Robo-Crouch: Check Lampard's face in the background, he got tired of it quickly too...
Wednesday August 22nd: Gordon is getting back to work. First order of business is a meeting with German Chancellor, Angela Merkel (NECKLE!) to talk over a referendum for the EU treaty. The Guardian reports that she will be treated to a night out at Wembley for England’s friendly (if there can be a 'friendly' between these two teams) with Germany. She's definitely better off with Gordon at such an event. I could just imagine Blair taking his shirt off and swinging it above his head while joining a chorus of The Great Escape theme, because it might improve his opinion poll rating.
I, personally have a complex relationship with the English national football team, which I will one day write about at length. I will tell you now the exact day and time the dream died, for me - It was the World Cup quarter final - 2002 - England v Brazil. It was around the time when Ronaldinho spooned a free kick over David Seaman's head and into the bottom left corner of the net. The time was, well, I can't be sure of the exact time, because I, like most other people in the Woking branch of RSVP had decided that it would be a good idea to start drinking at 7.30 AM. To this day, when I talk to England fans about Ronaldinho's goal - they first pretend that they don't know what I'm talking about. Then they say he didn't mean to do it. My reply is - have you watched him play football before? He's The One in his generation. Much like Best, Pele, Maradonna, Ronaldo and Zidane were. The Nike ad footage of him as a kid taking on whole teams and then scoring proves that.
He meant to do it and he made that shit look good.
Anyway. When I walked out of the bar at full-time, I saw grown men, fully attired for work, weeping in the street like they had lost a relative. With that, I turned and walked off home. The office would have had as much atmosphere as an undertaker's workstation and I wanted no part of the misery. And to this day, I find it hard to hear the national anthem sung without picturing the reddening, creased faces of stockbrokers and lawyers, united in their grief after the media hype ended with another disappointing loss. I took the penalty loss in Italia 90 on the chin. The Euro '96 knockout too. World Cup '98, I was still shielding that last ember of hope that an England team might win the World Cup in my lifetime. But the Brazil match was the straw that broke the camel's back. As for last year's World Cup, I sneered my way through England's matches. I was completely numb to the pain of the defeat by Portugal. And I was supporting Ghana.
As I write this the scrore is 2-1 to Germany, after England went ahead nine minutes in.
Hahaha - now Peter Crouch is on.
Gordon appears to have been overly blessed with gifts from political well-wishers since he came into office. According to The Scotsman, in the first three days of Gordon Brown's term £500,000 was donated to The Labour Party. And what did Tony get? Muffin basket.
Diet Blair is really grasping at straws now - at this rate he might actually finish his run before Prince does. His 'anarchy in the UK' rant nicely crowns the week in which he offered the Prime Minister a "bare knuckle fight" over the NHS. The Times contained quite a thoughtful piece by Richard Morrison today, basically saying Dave's statement was the sort of loose talk which starts witch hunts. He went to Nike's Midnight Madness basketball event at Crystal Palace on his Jack Jones, and sat as the only middle-aged White man in a crowd of 5000. We're not that scary, Dave. Come to Carnival this weekend. Eat some Jerk Chicken, drink some Guinness Punch and dance with a female Fed. If Hague could do it - you can....
According to 3121.com, back-up singer Shelby J and Mike Phillips hit a secret gig and jammed with a house band. It looks like she may have been trying out a few new numbers, in preparation for the weekend...
As I mentioned yesterday - Common looks set to support Prince on Friday. Mr Nelson became a fan of the Chi-Town wordsmith after hearing The Light, from his 1999 album Like Water For Chocolate and the pair have performed the song together at least once. Common's freestyling skills should also make the aftershow party an interesting affair. Literally anything could happen
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