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Crushed backs and other celebrations May 12, 2012

Posted by normanmonkey in QPR.
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I was fine until about half-an-hour ago but now I’m like Martin Sheen in the opening scene of Apocalypse Now. Alone with absolutely nothing on TV, pacing despite being declared medically unfit to stand, swigging a cheap rose I’d sniffily declared not to my taste at 6pm. In fifteen hours time Stoke kick-off against Bolton, a unlikely, but still very possible win for the latter and QPR are relegated. Unless QPR can get a point away at Man City. And that’s not going to happen.

Things couldn’t be worse: following medical advice I have spent the last two days lying flat in bed after having my spine crushed by a publican when Djibril Cissse scored a winner in our last Rangers game. Waiting months for a weekend of sunshine only to be told by the doctor to lie down indoors. And I never in my life believed my happiness would be relative to something that was happening in Stoke.

To compound matters I may just recover the ability to sit upright and walk just in time to watch the conclusion on television, sitting within arms reach of the publican, Lee Blewett in his pub The Bramley Inn.

In the past week the Man City – QPR game has become a matter of national debate. There is only one voice I’ve heard that entire time who has openly declared, with no hint of irony, they believe QPR will win: Lee Blewett.

It’s the kind of blind faith that has seen him travel all over the country full of vim only to witness in nine outings nine straight defeats and one solitary goal (compared to Chelsea’s six), so god knows what odds he is operating on for such a prediction, but despite all this evidence to the contrary, he will yet again experience the crushing disappointment that comes with confronting the odds with his hand on his crotch.

The tragic thing is this fixture and the need for Bolton not to win at Stoke coincides with the birthday party he’d organised for his partner.  Curious to how this would pan out I asked what the plans relating to football tomorrow, receiving the reply: “I am going to get her twatted tonight. Tomorrow is all about the footy’. Not a line I imagine we’ve seen oft used in the vaults of Mills & Boon.

Tomorrow one of us is going to need to watch the scores come in in a cage. I certainly don’t want him charging at me like an undersexed gorilla if Stoke or, god forbid, QPR score. The physio was amazed I’d been walking, driving and commuting into town after ligament strain he inflicted on my back. And it cost me fifty-five quid for he to tell me that. That’s the exact same sum I owe Blewett for the Chelsea away match he suggested we go to fortnight ago, all in the belief of a surprise result.

That finished 6-1 and he looked a broken man. Tomorrow the only man who may be broken is whoever is in reach at the final whistle and, with the state of my spine, I’ll be slowest out the blocks.

No points deduction May 12, 2011

Posted by normanmonkey in Friends, QPR.
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The most beautiful three words in the English language are not ‘I love you’ but ‘No points deduction’.

This is my final word on anything football realted for some time as, believe me, I am more weary of it than anyone else reading this. After a week of sleepless nights, gnawing fists, speaking in tongues during meetings, bursting into tears, barking at and breaking down in front of friends, family and colleagues and reading wild speculation from those in the know (and not a single sports journalist can be included in that grouping), it was announced at midday on Saturday that QPR would only receive a fine for their transfer transgressions and were officially Champions. It is a week that I, nor anyone who came into contact with me, will want to endure again.

Enough has been written about the scenes of delirium around Shepherds Bush already. I’m not in a position to report on that moment as I was in a cab stuck in appalling traffic and going nowhere for a King’s ransom on the Warwick Road. All I’ve got to show for it is crippling shin splints after giving up and describing to run the remainder of the journey in Timberland boots arriving just in time to hyperventilate at the steps of the ground as QPR scored their one and only goal 29 seconds into the game before going on to inconsequential defeat.

Next season we will be in the Premier League for the first time in 15 years, entertaining the likes of Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea and for most of those games I will probably be stuck in a taxi somewhere on the Warwick Road.

Then there is Russell an ex-colleague, now present friend and ensconced in Paris who is a Cardiff fan who has watched our success and their capitulation at the final hurdle in unbounded horror. The rivalry between his club and mine is intense and dates back to a 2003 Cardiff play-off final victory – in Cardiff – that was full of loathing and retribution has been like an open wound ever since. Even in his job interview, he grinned to me, the interviewer, upon hearing I was a QPR fan ‘We could see you crying on TV’. He very nearly didn’t get the job.

A couple of years later Russell thought it a good idea to join me in watching a televised Cardiff-QPR fixture in a pub full of QPR types, most of them proper nutters, on a Friday night on the Goldhawk Road in Shepherds Bush. Despite Cardiff then being unbeaten  top of the league and QPR being bottom and pitiful, the latter scored a goal with their first shot in the 90th minute. Amid the eruption of hooped flesh and cacophony of delight sat a broken Welshman on a stool, his pint knocked flying, jostled by simian men who assumed he too was delighted at this sudden unexpected, undeserved twist, staring agonised, unblinking at the floor as if he’d just descended into hell.

Russell then did a funny thing. He went to the gents and locked himself in the loo for a full hour and refused to come out. Years passed and this season looked like being a head to head. For only two weeks this season was another team top of the league, that was Cardiff and, of course, Russell would be on me like a flash to salute the great breakaway (‘Just you watch us now!’ etc), yet it still went to the wire with Caridff bubbling closely beneath. In fact, had QPR had any significant points deducted, as it was predicted by the press they would, then Cardiff would be promoted in our place.

The no points deduction was announced and QPR declared champions at midday on Saturday and despite my best attempts to elicit a response there was not a text, tweet or call from Paris. All contact was down. And then at around 8pm on Tuesday evening he uttered his first words via Twitter: I’ve just come out the toilet. If Cardiff progress to the Play off final and lose to their bitterest rivals Swansea let me you, that self-imposed exile in the toilet will become permanent.

Brandy on ice – a QPR promotion May 1, 2011

Posted by normanmonkey in QPR, Uncategorized.
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Did anyone remember to check the Norwich score then?'

Only at QPR can supporters invade the pitch to celebrate being promoted to the Premier League before bothering to check whether the other game that affected our status had finished. It hadn’t. Yet no one had the foresight to patiently see if Norwich would finish with 2-2 draw. Norwich didn’t. They scored and won 3-2, rendering the chants of ‘The R’s are going up and now you’re gonna believe us’ premature.

I witnessed this from my seat just behind the Directors Box in full knowledge, unlike the club co-owner Lakshmi Mittal, the fourth richest man in the world, that our party had been shafted (it goes to show you that money can buy you anything, but not even 5 billion quid can give you the final score from Carrow Road before making a tit of yourself). The supporters were singing so loudly about being promoted that no one could hear the PA system trying to tell them we actually weren’t and asking them to go home. Eventually the message got through, the promotion celebration was brought to an abrupt halt (if it was a cartoon you’d hear the sound of a stylus being hoiked off the record player) and it was rather like turning up for a New Year’s Eve party where Big Ben only struck up to 11.

An old friend in Australia whom I haven’t heard from in 18 months even found time to email to say he’d spilled his Pinot Noir down his front laughing at the pitch invasion that had been on the news. Yes, our embarrassment and wretched anti-climax in a small corner of Shepherds Bush had gone global.

So after global derision, promotion and the Championship was secured with a majestic 2-0 at Watford yesterday, but, of course, it wasn’t. There’s the matter of an FA charge concerning the transfer of Alejandro Faurlin from Argentinian club Instituto in an alleged £3.5m brokered deal that appears to be part Gordon Gekko, part Gordon the Gopher. When Faurlin had his medical signing for QPR it is not known if physios found bruising from where he fell off the back of a lorry, but the FA are investigating how we happened upon the signing as his owners weren’t Instituto and there is a (possibly unfounded) speculation we may be docked points to deny QPR a return to the Premier League after a fifteen year absence that has taken in two relegations and no small amount of ignomy on the way.

This is typical QPR, certainly since I’ve been following them.  In 1986 we won away at Chelsea and knocked out the European Champions Liverpool in the semis to reach the League Cup final only to lose 3-0 to Oxford. Our last foray into Europe we managed to have a 6-2 home advantage over Partizan Belgrade overturned with a 4-0 away defeat. Since we’ve been out of the Premier League we’ve managed to spend an entire season in financial administration with fans collecting donations in buckets outside the ground; a court case involving a gun pulled on the Chairman at the ground by gangsters on a matchday (where the judge concluded the Chairman was an ‘unreliable witness’); a merger with Wimbledon; a possible move and certain death to Milton Keynes (Wimbledon copped that one) been knocked out of the FA Cup by a team that sounded more like a car dealership and whom no one knew existed (Vauxhall Motors) and actually not won a single FA Cup match in ten years. Think about that: ten years! There’s also been the matter of recent events where we managed to get through 12 managers in less than 3 years all with increasingly disastrous consequences until the appointment of Neil Warnock who may or may have not won us the Championship.

Frankly this FA inquiry is the sort of thing that keeps a man with a QPR season ticket and limited social horizons beyond the nearest bar awake at night (and disinclined to blog if you;ve noticed the lack of activity roughly coincides with the FA charge). Yesterday afternoon was still spent listening to BBC London hunched in the kitchen and then charging around in triumph, then pausing to wipe a tear, frantically texting and calling other emotionally unstable idiots with a similar orientation, but there was no champagne.  My publican friend Lee celebrated himself into a toxic stupor at his own real-ale festival, but after one false dawn the previous week I’ll save my celebrations until all bases are covered.

My Moet is being kept on ice until the FA verdict on Friday and I wholly expect to go berserk at the final home game on Saturday.  It’s not worth going into the details of the case safe to say the club say they’ve been transparent and are confident they will win (given our history, as soon as anyone associated with QPR says that concerning any contest I am immediately filled with dread). Considering the FA is in considerable debt, they’ve not exactly managed the case or publicity around it well and our owners comprise not one, but two self-made billionaires (who didn’t get to where they are today by taking no for an answer or with an ‘After you, Claude’ approach to business)  there’s doubt whether the FA have the stomach or can afford the lawyers for a very messy fight.

For fifteen years we’ve waited for a return to the top flight. It’s unprecedented a club can win the league with a game to spare and still be waiting for results to come in from else0hwere, in our case not from a football ground but a QC. And while we’ve waited since 1986 and that League Cup final to make another appearance at Wembley, at least the hearing is taking place there, but whether we’ll get a win reamins to be seen. Typical QPR, as we say. In the place of champagne a large brandy would be more appropriate. A final thought: Pete Doherty is a QPR fan, do you think he turned out the way he did by coincidence?

Carry On Adel January 25, 2011

Posted by normanmonkey in Home, In the news, QPR.
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A fundamental problem of having Sky multi-room and having someone else living somewhere in the house with a remote control is you never quite know when your viewing of a BBC4 documentary downstairs is going to be interrupted by someone deciding to go for a tour of the Babestation channels upstairs. One minute you are taking in Martin Luther King and he’s got a dream the next second it’s Monique from Essex and she’s got the horn.

My mini-cab driving cousin in hiding will be here for one more week before it’s time to move on and I wonder if it’s because he’s starting to disapprove of my lifestyle. He’s developed a taste for Barolo and late nights and I’ve developed a habit of waking up when I hear home go for his first fare at 4am. The result is we both look shattered.

As someone who has resolutely lived alone for eleven years coming home to an occupied house after a grueling  twelve hour day is something I’ve yet to adjust to and its especially hard to unwind when you are greeted with a full recital of who said what to whom on Talksport since sunrise before you’ve even had chance to reach for the corkscrew.

Sometimes our conversations tend to go off on tangents or hit a brick wall altogether. Last week some colleagues and I pitched to the marketing director of a well known biscuit manufacturer and I was explaining this he looked at me and said ‘They’ve got them two for one in Sainsbury’s at the moment. I’ll treat you before I go and get some of their double chocolate ones in…they’re the bollocks!’.

I don’t know who was more shocked, he or Iliana the cleaner when she found him here the other afternoon. Although he explained he was my cousin I’m sure this has further proof in her mind that I’m a closet homosexual, especially as I told her not to mention to my parents he was staying here should she see them. Iliana gave me a certain knowing, conspiratorial Bulgarian look, the sort that said,  ‘Ok, but In my village they would paint your house pink and then nail your genitals to the wall for this’.

Then again, I have begun to question my own sexuality recently as I think I am growing increasingly infatuated with someone of the same sex, a young Arab boy to be precise. He’s name is Adel. I often go into London to gaze at him for upto an hour an a half at a time, whereupon I swoon at his gentle touch, the way he moves and become utterly lost in rapture. There are times he leaves me utterly speechless and I can’t imagine him out of my life.

Before we get all Cecil Beaton in Marrakesh, it is probably worth pointing out that Adel plays for Queens Park Rangers, wears the number 7 shirt and is the Zinedine Zidane of Shepherds Bush. There’s nothing worse than a football bore, but I’ve an overwhelming desire to express my feelings about him and can barely contain myself. In 25 years of going to the Rangers I’ve never seen a player like him, and in my time I’ve seen the likes of Dalgleish, Hoddle, Gascoinge, Cantona, Bergkamp and our very own Shittu and Doudou (by God, the early 2000’s was not our finest hour). In formative QPR years I idolised Clive Allen, Roy Wegerle and Les Ferdinand, then rapidly accepted that almost all footballers were just potential rapists who could kick a ball more accurately than your average builder and in the meantime I discovered The Doors, David Lynch, lager and cleavage.

But Adel is not like all the others. In the past six months under the paternalistic guidance of Neil Warnock I’ve seen teams taken apart singlehandedly by his nonchalance, trickery, panache and outrageous grace. Sunday was no different. He produced live on television and everyone was talking about him and asking why he was playing for QPR. That’s when the jealousy set in as Chelsea and Manchester United fans started tweeting they should sign him up. Now I’m torn and hope that he’ll realise what there is to savour between us and put in a shocker when the media spotlight is on him so I can have him all to myself a little bit longer. It’s getting beyond replacing the pop art prints with an Adel poster and flying a Moroccan flag above Wisley House (Neighbourhood Watch would have something to say about that). If I was ten years younger and not tied to a career, I’d give serious consideration to having a transplant of womb, ovaries and uterus just so I could have his babies.

It is only a matter of time before he’s playing for Real Madrid in the Champions League, I’m brought back crashing down to earth watching a bunch of blokes called Dave falling over and running into each other for ten grand a week and Adel will be a faded, tear-stained memory. This is getting a bit too Death in Venice for my liking.

Talking of crashing back down to earth my cousin just came down from bed because he couldn’t sleep and clutching his mobile:  ‘Here’s the name of that old Doris I saw on Carry on Cruising the other day. Google ‘er up…she looks just like our Nan.’.  He was right, she did and with that he disappeared just as quickly again upstairs to get reacquainted with women on Sky Channels who, I can assure you, look nothing like our Nan.

The young Arab boy in the hoops is simply divine

Norman Monkey The Brand January 12, 2011

Posted by normanmonkey in Consumer PR.
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If only I could apply the same determination, dediciation and focus to my personal life as I do in my professional (which has of late, it must be conceded, not permitted for much of a personal life), then I’d be Aristotle Onassis. I’d also not be awaiting a letter from the DVLA informing me how much I owe for not paying my road tax and I’d also have a white carpet that, thanks to red wine, didn’t look like the Marquis de Sade’s bed sheet.

PR is all about problem solving. Make something famous, talked about, loved, even if it’s inferior to what else is on the market. My god, if I knew the answer to that I wouldn’t have been reduced to signing up to Match.com in the summer. On occasion, such as this evening, there is cause for an ebullient mood because I believe I may have cracked a very difficult brief. On other occasions problem solving often comes about from creating a problem that didn’t before exist and selling the problem in at the same time as the solution (lets call that the smallpox vaccination approach to marketing – the brand giveth the pox and the brand taketh away).  Then there’s the other times where a client has a genuine problem, mired in the shit, and it’s your job to work out how to extricate them if not smelling of roses, then almost certainly not smelling of shit.

So far I am managing to make a living out of this, but it is starting to occur to me that maybe I should hire myself as a client because outside the office I am dans le merde (is that even correct?). It’s the only logical solution to get myself out of the constant minefield of buff envelopes, ex-girlfriends who complained about my lack of free time (Village East and QPR and the post-trauma and fatigue of both is as much a factor as anything work related) and red wine stains that set in.  It’s only a matter of time that I spill red wine on the unopened buff envelopes containing despairing complaints from exes that I compound all my flaws in one.

If I were a client I may suggest a total overhaul in my comms strategy and make myself more accessible. Answering the phone, let alone being available for face to face interaction would be a start. Another would be to open the aforementioned buff envelopes. Early on in the proceedings the DVLA were sending me polite reminders but now there’s an angry red aspect to their communications and by which time its all too late to pick up the hints (the awkward irony should not be lost that I also lead campaigns for a leading motor brand reminding other drivers of exactly this kind of thing). As for the red wine it’s all about spatial awareness in as much as remembering firstly not to place a full bottle of Barolo on the carpet and secondly not to knock it flying whilst dancing like a tool to Bowie of a Friday night. If I had the budget, there;s definitely the case for a total brand overhaul and some third party partnerships with mineral water, the V&A and football teams that haven’t gone 11 years without a win in the FA Cup.

It was also revealed at work today whilst exercising my professional capacity into purchasing behaviour (people don’t want to be observed purchasing the cheapest if in aspirational surroundings)  that even though I required a white wine to remove the red stain I steadfastly refused to be seen buying a bottle of Blossom Hill white wine in Sainsbury’s in Cobham. At least, when everything else is unravelling due to my own ineptitude, its surely reassuring to know that I still have principles that are upheld. Even a stained carpet deserves to be doused with a bit of the good stuff and I was happy to help out with the leftovers.

A sentiment enough to send a sensitive soul to Beachey Head

 

Mad Men September 30, 2010

Posted by normanmonkey in In the news, QPR, Single London.
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There’s a number of ways two young, single, professional gentlemen at the cut and thrust of the London PR scene can spend their evening. Start off with cocktails at The Ritz, dinner at The Wolseley, maybe a private members club or off to Bungalow 8 before retiring to their respective penthouse suites with the women of their choice. Modern day Mad Men.

I wager that few would choose to spend it in an alcove of a football ground in  Shepherds Bush with slightly unhinged, lagered-up middle-aged ‘geezers’ who also happened to be two of Millwall’s ‘Top Men’ (and I don’t mean in the boardroom) as riots and pitched battles flared up outside.

Come to think of it, that wasn’t exactly how DT and I envisaged spending our evening at the Rangers either: grinning inanely and taking deep breaths upon hearing yet another rapid-fire yarn lamenting the good old days of mindless acts of violence.

That was all made possible by Blewett who thought it would be a nice touch to introduce two regulars from a former pub of his to the club restaurant where we were dining so we could enjoy a live recital of The Football Factory.

This somewhat undermined the military precision planning and leaving work early from Bermondsey to be inside the ground at 6pm to escape the hooligans outside the ground only to discover our own mate had arranged for them to come to us. Of all the measures taken, that was not one I’d calculated for. Nice one, Blewett. I’ve never felt such gratitude and relief upon having my hand crushed in a farewell handshake goodbye.

I think we heard about 200 anecdotes unbroken for a pause for breath and all of them containing the words ‘Tear up’ (usually prefixed with the ubiquitous ‘proper’ or ‘right old’). Believe me, it’s exhausting this whole trying not to get a bottle of Becks banged on your head business – survival instinct kicks in.

The strategy when confronted with two men of a certain age for whom a broken nose is a term of endearment is to agree with everything they say and not to mention that you work in the media, have close friends who are French, use a personal trainer, read The Guardian, dislike lager, drink espresso martinis and, in DT’s case at least, you live with someone who has just competed in a Ladyboy of the Year competition. Actually, there’s no acceptable social context for the latter. He’s just going to have to soldier on alone with that one.

The football was largely inconsequential. As we were reliably informed by our acquaintances it was all about the tear up. Apparently liberties had been taken and a lot of old faces were coming out of retirement for this one. They weren’t wrong. Shepherds Bush was a battlefield in places and the violence made international news (USA Today, The Australian, The Ealing Gazette).

If Blewett was bang on the money with one thing it was better to have them inside with us, than for us to be outside without them. I see the logic, but I’d still sooner have swapped them for Penelope Cruz and Megan Fox, but maybe not for Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. I’d have probably taken him and his chickens, covered them in QPR memorabilia, lobbed them in the away end and turned a blind eye to that one.

After all that tension, we naturally needed to escape the war zone for a couple of  late night cold drinks to calm down. From Romper Stomper to Old Compton Street in thirty minutes. How;s that for varied night out and we’d have almost certainly got a pasting for mentioning that as a potential destination. Anywhere to avoid a beating. Better to be hit upon by a man than hit by one  is my new motto.

Play your cards right September 27, 2010

Posted by normanmonkey in Friends, Music, QPR.
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Waking up to a jolly cretin on the local radio station announcing that the train you’d rather been hoping to catch into town has been cancelled – along with all those that follow it – is a surefire way to kickstart the working week.  The only positive was the arrival in the post of the credit and debit cards I managed to lose over the course of 24 hours last week with depressing predictability just prior to a date with a woman who appeared to be both fussy and high-maintenance.

She had the good foresight to cancel the date hours before, but my being forced to subsist from a Friday to Sunday night on the company card is going to reveal to our Financial Director, at the very least, the itinerant lifestyle a West Byfleet dandy.

It’s all laid bare with spectacular predictability: Village East cocktails, Waterloo cash withdrawal at 8am on Saturday morning,  the train fare to Queens Park Rangers, Threshers, Sunday lunch in Weybridge and a Chinese takeaway. One thing that didn’t get a reduction on the card was the offer of a discount on a good bottle of Morgon from a shop proprietor on Bermondsey Street on the condition I give him a kiss. Friday had been one of those nights.

Latterly, I even managed to restrain myself from buying the 5disc box set of Bowie’s mid-70’s masterpiece Station to Station (according to legend The Dame was so out of it during recording, living on a diet of raw peppers and milk, that he is quoted as saying he only knows he recorded the album in LA because more reliable people have told him so). That particular gem has now been ordered as the first purchase on the new cards.

Two weeks of almost unceasing gym activity and abstinence from the grape always feels like two weeks too many when you’ve been stood up and Levi is grinning at you from the entrance to Village East. It was a fine evening and the company excellent as always. The next doorway I encountered in the light of day was the entrance to Loftus Road and a meeting with Blewett and Robbie Gale for a good lunch, three goals and three points before retreating back to the Wisley with the latter to celebrate another weekend at the top of the league that has left many people staggering around Shepherds Bush in shock.

Sunday evening’s subsiding mood was lifted by a text from DT that simply read ‘I’m at the Ladyboy of the Year 2010 with my new flatmate. He’s in it’. At least I knew there would be an illuminating conversation over morning coffee prior to getting down to the business of public relations. He’s gone from living with  70 year old landlady  to a twentysomething landladyboy. While the former cooks a far better roast beef  dinner, the latter clearly wins hands down in a head to head Beyonce lookalike contest.

There had been a sense that perhaps a return to the gym was what was required this evening. However, nodding off on the train back from Waterloo was probably a sign that tea and rest was required. Tomorrow I’ll need all the energy I can get as I may have to break my record time for running a mile. QPR are hosting Millwall. West vs East. And DT and I have to take the same route into Shepherds Bush from our Bermondsey office as the all nutters and their nuttier mates from the New Den.

We’ve talked about leaving work early for the journey so we can do our new business pitch the next day with our own teeth. We reckon 10am should be about right.

Hoops, They Did It Again August 10, 2010

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The cup run was good while it lasted. It peaked around the chocolate tart and cheese and biscuits but juddered to a halt not long after kick off.

So, normal service has resumed at Queens Park Rangers. Ungraciously thumped to the point of humiliation by a Port Vale side two divisions below them, pissing down with rain in August, collective gloom, the occasional erupting psychopath, missed my train home by a split second and not a single positive to be drawn from the evening .

My major regret is that I didn’t drink anywhere near enough wine during the pre-match meal to have made the football on show hazy. Instead I had DT and Wilcock with me. They went on a scoffing mission at the dinner like two Dickensian waifs dragged into the W12 Club out the gutter. DT looked at my expression at a latter stage of the match and quite rightly said ‘If it hadn’t have been for that dinner, I’d be pissed off n’all’.

Others chipped in from afar: ‘A teabag stays longer in the cup than we do’, said a philosophical and suicidal Blewett via text. Poor sod, always gripped by an irrational sense of optimism. He always thinks it’s  going to be ‘Our Year’. I bet that’s what someone said in the Polish  cavalry in 1939.

I’ve just checked the calendar and there’s nine more months of this. More of a worry, it is supposed to be a primary form of entertainment, but anyone else whom willingly chooses to spend a cold Tuesday evening sitting in the rain in Shepherds Bush over any other form of location or recreation is either plastered, a lunatic or both which leads me to fear the worst for my level of aspiration and mental wellbeing.

No one is exactly holding their hopes out for a run in the FA Cup either. QPR has gone 14 matches without a win in that particular competition. Four draws, ten defeats – taking in the likes of Vauxhall Motors (yes, that is a football team and was news to us at the time as well) and a 4-0 defeat to a Swansea side at the time languishing 92nd in the league without a win for months. The last FA Cup victory was in extra-time against Luton in 2000. For us, there’s about as much romance in the cup as a date at Nandos with Fred West.

I need a plan, a diversion: Russia seems an interesting to go. Especially after those pictures of that spy Anna Chapman caught my attention. We have Cheryl Cole, ‘Proof’ as my friend Lucie says ‘That you can polish a turd’, while they’ve got international women of mystery, speaking multiple languages including that of seduction.

There was a story in one tabloid about how she had a fling with a student from Southampton. He said she was wild in bed, evasive, emotionally cold, avoided being photographed and he did think at the time it slightly unusual that she conducted her business on six mobile phones.

To most I suppose the clues were there, but I began to wonder if I’d been out with her myself. It came as no surprise to read subsequently that she lived in Weybridge for a time.  There’s the possibility Russia could be the ruin of me, especially if I can get all that kind of thing in Surrey.

And you know what? I bet she supports Port Vale.

Lancing the Boyle April 25, 2010

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What sort of man would marry Susan Boyle for money? Well, according to my morally dubious subconscious, me for starters.

There are times when one wakes up in a sweat in the middle of the night realising with huge regret it was all a dream. For years I had a recurring one about coming off the bench to play for Queens Park Rangers though that hasn’t happened for a long while. At present I’d probably get in the starting line-up. Others have involved predictably involved a member of the opposite sex.

As far as I know, unlike one half of the planet, doing something unspeakable with Megan Fox hasn’t floated across my transom but, following a strong coffee just before slumber on Friday night, being married to Susan Boyle has.

Nothing quite prepares you for the moment when, having gone 36 years, without even a whiff of the altar, you find yourself cornered in a room with SuBo (who for reasons again beyond me had dyed her hair red) making demands that we step out together and inform the world’s press that I was her husband and we are in love.

My recollection is I’d consented to put my name forward for a fee but I wasn’t expecting her to turn up on my doorstep and an international media frenzy. Faced with a red-haired and highly emotional Boyle talking my way out of it proved impossible.

The universal humiliation of being the man who married the Singing Haggis was as good as a death sentence (what will the family Christmas be like with her breaking out into ‘I Dreamed a Dream’ and holding my hand as relatives look on in agonised disbelief? As for getting a sympathetic hearing from the likes of Wilcock and Gloria in the office, well…) and I knew this was not the course I had intended my life to take.

My only strategic option was to become hysterical, explain in firm and frank terms there had been a terrible mistake and there was no chance. She went ballistic and, to compound matters, the public turned on me. Fucking hypocrites. What if the shoe was on the other foot? What this all says about my tendency toward marriage does not necessitate a seance with Sigmund Freud.

Going into hiding proved futile as everywhere I went I was chased by SuBo. Being pursued and chased is standard fare in nightmares, but by Susan Boyle with red hair is another thing altogether. When she finally caught up with me she threw a packet of washing up powder (yes, I know) at me. Apparently this triggered a get out clause in my contract and in an unexpected move and to the surprise of all parties she instantly rocketed screaming into orbit. If only I had those powers with certain exes, or clients come to think of it, in the past. I’m already building a prototype.

Never have I been so relieved to see my radio alarm clock in the darkness. Practically shaking I had to stagger downstairs for a glass of red and a cigarette at 4am to steady the frayed nerves. I’ve done some stupid and irresponsible things in my time -knocking a girl backwards of a port wall during an embrace, taking Dan Turner to Amsterdam, driving a Volvo, watching QPR away (or home for that matter) – but marrying Susan Boyle is a new low even for me.

Tonight, I’m not taking any chances. I’m wearing a crucifix and the Hoops shirt to repel SuBos in the night and try to trigger the long-lost recurring dream of playing at Loftus Road. Give me Les Ferdinand over Les Miserables every day of the week,

Blog abandoned due to worklogged week February 17, 2010

Posted by normanmonkey in QPR.
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Where once there was expectation and optimism in the array of talent at our disposal, it takes a torrent of rain and an abandonment to lift the mood when arriving at White City tube before a QPR match the days.

The good mood was buoyed by the realisation that the W12 restaurant and bar was still going to be open for the duration. This, in turn, meaning we wouldn’t have to leave the warmth, comfort and waitress service of vino and edibles to spend an interminable time watching young men who earn the average annual wage in just a fortnight fall over themselves and scream at a team mate as the opposition interrupted their latest spit roast to tap the ball into the net whilst laughing.

Louise the Vegan obviously couldn’t eat meat nor dairy so consumed all the available gravadlax West London (and I include Acton in that) had to offer. Yes, that famous dairy free vegetable gravadlax. As grown in on Scottish shores near the salmon farms. Life is full of so many contradictions these days (obese people in sportswear, someone with John Terry’s face being the subject of a national sex scandal etc) that I’m happy not to ask.

It was her first football match, but she doesn’t know what fate she was had been led to nor her reprieve – a bit like a Christian in Ancient Rome shackled on their way to the Colosseum declaring ‘Ooh, I’ve never been to one of these lion shows before!’.

A night at the Rangers is hardly Roy of the Rovers or the stuff you see packaged up for public consumption by producers with degrees in Film Studies and Propaganda at Sky.

Here it’s all vitriol, bitterness, despair. At present you are far more liable to be pounced on for smiling or witness Dads beating their hapless, shivering offspring for clapping a bad pass in what was intended as a pacifying act to win his approval than witness a goal.

This, of course, is the phlegm soaked reality at most football grounds. Men on their uppers, shabby shoes, broken noses, beaten down by a lifetime of endless failure and hotdogs that are liable to bite back. You can see it in their eyes. These are the guys who got the wrong number, the wrong woman and the wrong team. It doesn’t make for a good atmosphere when their side are 2-0 down after 25 minutes and temperatures hovering around zero in the stands.

Meanwhile, Matt Wilcock, who is showing all my tendencies at a young age, was ensconced in the W12 making mischievous gestures and inappropriate comments at the side of his mouth that provoked mirth but would most definitely have him strung up by News of the World readers had anyone else picked up his signal.

Tomorrow Amsterdam beckons with work. There’s a city that’s been known to take no prisoners. I’m taking a day off after a day-long meeting on Thursday so fellow-Cow Jack Clothier and I intend to hit the town. I don’t mind admitting that provokes an intake of breath. He’s up for a big one, considerably younger than me and mentioned going through the night. In a contest of experience over youthful exuberance there’s hope I may come out of it relatively unscathed, but stats and appearances don’t stack in my favour.

With full blond beard, long blond hair and a manly girth that has seen off many an ale that thought it couldn’t be beaten, he looks like a viking short of a pillage. With every intention to do the trip in style, I asked Jack where he intended staying and he repled ‘The hostel’.

I’ve insisted upon booking a five star hotel in one of the better rooms for us both and we’ll do it properly. Choosing was not diffifult. Any management who offer the likes of Clothier and I a complimentary mini-bar are to be both lauded and reprimanded at the same time. Are they mad? I Keith Moon, he John Bonham. The last of the rock and roll Titans unleashed. Amsterdam watch out!

That or we’ll sat in some bar with football pendants listening to reggae, stagger around like every other hopeless idiot saying ‘Wahey’ a lot, get mugged and one of us will end up fished out of the canal in tears.

This is the first entry for a while and can only apologise to the solitary person who contacted me to complain for not having installed earlier. It comes down to this: in the last seven days there has been nothing but long working hours, commuting, gym, fatigue, sleep, and parading around a London Bridge flat with fellow colleagues and all wearing crash helmets.

All that combined or the latter alone should be sufficient explanation and if not heaven knows what is.