The conventional thinking is that you have to be gay or pissed to enjoy the Eurovision Song Contest, but I've devised a way of keeping geeks like me interested. What you do, is score each entry according to the criteria below, and see who's your winner. You'll notice that musical excellence is not a factor. It's all about encouraging good practice and eliminating cheesiness. If you like cheesiness, just reverse all the rules. (I think that's what most national juries already do.)
1. Start by giving each song 10 points.
2. Add one point if the singer is female. (Or male, depending on your preference. If you're even more sexist than
me, you can add points for shortness of skirt, tightness of trousers,
etc.)
3. Deduct one point for use of a wind machine. (See left: the poor girl can barely stand up.)
4. Deduct one point for each key change. If the singing is so bad you can't tell if there's been a key change, deduct two points.
5. Deduct one point for each person other than the singer on stage. (The rules allow six people, which is why so many countries have five
dancers. We should reward countries who are prepared to trust to the
pure abilities of their singer. But what if there are two singers - twins, perhaps? See step 9.)
6. Add five points if the song is not in English. (Remember the days when songs had to be in each country's own language. Back then we only suspected the lyrics were all nonsense.)
7. Deduct three points for any song from the former Yugoslavia. (They'll all vote for each other, anyway, WHICH IS A GOOD THING: twenty
years ago they were slaughtering each other. But they don't need our
help now.)
8. Add up to a maximum of five points according to how much the singer and the song remind you of Kate Bush. (Again, you can tailor this to your own preference, choosing a singer you like. But I don't think you'll find many singers remind you of Nick Drake, for example.)
9. Deduct any remaining points if the singers happen to be Irish twins.
At the end of the show you should have a winner. But if it's Englebert Humperdinck, something's gone horribly wrong. So we need an emergency rule 10: deduct 10 points for any song in 3/4 time. Phew. Enjoy the show! But this does all seem a bit too much like hard work. I think I'll stick to plan A and just get pissed.
Alan Pardew's face is all over the football news today. This is the smallest photo I can find of him. Even so, it still makes me angry. And childish. I want to deface it, with comedy specs and a hitler moustache.
Strangely enough, these days I find Iain Dowie vaguely tolerable. Not to look at, obviously, though I can watch his lookalike, Adam Gorblimey off the Apprentice, without throwing up. Dowie was, we can now see, just a chancer. He took his limited skills and spun them into a nice little earner for himself. If it had been at any other team we'd have been cheering on his chutzpah, and waiting anxiously for the day he can wreck another decent club's finances and prospects. But we can feel satisfied because it doesn't look like anyone's ever going to put him in charge of a football team again.
And if Les Reed turned up at the Valley, I think he'd get a polite, if not effusive, welcome. He never had a chance, and although he had some decent skills (I know this, because his website said so), they weren't the ones Charlton needed. Everyone knew it, including him, and everyone was relieved when he heft.
But Pardew. Oh, the loathing I feel! It's partly, of course, because he promised so much. A former player, a hero on the pitch, he seemed to have all the credentials for the Charlton job. Now we see he was a false messiah. A very false messiah and a really naughty boy.
He managed to get his squad to underperform at every turn. Then slagged them off by getting in a string of loan players who clearly didn't care, and just collected their pay cheques. And then he tried to explain it all away by the bizarrest set of post-match comments any manager has ever uttered. They were bewildering times, and you felt he only lasted as long as he did because the cost of getting rid of him was unaffordable. But finally he did go, and no doubt his payoff added financial damage to the utter wreck he'd made of the team spirit.
And of course, what's really angering is the success he's now having at Newcastle. If it's just luck then it couldn't happen to a less deserving person. If it's skill, then where the hell was it when he was at Charlton? If he ever comes back to the Valley, we'll chant "Where were you when we were shit?" and know that the answer he should honestly give is "I was here. I was shitmaster general, thank you very much."
My posts are usually quite short. It's not because I have a poet's gift for concision, the haikuist's ability to summarise a mood, a sight and a season in 17 syllables. Nope, it's because I'm lazy. But I think it might tax even the great Matsuo Bashō to summarise yesterday's sights and moods, never mind the season, in a short space. Just use the word "parachutists" and four of your syllables have gone. So, prepare for a long post. Make a cup of tea, if you like, and comfort yourself with the fact it's going to be the last for three months.
During the morning, I'd seen updates of the travelling Hartlepool smurf army. One general theme of the day was that one thing we'll miss about League One is the fans. There may not be many of them, but they have a honest dedication that you don't always find among the bigger teams. The best photo was this one, from Kings Cross station, and what's best about it is the people on the right, acting as if this is a normal sight on the Underground. Just ignore it, like the Football League Show was certain to do.
I got to the Valley over an hour before the game began. So did a lot of other people. There was a buzz in Floyd Road that hasn't been there for many years, with a huge queue outside the shop. I thought about going to the pub, but the afternoon's events were about to begin, and I didn't want to miss a thing.
The first of many of the day's delights was reading, in the excellent programme, that one of Chris Powell's musical choices would be Kate Bush. He said "People may laugh at me but I absolutely love Kate Bush. It doesn't suit me at all, but I do." And there was me thinking I couldn't love the man any more than I already did.
The pre-match sequence got underway with some pitchside interviews, and then some operaoke from Martin Toal and Rose Jang. I'd be really interested to know how Rose Jang came to be there. She's a Korean American from Princeton and although she apparently studied at Goldsmith's for a time, she's not previously shown any Charlton affiliation. Their performances were rousing, in their way, but with a few too many truck driver's gear changes for my liking. I'd have been happier with more Victoria Stanyon, not least, I must admit, because she was looking stunning. If I were to describe in detail what was so attractive about her, people might form an unfortunately accurate opinion of me.
Then the special surprise. There'd been loads of rumours that it would involve Pixie Lott and a helicopter, but the real giveaway had been that someone had seen the Red Devils parachutists were booked for a function at Charlton on Saturday. A man in red was on the pitch earlier, apparently mending a tear in the turf with duct tape. And at about 2:50 five of his mates staged the only kind of pitch invasion you can get away with these days.
By this time, all the smurfs had arrived, and were greeted with a standing ovation from the home fans.
All this, and the football hasn't even started yet.
The first half was a bit flat, to be honest. Johnnie Jackson was subbed quite early, and with Scott Wagstaff moving to the left, Charlton didn't have the shape they needed. Hartlepool didn't threaten much but scored the only goal of the half from a corner. No-one cared that much.
At half-time a thunderous ovation for Alan Curbishley.
The football really started after half-time, particularly after Bradley Pritchard came on after 65 minutes. Let's just stop and consider him for a while. A year ago he was playing for Hayes and Yeading. Next year he'll be in the Championship, another example of Charlton's superb recruitment drive last summer. Three goals in ten minutes - the last an exquisite volley by Kermorgant - saw the game won, and no-one could have begrudged Hartlepool their second when there were about five minutes remaining.
In some ways the result didn't matter. But it meant Charlton had 101 points. We all know how good they've been this season, but now it's typographically obvious for ever, as they are one of only 8 teams to need three digits in their points total. (Actually, it looks even better in binary: 1100101).
The final whistle ushered in the only shambolic moments of the day. There was some confusion over the erection of the display stand, and the "lap of honour" was more like a disorganised stroll in a park. Understandable, really, it's not as if Charlton have much experience of organising victory celebrations. Again, nobody cared. By this stage Pixie Lott could have jetpacked naked into the stadium and no-one would have noticed.
Chris Powell made a moving speech. The North Stand sang "we've got our Charlton back" and everyone finally drifted away, dreaming of what next year might bring.
Yesterday was a wonderful climax to a wonderful season. THANK YOU, CHARLTON! THANK YOU, THE BOARD, THE STAFF, THE TEAM! THANK YOU, CHRIS POWELL!
I really hate Queen. The seventies pomp-rock band, I mean. Their music has always seemed a bit fascistic to me, with its insistent beat and demagogic posery. It doesn't allow any individuality and tries to force everyone into a uniform emotion, of the kind that can lead to hatred and oppression. I'd sell my worthless soul if some satan could guarantee I'd never have to hear Bohemian Rhapsody or We Will Rock You again.
If only Nick Drake, say, had written a song about how nice it is to win something for once. Then the Valley would have been singing a folk-inspired melody yesterday with an accompaniment of guitar and strings. Maybe Nick Drake would have been inspired by his own song to not kill himself.
But that's one of only two ways yesterday could have been improved. (The other would have been if the opposition had been a more hate-worthy team. Wycombe were great, like Walsall before them, and I'd much rather we'd beaten some ugly team like Oldham.)
But until someone discovers Nick Drake's lost happy album, yesterday is as good as it gets. Next season looks like being big fun! But meanwhile, next week Charlton could reach 100 points and in two weeks' time, we've got an "ignore the cup final" party to go to. The memorable days keep on coming.
I am the world's worst football pundit, as regular readers know. But in January last year I wrote this about the possibility that Chris Powell was going to be made Charlton manager.
If he does well, if he leads the team to promotion, won't that be a much
better feeling than getting there with Phil Parkinson, or some other
manager who's slumming it in the third division to resurrect a faltering
career?
Football, thank goodness, isn't about always doing the sensible thing.
If it was, I'd be supporting a team that wins something occasionally, or
Arsenal. Following a club like Charlton is foolish and romantic - it's
daring to hope against expectation that some dreams come true. And there
aren't many dreams bigger and better than seeing Chris Powell leading
Charlton to glory.
Now that promotion is confirmed, maybe we can stop being superstitious, and start talking about how good Charlton have been this season. We can no longer jinx the team.
Top of the league since mid-September. Promotion gained with three games to spare. 94 points (and 100 a real possibility). 20 clean sheets. 15 away wins. A goal difference of +44 (the best outside the Premier League). According to bluesq.com 25-1 on to win the title. With that sort of performance, Charlton should have been promoted long ago. In a normal season they would have been.
Which just goes to show what a strong competition League 1 has been this year. In particular, the two Sheffield clubs have not let up in their pursuit. Now one of them, probably Wednesday, will face the torture of the play-offs. In a normal season, the league would have been a straight and thrilling
contest between them, and they could probably both have got and
deserved promotion.
But this wasn't a normal season. Charlton's achievement has been phenomenal. All the more so, when you look at how it started. An almost entirely new squad was assembled over the summer, and lots of established players left. We've seen similar changes before. In the years of post-Curbishley decline the turnover of players was dizzying, but the common factor always seemed to be that the incoming players were no help at all. You just need to think of Hasselbaink, Jeffers, Faye and others too appalling to mention to be reminded of those years.
The difference this time seems to be that Chris Powell was involved. He has spoken about his intention to change the mindset of the club, to get in players who shared his approach to the game. And it's worked. One of the striking things about Chris Powell, once you get past his huge charisma, is his football intelligence: he has an exquisite eye for a good player. The best example of this is Yann Kermorgant. Powell knew him from Leicester, where he was out of favour and unwanted, but obviously saw something in him that no-one else did. He's gone on to be one of the stars of the team, not just for his skill and physical presence, but for his indomitable spirit. He must be one of the most fouled players in the league, but he shrugs it all off. As he's a Breton I'd liken him to a menhir, but of course he's far more mobile. More of an Obelix, perhaps.
So the result has been that a rookie manager, in his first full season, with a squad that had never met before the season started, has achieved one of the best performances ever in an English football season. Yes, it really is as good as that. It has been a privilege and a huge pleasure to follow Charlton this season
We knew what had to happen for Charlton to be promoted today. They had to win, and Wednesday had to fail to win at Colchester. It could happen, but I didn't think it would. Be honest, you didn't think it would. That's not how it happens with Charlton. The rulebook says we don't get these breaks. But now, Charlton fans, we've got a new rulebook. I was following the game on twitter and once BWP scored, I felt secure. Charlton don't give away the lead these days. All we needed was for Colchester to hold out against Sheffield Wednesday. And that happened, and suddenly my eyes were full of salty water and I lost the ability to speak.
My only regret about today is that I wasn't there. But next week there's a similar situation. For the first and only time in my life I'll be wanting MKDons to win. This pains me, but if Charlton beat Wycombe, and Sheffield United don't win at Milton Keynes, Charlton will have won the league. And then we can celebrate properly, all of us, at the Valley.
When the Jeremiahs behind you are talking about who Charlton'll get in over the summer to deal with the Championship, you know the mood has changed. Two wins in three days makes such a difference. If the stubborn resistance at Oldham showed the strength of character in Chris Powell's team, this win showed their ability to ration their effort, once again doing just enough to hold on to the win and keep something in reserve for the four remaining games.
Walsall were much better than anyone expected, and brought a refreshingly positive approach to the game. They deserved more than the 227 fans they brought with them. It's hard to understand why they're on the fringes of relegation, and I hope they stay up. I even liked their strip: black shirts and shorts with a white diagonal stripe on the shirts. It's obvious that Charlton's deal with Macron isn't going to be renewed and there will be a new kit manufacturer next season. Let's have a diagonal stripe, please. I love a diagonal stripe.
For once, also, we had a referee who seemed generally competent, although there were two glaringly wrong throw-in decisions that were basic errors. He was booed off the pitch, which was unfair, I thought. Booing the ref has become a habit, like smoking or Greggs pasties, that you keep doing even when you know you shouldn't.
So: well done Walsall; relatively well done the ref. All this bonhomie from me can only mean that the game wasn't memorable. If I were to open my book of football clichés I'm sure the phrases "business end of the season", "winning ugly", and "results matter more than ..." are waiting. You can assemble them into a sentence perfectly well for yourself. Any fool can do that. Even Steve Claridge. Actually, I'm even going to be nice to him and say that, as far as I know, he's never eaten anyone's pet poodle. He's not totally evil.
Posts
