Football on the Radio

I don’t know if there was, or ever will be, a ‘golden age’ of radio football commentary, but having been an avid listener for more years than I care to remember, I’d be willing to posit the view that we are not living through it right now. The continuous deployment of shrill hyperbole appears to be the industry standard among the commentating fraternity, while any analysis invariably has ‘triumph’ at one end and ‘disaster’ at the other, leaving little room for subtlety or nuance. It could be that the sheer number of games being covered has led to a lowering of the qualification bar. Alternatively, we could be going through the kind of cultural decline that I’d be willing to expand upon, but only after another couple of drinks. 

Many commentators appear to think that shrieking at every goalmouth incident will convince listeners that something exciting is happening. They will routinely describe events at a 2-2 draw between, let’s say, Motherwell and Kilmarnock as ‘astonishing’ or ‘incredible’. In my book, ‘astonishing’ takes quite some doing, while a word like ‘incredible’ should only be used if, for example, Dundee United bring on a two-headed transsexual substitute who scores a late winner and then gets sent off for defecating in the centre circle.

Back when I was a lad (and it was all fields around here), there was not that much football on the radio, which somehow made it seem just a bit more special. Commentary, even on big games, would not start until the second half; to get the midweek football results, you often had to wait until a brief ‘sports desk’ at 10.15pm. By contrast, today’s wall-to-wall coverage leaves nothing to the imagination. Every incident, however mundane, is analysed, picked apart and debated as the pundits (aided and abetted by their phone-in punters) take the same forensic approach to an offside decision at Easter Road that the Warren Commission took to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Amidst all this babble and burble, wherein every single incident is deemed to be ‘incredible’ or ‘sensational’, it becomes difficult to spot something that genuinely is incredible or sensational.      

In addition to the rationed coverage, one of the features of the old days of radio commentary was the frailty of the technical links, particularly when the game was being played abroad.  Nowadays everything is digitally pristine, to the extent that a commentator at a game in Uzbekistan will sound like he is broadcasting from your back garden. That is probably a very good thing, but there was something thrilling about tuning into a crackly old analogue line that seemed liable to break down at any moment; the fact that the commentator was often just this side of legible made it all the more gripping. A game from Eastern Europe (a.k.a. ‘behind the Iron Curtain’) sounded like it was being broadcast from the moon, but what mystery and excitement those precarious signals evoked. 

I recall once sneaking a transistor radio into school to listen to England losing 2-1 to Czechoslovakia in a European Championship qualifier. I can’t remember why the game was being played in the middle of the afternoon; perhaps those Iron Curtain commies didn’t want to waste good socialist electricity on decadent westerners. For a brief moment, I was the toast of an admittedly very small section of the geography class who gave a toss about whether or not England got a result in that tricky away tie. It was quite a tough Glaswegian school, so I was taking a bit of a chance by volunteering to be the bearer of news. My fellow pupils were delighted that the English had lost, but had I reported that they had won the game, there might have been a danger of them adopting a ‘shoot the messenger’ policy. I could have found myself hung up on the school railings by the hood of my duffel coat.  Again.      

In spite (or perhaps because) of the fact that I was rubbish at playing it, I was a football nerd in my teens. One of the reasons that I don’t complain about my kids playing computer games is that I have enough self-awareness to acknowledge that, had FIFA or Championship Manager been available when I was a lad, I would never have left my bedroom; my parents, in fact, would probably have had to feed me through a drip. Tragically obsessed with football facts and figures to an extent that would nowadays invite a diagnosis of mild autism, my Saturday nights would occasionally be spent trying to tune into a German radio station, trying to work out what was happening in the Bundesliga games. I should point out here that I could not speak a single word of German. 
Now perhaps you’d like to pause for a moment to take in the enormity of that last statement.  
A boy who didn’t speak German trying to listen to a (very weak) radio signal from Germany, trying to interpret what was going on in a game between two German teams. On a Saturday evening. I think it is safe to say that that would have earned me quite a high score on the ‘you’ll never get a girlfriend-ometer’. 

My greatest triumph in interpreting-dodgy-radio-signals-in-German was when I ‘worked out’ that Bayern Munich had got an absolute pasting in a game against Kaiserslautern. The commentator was going mental –in German, obviously- as goal after goal seemed to fly in. As the very weak radio signal swirled about, hovering intermittently somewhere between German football and what sounded like the Belgian pop charts, I knew that Kaiserslautern (or maybe Bayern) were scoring a barrow load of goals in a short space of time; either that, or I was listening to a ‘highlights of the season’ show. The internet hadn’t been invented yet, so I had to wait a day or two to have the amazing news confirmed: Bayern had indeed been roundly thrashed and I was –probably- one of the first schoolboys in Scotland to know about it, thanks to the miracle of crackly medium wave radio. I still count that as one of my greatest achievements in life, right up there with the birth of my children and the time I almost got a nine-letter word on Countdown.         
Having started this piece by complaining about ‘shouty’ football commentators, I’m now going to eulogise about a ‘shouty’ bit of commentary. When used sparingly, near-hysterical excitement is a legitimate weapon in the commentator’s arsenal. In Star Trek, Captain Kirk and his crew had their phasers on stun most of the time and only switched to the full bhuna in exceptional circumstances. I would recommend a similar approach for commentators.  My advice would be: don’t simulate noisy orgasm when Queen of the South equalise with three minutes to go in a Ramsden’s Cup tie against Partick Thistle. If you behave like that when normal stuff happens in a normal game, where can you go once extraordinary stuff happens in an extraordinary game?              

This clip (using TV pictures, but with the radio commentary) features the Dutch radio commentator Jack van Gelder and provides a wonderful example of how to invest a description with the appropriate degree of awestruck wonder. The vocabulary is minimalist, but the context renders this entirely appropriate. The occasion was the 1998 World Cup quarter-final between Holland and Argentina. In the last minute of a tense game, Dennis Bergkamp scored a stunning goal to take Holland to the semi-finals. It was remarkable enough that Frank de Boer could play the 80-yard pass that he did; it was remarkable enough that Bergkamp could control that pass, flick the ball past the defender and then place a shot, with the outside of his foot, beyond the goalkeeper and into the far corner of the net.  But to do all of that in the last minute of a World Cup Quarter Final? Now that, my friends, is astonishing. 
It will take 38 seconds of your time to watch the clip. In that time, you will hear the joy and wonder of the commentator, but you will also witness sporting excellence, incredible spatial awareness, geometrical precision, astonishing technique and breath-taking guile, all condensed into one incredible, poetic moment. Jack van Gelder rightly judged that this extraordinary moment was beyond ordinary words. In truth, the only thing left for him to say was: Dennis Bergkamp! Dennis Bergkamp!! DENNIS BERGKAMP!!!

A 'spokesperson' for the Taliban

I nearly choked on my cornflakes this morning while listening to the 7am news on BBC radio. During an item about the delayed start of the proposed ‘peace talks’ in Islamabad, the newsreader started a sentence with this phrase: 

“A spokesperson for the Taliban said …”

Excuse me? A spokesperson? For the Taliban? We’re unclear about the gender of someone speaking on behalf of the Taliban?

Here are some phrases you could hear any day on the news, none of which would cause undue alarm: “A spokesperson for Friends of the Earth said …” or “A spokesperson for Marks and Spencer said …” or perhaps “A spokesperson for Channel Four said …”

Not one of those phrases is in any way jarring, because each of those organisations might well have a 'spokesperson' who isn’t a man.

Perhaps someone on the BBC news team doesn’t know what the Taliban is, what it has done, what it stands for and what it would like to achieve. That would be pretty poor form for anyone working in news and current affairs; such poor form, in fact, that you’d have to imagine that anyone displaying such ignorance would be out of a job in no time at all.

You might think that I'm being a tad uncharitable by speculating that sheer ignorance might be responsible for the use of that phrase “A spokesperson for the Taliban".

That may be the case. But other, less charitable interpretations are available.

Making an album, part 2: It’s not (quite) about the money, money, money.

I’ve had some interesting correspondence since my previous post about deciding to record an album and to write about the various issues associated with that process. Most of the comments have been supportive, with some folk saying that they are curious to see how it will all turn out. I was a little bit surprised by a couple of the more critical remarks, not because I expect everyone to think that my idea is great and that my music is wonderful, but because these comments focused on the fact that my opening spiel talked about money and, specifically, about my hope of recovering some of the costs of the venture. 

One correspondent suggested that I was approaching this from the ‘wrong direction’, because true artists shouldn’t be bothered with financial considerations; this person suggested that, if filthy lucre was at the top of my agenda, I would be better advised to stick to my day job. I’m intrigued by arguments about the purity of art.  It seems to me that, unless you have a benefactor (or can survive on just the occasional bowl of steam), money will impact on how and when you produce your work. If you can’t make a living from it -which is the case for the majority of artists- then whenever you spend time and money on your art, it is time and money you are not devoting to something else; it is time you are not giving to your loved ones and money you are not spending on essential bills or other items.  Should I spend a couple grand making an album because I feel the need to, or should I put that money towards my mum’s hip operation? Should I hire some really good session musicians to sprinkle fairy dust over my stupid little songs, or should I use that cash to give my kids a really good holiday? It’s a difficult call.  

Any musician who has their work promoted by a record company and any artist whose endeavours are supported through the public purse (for example, with a grant from Creative Scotland) is in an unusual and fortunate position. I don’t have any choice as to whether some of my hard-earned tax buck should go towards subsidising another artist’s (no doubt worthy) efforts. I do, however, have a choice in how I spend my own spare cash and -much as I’d love some additional support- I’m comfortable with the fact that I’ll have to record this album on my own dime. If wondering how I might best manage that makes me some kind of philistine breadhead, then I guess I’ll just have to live with the stigma.     

If previous experience is anything to go by, I have about as much chance of getting my money back as I have of becoming the next James Bond; in fact, I would regard it as something of a triumph to recoup even a quarter of my costs. My prospects of glory are somewhat south of remote, but that won’t stop me committing to the enterprise. It would just be nice to think that I’ll be able to bank enough positivity to encourage me to start work on another album; that ‘positivity’ might be defined in financial terms, but it is just as likely to be something as simple as getting some good reviews and good vibes from a handful of supporters. The truth is that the real reward will be the work itself and the completion of that work.     

I think that when people make art, they are probably making it first and foremost for themselves. But even if that were not the case, I’m not sure why anyone would object to an artist hoping to get paid for their work. It’s always nice to get a little approbation, but it’s probably nicer to get paid; and it’s probably even nicer to get paid a lot.  I heard the comic actor Christopher Biggins on the radio recently talking about his role in the TV comedy ‘Porridge’; he was, as I recall, a relatively minor character in the show (let’s, for the moment, leave to one side the question of whether or not Mr Biggins can legitimately be described as an artist). In a charming interview in which he came across as an amusing and essentially decent chap, Mr Biggins revealed that every time the BBC shows an old episode of ‘Porridge’ on the telly, he pockets £1,000. That, my friends, is a beautiful dollar. Just imagine how good it must feel to get work that pays you at the time that you do it and is still paying you some forty years later. No wonder Mr Biggins sounded so jolly.      

At the risk of causing offence, I’ll venture the opinion that writing a song is a purer artistic process than acting in a sitcom. I would define it as purer because there is an unbroken line between intent and execution. It is pure in the same way that writing a poem or painting a picture is pure, because the intent of the artist –at that stage- is unmediated and uncompromised. 

On my way to the holy grail of completing the album, there are certain things I am able to do musically and certain things in the recording sphere that I can achieve on my own. I have a basic recording set-up at home, but have neither the equipment nor the technical expertise to record to the standard I would desire. Accordingly, I have to book time in a professional recording studio to realise my goal. I must also factor in the additional cost of hiring session musicians. You might argue that I could just record these songs with vocals and acoustic guitar and do a ‘purer’ version of the album without spending a lot of money. I could do that, but it would result in a particular kind of album and not the one that I want to make right now. The album I want to make has to sound as close as possible to what I’m hearing in my head; achieving that sound will necessarily involve a significant investment of time and money. 

There is, of course, an obvious tension between ‘how much’ money I am willing to spend and ‘how good’ I want this album to be; in my experience, the less you rush things, the more you take the time to review your options, the better the end result will be. There might, however, be limits as to how much time you should take.  Many moons ago I was in a band that recorded a couple of songs at a ‘proper’ recording studio in Glasgow. We sat on the tracks for a few weeks before deciding that they could be improved with some judicious remixing. When we called the studio to book some additional time, we were told that our tracks had been erased to free up some room on the master tape. Chastened and more than a bit crestfallen, we had to make do with the unsatisfactory versions we had. Who knows, the entire course of pop music history might have been different had we only managed to remix those two tracks (although, if I was a betting man, my money would be on the remixed tracks still sounding a bit rubbish and the band still breaking up within six months). These days, with digital recording and storage, it is unlikely that anyone would have their material scrubbed just to make some space.   

There are countless examples of the excessive (and compulsive) behaviour of bands in the studio, tales of musicians who spent weeks working on a snare sound or a difficult guitar solo. Bryan Ferry -an artist I really admire- once used 30 musicians at six different recording studios over several years to make one album, the lush and lovely ‘Boys and Girls’, released in 1985. This album achieved some notoriety before it was released because Ferry had sunk so much cash into it; he is known to be something of studio obsessive, but –even by his meticulous standards- this one was a doozy. You might argue that to spend so much time and money on an album was ridiculous, decadent and indulgent, but the end justified the means if the songwriter achieved what he set out to achieve. 

‘Boys and Girls’ is bejewelled with sonic delights, but there is one achingly beautiful piece in which the purity of the songwriter’s vision is illustrated. ‘Windswept’, like much of the album, features gossamer-light melodies floating on a beautifully seductive rhythmical bed.  About two minutes into the track, a violin appears stage left for a brief cameo, the job of which is to introduce a scorching and melodic guitar solo from Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour which –for 25 blissful seconds- lifts the song out of its seductive reverie, before we settle back once more into Ferry’s trademark elegant ambience. You could argue that ‘Windswept’ didn’t need that brief appearance by the violin nor, indeed, the expensive guitar solo, but here’s the thing: Bryan Ferry thought it needed it. My guess is that he wanted to create something beautiful, now matter how much time and money it was going to cost him. He pursued his vision and, for an artist, that is what counts. The bonus for Bryan was that the ‘Boys and Girls’ album gave him his only UK number 1 solo record. 

Now that I’ve fulfilled a lifetime’s dream by seeing my work mentioned in print alongside that of Bryan Ferry, there’s a link below to a one of the tracks from the album. It’s called ‘How will you know when you know?’ and the lyric is relevant to some of the topics I’ll be exploring in this blog. The song is about being in a band and about hitting the wall of realisation that you are not going to be the next U2. In the first verse, there is excitement and optimism as the band plan for a successful future, loading up their van to hit the road for a gig (in the exotic location of Aberdeen). The second verse is written from the perspective of the morning after the night before, grinding through the day job and attempting to analyse events through a fug of sleep deprivation. What was last night about?  Why did we do it? Was it really a good use of our time? The chorus illustrates that perhaps a certain realisation has occurred to the protagonist:  

“If every step we ever take leads us to where we ought to be,

shouldn’t we be smart enough to know we ought to rest there?” 

I think the track is pretty much finished, but I'd be prepared to reconsider if anyone can pass me David Gilmour’s phone number.                 

How will you know when you know?

Is sugar really the new tobacco?

An interesting story caught my eye the other day. Tony Badger, the owner of a British food shop in Canada, was ordered to stop selling Marmite, Ovaltine and Irn Bru because they contained ‘illegal’ additives. Mr Badger had been selling these items since 1997, but the Canadian Food Inspection Agency is now increasing its inspections of suppliers and cracking down on the sale of such goods.
I wrote almost exactly a year ago about a proposal to introduce legal limits on the sugar, salt and fat content in food in the UK.

I said then that:

"Legislation … can only be defined as ‘helpful’ if you think that it is your responsibility is to remove choices from people who are unable to act rationally and who might otherwise damage themselves. Legislation only counts as help if you believe that people are not capable of helping themselves, not capable of making informed decisions in their own interests."

The politics of food are even more depressing now. Every other week some quasi-autonomous pressure group will try to flex its muscles, which will usually be followed by a politician -out to make a name as a reformer concerned only about the public good- proposing another asinine and illiberal piece of legislation.

The pressure group Action on Sugar is currently getting lots of exposure in the UK. Their poster boy, Dr Aseem Malhotra, has been floating the idea that ‘sugar is the new tobacco’ and urging government action. One of the central planks of their argument is that sugar has ‘no nutritional value’. I must have missed the memo about abolishing eating for mere pleasure. Why do these people think that everything we eat has to have some nutritional value? Has it occurred to them that perhaps people like eating sweet things because they taste nice?

I'm a non-smoker, but from a civil liberties point of view, I think the way the smoking ban was introduced provides an interesting model for what our food future will look like.

The 'health' justification for a smoking ban had been around for decades, but it was only in the last few years that governments got around to imposing it. The first epidemiological studies showing an association between smoking and lung cancer were published as far back as 1950. If the health risks were /are that serious, why was the full ban not introduced in 1968 or 1975 or 1994? Why the long delay?

One of the reasons, I would suggest, is that the concept of a ban had to be allowed to percolate for a while in the public consciousness. People have to be primed in order to accept a law like that. Potentially ‘difficult’ ideas get introduced into the public domain via the drip method: first you suggest something fairly radical, see how that goes down, then let it simmer for a while. Once it becomes a notion that many folk find more or less acceptable, it starts to acquire a certain inevitability.

Now that the smoking ban is an accepted part of everyday life, all bets are off on where we might end up. ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) has already proposed that the ban be extended to smoking in cars; I’d wager that it is only a matter of time before smoking is completely illegal. This ‘public health’ model of government intervention is also being applied to the debate on internet regulation. The arguments have become familiar: vulnerable people have to be protected, children can't be exposed to porn and paedophiles, militant nutters can't be allowed to propagandize and proselytize, yadda yadda yadda. It's not that big a leap to envisage a gradual clamping down on internet activities 'in the public interest'.

For a certain type of person, the answer to every perceived ‘problem’ is always more government action, more legislation, more decision-making taken out of the hands of people like you and me, people who simply can’t be trusted to act in our own best interests. We needed to be told to stop smoking. We’ll need to be told to stop eating doughnuts. We’ll need to be told to stop accessing inappropriate material on the internet. Left unchecked and unchallenged, there is simply no area of private life into which these people will not attempt to intrude. Of course, the sugar Nazis -motivated by a vague desire to do good- will argue that legislation is required because the food industry can’t be trusted to act responsibly. But the darker, less palatable truth is that they don’t trust us, the people, to act responsibly.

The more that slick opportunists like Dr Malhotra pop up on TV and radio telling us that ‘sugar is the new tobacco’, the more likely some folk are to believe it. The pressure for legislation will then start to build, because that’s how it works. They won’t be happy until they get what they want. And once they get what they want, they’ll want a little bit more. And then a little bit more. And the more we allow ourselves to be governed like this, the further that trend will develop. We will sleepwalk towards a future in which our children and our grandchildren will have fewer rights as citizens than we currently have.

Somehow, I’m reminded of that old saying:

Why does the dog lick his balls? Because he can.

What's the point in making an album?

Having spent some time trying to get re-acquainted with the idea of making and performing music (after a few years in which work and stuff had taken over), I have decided that 2014 will see me record, and then release, an album. What is the point, you may well ask, in undertaking a project like this?  Do people even listen to albums these days?  Don’t they prefer to just pick and choose individually-downloaded tracks?  And, perhaps more to the point, what’s the point in an unknown middle-aged bloke making an album? Who on earth is going to care about a vanity project like that? Who on earth would want to buy it?   

I do understand that not many folk will reckon that what the world needs right now is some more middle-of-the-road pop music. I won’t be surprised, therefore, to encounter a tsunami of indifference (with perhaps the odd showery squall of derision), but I’m going to go ahead with it anyway. And, in a series of blog entries over the next few months, I will look to explore some of the considerations and processes involved in recording an album. 

Among the questions I’ll try to address are: If you are not making a living from music, what is the point in making an album? Why, indeed, bother writing songs at all? What does the process of making music do for the soul? How will I decide which songs will go on this album? What will these songs be about? Who is going to play on them? How will they be recorded? What would I like them to sound like? What is it that makes certain sounds and musical arrangements attractive or unattractive? How much money am I willing to flush down the toilet spend on recording the album? Do I have even the remotest chance of recovering some of my costs? And, if I am to do that, how will I make people aware that this album exists?

If my current selection of sketches and demos is anything to go by, what I am going to end up with will probably be a middle-aged sort of album; by that, I mean that the music will be middle-of-the-road, with an emphasis on song construction, tasteful arrangements and songs that are shackled to the ball and chain of ‘verse’ and ‘chorus’. That’s the kind of music I’m invariably drawn to and it’s the kind of music I usually end up making. I see no need to apologise for that, because there are really are only two kinds of music: the kind you like and the kind you don’t (or perhaps, in this case, there might be a third category: the kind that will embarrass my kids and family). This album certainly isn’t going to be 'cutting edge’; I’m way beyond the point of trying to surf the zeitgeist. There was a point in my life when I knew (and cared about) what was going on in the world of contemporary music, but those days are long gone. I wouldn’t recognise the zeitgeist now if it stopped me in the street and hit me on the head with a vinyl copy of James Blake’s latest album. 

Whatever else happens, I’m planning to have some fun doing it and writing about it, but I also hope that a few folk might be interested in reading about the development of the project. So … to kick off, there’s a link at the bottom of this post to something I’ve been working on for a while. I think it is just about finished and it feels at the moment like it might turn out to be one of the signature tracks on the album. It’s called ‘Far side of the moon’. The theme of the lyric is ageing and disillusionment, with the far side of the moon representing the point at which someone is completely cut off from a place (or a mindset) they used to inhabit. In a state of existential ennui, the individual might come to terms with things that may not previously have been viewed with any degree of positivity; but on bad day, that person might be tempted to measure life in terms of the things they don’t have, as opposed to finding comfort in the things that they do.        

My starting point for songs usually involves banging out a few chords on guitar or piano (that will be a topic for another post), but in this case, it began in the studio with me just playing bass guitar along to a drum loop. At the start of the session, I had no idea what I was going to play; all I knew was that I wanted to try a slightly different approach to constructing songs. I recorded six bass lines to match six different drum loops, then lived with these demos for a while to see if I had anything worth developing. Of those six loops, there are now perhaps three with a chance of becoming songs for the album. I should point out here that I am by no means an accomplished bass player. The truth is that I am barely even competent but, thanks to the excellent working relationship I have with Eddie MacArthur at Stealth Studios, I knew that the session would not be wasted. His technical skills consistently allow me to get the most from my very limited musical abilities.      

As I listened to the demos (usually in my car, on the way to and from work), various melodic ideas began to form and -in the case of this particular track- I started to focus on a general feel for what the song might be about. Once the mist had cleared, I was able to work out the chord structure and the architecture of what would become the final arrangement.  For quite a while, the breathy backing vocals sounded like they might have been the main hook, then -relatively late in the day- I managed to come up with the guitar motif. I’ll write some other time about how musical influences get absorbed into the process of writing and recording, but I can spot a couple of powerful influences on this recording. It may have started with a slightly haphazard process (and one which could have potentially wasted a bit of time and money), but I find the end result quite pleasing on the ear. And that, ultimately, is what this is all about. 

Far side of the moon

Let's blame the nasty referee.

The New Year, alas, sees football, as represented by the ‘best league in the world’ (a.k.a. the league for selfish pampered millionaires who cry when they don’t get their own way) continue its inexorable moral decline.

After suffering what he considered to be a couple of dodgy decisions in the recent match against Manchester City, Liverpool manager Brendan Rogers claimed that because referee Lee Mason lived in greater Manchester, he was unsuitable to officiate at a game between a Manchester club and a club from Liverpool. In other words, he believed that the mere fact of Mr Mason’s postcode prevented him from being professionally objective during a game of football. Rodgers compounded his pathetic slur during a press conference a few days later by having the audacity to state that:

"In terms of geography, I certainly wasn't questioning the integrity of referees. It was more than logical in terms of having a referee from that part of the world refereeing a game in Manchester. I was only speaking honestly after the game. I think the FA knows perfectly well I am someone who engages in supporting the referees."

Ah … that makes it so much clearer. Brendan Rodgers supports referees and doesn’t question their integrity. Except, that is, when he doesn’t support them and states that they can’t be trusted because of where they live.
I wonder what Mr Rodgers would think if a pundit had said before Liverpool’s game against Chelsea that: "I don't think Liverpool will really go for it against Chelsea this week, because Brendan Rodgers used to work there and he's basically still Jose Mourinho's apprentice." That would have been a stupid and insulting statement to make, just like his was a stupid and insulting statement to make.

That incident was bad enough, but the ‘spoiled brat’ bar has just been raised by Southampton, with their egregious complaint to the football authorities about referee Mark Clattenburg. They don't want him to referee any of their matches again because he 'insulted' one of their players. And what was the nature of this disgraceful insult?

When their player -Adam Lallana- challenged the referee over his refusal to award a penalty in the game against Everton, Clattenburg is believed to have said: "You're very different now you've played for England. You never used to be like this." I’m sure that poor Adam had never before heard such shocking language on the football field; I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the lad was being counselled after this truly horrifying incident.

A spokesman for Southampton claimed that it was not ‘appropriate’ for Mr Clattenburg to officiate in any of their matches until this matter had been ‘properly resolved’, because “Any official insulting any player, no matter his intentions, is clearly not acceptable behaviour”.

Anyone who watches football will know that, in the course of the average game, referees are routinely subjected to the foulest abuse, so it is depressing to realise that so many high-profile figures don't give any consideration to how their actions might impact on the culture of the sport. Those at the top have a responsibility to set a professional and respectful tone, so every time a manager or player bleats about being cheated or robbed or, in this case, ‘insulted’, he contributes just a little bit more to football’s moral decline.

I watch my 15-year old son playing every week and the lack of respect for officials, even at that level, looks to me like a cancer that is eating away at the heart of the game. I sometimes wish my boy had chosen another sport to pour so much of his time and energy into. I'm amazed that anyone would want to be a match official these days. Who would want to give up their free time to take abuse from belligerent idiots who don't even know the laws of the game?

So congratulations to Brendan Rodgers for his unique method of supporting referees. And congratulations to Southampton for having joined the league for selfish pampered millionaires who cry when they don’t get their own way.

I’m sure they must feel like a proper big club now.

The dark side of Camelot

Built to a large extent around interviews with friends, colleagues and former associates, this remarkable book by Seymour Hersh –first published in 1997- delineates a world that, to the modern eye, seems barely believable.
We are all used to reading about political scandals, but John F. Kennedy's activities went far beyond the odd indiscreet affair or dodgy business connection. His 'unofficial' CV is remarkable, containing as it does dalliances with prostitutes, connections with organised crime, a string of mistresses, bribery, election fraud and links to a number of assassination attempts on the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro.

In tracing Kennedy's inexorable rise, Hersh sets the scene with some illuminating background information on the family, particularly on his ruthless and ambitious father. With rumours constantly linking him to bootlegging, profiteering and organised crime, the bad smell around Joe Kennedy meant that he could never have been president, but he made up his mind that one of his sons would be, whatever it cost. As Hersh puts it, “Joe Kennedy spent his life making money … and then hiding it.” Once his own political career had perished on the rocks of a disastrous tenure as US ambassador to the United Kingdom, Joe used his vast fortune to get his son into the White House.
There seems little doubt, for instance, that the 1960 election was crooked, with even Kennedy's opponent -Richard Nixon- later conceding that, in the realm of street-fighting politics (yes, that's a euphemism for bribery, cheating and lying), he was out of his depth when he tangled with the Kennedys.

The iron curtain around the family can be hard to breach, but Hersh manages to secure a number of startling interviews with former associates and colleagues, revealing several jaw-dropping anecdotes about the extent of the ‘unusual’ lifestyle enjoyed by the president, his brother Bobby and their inner circle.

One of the key arguments of the book is that this very lifestyle presented a significant risk to America’s security. There is certainly evidence to suggest that the president’s complicated relationship with drugs (he was constantly on a cocktail of powerful medication for Addison’s disease and a chronic back condition) may have accounted for his unusually high sex drive and his willingness to take risks. Hersh puts the case that the Cuban missile crisis was down to a disastrously inept policy on Cuba, fuelled by what appeared to be a pathological hatred of Castro and a dangerous taste for brinkmanship. There is little doubt that Kennedy sanctioned various (rather inept) attempts to assassinate the Cuban leader, but he also gave tacit approval for the coup in South Vietnam which resulted in the murders of president Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother and chief adviser, Ngo Dinh Nhu. The fall-out from that would prove to be disastrous.

It might be tempting to think that any modern politician behaving like Kennedy would be exposed and excoriated in the press and social media, but the truth is that many influential people -particularly in the world of journalism- knew about the Kennedys, but chose to put a blind eye to the telescope when it came to the behaviour of the up-and-coming senator and, later, the handsome young president. Having an ideological crush on a politician invariably impairs the critical faculties, a fact that is as true today as it has ever been.

Hersh offers no theories on the assassination, other than to state that the lack of credible evidence points to both Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby acting alone. If however, you are inclined to conspiracy theories, the book’s merciless accumulation of grubby detail might tempt you to look in one particular direction; when you add up all of the connections with (and favours owed to) various shadowy underworld figures, it doesn’t take a huge leap of the imagination to suspect that someone somewhere might have nurtured quite a grievance against the Kennedy clan.

One can’t help but wonder how a family with so many dodgy connections, so many skeletons in so many cupboards, managed to attain a status somewhere between royalty and showbiz demigods. You come away from this book with the impression that, for all the charisma, the glamour and the showboating idealism, the fact that people like this could accede to power is something of a stain on America's soul.