Once in a Lifetime or Every Tea-time

Let’s make sure London leaves a proper lasting legacy after the 2012 Olympics. So far, the logo has been mocked and the stadium labelled functional and boring. We need to create an event to give the worldwide audience a taste of what it’s like to live in this great city in the 21st century.

The marathon won’t suffice. Yes, it highlights the architecture but the streets are cordoned off. It’s like looking at the lycra kit without the athlete or a wallet without the cash and cards. It cannot convey the psychology of the city. We need something else.

To have an event recognised by the IOC, it must promote ‘a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.’ Perfect. Let’s nominate a walk during central London’s rush hour. What activity better fits the Olympic motto of ‘Faster, Higher, Stronger?’

With a speed that would have participants sectioned in the countryside, it will give spectators a true, bustling, taste of London. TV helicopter shots could capture this flowing beauty, a site to rival the Tour De France’s peloton in full flow.

Competitors are awarded points for assertiveness, aesthetic merit and self-absorption. Judges will also look for the maintenance of an impassive, uninterested facial expression.
Athletes will have to combine pace with intuitive grace as they slide their shoulders away from incoming people and trudge ever forward. Coaches can train competitors to accept a free newspaper without losing momentum. Points are deducted if the walk is briefly interrupted and Olympians go toe to toe with any ‘tutting’ males.

Athletes will then reach the tube line having performed disciplines such as cancelling a tai-chi class and carrying a skinny latte raised over the head, a cardboard beacon to the Olympian ideal. Bonus points are available on the downward escalator for recognising flirtation, awareness of advertising and tipping buskers whilst staving off a category five panic attack.

By the end of their ordeal, the competitors will have a far greater understanding of London life. It would generate a better legacy than any commerative coin. If the Dutch sport Korfball can be recognised as an Olympic event partly because it guarantees a ‘full range of intense emotion’, I feel we are onto a winner. Inspired by Beijing’s slogan of ‘Light the Passion, Share the Dream’, we could offer ‘Fight the Crowds, Share the Tension’. With only 1708 days to go, it’s time to start lobbying.

Heady Matters

A friend recently asked if I’ve ever had a bad hair day. I lifted my face to the clouds and roared with laughter. My baseball cap fell off. My friend guffawed.

I came close to having a bad hair decade. At one stage of its growth, my hairstyle took a phone-call from Tim Burton’s casting director. Rent Edward Scissorhands and look very closely at the topiary. I’ll say no more.

It began when I went to see Oliver Stone’s ‘Wall Street’. I remember thinking that the real lesson of the tale was that if you have hair like Charlie Sheen, you should be beaten with a xylophone hammer. Traumatised by displays of power hair, I needed to rebel, to send ripples through my community and to commit crimes against paternity. I grew a mullet.

After the mullet, came the pony-tail, then something that slowly conquered my back and was formerly declared an area of outstanding national mockery. They were hard years, featuring Magoo glasses and green caps. They formed scars on my psyche that still send shock-waves through my hair.

I looked like I had been rejected from a buskers’ union. That was partly the point but what I thought was self expression was lack of direction. I should have looked for role models. I should have studied team sports.

There are athletes who steadfastly maintain sensible haircuts. Indeed, some of them are not just sensible, but are the very archetype of sensible, an ideal of a hairstyle, that has been mystically formed to provide corrective guidance for those tempted by the ways of the crimper. The athletes provide the kind of self-less public service that should, at the very least, merit an Esther Rantzen special.

Witness Michael Owen a striker who has always known where the gel is. Such is Owen’s talismanic quality that a previous England manager based one of his pre-match tactical talks on the symmetrical perfection of the player’s hairstyle. (“You see lads, he’s kept it flat at the back, even in the middle and the front line is well forward but could track back later.” It produced a dull but solid performance, leaving two key members of David Beckham’s appearance consultancy team weeping into their man-bags.)

Owen’s sensible haircuts are reassuring to the team as they do not disturb its cohesion. They blend. They guide the individual to tribal belonging and are a consequence of joining a group of older players at a young age. The fresh- faced interloper wants to look the part: young bobbies grow moustaches and focused hard working athletes adopt a bland hairstyle. That’s the point I just didn’t get.

Michael Owen dashed over the threshold of adulthood and immersed himself in the bath of team belonging. I just stood there, looking for a signpost, shaking my head and shoulders. He needed to belong, I needed to be lost. They were choices that have shaped our personalities.


Although his hairstyle choice was healthier than mine, it can lead to other problems. During post-match interviews he sometimes sounds like the bureaucrat who can quote the rulebook. It is one symptom of the recently labelled condition ‘grouphair’. (The review of the label’s accuracy is still pending from an independent peer group). Its sufferers avoid promoting any hairstyles that might be outside the comfort zone of consensus styling. However, because the condition drives members towards unanimity, they occasionally slip up and forget that they also exist (at times) outside the constraint of the team.

Michael Vaughn, sometime England cricket captain and full time grouphair sufferer, said, in a recent interview, “This is not about Michael Vaughn. This is about cricket.”

There’s the rub. Too often, Michael Vaughn thinks of himself as Michael Vaughn the cricket player. It has become too big a part of him. He has sacrificed too much identity on his temple. My hair was a formless mess reflecting my confusion but by letting someone shape your style too early, you may lose out on a bit of individualism. One can become interchangeable. No one wants to mould it like Michael because he shapes it like everybody else. The future is WikiHair: team belonging assisted by a team of consultants. Ask David Beckham.

This Thing We Do

Last night, the last episodes of the Sopranos started their run on E4 at 10.00pm. Fans have been marking the occasion in original ways.


As Villa Park, Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho surprised seasoned media watchers with a new hairstyle, a clear tribute to Paulie Walnuts, Tony Soprano's henchman.







It promises to be an interesting, and traumatic, nine weeks.

Stop Press!

Eyebrows is honoured to have a guest contributor!

Joey Barton, the recently re-bailed critic and professional footballer, continues his annual appraisal of the summer books.

Here, he offers his insights on the publishing event of the year, the release of 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows*'.

Without further ado, Joey - from the 'ead, son:

"I was a kid. I went to school. It had magic and I had adventures. Here are my books."

So there we have it.

Frank Lampard, writer, home movie enthusiast and weight-watcher, was not available for comment as he refused to leave the comfort of the bathroom cabinet.

We had arranged to have the thoughts of David James, artist, model and environmental activist, but, unfortunately, there was an incident in his local Waterstone's which has left him hospitalised. Trying to bypass the queue, his son threw him a copy of the hardback from the corner of the shop and the player is now receiving treatment for a suspected fractured metatarsal.

In an ironic twist, he is unable to read the book during his hospital stay as medical staff have strapped his hands in an attempt to limit any further injury.

*Any readers who suspect this suspiciously timed post is a cynical attempt to increase the blog's Google hits are hereby accused of not learning the moral lessons of the HARRY POTTER series, written by J.K ROWLING, and adapted into films starring DANIEL RADCLIFFE.

'I'm On the Touchline, Thinkin' 'Bout the Government'

Maybe Mourinho is right.

On Sunday, as part of his homily, he said he feared 'the end of democracy'.

On an initial viewing, he appears to be attributing a collapse in society to penalty decisions, made in Manchester United's favour. After all, they are a big club and they probably have a subs-bench at meetings of 'The Bilderberg Group', the society of oligarchs that apparently rules the world.

However, to properly understand the blether, it might be helpful to view Mourinho as a Nostradamus enthusiast, simply concerned by current affairs.

Maybe he was aware that 170,000 tonnes of raw sewage has found its way into the Firth of Forth.

Clearly, that was eschatological.

He was no doubt further troubled by reports of Boris Yeltsin's health. As the man responsible for 'shock therapy' economics is ushered into paradise, Mourinho must be pondering the current state of Russian democracy, with its lurch towards totalitarianism.

However, it is the final story that leaves no doubt that Mourinho hears the Lyre of Prophecy. News has reached us that men of bad repute are free to roam our lands. A prisoner escaped from a Kentucky jail by having accomplices send a bogus fax to the authorities, demanding his release. Despite bearing the letterhead of a grocery shop, the fax, which was littered with spelling mistakes, prompted the prisoner's release.

Traditionally, prophecy is delivered in the first person. He can't be far away from saying 'This is not about Jose Mourinho'.

We are waiting 'special one', we are waiting.

'I speak the truth' - Jose Mourinho