Quintin Jardine's blog

This is something to think about when negative people are doing their best to rain on your parade. So remember this story the next time someone who knows nothing and cares less tries to make your
life miserable.

A woman was at her hairdresser’s getting her hair styled for a trip to Rome with her husband. She mentioned the trip to the hairdresser, who responded: “Rome ? Why would anyone want to go there? It’s crowded and dirty.. You’re crazy to go to Rome . So, how are you getting there?”

“We’re taking Continental,” was the reply. “We got a great rate!”

“Continental?” exclaimed the hairdresser. ” That’s a terrible airline. Their planes are old, their flight attendants are ugly, and they’re always late. So, where are you staying in Rome ?”

“We’ll be at this exclusive little place over on Rome’s Tiber River called Teste.”

“Don’t go any further.. I know that place.Everybody thinks its gonna be something  special and exclusive, but it’s really a dump.”

“We’re going to go to see the Vatican and maybe get to see the Pope.”

“That’s rich,” laughed the hairdresser. You and a million other people trying to see him. He’ll look the size of an ant. Boy, good luck on this lousy trip of yours. You’re going to need it.”

A month later, the woman again came in for a hairdo. The hairdresser asked her about her trip to Rome.

“It was wonderful,” explained the woman, “not only were we on time in one of Continental’s brand new planes, but it was overbooked, and they bumped us up to first class. The food and wine were wonderful, and I had a handsome 28-year-old steward who waited on me hand and foot. And the hotel was great! They’d just finished a $5 million remodelling job, and now it’s a jewel, the finest hotel in the city. They, too, were overbooked, so they apologised and gave us their owner’s suite at no extra charge!”

“Well,” muttered the hairdresser, “that’s all well and good, but I  know you didn’t get to see the  Pope.”

“Actually, we were quite lucky, because as we toured the Vatican, a Swiss Guard tapped me on the shoulder, and explained that the Pope likes to meet some of the visitors, and if I’d be so kind as to step into his private room and wait, the Pope would personally greet me.Sure enough, five minutes later, the Pope walked through the door and shook my hand! I knelt down and he spoke a few words to me.”

“Oh, really! What’d he say ?”

He said: “Who the **** did your hair?”

When the BBC announced that David  Beckham was to be given a lifetime achievement award, my first reaction, shared by many, I’m sure was, ‘He’s only 35.’ Then I had a look at his detailed biography and I changed my mind. It’s not just what he’s done, it’s the way that he’s done it. Like all great footballers, he added about 20% to his natural talent by sheer hard work. Then he added something else. Some would call it charisma, and that’s fine. I’d call it character. Yes, he has traded on his football fame and on his wife’s Spice background to build a brand that’s made them multi-millionaires. But he’s done much more than that. He’s been an ambassador for his country whenever it has asked him to step forward. He stands out from the recent World Cup debacle as one of the few figures of integrity in global football. He’s a UNICEF ambassador and he’s a lead ing figure in an anti-malaria charity. He lives his life as a target for every paparazzo out to make a buck, and remains mostly spotless.

Becks has been a public figure for half of the life that was honoured last night, but I don’t believe that anyone truly appreciated what he is until his name was called out last night, and the entire massive audience stood and applauded him, quite spontaneously, until their throats and their palms were sore. It was cathartic; the opportunity to express true feelings and they all took it. There wasn’t  dry eye in the house, or in ours. When, finally, they allowed him to speak, he wasn’t massively articulate, but what he said was balanced, humble, caring, good and from the heart.

Come the next honours list in ten days time, people will be knighted and ennobled. History tells us that many will have helped, in the main, only themselves. If Becks goes into 2011 as Sir David, it’ll be an honour bestowed for what he’s done for others, not for himself, and for what he means.

If there had been a category in last night’s awards for most twittering in world sport, Ian Poulter would have won. The result had barely been announced before he was out there protesting  that either Graeme McDowell or Lee Westwood should have been lifting the trophy. Poulter is known for speaking his mind (This may be why the  twitter format suits him. Work that one out.) and he has to be respected for supporting his mates, even when the winner is, like him, a notorious Arsenal supporter. However he’d have complained with more authority if he’d turned up for the event himself. Only three of the twelve members of the winning Ryder Cup team were present at what Ian P calls the Spoty awards, and two of them were candidates for the main awards. That meant that when the victorious side won (predictably) team of the year, only Lee Westwood, GMac and Ross Fisher were up on stage with Monty to receive it. But should they have been candidates, given that it’s a European, not British team and that six of its twelve members don’t hold UK passports? What the hell, better them than Chelsea, who are mostly foreign hired hands with a foreign coach.

Last night I did something that I can’t recall ever doing before. I voted in the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award. Better than that, I voted for the winner, and punched the air when the result was announced. Then I held on to the phone so that Eileen couldn’t negate it by voting for Jessica Ennis, worthy as she is. I needn’t have worried though, since it seems that A P McCoy ran away with it. Forty-one per cent of the poll in a ten-runner field indicates a pretty decisive victory. Why did I vote for him, when I’m not a great racing follower? Two reasons. First, in a field of excellent candidates, only he and Phil Taylor, a worthy runner-up, were so dominant in their sports. There is no world champion in National Hunt racing, but if there was, then Tony McCoy would have held the title for fifteen years. Second, there’s the nature of what he does. David Haye and Amir  Khan (who should, IMO, have been the boxing candidate rather than the Hayemaker) put their well-being on  the line in their sports, but they are looking to break their opponents’ bones. A P and his fellow jockeys compete against the certain knowledge that they’re the ones who’ll be suffering the fractures; he has had almost seven hundred falls in his career and he’s broken just about everything. He has also broken just about every record that’s open to him. At 36, he has a few more years left to raise those bars even higher.

I was beginning to doubt the weather forecast, but it’s back. At some point during the night a fresh fall of snow, a couple of inches, landed on Gullane. Cheers.

The manager of Blackpool Football Club is a man with a reputation for telling it like it is.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/b/blackpool/9300866.stm

This link (copy and paste if you have to) might not work outside the UK, but hopefully it will, because it says all that needs to be said about the nutters, lackeys and toads who run world football.

I’m going to have to break ‘The Journey’. I’ve been reading Tony Blair’s autobiography for quite a while now, and I’m still less than halfway through. The rise and faltering of New Labour was an interesting period of recent British history, and the testament of the man who was at its heart will no doubt be a source document for future students of the era. It should be fascinating for anyone who’s as interested in politics as I am: it should be but it isn’t. Our former prime minister may be a man of many skills, but  story-telling isn’t one of them. It wouldn’t be so bad if it had been well edited, but it hasn’t been. Next time I see my bro-in-law, I’m going to have to apologise for giving it to him for his birthday. To put it in perspective, I’m currently listening to The Essential Leonard Cohen fora bit of light relief.

A good friend of mine describes Scotland as a poisonous mix of self-interest and naked tribal politics. She’s from Paisley, so she should know. But are we really that bad? Doesn’t that description fit most western societies?

I have a confession to make. My family and friends might disagree, but I am not the most patient man in the world. Remarkable in some ways, since I spend a lot of my life in a nation famed for being laid back.

At the beginning of last week, I decided that most of my Christmas shopping would be done on line. Mistake. I’m looking out of my window at a snow-free environment; temperatures have been above freezing for close on a week now, and everything is back to normal. For all that both DHL and ParcelForce have effectively declared Scotland a no-go area. Fine, they must have major backlogs to clear. However they have also declared themselves no-go areas when it comes to customer information. You can get through to a depot, but it’s bloody difficult, and when you do, it isn’t worth it, as they don’t even know where your consignment is within their warehouse, far less can they tell you when you might receive it . . . or even whether.

But it’s not the carriers alone. My phone rang a few days ago; I picked it up and an automated voice told me that  ‘Due to the adverse weather, your TESCO wine order has been delayed.’ Then the line went dead, and I’ve heard nothing since. Sorry Mr T, but to me customer service involves real people, not computers. The people at DHL etc, might not be able to help, but at least they are invariably sympathetic.

There’s worse. Last night I had an email from Marks and f*cking Spencer about another order; it said that home delivery would not longer be possible, but that I could log on to my account and specify store collection. I tried; the system wouldn’t let me. I decided on their second option, cancellation: that wasn’t possible either. In fact their system wouldn’t let me alter the order in any way.

This morning they sent me another email, contradicting the first. It told me that I will receive my purchases after all, in two parts, by December 24 (estimate). So now I’m one of thousands of M&S customers who don’t know where they stand, and I’m not happy. Twiggy herself could turn up on my doorstep to apologise and I wouldn’t let her in, far less offer her coffee and biscuits. They could send Jamie Redknapp, another front of house star, (Isn’t that guy lucky that he has his mother’s looks, not his dad’s?) and I’d tell him to piss off back to Thomas Cook, or Sky TV, or wherever. Peter Kay? I’d nut him.

This is supposed to be the season to be f*cking jolly. Not around here it ain’t.

You couldn’t make Sepp Blatter up. Not content with the organisation over which he presides having sold . . . sorry, mistake, delete that . . . having awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, a country with absolutely no domestic history in the game,  with summer temperatures that will require all the games to be played indoors, and with immigration laws that deny entry purely on the basis of nationality, he has now made a joke of another of the potential host country’s quirks, its ban on homosexuality. Sepp’s solution: (shrug) (smirk) gay fans can refrain from sexual activity while they are there. (Okay, I’ve inserted the shrug and the smirk, but you can picture those, can’t you.)

I’m not alone in being offended. This by John Ameichi, a respected gay sportsman.

http://amaechiperformance.blogspot.com/2010/12/sepp-blatter-fifa-and-proof-of.html

There’s another line in the story that caught my attention, another quote from Herr President. “I think there is too much concern for a competition that will be done only in 12 years.” That reveals a lot about his mind-set. He’s 74; by the time of the Qatari World Cup he’ll be 87, so there’s a fair chance he’ll be looking up at it by that time. (Although maybe not, on the basis that only the good die young.) So, although he knows that millions of people around the world are offended by his organisation and by its conduct, he doesn’t actually give a shit.

Clearly, Blatter should be removed from office, but it’s not going to happen.

I believe it’s Christmas next week. Bugger. Bah. Humbug.

I can appreciate that night happen if you read the series out of sequence, but the latest Skinner will always tell you where big Bob is at. The next one’s going to do even better. It’ll tell you where he was at fifteen years ago. You’ll get to know him a lot better as well, and to uncover quite a few secrets that lie hidden in his past.

While most of the rest of Britain were watching a young man achieve his lifetime goal, my telly was on another channel watching a God-given talent that’s above and beyond anything Simon Cowell ever produced. A few years back, Bill Massey, my  then editor, a West Ham nut, told me that there was nothing he enjoyed more than watching Paolo di Canio just pissing about. But not even Paolo, that great eccentric, could generate the sheer pleasure that’s to be gained these days by watching Lionel Messi when he’s given free rein by Barcelona, ‘mes que un club’, to express himself. The lad is so extravagantly gifted that he makes me laugh with admiration, and no other footballer has ever done that. Best of all, unlike so many others in his sport, he does it with a smile on his face.

I believe that something called The X Factor, came to an end last night and that 20 million UK viewers tuned in to ITV to watch the final. I know very little about the X Factor, beyond what I see in headlines, but my impression from those is that its purpose is to give the mainly mediocre their five minutes of fame, and that it pulls in viewers by relentless promotion and by letting its judges get confrontational. That’s right, same as ‘Strictly Come Dancing’, but less posh. Seems to work, though; if it pulls one third of the British population then it must generate mountainous advertising revenue, and ITV surely needs the money.

Not an auspicious start for the new Aberdeen management team. I wonder if Craig and Archie will have third thoughts.

I subscribe to just about every available football channel on TV. This includes ESPN, but there I am a reluctant customer, and I might even chuck it. Why? Because of their commentator, one John Champion. He may be the humanitarian of  the year in private, he may be great company in the pub. But I’m afraid there’s something about his style that sets me off. I sense a sneer in everything he says, the tone of a true smart arse, and you know what they say about them. It would be fine if he’d stick to football, but he doesn’t seem capable of describing a game without interspersing his commentary with snide, irrelevant and unnecessary comments. He reached a nadir yesterday when, during a game, he picked out one particular player (No, not Joey Barton) and told his audience that he had been ‘ a bad lad’ and that he had spent some time in a young offenders’ institution. I didn’t know that, and I doubt if many other viewers did either. I don’t know either, why Mr Champion chose to mention it. I’ve since checked on it. Yes, it was a serious offence, but the individual was punished. He might have gone out of the game, but his present employers saw good in him, and now he’s getting on with his life; or he was until a knobhead with a microphone dug out his past and broadcast it to the nation. ESPN is a respected broadcaster, but it’s being brought into disrepute; it should do something about it.

Oh yes, Chris, I knew your father. Allan and I were colleagues in the 1970s: a man who was universally liked and who’s still mourned by everyone who knew him. He had a fund of stories, including one about a popular entertainer of the time who visited his restaurant, and . . . here I quote . . . ‘Took my breath away.’ You had to listen to him all the time, in case a great one-liner slipped past. The last time I saw him was at the signing table at the Edinburgh Book Festival; you might even have been with him. Lovely man; God bless him

I don’t feel bad at all about 2018. I do feel bad about the FIFA crew, and wish that the football associations of the ‘major’ countries had the courage and motivation to flush the shysters out of there. Maybe there’s a nearby river that can be rerouted, for that’s what it might take. As for 2022, you Aussies had a much better case than Qatar. If Israel qualify, it’s going to have to amend its laws to allow its team and supporters into their country. The very fact that it have such a law should have disqualified its bid from ever being heard. That, and the fact that if your average Qatari was given a football he would either try to eat it or would confuse the life out of himself trying to find the control buttons. And speaking of buttons, don’t write off your cricket side. Without being anti-English in any way, (I married one while in full possession of my senses.) you should realise that your visitors have one of their own; it’s labelled ‘self-destruct’, and sometimes it goes off of its own accord. It ain’t over till the fat umpire sings. You ask my pal from Bradford; he’ll back me up.