ANOTHER SIGN ALONG RUIN'S HIGHWAY.

A footballer died, in the arcane  phraseology of CoronerSpeak, by his own hand, he took his own life, as officialdom routinely says.  In simple language, he hanged himself.  Always seems an unequivocal rejection of les joies de vivre, not what you would call a cry for help, stepping off a ladder or a chair with a  rope around your neck.  It's not a George Michael kind of event, hanging yourself. It's not a staged, Lady Sir Elton John tantrum.    What shocked me was hearing one of the skymadeupnewsandfilth gabshite soccer pundits hyperbolising that when he heard of Mr Speed's death he thought the report  was some sick and twisted joke.  Now, I know the premiership is filled with nancyboys and gangrapists and drug fiends and creatures, like Sir Alec Ferguson, of an entirely different species but surely they don't make jokes like this, especially about one of their own., This prick, of course, didn't actually think that, it was just another variation on sick as a parrot, to'ally and u''erly gutted;  scratching about in his cliche box, this was the best he could come up with - I thought it was some sick and twisted joke.

In the feverish coverage of celebrity reaction all expressed disbelief that a man so successful and happy could top himself, especially after  having, shortly before, broadcast, himself, some of that dire telly punditry,  the clunking, half-growled Hansenisms,  the chirpy cheese'n'onion flavoured Linekerisms, how could anyone so blessed top themselves, it is almost as though there was panic in the troughing ranks of ex-footballing bletherers,  'Appen tomorrow, bonnylad, might have mused the repulsive Shearer, 'appen tomorrow, oo knows, mebbe Ah'll be toppin mesen.

No-one in football was able to articulate the simplest of truths - in the midst of life we are in death,  who can know a man's mind, no-one was sophisticated enough to acknowledge  - and fuck me it's not asking a lot - that we each of us, every day of our lives, wear a mask that few if any, including ourselves,  can see behind.

God rest his soul, I am sorry for his family,  that was the proper response, not some showbiz, Victor Meldrewesque IDon'tBuh-lieveIt!  What's not to believe?  He's fucking dead isn't he? Instead, what they showed, clearly, beyond question, one after another, was that they didn't know Mr Speed at all.  All they knew was the moronic,  self-congratulatory charmed circle of professional football and that its septic bubble had briefly burst. If Mr Speed had really enjoyed an extensive network of really close and supportive  friends one would think that he' have confided in them, rather than stepping into thin air, with only the rope to break his fall. Empty-headed, vain, posturing egomaniacs, wankers all.  Never mind, lads, it'll all be back to normal next week;  talk on, talk on with hope in your hearts and you'll never talk alone.

 Britain's ever-popular salty snacks ambassador, Mr Gary Potato.

MORE FOOTBALL. BRING ON THE ANCIENT WHORES.

WEEPING POTATO-MAN THRASHED BY MONTENEGRANS (WHO..???)

ENGLAND'S SIX MILLION POUNDS WOP COACH SAYS; EESA GOOD BOY, JUSTA NEEDA FUCK AN OLDA LADY, A-LIKEA HEESA MOMMA, OR MAYBE HEESA GRANMOMMA.

England's manager last night was said to be a hundred per cent behind failing striker, Wayne Potato, after the Scouse dummy was kicked all over the pitch, last night, by part-time amateurs, Montenegro, a team which started playing football in January.  If we could only pay him another hundred grand a week and maybe arrange to have a coachload of old prostitutes, standing in their underwear behind  the opposing goal, then we'd see flashes of the old mashed potato, said an aide translating for the moron, Capello, who can neither speak English nor, unsurprisingly,  manage the English  football team. Also, maybe if the manager could have another six million pounds, for being sacked,   that would help, too.  It was the great English manager Sven Erikkson, wasn't it, who was also shit,  who said It iss a game off two haffs, in the firsst haff you get paid millions off pounds for losing everything and in the ssecond haff you get millions off pounds affter you haff been ssacked ffor being sshit.

Wayne Potato's doxy. Karen Potato, described as a model and entrepreneur said, screech, screech,, screech, I'm a model, me, so youse can all fuck off, screech, screech, screech, see that Victoria Beckham, she's a slag, she is.

KEEP RIGHT ON TO THE END OF THE MONEY.

Mayor Johnson's favourite provincials, the Scousers are wetting themselves again, this time  over the fate of what it is pleased to call its football team. Not enough that the blessed John Lennon would've been seventy this week, probably have graced us with another thirty years of drug addiction, bullying, petulance, nude self-portraits, intolerable, twelve-bar druggy doggerel and peace activism, in bags, or beds. And that's not to mention all the avant garde horseshit from the  horrid, stupid, tight-fisted Nasty Nip  which he would have co-produced or co-created,  them being artists and everything. As if John,  fab mopster, Liverpool's favourite dead absentee, being dead wasn't bad enough, his fellow Americans have only gone and fucked-up the footy team.

I don't pay enough attention to football to know if the Liverpool squad contains even one local player, or even one English player, for that matter,  but my guess would be that it's loyalty will be not to the boneheads who turn up chanting and weeping in  expensive replica strips, about Dalgleish and Shanks, but to whichever gangster cartel, or whichever arm of skymadeupnewsandfilth signs their hundred- grand-a-week paycheques,  that their loyalty will not be to locale but to international sponsor.  No matter to Frank Scouse, that his team is owned by Money Inc, football is more important than life or death, isn't  that what they said, or realism.

We have waxed long and sentimental, here, in our broken-down, old leftie way, about the historical importance of the the Football Association to towns and cities and counties up and down the land, how some of them were called this or that Wednesday because that's when they played, on the half-day, about how the players would travel on the same bus to the game as the supporters, how it was all a jolly good thing, relatively decent sportspersonship, a healthy outlet for ancient, male hostilities, a sanitised, often good-natured tribalism, how fans would follow their local team from cradle to grave, singing their inventively  scatalogical anthems down the pub before and on the stands, a torrent of piss flowing down the steps, a steaming Bovril imbibed against the cold. And how, now, globalised, the beautiful game is  just another  branch of consumerism, many of its players as wretchedly, thuggishly amoral as city traders, or wealth creators, as we who are about to be cut, must salute them.

It's shit, all this Liverpool stuff, one gang of billionaires or another finagling for ownership, each masquerading as sporty philanthropists, whether it's porn baron David Sullivan at wherever he is - West Ham? -  Russian  gangster,  Abramovich, at Chelsea or this pair of yanks and now a Singaporean billionaire,  entire football-mad communities, generations of them,  line up to be fleeced for season tickets and merchandise, heedless that the elastic loyalty, the foul play and the heart-stopping greed of those whom they worship, Spic, Dago, Kraut, Paddy, Tall And Tanned And Young And Lovely Boys From Ipanema and even the odd Zulu,  together with the  shit which happens when telly gets involved, these are the problem, not the owners;  the problem is the players; money-love, sponsorship deals, unpunishable gang-rapes,  coke-snorting morons in Bugattis; working, in retirement, for Morrisons, selling crisps and beer. And the fans, bewilderingly needy, sentimental, short-sighted and stupid. Locked together with the New Global Centurions, Whore-Banging Imbecile Potato-Man Rooney or Buy My Cosmetics Beckham, the Liverpool fans currently whining can at least console themselves with the thought that for as long as Supidityhas the price of a ticket in it's pocket, they will never walk alone.