Bone Thugs 'N' Harmony

Sam Allardyce might have been expelled from St James' Park, but all of his bad signings remain. Most notably, the ones with dodgy disciplinary records. I'm talking Joey Barton and Alan Smith, mainly.

By all accounts Alan Smith is a gentleman of the highest degree off the pitch, but on the pitch, he's an animal. Joey Barton is a tough guy, with no fear of getting aggressive in any given situation.

So who do the board bring in? Without even consulting Kevin Keegan? To oversee transfers, youth development and scouting? Of course! The man that once attacked a taxi driver with a brick and was no angel when in his football kit - Dennis Wise.

Now don't get me wrong, I quite like Dennis Wise, and his managerial record with Millwall and Leeds is decent. But he is a bit of thug. He's not delicate. And it sems that bringing him in will just be fighting fire with fire, no?

Wise, apparently, will have no involvement in the first team, that will be left to Keegan. And he is in fact what used to be known as a 'general manager'. And I think it would be genuinely farcical to suggest he will be to Keegan what Avram Grant was to Jose Mourinho, but on a few levels, the appointment seems bizarre.

Then again, I'd expect nothing less from the ever entertaining Toon army.

Comedy: Demetri Martin

This article originally appeared on the Such Small Portions website, here.

Demetri Martin - These Are Jokes (Comedy Central Records)

Demetri Martin is a very natural comedian. He looks and sounds very honest, in his simple clothes, a self-confessed “gay Beatles” haircut and a youth defying his thirty-five years.

He’s a Greek lad raised in New Jersey, and he’s really smart. He’s won awards and contributes for The Daily Show. His stand-up consists largely of deadpan one-liner, but his real talent lies in the different ways he brings them all to life.

Admirably on These Are Jokes, there’s a CD and a DVD, containing mostly different materials. The DVD is taken from a 2004 Comedy Central special where he uses David Shrigley like animations and a deliberately amateurish stage show including his Mum and Grandma to give his jokes new life. It works impressively.

On the CD, recorded in Chicago, he uses guests – Leo Allen and Will Forte – and song. Best of all is Sames And Opposites, sung in a moody Leonard Cohen style, including being impressively lyrical. “Earrings are the same as sneezes, two is okay, but ten is annoying”; “A squirrel is the same as a can, when there’s a bb gun in my hand”; Saying ‘sorry’ and ‘I apologise’ is the same, except when you’re at a funeral.”

The world he creates is admirable. He’s not particularly political of philosophical, or even deep. This is almost certainly deliberate. He strips things down his observations to well thought out surrealism: “I bet drowning is a really horrible experience, unless right before that you’re really thirsty. That’s why when I go out on the water I take a life jacket and a bag of potato chips. I wanna go out quenched.”

On the DVD there are clips of early gigs. One where he has a beard, plays a yo-yo and rides a unicycle, the other where he’s short haired, awkward and in a plain, grey sweatshirt. They just go to show how far he’s come. He is slick and masterful in his audience control. He is quiet and unenergetic enough to demand close attention to his words, meaning the smallest look, frown or smile is funny.

He slips easily from the banal: “If I have the choice between and escalator and an elevator, I always take the elevator. I tripped on an escalator once and fell down the stairs for an hour and a half”; to sociology: “Camouflage clothing is great when you’re in the woods and you want to blend in; when you’re in the city, it’s like: there’s an asshole”; to death: “Batteries are the most dramatic of objects. Everything else breaks or stops working. Batteries die.”

In short, the man’s impressive. Ambidextrous in the extreme, he uses his skills well, Bill Bailey like musicianship combining with his Woody Allen like observations. He’s also incredibly funny. “I think they named oranges before they named carrots,” being

Top 6 Burning Effigies

I compiled this list for the February issue of All Out Cricket magazine, it;s relatively amusing...

1 - Darrell Hair Vs Pakistan - Lahore, Pakistan 2006

Being called a cheat isn’t cool. But on day four at The Oval of Test four in a five Test series against England, that’s exactly what happened to Pakistan in an incident dubbed by Imran Khan as “the biggest crisis in Test cricket history”.

Australian umpire Darrell ‘controversy’ Hair and fellow man-in-the-middle, West Indian Billy Doctrove, decided the match ball had been tampered with and blamed the bowling side, Pakistan.

England were given 5 runs and a replacement ball. Play continued until tea, after which a defiant Inzamam-Al-Huq refused to bring his side back out.

Too much time went past, the umpires awarded the match to England and chaos ensued. Amidst accusations of racism levelled at Hair and allegations of bad sportsmanship directed at the Pakistani’s, everyone got involved.

Michael Atherton criticised Hair, Nasser Hussain sided with Inzy, and Steve Waugh supported the umpires.

Needless to say, Hair not Doctrove was the umpire that made the decision that day and effigies of him as the Michelin man wearing a sun hat were burned on the streets of Lahore. More inventive than most, it must be said.

The ICC banned Hair from umpiring international matches and the Pakistani side were cleared of cheating, but Inzy was charged with bringing the game into disrepute and banned for four ODI’s.

Simply put it was a mess, a farce and a debacle that could have been avoided.

2 - Greg Chappell Vs Sourav Ganguly - Kolkata, India, 2005/6

Cricket players in India are national heroes. Mess with them and you mess with the whole country. Greg Chappell found this out the hard way.

Appointed coach of the Indian side in 2005, Chappell went about business with an out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new attitude. VVS Laxman was dropped and Suresh Raina and Venugopal Rao were brought in. At this point Sourav Ganguly was serving a 4-match ban and unavailable for selection.

On his return, he was reinstated for a tour of Zimbabwe. But poor form, inter-team tensions and a leaked email from Chappell saying Ganguly was unfit to lead the team set the ball rolling.

Harbajan Singh’s subsequent public criticism of Chappell resulted in a gagging order for the whole team. Then the whites really hit the fan.

In late 2005 Chappell removed Ganguly as captain, replaced him with Rahul Dravid and dropped him from the ODI team. In early 2006 he was dropped from the Test team too.

India went mental. Effigies of Chappell were burned in Ganguly’s hometown of Kolkata and the issue made it into Parliament.

Ganguly was recalled later that year because of injuries, but dropped again. There was more fire and protests in Calcutta, including a blockading of rail transport in Bengal.
Chappell left his position in April 2007, and Anil Kumble is the current Test captain.

3 - Dhoni, Dravid, Sehwag Vs India - India, 2007

Cricket is just a game right? Right. Some things are more important than cricket right? Right. Not if you’re Indian. Cricket is everything. Life, death and gambling. Everything.

So you can imagine the pressure on the players when a World Cup happens. And you can imagine the kind of reaction you get if you don’t do quite live up to expectations.

Actually, you probably can’t. After a poor display by India in the 2007 World Cup including a five-wicket mauling by Bangladesh, no one and nowhere was safe. Effigies of Rahul Dravid, Virender Sehwag, Harbajan Singh and the previously sacred Sachin Tendulkar were all set alight.

But Mahendra Dhoni, out for a duck against Bangladesh, got it worst. Effigies, obviously, were torched. Plus his new house being built in Ranchi, East India was attacked by Jharkhad Mukti Morcha activists.

The boundary wall was destroyed, mock funerals for the players were held and the activists demanded that the house, a gift from the government, was given back. It wasn’t.

The other players had government troops protecting their homes to prevent similar ordeals. And you thought you were passionate.

Most disturbing were angry fans chanting: “Dhoni die, die”, and complaints from the lion-haired wicketkeeper-batsman’s distraught mother who told journalists: “People do not have sportsman’s spirit.” Indeed.

4 - Habibul Bashar Vs Bangladesh - Bangladesh, 2007

In the effigy burning world, news takes on a whole different complexion. And you may have noticed a recurrent them in our list: they are all in India and Pakistan.

So you can imagine the kafuffle when in April this year the Bangladeshi’s got in on the act. Fire spreads.

Even after beating India in the 2007 World Cup group stages, consecutive defeats to Australia (acceptable, surely) and New Zealand, ensured that captain Habibul Bashar got the petrol doused street protest treatment.

But wait. It wasn’t uncontrollable, cricket mad rabbles or desperate gamblers doing the idol burning, no. It was students at Dhaka University. Not your average protest, to be sure.

But the setting alight of the most successful captain in Bangladeshi cricket’s history sent out one very clear message: no one is safe. On the other hand it was a sign that Bashar had hit the big time, so pro’s and cons.

5 - Chris Broad Vs Sourav Ganguly - Kolkata, India 2006

The controversial umpire and father of Stuart had a trail of destruction leading up to the one that got him a spot on our list.

Having reported Muttiah Murilitharan once and Harbajan Singh twice for chucking their ‘doosras’, he also got cross with Shoaib Akhtar and Inzamam-Al-Huq, on separate occasions, for excessive appealing.

But it was his six-match banning of Sourav Ganguly for his Indian sides slow over rate that really made him some enemies. And he got the full works in Kolkata where a full size model of Broad was ignited.

Justified or not, it didn’t make him a popular man in India. Indeed, Sambit Bal, editor in chief of Wisden Asia said: “Broad has come to be hated in India, where people think of him as an officious, meddling sort of chap.” Blimey.

6 - Mike Denness Vs India - Port Elizabeth, 2001

There is a school of thought that says if you’re going to upset the Indian cricket team, and their fans, you may as well do it properly. English umpire Mike Denness is the headmaster of this school.

In a Test match between India and South Africa in November 2001 in Port Elizabeth in South Africa, he imposed punishment on no less than six Indian players. Yes, six.

Harbajhan Singh, Shiv Sundar Das, Deep Dasgupta and Virender Sehwag were all given a one-match ban for excessive appealing. Sourav Ganguly was banned for a match for failing to control his players’ behaviour, whilst Sachin Tendulkar was banned for one game for ball tampering, or “acting on the ball”.

Obviously, mayhem followed. Denness was branded ‘Denness the Menace’ by the Indian media, and a straw effigy of him astride a mule was paraded along the streets of India, receiving the inevitable flaming shortly afterwards.

Amidst accusations of racism it was demanded by both the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and the South African cricket board that Denness not be allowed to referee the following two Tests. Their wish was granted.

The Test he had umpired was reduced to a “friendly five day match” and the series limited to the two remaining tests, which Dennes wasn’t even allowed into the venues for and South Africa won 1-0.

Denness was remarkably philosophical about the events: “If Tony Blair and George Bush have had effigies burned then I’m in good company.” Turning a negative, into a positive; very Eastern, ironically.

FOOD

Sometimes, I write about food too.

Click here to see a feature getting predictions from top chefs on who may or may not be on the Michelin radar when the results come out in January.

It was published in the January 3rd 2008 issue of Caterer and Hotelkeeper magazine.

SPORT

Sometimes (often) I write about sport for www.4sportsake.com. It's a funky little blog with a mixture of professional and non-professional journalists giving their opinions on some very interesting matters in the world of sport.

Click here and you'll see what i've written. It features such highlights as fetishising Ronnie O'Sullivan, damning Liverpool and Rafa Benitez, and predicting the crumbling of Phil 'the power' Taylor's domination of darts.

As if that wasn't enough, you'll also get comments on cricket and the sports personality of the year.

You lucky people.