad football’, arguing that teams never win playing ‘bad football’. “Greece played tight, dull defensive football in Euro 2004, but it wasn’t ‘bad’.” Take Chelsea’s Champions League elimination of Barcelona this season; some derided Roberto Di Matteo’s allegedly anti-football tactics, ignoring the fact that defensive football is a tactical discipline with its own intrinsic qualities and nuances. England could only dream of such accomplishment in Germany. Baddiel provides a fitting epitaph for the 2006 campaign: “We gave the ball away, we constantly looked frightened at the back.” ’twas ever thus.

Skinner closes the podcast with an almost apologetic tone, confessing “We couldn’t be bothered sitting here trying to be funny, I’m pissed off.” This is something that the ubiquitous ‘Toby Jug full of hot piss‘ Adrian Chiles would do well to take note of. Sometimes it’s right to be morose if it captures the moment. In the wake of a defeat, you don’t want to be laughing and joking about it. You can’t force yourself to stop agonising over it. It might not be the right thing to do, like picking at the scab of a grazed knee, but even if it is painful, you just want to feel that something is being done to heal the wound.

To my mind, the appropriate tone at such a time is the one captured in this podcast – unashamedly dejected, bleakly conciliatorial, strangely cathartic. I’ll listen to this again at some point this summer, seeking consolation by reminding myself that this is just the way it has to be. The FA should make this available on their website as dejected England fans nurse their grief. If you’re an England fan, I suggest you do the same, using the links below.

DOWNLOAD – Baddiel and Skinner – 1st July 2006

SOUNDCLOUD – Baddiel and Skinner – 1st July 2006

 

A Fraction Of The Whole: Scott Parker

Celebrating the game’s minutiae, one tiny fragment at a time

When Spurs threw away a two-goal lead against Arsenal earlier this season, there was little for away fans to celebrate. They eventually capitulated 5-2 at the Emirates, and gave their north London rivals the impetus to reverse a dire run of form. As it stands, Arsenal are now in the driving seat to claim third place in the Premier League, and the Champions League accoutrements that it brings.

There was, however, one shaft of light beaming through the gloom. When Scott Parker was sent off for a second booking after steaming into a tackle with Thomas Vermaelen, it capped off a miserable day for Spurs. The tackle, while not malicious, was fully deserving of censure, and symbolised a desperate day for his team.

Rather than trudging off in self-pity (the conventional method of walking off after a red card), Parker would momentarily remain on the pitch without complaint, to check on his fallen opponent, to ensure that the tackle didn’t inflict any significant damage. He then shook the player’s hand to show that there were no hard feelings.

While Spurs fans would be forgiven for not caring about such a gesture (indeed, it will be entirely forgotten if Arsenal do go on to claim third spot), it was a pleasure to witness as a neutral. All too often we hear the strained epithet “He’s not that sort of player”, the flimsy integrity of which can be summarised by this diagram:

With this in mind, in a game blighted by inflated egos, astronomical salaries and Adrian Chiles, it was good to see a rare moment of genuine sportsmanship, even if was borne of a moment of frustration.