Editor’s note: We’re having a wee departure from the norm for the site with the following article…given that it’s from someone who hates football discussing an incident that deepened their hatred of the sport and it’s fans. I think it’s well-written and entertaining, and it’s based on a personal experience. Hence, I haven’t censored it. Before there are any knee-jerk reactions to it…Jamie would like to make clear that he’d have been as gutted to end up sharing a holiday with fans of any club! (And I have a season-ticket for Ibrox, so we’re not an anti-Rangers site!) Scottish comedy’s a broad spectrum and this site aims to reflect that. You’re welcome to post your comments below the article. Now read on… Teddy.
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Imagine an eerie, post-apocalyptic landscape. Sheets of newspaper crinkle in the wind, blowing down streets and beaches untrammelled by human feet. There are no people here. None at all. Nature’s sound-track falls and rises in roars and whispers across the deserted shop-fronts and smooth-as-silk sands. There’s definitely no football. Do you know where we are? We’re on my perfect holiday.
Not for me the hordes of scarlet hedonists scuttling over beach-towels like migrating crabs : the kind of hideous families who look like they’ve been created by Mr Blobby fucking a pot of lobsters. Or families from Paisley asking for directions to the nearest fish-and-chip shop – in Turkey. Or being surrounded by the sort of quasi-racist holidaymakers who insist on calling every foreigner they see ‘Manuel’, even if they’re on holiday in Norway. If the word ‘Uncovered’ can be tagged on to the name of my holiday destination for the purposes of a SKY1 documentary series, then you can count me out. And did I mention definitely no football?
So when my (now ex) girlfriend announced that our first holiday together – and my first trip abroad for seven years – would be to Salou – a Spanish resort town beloved of the people of Blackpool – my heart didn’t so much sink as plummet through the earth’s molten core. She detected some of this in my facial expressions: ‘I know you’re disappointed, with it being so late in the year,’ she said, ‘but just because the place will be a ghost town doesn’t mean we won’t have fun.’ If I’d been a cartoon character, that would have been my cue for a double-take. I asked her to repeat the words ‘ghost town’. ‘Ghost town,’ she said again, puzzlement ruffling her brow. Ghost town: my kind of town.
We arrived at Edinburgh airport minus the baggage of life’s interruptions, looking forward to an undisturbed, relaxing week of each other’s company. I looked around the departure gate. Bald-spots, beer bellies and football strips abounded.
“Why are there so many Rangers supporters boarding this flight?” I asked her. She shrugged.
Football’s supposed to be in my blood, but it isn’t. I go out of my way to avoid it; unfortunately, being male and Scottish love of the sport is seen as a non-negotiable prerequisite for ownership of a penis. Not liking football doesn’t compute. It leads people to suspect you’re one of ‘them’ they’ve read about in the Daily Mail.
“I don’t like football”, I tell them.
“Then… what do you and your boyfriend do on a Saturday then?”
Strangers strike up intense, football-related conversations with me without ever assuming a lack of passion on my part, and then act appalled when I don’t know who scored the winning goal in last season’s Cup play-off. The way I see it, if I want to feel part of a feral, noisy, and violent tribe, I’ll visit my family. Football is nothing less than a stadium-sized distraction from the finer things in life. And there I was, about to board a plane alongside scores of drunken zealots, the harbingers of doom now revealed in the shiny blue sea of their strips. The whole of Ibrox, Rangers’ spiritual home, was following me abroad.
“What’s going on?” I demanded of one of them.
“Rangers”, he slurred, “are playing Barcelona. You going to the game, mate?”
If – as the old saying goes − ‘War is how the Americans teach themselves geography’, then football is the Scots’ method; although in Scotland war and football are never mutually exclusive. The flight certainly wasn’t a dull one. Cabaret was provided by the Rangers’ fans; those maestros of the music of hate. The hairy gentleman seated behind me was responsible for percussion accompaniment, which involved using the back of my seat as a drum-kit. He gleefully kicked and thumped his approval to the sectarian songs that were filling the cabin like nerve-gas.
“One more thump and I’m saying something”, I said to my girlfriend, after the one-hundred and seventieth thump. I said it again thirty thumps later. The stewardess thundered down the aisle. Now they’d be sorry. She surveyed the army of tattooed tub-thumpers surrounding her on each side of the plane and decided that a genial “Come on, boys, be nice”, would do the trick. It didn’t. Off she swished, leaving us at their mercy once more.
By the end of the flight they’d turned the air as blue as their shirts. The stewardess, whose smile had been worn down to a hyphen, raised a conspiratorial eyebrow at me. I raised two in reply, as if to say ‘All evil needs to prevail is for good women to do nothing.’ I figured that was too verbose a message to be conveyed by brow, so followed up with a less-ambiguous scowl.
In the airport terminal I ranted like a half-mad savant, prophesying pain and torment for the duration of the holiday.
“Calm down, honey”, said my girlfriend. “The fans will be staying in Barcelona; they won’t come near Salou. It’ll be fine, OK?”
We greeted our airport transfer driver. It was a long journey from Barcelona’s airport to Salou. The background thrum of the road was all we felt able to process after our airborne aural assault, so we said nothing to each other, dreaming of cocktails on empty beach-fronts.
“I think it’s going to be OK”, I said as we pulled up outside the hotel.
“Me, too”, she trilled.
The smile I’d allowed to pull my cheeks apart slammed shut like a leather-bound book. There it stood, like a brothel in a monastery, the letters of its neon sign pulsing like poisoned veins: ‘The Ibrox Bar’. I gaped up at it: “Please tell me Ibrox is Spanish for ‘cocktail’.” Raucous laughter boomed from the bar’s open door, so loud it was almost visible. The advance party was already encamped. Reinforcements would surely follow. Shell-shocked, I stood on our hotel balcony. I lit a cigarette and gazed up into the cool night air. Draped over one of the top-floor balconies was a flag depicting the red-hand of Ulster. The hotel had been compromised, too.
“Let’s just go to that nice Italian restaurant across the street and forget about it for now, shall we?” she asked, not really asking. Over a civilised meal I chewed over some uncivilised sentiments.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll all die”, I said, stabbing my fork into a fat slice of chicken.
She pushed a piece of pizza to the back of her plate. “I’m here to have a nice, relaxing time, OK?”
I wondered how long my wine glass had been empty. “It’s not my fault we brought hundreds of marauding Vikings with us. I knew I should have paid more attention to football fixtures.”
Her hand slapped down on mine, a gesture of stern affection. She dared me to look at her. “Let’s just have a nice time. OK?”
I nodded, knowing she was scouring my features for any residual sulk. “OK.” In my head I pictured a Rangers’ fan burning in Hell.
“That’s what I mean”, she said. “Keep smiling like that.”
The scene outside the restaurant was like one from a zombie movie. Drunken, blue-clad louts staggered and zig-zagged up the street. “WE ARE THE PEO-PLE!” came the chorused cry. I felt like crying myself.
“Let’s go somewhere for a nice walk”, she said, emphasising the word ‘nice’ with a hiss.
“OK”, I agreed. “How about France?”
Palm trees were silhouettes against the purple-tipped sky. At the horizon the sky was alive with brilliant hues of yellow and orange, like flames cast from a furnace, or light thrown from a far-off nebula. The promenade was deserted, the only sounds our steady footfalls on the pavings. A soft sea-breeze teased our bare arms. We sat by the marina, legs dangling above the water. Boats whished and creaked against their moorings, gentle movements lulling in the darkness.
“You’re quiet”, she said, gently squeezing my fingers.
My eyes were fixed on the endless expanse of ocean: dark, deep, silent and eternal. “Yes”, I said, feeling a smile on my lips. “Yes, I am.”
The next day the blue-shirts took their battle to Barca stadium, leaving the sun-kist streets of Salou deserted. Only the odd sheet of newspaper dancing in the wind disturbed the calm. And I smiled. I am the people. One-nil to me, football.
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About the Author
Jamie Andrew has been on the comedy circuit for just over a year, and in that time has come to the attention of at least three different people; three of whom didn’t think he was that good. Despite this, he got to the final of the Hilarity Bites New Act competition 2011 in Darlington, and had a run with his show, God vs Jamie Andrew, at the PBH Free Fringe Festival at Edinburgh. The same three people came to see him there. They still didn’t like him.
It’s not surprising that Jamie doesn’t like football, after years of being picked last for friendly games at high school. This was no conspiracy. He sucked at football. But it was the laughter he received whilst playing those early games that convinced him his future lay in comedy.
Follow Jamie on Twitter: @nottheclimber
“thoughtless attacks on anything and everything…” Andrew Dipper, Gigglebeats
“I concur” Graham Mackie, when someone on the Scottish Comedy Forum said Jamie was alright.
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