Quintin Jardine's blog

I’m well short of being an Arsenal fan but I am a football fan and I believe in fairness. So as Arsene Wenger suggests I should be, I am unhappy that last night’s game in Barcelona was marred by one of the worst, least considered and least defensible refereeing decisions I have ever seen. I’m not going to say it cost the Gunners the game, for they were outplayed for 90 minutes and if they’d had twelve men rather than ten that would still have happened. But I am angry that there are no sanctions against referees who fail as badly as that Swiss clown did last night. His career will carry on regardless. We will probably see him in charge of another European tie before the season is over, and that will be unfair to the people who pay good money to watch that game.

I can’t conceive of any realistic circumstances in which Mr Busacca would ever be given charge of an Old Firm game, but I can imagine all too easily the potential for disaster if he was.

At the other end of the celebrity spectrum from the prematurely praised Pixie, I’d place Professor Brian Cox, chief creator and presenter of the BBC series, Wonders of the Solar System, and now Wonders of the Universe. Professor Cox looks ridiculously young to profess anything, but in fact he’s 43, has three degrees, the most recent being a PhD in high energy particle physics from the University of Manchester, where he occupies a chair. In an era of bright youngish presenters he stands out as the brightest, the brainiest and the best at managing to get his message through to people like me, who begin from a position of not knowing what the **** he’s talking about, and end enthralled, educated and enriched by the experience.

The one Black Hole in his otherwise stellar CV: he played keyboards with the band D:Ream on that questionable anthem that was seized on by Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson as New Labour’s theme tune for its 1997 election campaign. It was called ‘Things can only get better’, but if the writers could have seen the future as well as Brian they would have added the lines, ‘for a very short time and then get a bloody sight worse.’

Just read a piece in the Torygraph ‘Celebrities’ section; its subject was one Pixie Geldof. Ms G is twenty years old, and as far as I can see has achieved nothing in her short life to date. Indeed she seems to have done precious little other than be chucked out of a posh school. So why should she be celebrated? Has the word really become so debased? I have a lot of time for Pixie’s old man, but in any talented daughter contest I’d back mine against his, time after time after time.

Nice and sunny this morning. What a bugger when you have to work.

Ah yes, that one. The mayor gave them a room for the night because they were cops.

Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, has just gone on record as saying that UK banks put profits before the customer and that too many of  them have made money from the gullible and unsuspecting. We are told that these institutions must pay enormous bonuses to prevent the top performers from taking their special talents abroad. Given Mervyn’s view, wouldn’t that be desirable? The allies are trying to create a modern economy in Kabul at the moment. I’m sure they could use quite a few of these guys.

Just like old times last night. The ten o’clock gang in the Mallard, caught up with all the village news and allegations and got in far too late. And as always, the cat was waiting for me at the end of the road, to walk with me for the last few yards.

Around a year ago now, I was at lunch in London with a group of publishers, when the guy sat next to me took me by surprise, by saying, ‘Tell me a bit about yourself. Whose music do you like?’

I gave it a couple of seconds thought and replied, ‘Springsteen, Van Morrison, REM, The Drive-By Truckers . . .’ That was as far as I got because the questioner stared at me and exclaimed, ‘You know about The Drive By Truckers?’ I knew full well that what he really meant was ‘How the **** does a bloke your age know about the Drive-By Truckers?’ but I let him off light since lunch was going on his card, smiled as if I was humouring him, which I was, and said, ‘Of course I do.’

Well James, if you come across this and you don’t know about it, the Truckers have a new album out. It’s called ‘Go-Go Boots’, I’m listening to it right now, and it’s monster.

I have a pile of books by the side of the bed; must be two feet high at least. Dunno when I’m ever going to find time to read them since I got my Kindle. Things a contemporary author should keep to himself, but . . . one of its great attractions is the opportunity it gives to look back on reading experiences from the past and relive them. You wouldn’t drive in to town to pick up a copy of a blast from the past, but now you can have it by pushing a couple of buttons. As an example, I’m currently revisiting A A Milne’s Winnie the Pooh.

What? QJ, creator of the toughest cop in the  known universe, reading Winnie the ******* Pooh? True, and he’s not ashamed to admit it.

The project sprang from my buying a complete Milne box-set, with the original Shepherd illustrations, not the pallid Disney versions,  for my step-granddaughter Mia, for some future birthday. (They will stay in the box for a while until Senora Banana’s fingers are a little less sticky.) That reminded me of a moment when my own kids were very young, and Irene and I tried to read to them from House at Pooh Corner. Forty years on  they still haven’t figured out why Mum and Dad never got to the end of the story of Pooh-sticks; we couldn’t. The only thing that might have been funnier  that the tale might have been, for a neutral observer, the sight of two adults doubled up with laughter on the floor, while two kids stared at them wondering what the fuss was about. And forty years on, from an adult perspective, the adventures are just as funny. I don’t really have anything against what Disney has done to the Enchanted Forest but none of it has ever really captured the magic of the original.

My day ended on a higher note (that’s after my daughter accused me of whinging when she called me on my mobile because the BT line for which I pay advance rental has gone down and they ain’t bothered too much about fixing it) than it started, with the final episode by Sky TV’s excellent drama, Mad Dogs. Taking a break from its usual practice of doing half-decent  adaptations, Sky came up with a rarish concept with this series. They took four very good actors, Max Beesley, Philip Glennister, John Simm and Marc Warren, who are all ‘faces’ on television, mostly on BBC, commissioned a slim but original script that relied more on insinuation than on whizz-bangs, and let all four of them act their socks off in the way they’ve never been allowed to before. Maybe Sky will do something imaginative and sell repeat rights to BBC or ITV, because it deserves a terrestrial audience.

Made the transition from Spain to Sco’land yesterday. To be accurate, it began yesterday but finished in the early hours of this morning, thanks to a flight delay, compounded by the fact that the Border Agency deployed one man to process the passports of over 300 passengers while his mate dealt slowly and deliberately with the non EU citizens. Welcome to Edinburgh, and have a ******* awful day.

Slept badly, then got up to make my way through a mountain of mail. Half-way up that I tried to made a phone call and discovered that my landline was dead; tried to report the fault to BT which did its level best to discourage me, then promised me that they’d get round to it, eventually.

Half way down the mountain, I found an interesting communication from the office of Boris Johnson. You know him, he’s the mop-headed, bleach blond Tory twat who managed to get himself elected as Mayor of London on  the basis that anyone would have been better than Ken Livingstone, only for the electorate to discover that ain’t true. Boris wants me to send him £120 because I didn’t pay the congestion charge levied on my car in his city on February 1. I have three problems with that: 1) I resent Boris thinking for a second that I’d ever be crazy enough to drive in the place. 2) Not only was I not in London on February 1, I wasn’t even in the United Kingdom. 3) I sold the car in question a month before its new owner attempted to cruise it through the metropolis on my tab.

I know, there is something comedic about it; the sort of crazy thing that only happens to other people. But when it happens to you, and you have to deal with the consequences of a chancer buying your motor and  DVLA being ludicrously slow to register the change, then compounding its own incompetence by trampling all over the Data Protection Act in sharing your out-of-date personal information with Boris ******* Johnson, you try laughing that off.

“Do you look at your husband’s face when you have sex?”

“I did once & he looked really angry.”

“Why should he have been angry?”

“Because he was watching through the window!”

Just been sent these by my friend David; he assures me that they are not true stories.

WIFE VS. HUSBAND

A couple drove down a country road for several miles, not saying a word.
An earlier discussion had led to an argument and
neither of them wanted to concede their position..
As they passed a barnyard of mules, goats, and pigs,
the husband asked sarcastically, ‘Relatives of yours?’
‘Yep,’ the wife replied, ‘in-laws.’

CREATION
A man said to his wife one day, ‘I don’t know how you can be
so stupid and so beautiful all at the same time.
‘The wife responded, ‘Allow me to explain.
God made me beautiful so you would be attracted to me;
God made me stupid so I would be attracted to you!

THE SILENT TREATMENT
A man and his wife were having some problems at home
and were giving each other the silent treatment.
Suddenly, the man realized that the next day, he would need his wife to wake him
at 5:00 AM for an early morning business flight.
Not wanting to be the first to break the silence (and LOSE), he wrote on a piece of paper,
‘Please wake me at 5:00 AM .’ He left it where he knew she would find it.
The next morning, the man woke up, only to discover it was 9:00 AM and he had missed his flight
Furious, he was about to go and see why his wife hadn’t wakened him,
when he noticed a piece of paper by  the bed.
The paper said, ‘It is 5:00 AM . Wake up..’
Men are not equipped for these kinds of contests.

Sorry folks, I’m stuck on sports. I have just read that the people in charge of the Scottish Premier League have decided that the 2011-2012 season is going to start on July 23. This is right in the middle of the traditional Glasgow Fair Holiday fortnight. What better time to kick off a new season than when our largest city is emptied? Nuts.

This one is dedicated to Michael Connelly:

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), The FBI, and the CIA are all trying to prove that they are the best at apprehending criminals. The President decides to give them a test. He releases a rabbit into a forest and each of them has to catch it.

The CIA goes in.
They place animal informants throughout the forest.
They question all plant and mineral witnesses.
After three months of extensive investigations they conclude that rabbits do not exist.

The FBI goes in.
After two weeks with no leads they burn the forest, killing everything in it, including the rabbit, and they make no apologies.
The rabbit had it coming.

The LAPD goes in.
They come out two hours later with a badly beaten bear.
The bear is yelling: “Okay! Okay! I’m a rabbit! I’m a rabbit!”

For those golf fans among you who have ever pondered the matter, as have I, Bubba Watson’s given forename is not in fact ‘Bubba’ but Gerry. Most pro golfers like to have a URP (Unique Recognition Point). The late lamented Payne Stewart  always wore the colours of the NFL franchise closest to where each week’s tournament was played, and plus two trousers to aid the colour blind. Gary Player always wore black. Jesper Parnevik wore a baseball cap with the brim wrong way round. Jack Nicklaus, in his youth, was a fat blond kid with a crew cut who wore awful sweaters that made him look even fatter. Arnold Palmer had an aura the size of America. Seve had charisma to match that of Muhammad Ali. Lee Trevino never stopped wise-cracking to the crowd regardless of the effect it had on his playing partners. Gerry Watson, it seems, relies on a questionable nickname. I wonder why, as he can be identified easily, as the guy who has furthest to walk to reach his tee shot.

Sometimes the good guys win. Nothing against French football managers or German golfers, but what odds would you have got five  days ago against a treble of Motherwell clattering Celtic 2 — 0, Birmingham winning the Carling Cup, and Luke Donald winning the Accenture Matchplay Championship. I couldn’t be happier for Stuart McCall and Alex McLeish, who can finally be forgiven for leaving the Fir Park job to lead Hibs to relegation that same season, and most of all  for LD who took on the best golfers on the planet, played six matches in five days, and remarkably was never behind in any of them.

Quiet day yesterday, reflecting on an excellent Saturday evening as guests of Sue and David, Them Next Door. Nice one, Shirl.

A story I’ve been sent from Queensland. True? You tell me.

Recently a routine Police patrol car parked outside a local neighbourhood pub late in the evening. The officer noticed a man leaving the bar so intoxicated that he could barely walk.

The man stumbled around the car park for a few minutes, with the officer quietly observing. After what seemed an eternity and trying his keys on five vehicles. The man managed to find his car, which he fell into. He was there for a few minutes as a number of other patrons left the bar and drove off. Finally he started the car, switched the wipers on and off (it was a fine dry night). Then flicked the indicators on, then off, tooted the horn and then switched on the lights.

He moved the vehicle forward a few metres, reversed a little and then remained stationary for a few more minutes as some more vehicles left. At last he pulled out of the car park and started to drive slowly down the road. The Police officer, having patiently waited all this time, now started up the patrol car, put on the flashing lights, promptly pulled the man over and carried out a random breathalyser test.

To his amazement the breathalyser indicated no evidence of the man’s intoxication.

The Police officer said “I’ll have to ask you to accompany me to the Police station – this breathalyser equipment must be broken.”

“I doubt it,” said the man, “tonight I’m the designated decoy”.