5 Things I Wanted to Be When I Grew Up

1.Professional Wrestler

  

In 1991 the World Wrestling Federation was massive in the UK.  We used to play Royal Rumble during our school lunch, with elimination taking place for anyone who was thrown into the hedge.  The British Bulldog was a big star in the States, and he was from Wigan which was only down the road!  How hard could it be?

I started doing press-ups every night.  By the third night I couldn’t move my arms without wanting to cry.  Then my mate said ‘they’re all on steroids anyway’ so I asked if he knew anyone who could get me some.   He offered to steal some of his sister’s Slimfast.  I declined and the dream was over. 

2.Footballer

When it came to The Beautiful Game I wasn’t gifted with natural talent.  Nor did I make up for this mammoth void of ability with a willingness to work hard.  Where I was blessed however, was with an almost unlimited amount of self-delusion.

To the point that at the age of 19, despite never having risen above second choice centre-half for Lambshire Lane under-15’s in South Sefton Sunday League Division 5, I still entertained the idea of being discovered.

Where exactly, is anyone’s guess.   I wasn’t playing for a team at this point and even a Hollywood biopic would seem far-fetched if the principal character was signed up by a Premier League Soccerball Franchise after being spotted excelling in a particularly competitive game of ‘kerby’ with his mates.

3.Rock Star

This appealed to me more than footballer as I thought you could just get smashed, sleep around, fight with everyone and still be successful.
 

And few footballers can get away with that.  Obviously Duncan Ferguson is an anomaly.  (The back of the Duncan Ferguson DVD I got for Christmas is a hoot: ‘DUNCAN FERGUSON! ALL the red cards! ALL the injuries! BOTH the goals!’)

I’ve got a stand up show called ‘Rock and Dole’ all about my dalliance with this profession so you’ll have to come see it.  I know – a plug, mid blog.  Shameless.

4.Pop star

A precursor to the above, this was all Morten Harket’s fault.  He was the frankly beautiful singer from A-Ha that I had a small man-crush on at aged 7.  (Past tense, okay?  What?)

When the badly animated video for Take On Me came out it was lauded as a technological breakthrough.   Watching it with 2014 eyes it comes off as a tossy piece of GCSE media studies coursework.

My brother and I had matching corduroy jackets so I forced him to wear his and often beat him senseless until he agreed to mime alongside me to Take On Me.  The snooker cue I wielded as a lethal weapon conveniently doubled as a fake mic stand.

5.Ice Cream Man

This was the second goal I set myself in life and sadly, I still haven’t got there.  (The first goal was to use the potty as a 2 year old, but the babysitter wasn’t confident in my abilities so told me I had to ‘just go’ in my nappie.  Awful scenes.)

When I was 4 I told everyone that I was going to be an Ice Cream Man and they all humoured me like the sycophants adults become around toddlers.

“Ooh, he’s an ambitious little one, isn’t he Mrs Avery?” 

That’s not ambition.

A mate of mine began his business career in Primary school by starting a fan club for himself and charging his friends 2 quid to join. 

That is ambition.

Follow me on Twitter @samaverycomedy

5 Reasons Cricket is Better Than Football

1.The Games Last For Fucking Ages

 

A test match lasts for 5 days which is longer than most relationships I’ve had.  You simply can’t beat the drama of long sporting contests, games with more twists and turns than a one-legged Morris dancer. 

To be fair, you do get that with some football matches but you certainly can’t fall asleep, go to work, lose your job, get a new one, have a shave, get divorced, do a big shop, have another shave, give birth, and then return to the match to see you’ve not actually missed anything.

2.Respect for Officials

Everyone uses Rugby as their example for how a referee should be respected but in the last Ashes tour Ricky Ponting was fined a load of money for talking to the umpire. 

Talking.  Not shouting.  Not screaming. Talking.

Oh, and he wagged his finger at him too.  The filthy animal.
 

3.The Commentary

The BBC’s Test Match Special is where it’s at.  I’ve spent days at a time listening to every single ball.  For this winter’s Ashes tour they’re even replaying the commentary from the previous night so you can listen to it as-live the next day. 

Why?  Because we will listen.  The warmth between former players from opposite sides oozes out of the speakers and when not focussed on the sport, they talk at great length about cakes that people have baked them.  And somehow, it’s fascinating.

Imagine listening to Alan Green or Clive Tyldesley for five days.  Demand for the Samaritans would go through the roof as people jumped off theirs.

I’ve never been to Guantanamo Bay (although I have stayed in a Travel Lodge) but they could do a lot worse than using the above as a sure-fire route to extracting information from suspects.

“Forget the waterboarding, Johnson.  This guy won’t crack for that.  Bring me the Tyldesley / Beglin commentary from the 2003 Group G scoreless draw between Manchester United and Basel...LOOPED EDITION!”

Instant confession. 

 

4.You Can Drink In The Stands

This feels odd when you arrive for most games around 10.30am and dive straight into the ale.  I was looking round for someone to throw me out but all I could see were lots of happy, friendly people drinking pints.  It seemed out of context, responsible adults enjoying alcohol together?  In public?   And  no-one’s been glassed?!?

The closest it came to kicking off was when two stag do’s morphed into a mega-do like a bunch of Jaeger-fuelled Power Rangers and started piling all their empty (plastic) pint glasses on top of each other to ‘feed the snake’. 

Hardly The Football Factory is it?

(By the way, I normally wish nothing but haemorrhoids on stag parties in fancy dress, but to the lads dressed as gorillas who spent half the day chasing their banana-clad stag, I doff my cap.)

5.We’re Quite Good At It

However you argue it, the England football team have failed other than in 1966 when a home crowd and dodgy decision got them over the line.  Two semi final defeats to Germany in 1990 and 1996 apart, they’ve been consistently shite.

Despite being recently given the kind of seeing-to by the Aussies normally reserved for a prison shower, the England Cricket team however are quite good in the scheme of things.  Mainly because there are only eight Test-playing nations and two of them are utter cack. 

And when you break it down we only really need to be better than Australia and everything is okay.

Follow me on twitter.com/samaverycomedy