Distracted Dad
Richard Hearn likens football to politics
I don’t think enough has been written about the election. P.S: I am mad. (*This is a variation on an old Spitting Image joke, and it made me think they should bring it back.)
I lapped up the election, couldn’t get enough of it. At the time of starting this column, we’d had the bit where everyone votes, but were still awaiting who the government would be. Gordon Brown had just offered to step down as leader.
The day after the election our new TV arrived. I’m not sure whether this was good timing or bad, as all programmes were watched with me scrutinising the picture quality. At times, it felt like the apocalypse was being broadcast and I was spending my time adjusting the contrast. Those four horsemen? Pestilence looks fine, but does famine look a bit blocky to you?
They say that politics is show business for ugly people. The peculiarities of a hung parliament made it Heat magazine for statisticians. So much gossip, accessorised by a calculator. There’s no limit to how many times two numbers out of three can be added together. Or – for hardcore fans, a combination of two large numbers, topped up by a few small numbers. Perhaps it’s actually Countdown for salesmen. On one level, I‘m loving it. (The other level being that aforementioned niggle that we are witnessing the first stages of the apocalypse.)
“Twitter was like overhearing goal flashes for a match when you’re trying
to avoid the score”
Twitter was great during the election. I’m following Armando Iannucci, Charlie Brooker and David Mitchell who were all hilarious throughout, especially during the leadership debates, although sometimes I was recording the debates to watch later, and Twitter was like overhearing goal flashes for a match when you’re trying to avoid the score. They all went a bit quiet on election night itself, then I turned on Channel 4 and there they were.
Another similarity this election has had to football is the level of dissection of facts and statistics, that I normally only know from the sports pages. Part of me is still worried that Tottenham’s fourth place is in jeopardy, in case Aston Villa and Man City get into cosy talks and add their final points tally together.
It’s not always easy to concentrate on momentous events when you have kids, but I’ve learnt now that they’re very much part of them. Watching Gordon Brown walk out of Downing Street was entwined with The Boy trying to show me the Lego ambulance he’d dismantled to turn into a spaceship. (This may sound like biting satire. It isn’t. It’s just Lego versus TV. ) And Youngest™ spent the whole of Cameron and Clegg’s joint press conference blowing raspberries. OK, so let’s call that bit satire. Who needs Spitting Image, after all?
