3 lions

The spectacularly entertaining fall from grace of Mr John Terry has been a long time coming. He is undoubtedly one of the most greedy and arrogant people in the public eye today, though admittedly this is in a society where greed and arrogance are considered more or less the norm. His sneering lack of concern for anyone else was all too clear, for example, when he was caught parking his Bentley in a disabled parking space to avoid paying 50p in the pay-and-display. He spent much of the autumn fostering rumours that Manchester Citeh were keen to sign him by making him a pay offer that no sane man could refuse... until conveniently Chelsea bumped his pay up to £170k a week and he was able to reiterate his undying love for the club's bank balance.

Terry had another narrow escape barely a month ago when his uniquely well-remunerated services as a tour guide came to light: ten grand cash in hand to tour the Chelsea football grahnd.

With the possibility that Mr Terry's naked contempt for common decency might lead to him being asked to vacate the position of England football captain, who could possibly step into the role instead? Let's look at a few candidates:

1. Rio Ferdinand - one of the three, along with Terry and Gerrard, who auditioned for the role only a year or so ago. Rio said in 2008 that he believed his past mistakes could make him a better captain - though he didn't spell out better than what/who.
2. Steven "Stevie" Gerrard might argue that his reputation is spotless because he was, after all, found not guilty of assaulting a man who wouldn't let him play the song he wanted when he was out on the piss.
3. Frank Lampard is almost as prone as Terry is to crying when he doesn't get his way, but assuming Terry stays in the team it wouldn't be credible for the club captain to have to defer to a club-mate when in the England strip.
4. Glen Johnston - may be too busy down at B&Q to be able to shoulder the extra responsibility, assuming he gets into the squad in the first place.
5. Michael Owen - who?
6. David Beckham has done the job before, and very capably, but can't really be regarded at international level as much more than a super-substitute: good for a thirty minute blitzkrieg towards the end of a game maybe, but not a guaranteed starter unless the opponents are of the lowest calibre.
7. David James - one of the few footballers with any moral credibility, but struggling to maintain fitness and aform despite all the practice he gets at picking the ball out of the Portsmouth net. Maybe a good caretaker 'til the World Cup is out the way?
8. Wayne Rooney - well... he's arguably the captain-after-next. Once he's done another year or two of calming down, and can demonstrably go five minutes without shouting swear words at referees, he might just make the grade.

Which kind of argues for the status quo....

In fact: what the heck. Keep John Terry as captain, because then when England are knocked out in the quarter finals (assuming they make it that far) he can fall on his sword and blub on the telly in the required fashion.

We are the pigs

Over the last few days our local council have been erecting these little posters on lampposts around the town. They all say things like "it's not the fast food, it's you" or "it's not the fizzy drink, it's you". Initially I thought these must be some "stop drinking so much" campaign, and I thought to myself that this might be more verbosely, but satisfyingly, expressed as: the reason why you puked all over the pavement, moron, wasn't because of that kebab and can of coke at the end of the evening but the 6 pints of cider and 3 WKDs. Now go home and sleep it off.

But in fact, on closer examination, the posters are an anti-littering campaign and, what's more, they carry a bald threat to fine people £80 for chucking their crap on the pavement.

This is good stuff, and very long overdue. However I have a few suggestions to make that might, in my opinion, have a more enduring impact.

1. Re-erect the stocks, they're in the town museum I should think. Put litterers in them with a sign inviting the populace to chuck half-eaten burgers at the wretched offender. Also that weird vivid red stuff in tinfoil that you see left on the bonnet of cars, the dregs of fizzy drinks, rusks that a baby has been gumming at for an hour but eventually grown bored of, maybe even a traditional rotten tomato or two. After an hour of this she or he would have to clean up all that mess before they could go home and have a wash. Or sit watching Jeremy Kyle all stinky and rank, if that's what they prefer.
2. Fine the fast food outlets and coffee shops and off licences £80 for every waxed paper cup, every polystyrene tankard of foul latté, every tinfoil slopbucket, every discarded can of Grolsch or shattered bottle of cheap vodka that can be traced from the sidewalk to their premises.
3. Instead of putting posters on every 10th lamppost how about attaching a... litter bin! Traditionally, of course, people either chuck their rubbish on the ground next to the bin, kick the bin to bits, or set light to it. But my third modest proposal should put paid to all that.
4. Pay a sharpshooter to roam the area in a car with darkened windows. He would have the right to randomly shoot people seen chucking their crap anywhere other than into a bin or who vandalise bins. It's unlikely to take more than a few good solid head shots for the littering scuzzers to realise that the odds have tipped out of their favour for good.

I'm not Richard Littlejohn, so I've stopped short of suggesting that offenders and their sons and their son's sons should all be strung up because it's the only language they understand. A little.

But if society genuinely doesn't want to drown in the polystyrene effluent of antisocial pigs then I really do think that litterers  - and those that condone what they do, the fast food outlets in particular, should be shamed into changing their ways and forced to make amends for their disgusting behaviour.

The ravening horde of Motty clones

Were sports commentators always as hysterical as they are these days? I'm sure it used to be that only very tense climactic moments would have a commentator screeching breathlessly: the final furlong or two of a close horse race for example.

Now in fast-moving sports like horse racing you can understand the necessity to babble at dozens of words per minute to keep up with the events as they unfold. But this seems to be the default setting for pretty much every sports commentator nowadays. (Possibly not golf, or bowling.)

And why the obsession with ridiculous statistics and beyond-pedantic levels of precision? In sports where the difference between competitors might be some fragment of a split second then fair enough, e.g. formula one racing, cross country skiing, the 100m hurdles. But yesterday the kids were watching the umpteenth World's Strongest Man competition (an edited highlights package I believe). The commentator did not shut the fuck up for even a half-second and there would be one or more stupidly precise statistics in every breath e.g. "he's held that car over his head for 21.07 seconds and that's going to be a tall order for the home fan's favourite to beat...".

Seriously: if two large Scandinavians can both hold a car off the ground at knee-height for approximately 21 seconds then for god's sake let them share the first place for the round! (Yes: every single never-ending sentence had one or more mentions of the competitor's nationality, usually with a handy cliche appended e.g. "hard-working Scot", "plucky Swede", "titanic Finn".)

Games consoles these days offer a very wide range of sports simulations and each of these come with a commentary track so that if you feel inclined you can hear Ally McCoist or Alan Hansen or some other muppet of that ilk tut-tutting about "a shocking game for the 'keeper..." and three hundred other stock phrases strung together by some mumpty algorithm in the software. Telling the difference between these simulated commentaries and the "real" thing grows increasingly difficult; not because the games are becoming more sophisticated but because the commentators themselves are so robotic.

Before I leave the subject of World's Strongest Man I'd like to sgguest this become the latest format to be repurposed as a celebrity version. I missed the latest outback show in which Jordan apparently ate Skippy the bush kangaroo's brains on toast but Joe Pasquale lugging a tractor tyre around Sittingbourne Greyhound Track would be one for the Sky Plus box and no mistake.