England 2018? Don't Bet on It

England, it has been announced, are going to bid to host the World Cup in 2018. So begins the usual merry-go-round of political voting and more sniping and kissing up than you'd find in a Big Brother house. Much as a lot of countries will take it upon themselves over the next few months to lavish praise on the English game and say how terribly nice it would be if the country which gave the world football were allowed to host it's greatest competition again, when it all comes down to it, as the rugby lot confirmed a fortnight ago, everyone loves to beat the English. As long as we keep sweeping all before us in the Champions' League, our hopes are doomed - we're winning quite enough already for the democratic bureaucrats at FIFA Central Command.

Some of the stuff coming out about it is already fairly ridiculous - Mohammed bin Hammam, President of the Asian Football Confederation, has come out and said that he believes that "the World Cup belongs to all the 207 nations in the world and it is the right of every country to play it. I believe strongly that this is the time for Asia, not for Europe". That's a very honourable thing to be saying, Mohammed, but it would probably carry more weight if you hadn't talked up your own mob instead of citing some of the 207 countries that aren't from Europe or Asia. If you'd turned up extolling the virtues of playing the next World Cup finals in Vanuatu, you'd probably have more of a case, but as it is, I could do exactly the same thing as you by coming out and saying that the 2018 World Cup final should be staged in my shed.

All talk for fairness against favouritism dies on it's arse when you're doing it just so your mates can win. That and with the far east having already recently hosted a World Cup, China having only just packed off the Olympics and the Indian subcontinent so riddled with gunfire that the Indians can't even stage their Indian Premier League there for fear of being shot dead, it's hard to see precisely what Asian nation looks capable of hosting a World Cup in 2018. We could always go for Hong Kong, but that probably still has enough ties to Britain to get up the noses of the boo-boys, so that's probably out as well.

But why can't England host the World Cup? I know we have the Olympics fairly soon, but I think all of us have more than a sneaking suspicion that that's going to be more than a little bit shit. We know that the only thing most of Britain really gives a toss about is football, and we really do give quite a lot of toss, so why shouldn't we be hosting it's greatest competition? Everyone can get involved, and it's a fantastic way to get the British public united behind something again - we could even find a use for the Daily Mail and the BNP, as they've got figures to show FIFA saying that if Poland draw a resurgent Pakistan in the group stage, they'd pack out any ground in the country.

I know that most European countries see us as stuffy, arrogant pricks who swan around thinking we're better than everyone - even the Irish fans in the rugby a couple of weeks ago came out and said that beating England was worth 'more than life itself'. We are stupendously hated. The French are great cooks and greater lovers, the Germans have gone from efficient ruthlessness to ruthless efficiency, the Spanish and Italians are passionate, fiery and beautiful, and the British are tripe-munching snobs who are afraid of sex. None of this has anything to do with football and our stadia and infrastructure should speak for themselves, but such is the human condition that it does undoubtedly affect our chances - after all, when the cool kids in class are planning a party, they never want to have it at the nerdy kid's house, even if he does have a swimming pool.

That and there is the fact that, in domestic footballing terms, we are better than everyone else. We're sweeping all before us in the Champions League again, Manchester United won the World Club Championship and the European Super Cup this year already, and there is a general growing feeling around Europe that if there's one thing worse than someone who thinks they're better than everyone else, it's someone who is and knows it. Will we get the World Cup in 2018? Maybe, but I doubt it. I doubt we will ever see another tournament on these shores, despite our fantastic history and stadia, until we learn what the other voters would see as a bit of humility. But what they would see as a bit of humility - a few more losses in the Champions League, letting the French win occasionally - I would see as a surrender. Being the best at domestic football , not being the most humble and kissing the most backside, should be the road to bringing international football to your door. Why should we surrender?

Why, because we want to host the World Cup, of course. But you know what? Stuff them, and we will. Who's for another all-English final?

Thats Not Her Name, Apparently

Ladies and gentlemen, I have been inspired to musicianship. I have picked up a guitar and am fully dedicated to the cause of becoming an international rock star by this time next Thursday. Bear with me, though, it's not the idea of snorting suspicious powders off of fresh stripper breasts that has enticed me into the exotic world of axemanship, but the fact that everything in the charts is so rank awful that recreating it really didn't seem too difficult. I have a guitar - two, in fact - lying around the place, and almost limitless free time to faff about with them, so why not have a go at writing the next 'London Calling'?

Well, if you want the short answer, it's because you could pretty accurately recreate my entire repertoire by throwing a guitar at a wall.

The problem was that I was stumped by a real guitar in the same manner as I was stumped by Rock Band; try as I might, I simply cannot get fingers on both hands doing different things at the same time. It's like the pat-your-head-while-rubbing-your-stomach trick, but with added twanging around and well-rehearsed failures at improvised cool. After the fourth time I went for what I thought would be an impressive new lick and dropped the thing on my foot, I went back to bed and had a lie down. Then I got up to have another go and found that the thing had somehow managed to detune itself by magic, and after that couldn't be bothered.

This rock star thing obviously requires more dedication than I had assumed.

This doesn't take away from the fact that the charts are getting worse. I'm fairly sure this isn't just me getting old, and that scientific theory could be employed to empirically prove how awful the bloody Ting Tings are. Almost everyone I know has spent as long as they can remember bemoaning the lack of guitars in popular music, and now they're back, nobody can wait for them to piss off again, as now 'rock' has become the domain of children with floppy haircuts and the wrong gender of jeans. Somehow, this makes it even worse. If popular culture was previously passing us by, it's now walking in unannounced, picking it's nose in the sitting room and wiping it's bogeys all over the furniture. Much as we maligned the fact that good music was seen by the masses as the domain of outcast old duffers, we were those duffers and that music was ours. The next thing I know I'm standing somewhere unpleasant and expensive listening to an 'ironic' rap cover of 'Peaches' by The Stranglers. For the entire first verse I thought the DJ was talking over the record.

I think the key difference is that, last time 'guitar music' was the in thing, you could sit back, listen and say "wow, this guy can play". You were impressed, taken in by the technical and artistic ability on show. Now it seems like things are decided more by the fullness and body of a singer's hair; every time I see a picture of the bloody Ting Tings that awful woman is leaning back just so she can see out from under it. That's not the stuff of rock and roll. Rock and roll should have singers who's hair is the result of being too busy being amazing to bother to go to the barber's. I like to pretend that Ozzy Osbourne only has his hair long simply because he is on such an alternate plane of rock that haircare simply doesn't exist. The idea of someone being paid to trim bits off your head would seem so ludicrous that he'd probably slap you in the mouth then and there. You might as well be asking him to butter a unicorn.

I think it's the crossing of two different eras that confuses everyone; The nineties were the nineties because everyone had talked it out and decided that the eighties were probably left alone and unmentioned, hidden behind the bog roll at the back of the generational cupboard. That's how things were supposed to be done. Then, once the Noughties rolled around desperately seeking an identity, it briefly flirted with punching out old ladies before it rooted around in the cupboard, pulled on it's gold lamé tights and went off 'ironically' dancing to Queen. Thus begins a fashion false dichotomy where on one side you have the old crusties that are taking it seriously, and the fashionistas are taking it seriously as well, but only on an 'ironic' level that, even though they don't actually like it, it's fashionable because it's fashionable - Frankie Goes To Hollywood haven't seen so many shirt sales since 1982, but then I don't think anyone really liked Frankie Goes to Hollywood then, either, so perhaps that's a bad example, but I saw a girl wandering around a nightclub the other day in a Frankie Says Relax shirt and gold lamé tights while Dizzee Rascal played in the background and it all but instantaneously gave me a headache.

Maybe I'm wrong. I am, after all, an idiot of some not inconsiderable renown. Maybe this is all very positive, and come 2010 will be spurring the nation into a repeat of the early 90's 'Greed is Good' boom, thus restoring us all to wealth and health via the medium of old Stone Roses records. Perhaps that's been the plan all along. Maybe in a few years we'll all be swept along on a current of new hope and renewed prosperity, sweeping all before us with grandiose gestures on top of an open-top bus of a new exciting era for Britain and British culture, led eloquently from the front by an ageing and erudite Liam Gallagher. I don't know. I couldn't tell you.

I just wish that awful woman would get her stupid hair out of my childhood.

Triple Figures to Eat at the Fat Duck

I'm sure many of you, particularly those from the UK, will be aware of Heston Blumenthal's particular blight on the British landscape. Famous for his three-Michelin-starred restaurant 'The Fat Duck', he's had several television series dedicated to, as far as I can see, making food pretentious. He is a man who's recipe for baked beans would take up most of this page, and the only person in the whole world so utterly deranged as to think that putting snails in porridge would make for a tasty starter. From this I can only conclude that the people who award Michelin stars and the producers who keep green-lighting his TV shows are either pretentious fops, or simply as I am fascinated by the man's ideas in the same way small children are often fascinated by monkeys picking their own bottoms.

Now, I know that before I even start that someone, somewhere is going to call me out over the fact I'm criticising the man's snail porridge without so much as bothering to try it, and that is a fair point well made, but the only reason I haven't gotten myself down to The Fat Duck for a few courses of bizarre foodstuffs hurled together by some sort of culinary mad scientist is because not only is there an eight month waiting list for lunch, but just sitting down costs you a hundred and thirty pounds. There is nothing on this earth, no matter how carefully prepared, that for a hundred and thirty pounds wouldn't taste exactly like chewing banknotes.

So obviously you'll forgive me if I dissect his menu without waiting the better part of a year to throw money away. It's not like I have an expenses account.

First of all, this man seems to have an obsession with making a gel or a jelly out of absolutely everything. The budding flora and fauna of our planet are reduced, in one A4 side of reckless insanity, to oddly-coloured goops of various shapes and consistencies. His roast foie gras is prepared with almond fluid, and elsewhere, passion fruit, peppercorns and even tea is jellied and gelled by wide-eyed lunatics for your culinary enjoyment. He's even, against all the rules of God and science, managed to find a way to turn a quail into jelly. The man is in league with Satan.

Now, I admit that I am not any great master of the kitchen - I can knock together a decent spaghetti bolognese when the mood takes me, but my greatest culinary breakthrough was discovering putting chopped garlic on my toast - but you surely have to be a little dented to want to pay a hundred pounds or more for a mad-eyed man to bring you toast made from moss. Perhaps once you get promoted above a certain level in the advertising business a strange palsy overcomes you and grips you with a bizarre urge to spend your money in as ludicrous a way as possible. I can only assume from it's continued existence that being rich makes you an idiot; you'd never get a bin man saving up his wages just so he can take his family to The Fat Duck for a hundred pounds a head, because the bin man knows he likes his steak and knows where he can get it for a tenner, complete with chips, peas, one of those dodgy-looking mushrooms and far less risk of it coming out jellified and covered in some mad chef's personal smug.

Maybe I'm behind the times and this is what everyone's doing these days. Perhaps snail bacon ice cream is a culinary wonder my denial of which is doing me a great disservice. That may very well be the case, I will simply never know. I'm not biased, I just don't understand., and how you choose to spend your money is obviously no business of mine. I do think, however, that if you regularly had that sort of money to throw around, and you were a well-adjusted bit of an idiot, then you'd probably get more enjoyment out of buying yourself a dozen or so steak dinners. Or having a Christmas tree surgically grafted onto your face.

You see, it's dawned on me in the course of writing this that Heston Blumenthal is not a mad scientist who's medium happens to be food. He's not even, as the media would have you believe, a master chef, though he is exceptionally clever at what he does - he is merely a genius at selling status. The fact nobody in their right mind really wants to eat snail porridge coupled with the fact it will cost you a hundred pounds to do so is a great way to imbue anyone who shells out for an evening at The Fat Duck with a sense of elitism and exclusivity. His restaurant is the culinary equivalent of a Mercedes Benz - it's extortionately expensive, ugly and backfires on you every four and a half miles, but damn it, all your friends see you driving a Mercedes.

The Fat Duck is a status symbol you put in your mouth, and Heston Blumenthal must surely laughing at all of us all the way to the bank, because he's found a way to get toffs and braying city boys to hand over hundreds of pounds to eat the jellified contents of his fridge. In a way, he's getting a little bit back for all of us who don't have the luxury of being able to eat our status symbols.

The man is nothing short of a genius.