Friday 26 August 2011

I’m tense and nervous, can’t relax: the David Millar mantra


Being involved in cycling is like being in an 80s nightclub: even if you’re not on drugs yourself, there’s the foreboding feeling that a lot of the people are. The place is awash with bad mullet haircuts and gold chain accessories. There is an abundance of waggling and pumping limbs sheathed in luminous lycra, altogether giving the impression of some enormous spandex-clad millipede. The same light-headed clamminess experienced after dismounting from an unexpectedly gruelling bike ride to the shops and back can be felt in the otherworldly, weary walk home after an all-night disco, accompanied with rasping throat and an unnerving spate of heart palpitations.

Into this context steps David Millar with his retro, buttoned-up shirt and lapelled jacket; there being no better spokesperson for a sport accepted for all its highs, lows, dangers and joys. William Fotheringham labelled Millar’s appearance as ‘artistic grunge-chic’, author Freya North saw him more as a member of a student indie rock group. With his intense, dark eyes and fringe flopping onto a sweaty forehead, he resembles more a Talking Heads-era David Byrne. Each man is indefatigable, able to endlessly run on the spot and perform the flailing mime of a drunken cross-country skier. Both are also strangely angular and stiff with awkward upright postures, as if straight-jacketed or wearing drastically ill-fitting clothes.

When Millar talks about his past, it conjures a slightly seedy image of over-populated hotel rooms with curtains drawn, ice buckets everywhere and used syringes tossed carelessly under the chaise-longues. The motto on everyone’s lips is: ‘whatever goes on tour stays on tour’. For cycling used to be, like rock n’ roll, where drug-taking was as commonplace as having a cup of tea. So much so that this is now considered hopelessly unfashionable, and new, more dangerous methods of getting high are in vogue, evoking the same nightmarish scene, but this time someone's blood is hanging in translucent bags at the back of the cupboard.

Millar talks of a sport full of bad influences; from conspiratorial entourages to mysterious therapists and team managers acting like desperate, publicity-crazed Malcolm McLarens. A world of young and impressionable cyclists being encouraged to push the limits and act as self-destructively as possible, where instructions to ‘go and prepare correctly in Italy’ is a euphemism for having a black market, white-coated chemist syringe hormones into your body.

But Millar is testament to a shift; a change; a redemption. Like David Byrne, he is now someone who is palatable, mature, and clean-living; someone who might wear the spectacle/cardigan combination of a familiar uncle; someone you would trust to look after your kids. You can now have a relaxed cafĂ© conversation with both men, but don’t dare let them order too many double espressos, as their black pupils will dilate.

There is the sense that Millar, in his cycling dotage, is still subjecting himself to peloton punishment just so that the sport he loves can live on. The more he suffers and self-flagellates for his sins, the more we can accept that some demon is being been exorcised, forgive and respect him once again. We can feel pride when David Harmon continually refers to him as ‘Britain’s David Millar’. Scotland can entertain mentioning him in the same breath as his namesake, legend Robert Millar. For cycling has been resurrected. On the other hand, for cynics and critics of the sport, there is still the amphetamine-jittery Talking Heads refrain: ‘Same as it ever was, same as it ever was…’

Friday 19 August 2011

Short back and many sides: Joey Barton’s head

Across the offices and magistrates’ courts of Britain, there is a united condemnation of Joey Barton.  Like a hoodied rioter, he is brandished ‘completely unacceptable’ and tarred and feathered as a delinquent dabbler in criminality. He is charged with irresponsible use of social networks and microblogging sites and quoting too many famous literary figures considered healthy for a footballer. We must hastily set up a kangaroo court for our little Joey. Let us sentence him swiftly and ruthlessly. His Dalai Lama re-tweets alone warrant a lengthy sentence.

Before passing judgement, we must also wrack our brains for some behavioural cause, for there is the nagging feeling that we are somehow collectively responsible for how Barton has turned out. We need C4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy to chair an immediate meeting of varied social strata, garnering the opinion of awkward Goths, menacing hip-hoppers, jittery parents, belligerent shop-owners and hounded councillors. We know this will only descend into a dreadful row, but it a reasonable step to take in admonishing ourselves from guilt.

But, in the words of the Confucius: ‘One tree that stands alone bears the most fruit and is less likely to be chopped down’. Or something similar. So it is a fresh assessment of Barton that is the most rewarding. There are plentiful descriptions that have been offered: he is a hooligan, a hardman, a pocket dynamo, a ‘dangerous player’, as labelled by Fabio Capello. He is a play-actor or critic of play-acting. Nobody seems to know exactly what to make of him. Even his agent, Willie McKay offered a complete mis-read by suggesting he had the ‘easiest job in the transfer window’ and had already been inundated with interest from top European clubs. One can imagine a one-way conversation: ‘You need a midfield enforcer, Arsene. Now, before we talk turkey, a drop more Tennents Super?’

After falling out with the powers that be at Newcastle Utd, Barton referred to himself as ‘persona non grata’, shocking the public by demonstrating he can speak Latin. Presumably he has picked up the local lingo of a number of affiliated barristers, particularly as his ‘previous’ doesn’t read well in English: Gross misconduct - one count. Assault - two counts. Breaking a pedestrian’s leg (gallery murmurs). Jabbing a lit cigar into someone’s eye (gallery erupts). The CCTV footage advertises Barton’s street fighting prowess and leaves an indelible, yet grainy, image. It resembles a deleted scene from the film, Scum, awash with sullen youths in starched collared shirts, sporting mod haircuts and brutally attacking each other with cries of: ‘Where’s ya tool?’

However, in the words of Desmond Tutu: ‘Resentment and anger are bad for your blood pressure and your digestion. Repentment is better.’ Thusly, Barton has reformed, addressed addiction, patronised charities, visited clinics, consulted the scriptures, analysed his entrails. He is now better known for his witty Wildean jousts with a gaggle of bullying sports reporters on Twitter. In return, they treat him like an idiot savant without the savant. He frequently engages in an acute love-hate, macho-gay mental tussle with Piers Morgan. There is an endearing bridging-the-class-divide quality about these exchanges last demonstrated by Lord Ralph and groundskeeper Ted in The Fast Show.

Barton’s tweets have so provoked the FA and the media’s fury that they risk lashing out and reducing themselves to ten men. Journalists are incensed that not only does he read Nietzsche, but he can quite effortlessly spell his name, which was impossible before the advent of Information Technology.  It's as if Barton has a Twitter ghost-writer who is embarking on a huge practical joke. Critics have lambasted references to non-picture books and use of ‘multi-syllable words’. Barton might have countered with: ‘It’s poly-syllabic, shitlips.’ For the underdog has blasted away writer Oliver Holt, describing him as the ‘journalistic equivalent of holding a digestive biscuit in a cup of tea for a second too long’. He has treated politics too, informing that he cannot abide Ed Milliband’s haircut or his lisp, signing off with the hilarious: ‘…obviously he shouldn’t be banished, just not the front man,’ Barton must be aware that there haven’t been singers with speech impediments for g-g-generations.

The duality that exists within Barton’s head has manifested itself on the outside in what can loosely be described as a ‘hairstyle’. He insists his savage short back and sides pays homage to murderous New York cabbie, Travis Bickle. The violent psycho suddenly resurfaces in Joey. However he has ended up looking more like he has been clippered in a dimly lit trench, alongside Private Baldrick. A comic vulnerability is restored.  

Wednesday 10 August 2011

Can't see the Woods for the Giggs?

 

Tiger and Ryan canter onto the turf once more this August and try and look convincing and concentrated, puffing out their cheeks, stretching and maybe even doing a star-jump with a serious, furrowed expression. Polite and slightly incestuous interviewers will ask sensible questions about driving accuracy and fitness levels, all the time secretly wanting to acknowledge the crash of elephants in the room with questions such as: ‘Have you been treated over the summer for sex addiction, because in my day it wasn’t considered an illness?’
For these two former squeaky-clean-imaged sporting bores have both taken on the Frankenstein features of a Tabloid Monster, only to be safely viewed through the browned glass of a man-sized bell-jar or from the back row of a panoramic 19th Century operating theatre.

But on closer inspection, the two are not peas in a pod, nor chips off the old block.  Yes, they are fine specimens of post-ultra-modern-man, with their cars, their properties, their worshippers, their casual sexual liaisons. However, we need to exhibit each individual facet of their lives to discover the quintessential difference between men at each side of The Pond. The awkward, slapstick, smutty postcard of Giggs suddenly appears dog-eared and absurd in the light of the slick, bleach-blonde, blurred lens, blue movie shoot of Woods.

Put their sporting accolades side-by-side, like Top Trumps: Woods is the highest earning athlete ever. Next to this fact, Giggs’ OBE and Sports Personality of the Year seem embarrassingly English; as twee and obtuse as a BAFTA is to celluloid superstars. Giggs has a fine property in Worsley, Manchester, but this is dwarfed by Wood’s complex in Jupiter Island, Florida. Woods has a $20million yacht mockingly called the Privacy; Giggs’ boat is modest in comparison and filled with gravy.

The mistresses themselves juxtapose all that is American and all that is British. Like roast beef and burgers, a beast can be skinned in an entirely different manner. For among Woods’ harem there exudes a flashiness, a sassiness, a frilliness and an ass-shakingness: a waitress, a cocktail-waitress (as if carrying a tray of Cosmopolitans is somehow more saucy than dirty plates), a porn star and, oh, another porn star. In return, Giggs offers up an all-brunette triangle of doppelgangers, including ex-Big Brother contestant and his brother’s wife to underline the small-town sexual frustration of provincial Britain – was there a drunken fumble in a bingo hall followed by mutual self-loathing, or were they planning elope to a chilly, wind-battered village for the weekend?

For Woods is the pectoral-pumping, arm-flexing equivalent of the ripped man next door doing the lawn with his shirt off in Desperate Housewives; the sort of man who stares impassively at himself in bedroom mirrors whilst doing the deed. In contrast, Giggs is a fretting Dev from Coronation Street, tangled in a complicated manage a trois-quatre-cinq-six, at the centre of an ever-expanding family, yet spending too much time in denial with solicitors and all-in-all bobbing around with the dark, curled hair and sideburns of a Player and the gaunt, devious expression of anything but a Gentleman.

But perhaps there is something helplessly boyish about Giggs’ predicament; a profound innocence that finds him cycling unflinchingly around to Natasha’s house with pockets clumsily stuffed full of twenty pound notes for her abortion. His blank admission to an ex-teammate, Andrei Kanchelskis, sounds more like a teenager at a school disco, or a child regretting his choice of ice-cream:

“I go out with three girls but just can’t choose which one is the best”

Woods, tour diary and pager in hand, would pour derision at such a haphazard way of handling affairs.