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Phill Jupitus: comic genius

Phill Jupitus's illustrated guide to banishing those end-of-season-blues.

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Good Godot – why the England team would fare well in the Theatre of Dreams

 

NOTE: Phill Jupitus had embraced the end of the football season so completely that Saturday night’s internationals passed him by. In an effort somehow to come up with a column, he has applied the usual tried and trusted formula to his Saturday night . . .

It was an enthusiastic crowd who witnessed another performance from Samuel Beckett’s boys. The result of this fixture has been a foregone conclusion since its first public outing in Paris in 1952. But over the decades, crowds have learnt never to take the outcome for granted. Coaches have tried new formations with varying results. Some favoured playing Vladimir in a more up front role with Estragon wide at the back.

Certainly Sir Peter Hall, when taking on this new European system in 1955, adapted it for a domestic crowd, with a lot more jinking interplay in the first half.

I wasn’t filled with confidence to see that Estragon obviously had a problem with his boots. Also at one point it became quite obvious that there were tensions, with Vladimir shouting in frustration: “Come on Gogo, return the ball, can’t you, once in a while.” Surely such overt bickering should be confined to the dressing room.

The first half was a complex affair until the arrival of new players, Pozzo and Lucky. They dominated the play by frustrating the ambitions of the regulars. Beckett’s game plan at this point seemed bogged down, relying too much on the input of the newcomers. Despite some nice movement from Lucky, and the late arrival of a youngster, the first half ended pretty much as it had started.

The second half started with Vladimir pretty much out on his own, screaming for service from Estragon. Once they were together the play seemed more complex, but the result was never in any doubt. Pozzo was a changed player in the second half, and tragically kept unsighted. As the final whistle approached, it became obvious that there were never going to be any goals and we would not be seeing the arrival of the overly anticipated Godot.

Waiting For Godot is at the Theatre Royal Haymarket and apparently directed by Alan Curbishley . . .

Next Week — Gabriele Marcotti on Sister Act.

FA Cup Final coverage was a laugh a minute

Phill Jupitus

As a last hurrah goes, the FA Cup Final is both frustrating and cathartic. Frustrating because it summons up the memory of your own team’s ignominious exit, but cathartic because you get to sit in a room full of fellow losers and pour scorn on the screen.

This phenomenon was given rein at this year’s Cat Laughs Comedy Festival in Kilkenny, where Barry Murphy and Karl Spain, the Irish comedians, hosted their own pre-match warm-up.

And there has been a real need for some kind of alternative. If you have watched the FA Cup action during ITV’s laughable coverage, then you probably missed half of it because you were peering out from behind your hands. In fact, I can’t be 100 per cent sure that Everton didn’t actually win the thing on Saturday and ITV just forgot to show the goals.

No escape from fans’ abuse, even at cricket

Phill Jupitus

Two games to go and the tantalising prospect of European football is still in the air. Despite such excitement, there really should be a name for those dull years when there’s no international football to ease the pain of season’s end. The European Championship and the World Cup help to prolong one’s exhilaration but somehow once they’re finished, your remaining summer is telescoped into an incandescent few weeks where the only distraction is whether you should bother going to see any pre-season friendlies.

I have made some tentative inroads into finding something to fill the approaching void of June and July and dodge this summer malaise, so I have started going to the cricket. I know precious little about the game, but that never stopped me enjoying football. However, the seasons do slightly overlap, so this weekend in a busy sporting itinerary I spent Saturday at Upton Park, and Sunday at The Ford County Ground in Chelmsford.

The first difference you notice is the atmosphere. While a raucous 35,000 watched the Hammers, about 2,000 were at the cricket. Where I sit at West Ham is just behind some of the corporate boxes, where you do occasionally find opposing fans. Before the game they are reminded that cheering opposition goals or wearing colours is not allowed.

Despite this, one whip-smart individual was somewhat ostentatiously sporting a bright red Liverpool scarf, and gurning at his companions. A few choice Anglo-Saxon aphorisms were thrown his way before a steward politely requested that the offending accessory was put away. At the cricket I was in the members’ stand behind half a dozen northern gentlemen who were wearing full Lancashire kit and nobody was bothered by their presence one bit.

Why I’m more than a little envious of you in the lower leagues

Phill Jupitus

For those of us who follow the other Premier League sides, watching the unstoppable Manchester United cruise towards another title is no fun.

For those in the lower reaches of the table there are more pressing concerns, as they work out the permutations of how the few remaining fixtures could affect them. I know it’s like this every May, but having had a closer relationship with football since taking the Game gig, this season has been fascinating.

In the lower divisions, Saturday was an occasion for unbridled joy for some and complete heartache for others. On BBC Radio 5 Live’s 606, Alan Green gave some of these individuals a forum for tipsy celebration or the opportunity for some kind of on-air catharsis.

Do referees really think giving penalties is better than sex?

 

Phill Jupitus

In the second half on Saturday at Upton Park when Salomon Kalou pulled down Hérita Ilunga, Mike Dean, who was officiating, awarded a penalty to West Ham.

But he did so in quite a striking way. His body crouched into a bizarre stance, his pointing arm jutting in front of him towards the penalty spot, and held the odd pose for three seconds. Even now I’m not sure if it was deliberate or if he’s just excited about Wolverine coming out.

The penalty is always a moment of high drama. An incident happens in the area, at which point every spectator, official, copper, steward and player looks towards the referee with anticipation or trepidation. This convoluted process of awarding a penalty is one of my favourite pantomimes in a game. At the precise moment you must experience the raw surging power of the job.

My Cup runneth over with nausea at Setanta’s assault on the senses

Phill Jupitus

On Saturday afternoon I settled down in front of the telly to enjoy the vicarious thrills of the FA Cup semi-final. A lack of partisan involvement usually makes for a relaxing few hours. But then I wasn’t banking on the excesses of Setanta. I know The FA Cup, sorry The E.ON FA Cup, has a deserved reputation as the world’s greatest knockout tournament. One would think, therefore, that the FA might have a vested interest in it not being made to look stupid.

This, apparently, is not the case. If you’ve got enough cash and some cameras, it’s good luck and see you when the broadcast rights come up for sale next time.

The coverage started two hours before kick-off, which is an awful lot of time to fill when you’re a relative newcomer to broadcasting. The first thing you see is the graphic of a huge FA Cup being built over the British countryside. Not unlike the enormous lions you see towering above the white cliffs of Dover when Setanta are covering England games. Now I’m no psychiatrist, but in the light of all the “big” imagery they use, would it be unreasonable to construe that somebody upstairs at Setanta is trying to compensate for something? I’m just asking . . .

What a surprise – Scottish FA are back-pedalling already

 

Phill Jupitus

Discipline. Respect. Role models. Do the people who incorporate such terms when writing about modern football, actually watch the game or indeed ever open their front doors? The massive groundswell of public opinion north of the border supporting the purported “life ban” of Barry Ferguson and Allan McGregor certainly caught me by surprise. To be frank, the idea that any sport’s governing body had acted at all was a bit of a shocker.

But much as I thought would happen, within the week, Gordon Smith, of the Scottish FA, was already softly back-pedalling, saying that the duo’s ban would be “looked at in the future”. It smacks of the kind of slipshod discipline you’d see in The Brady Bunch every week. Although, as far as I recall Greg and Peter never went out on a massive bender, which they then compounded by publicly abusing the world’s media.

The “shock and awe” response of George Burley and the SFA has been rendered pretty much irrelevant by Smith’s wishy-washy words. The subtext of the whole row now seems to be that the pair absolutely do have a lifetime ban. But it’s only a lifetime ban from George Burley’s Scotland team.

Once Ally McCoist takes over the reins, it’s come on down lads and mine’s a pint! So at what point does a player’s conduct really stop them from being allowed back into the game? Joey Barton’s charge sheet reads like a Quentin Tarantino script directed by Martin Scorsese, but once he was out of prison, (that’s PRISON) he was ushered back on the park within days. What does this tell our youngsters watching the game, apart from, if Barton’s playing, you might want to sit a few rows farther back.

It seems that every other Sunday some young buck from the game is being accused of something unspeakable in the red tops. But within a few days these stories just seem to dissolve. They get stick from opposing fans for a few weeks and then it’s like it never happened.

As long as football is an industry and the players its raw material, bad conduct will remain a moot point. It’s sad to be living in an age when the only thing a young player can do that will really upset his club is to get injured. Everything else can be “handled”.

Damned United: a love letter to a flawed genius

 

Phill Jupitus

Hollywood cinema is littered with spectacular films about its domestic sports — Eight Men Out, Slap Shot, The Natural, and that’s without Googling. So why haven’t we been able to do football credit on celluloid in the UK?

Al Pacino’s scene-stealing “Game of inches” speech in Oliver Stone’s American football movie Any Given Sunday is the first time I ever appreciated how difficult the job of a coach of any kind of sporting team must be. Until then, my favourite coach in a sports film had been Brian Glover’s fat PE teacher in Kes. This is why I always experience a slight hesitation at the box office when buying a ticket for a British football film.

What pre-publicity that I’ve seen for The Damned United has dwelt on various historical inconsistencies and how unhappy Brian Clough’s family are with it, which is a touch disingenuous. But before diving into the popcorn, it is worth remembering that this is, above all, a dramatic retelling of some key moments from a career that most of us are already familiar with. So last Friday I wandered into a multiplex to see what all the fuss was about.

Uneasy about feel-good feeling surrounding England

Phill Jupitus

Why does optimism about England’s international performance sit so awkwardly on our shoulders? The Fabio Capello era has brought an unfamiliar sheen of assuredness to the team and a corresponding skip in the nation’s step. Saturday’s unremitting goal-fest against Slovakia was remarkable not only for the action on the field, but also the unending cutaways to smiling, dancing supporters in the Wembley crowd.

It was like watching a Soviet propaganda film from the 1940s. Even those new, collared England shirts seemed to hail from that era. England’s 500th Wembley goal, scored by Frank Lampard, was almost too perfect, like it had been scripted.

There was flag-waving, rosy-cheeked children and the eerie sense that everybody was being positive under instruction. The team continued the Stalinist tribute night by going as far as oppressing a small East European nation. The only thing missing was the tanks. Thankfully the boys in the England camp know that there is a powerful streak of negativity in the more downbeat fans that needs to be fed in ever-more bizarre and exciting ways. So on Saturday night, those of us who find it impossible to enjoy a victory could focus on the case of the cursed strikers.