Replays from every angle

"Sky Sports is not inherently sexist. It is something that is a leftover from when we started."

Apparently, that was something of an apology, an explanation by Sky Sports' Richard Keys on talkSPORT of why he and fellow Sky football presenter Andy Gray had a less-than enlightened conversation about female assistant referee Sian Massey. The conversation was meant to be off-air, but somehow a recording made its way into the public domain.


As last weekend unfolded, additional evidence surfaced of Gray and Keys demonstrating behaviour that Sky would come to deem "unacceptable". By Monday, Gray had been sacked and by Wednesday, Keys had fallen on his sword, figuratively speaking. You might say "who cares?": after all, this is just a juicy media story - the perfect media story, actually, combining celebrity, sex and salacious scandal. It has, however, unleashed two separate debates. Firstly, the issue of sexism. Ironically, Sky can be credited with the modernisation of televised football and probably football itself.

When, in 1991, Sky successfully bid £474 million for the rights to broadcast the inaugural four seasons of the Premier League, it not only bid way over the top to secure those rights (leaving fellow bidders trailing by some considerable margin), but established a pattern that Rupert Murdoch's media interests would replicate elsewhere. David Hill, the ebullient Aussie who masterminded the Sky bid for the Premier League, went on to do the same for Murdoch in the US, where he was the architect of Fox Sports hijacking NFL American Football coverage from the CBS network using the exact same tactic.

Sky brought a brash new approach to live football coverage, turning its Sunday afternoon broadcasts into "destination TV", and introducing another American institution, Monday Night Football, to British audiences. Keys - a refugee from TV-am - and the ex-Everton and Scotland forward Gray were installed as the faces of Sky's football coverage, presenting a more laddish appeal than the BBC or ITV style, and clearly targeting Bloke At Home or Blokes Down The Pub.

When the Premier League rights came up for renewal a few seasons later, Sky - once again - pitched up a whopping bid to retain them, somewhere in the region of £700 million. Move on to the next renewal, and their [successful] bid exceeded £1 billion. With each successful bid, Sky consolidated its influence over the Premier League. The notion of football matches kicking off at 3pm on a Saturday or 7.45 on a Wednesday evening disappeared for good, as the broadcast schedule started to dictate the fixture list.

Money talks, clearly, and by now you'll be making the connection between Sky's dominance of football coverage, the money it has been prepared to pay for it, and the money sloshing around the Premier League itself. All those mansions in Cheshire and Surrey, WAG holidays and the parade of blingmobiles parked outside club training grounds have been funded largely through television revenue.

Sky not only revolutionised football financially, but also the football debate. It innovated where rivals like the BBC and ITV had not. Sky introduced 13-camera match coverage, generating multiple angles from which to see every goal, every tackle and, significantly, every disputed decision over and over again. This saturation created armchair referees and saloon bar linesmen, unsolicited second opinion and unprecedented pressure on the actual match officials getting every decision right. Barely a weekend goes by today without a referee's judgement being called into question over some disputed penalty, red card or offside decision, all thanks to the greater availability of media.

It's ironic, then, that this week's kerfuffle is the result of unguarded moments being caught on camera and on audio. Neither Keys' or Gray's behaviour comes as a shock to anyone who knows their reputations. A long-standing media rumour suggested that Roger Mellie, Viz comic's foul-mouthed and profoundly misogynist "Man On The Telly" was strongly based on Keys' somewhat 'earthy' vernacular. Gray's iffy history with women has been lengthily documented by the tabloids this week, and I can certainly concur that when I worked at Sky, I regularly witnessed Gray acting the star and in particular, chatting up anyone in a skirt, which must have been hazardous for some of his fellow Scotsmen.

Whatever your view of their behaviour, Keys and Gray's departure has certainly been accelerated by the apparent ready availability of audio and video material of the duo being boorish. Arguably, their behaviour has been no different to anything else witnessed in a pub on a Saturday night, but that doesn't make it any more acceptable for Sky who, as a modern employer and publicly traded company, must maintain a spotless reputation as an organisation of the highest ethical and moral standards, and a positive, inclusive place to work. This, of course, doesn't reflect the fact that Sky has appeared to have an editorial policy of promoting female presenters of the "phwoar" variety for its sports, news and entertainment channels, clearly aimed at appealing to the 18-35 year-old male who represents the bulk of their target advertising audience. That, by the way, is not a sexist comment. Just take a look at Sky's presenter roster.

The issue of whether a woman can be an assistant referee or even the 'man in the middle' (yeah, I know...), shouldn't even be in question. The interchange between Keys and Gray about Sian Massey may have been Neanderthal, and may have been no different from conversations going on in every pub since this issue first surfaced, but it's irrelevant. If Massey is good enough to boss the line, then she's good enough. End of discussion. A match official's chromosome content shouldn't really make any difference (and I'm going to swerve clear of that rabbit hole about men and women in sport in general).

What truly is murky is why this has become such a media storm in the first place. Why so much content has been released to the press, ironically condemning Keys and Gray to trial by video replay. The conspiracy theory doing the rounds is that, with Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation looking to wrest total control of British Sky Broadcasting (despite his dominance, Murdoch has always been a minority shareholder), Sky could do without any reputational diversions. As it is, there have been all sorts of hints and suggestions over David Cameron's relationship with various Murdoch executives, as well as the disastrous way Vince Cable was removed from the process to approve the  takeover.

Knowing the individual reputation of the two presenters involved, it was probably only a matter of time before something like this happened. Television stations - like newspaper offices - are notoriously leaky sieves, and the release of video of Gray being lewd towards a female presenter didn't have to travel far to reach the surface. 

Perhaps Sky were even looking for a reason to change anchors of their football coverage? It's been 18 years since Keys and Gray first came on air, heralded by Simple Minds' Alive And Kicking, and until this week, pulling in £2.3 million a year in salary between them would have made them easy targets for change. As I know from my own experience, when there's a target on your back at Sky, someone will find a reason to pull the trigger. The trouble is that Keys and Gray made that reason just too easy to find.

Alone again, naturally

The science fiction premise that the universe is broadly populated by a multitude of alien species who, rather conveniently for script writers and costume designers, speak English and have the full earthly complement of limbs, heads, eyes and mouths, has for years been dutifully accepted as harmless entertainment.

However, in the real world - this one - the question still remains: are we truly alone? Planet-sized intellects like Stephen Hawking less than helpfully conclude that, based on mathematic probability, it would be unlikely for life not to exist somewhere in the cosmos. Well, thanks, Professor H, I feel so much better informed now.

So at risk of leaving sensitive Trekkers (remember, they're never "Trekkies") sobbing into their pints of Romulan Ale, news reaches this galaxy that, most probably, we are the only living residents of, well, anywhere. According to a leading Harvard astrophysicist, the continuing mission to seek out strange new worlds - sorry, I'll stop doing that - the ongoing effort of the scientific community to identify new planets is drawing a big fat blank when it comes to identifying other places where life might be supported.

Picture: NASA

News, two weeks ago, of the discovery of an "Earth-like" planet only 560 light years away (pack up the car and program the TomTom, kids, we're off!) was hailed as a stroke of brilliance by the Nasa scientists who found it circling around the star Kepler-10. The excitement grew from the fact this planet is about 1.4 times the size of our own and was a "bona fide rocky world", which shouldn't be confused with Sylvester Stallone's next theme restaurant.

Unfortunately, despite also being something of a "missing link" between all the other gas-filled saunas in the universe and our own, gradually decaying orb, Nasa's finest were brought crashing down by the reality that, with a surface temperature of 1300-degrees (Centigrade, not that it makes much difference if you were planning a holiday), the chance of it supporting anything more than an oven glove was nigh on impossible. Sadly, says Harvard's Howard Smith, every planet so far discovered circling around stars has been profoundly uninhabitable for any form of complex or even simple life. 

That said, star gazers have only found 1000 or so planets so far: given that there are between 200 billion and 400 billion stars in our galaxy alone, and that the universe is, according to someone with an enormous tape measure, 14 billion light years across, you do wonder whether Hawking's mathematic probability has a point. Even if he's just guessing - and who's to say he's not - we're in similar territory to the comment oft-heard on the streets of Manhattan: "There's bound to be a Starbucks around here somewhere." And, nine times out of ten, there will be.

The American research institute SETI - the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence - was largely founded on the basis of an equation, by astronomer Frank Drake, that took into account all sorts of factors (such as how fast stars formed and how many were likely to have planets) to arrive at a likelihood that 'out there', something or someone might be living. Drake believed that there are as many as ten planets in our neck of the celestial woods which could be habitable by intelligent life. Well, at least someone's thinking about it.

Meanwhile, while sci-fi conventioneers continue to dress up as Klingons, and dispossessed individuals still camp out in the high desert of Nevada in the hope of seeing alien spacecraft doing doughnuts in the Area 51 car park, it would be nice to think that a little more time, effort and research could be put into addressing what the intelligent life on this planet has been up to since it pitched up just 200,000 years ago - a mere 4 billion years after Earth was formed.

Perhaps there are aliens out there, looking through telescopes right this minute, and saying to each other - in English, of course: "Nah, too hot. And getting warmer. It could never support intelligent life."

A Paris Love Affair

In The Sopranos episode Cold Stones, Carmela Soprano and her best friend Rosalie Aprile take flight from northern New Jersey mob life by jetting to Paris.


Meandering the boulevards, musea and churches, Carmela gushes uncontrollably about the city, its signature architecture, its culture, its squares, its bridges - just about everything one comes to think about the self-style City of Light. For Carmela, it's a spiritual awakening, the realisation that there is another life outside her marital car wreck of lies, evasion and deceipt.


While most of us are not seeking such contrast to a life in organised crime, it's hard not to wax as lyrically. For some, Paris is a noisy, traffic-clogged migraine waiting to happen, frustrated by indifferent waiters and made hazardous by streets peppered with dog poop. For others - and here's to whom my subs get paid - it's an intoxicatingly beautiful city, by turns prompting curiosity, swooning and shear enjoyment just to be out and about.


Spend anything more than a business daytrip to the city and you'll quickly become taken in by its charm and knowing beauty: every neighbourhood invites you for an hour, for an afternoon...forever, ensnaring you with the escapist prospect of living in one of those small but airy, big-windowed apartments, with the smell of freshly-baked bread wafting up from the boulangerie below.

If this already smacks of cliché it's because Paris is almost unreal; like a Vogue cover model, it can be too attractive. Stroll down another of Baron Haussman's perfectly planned streets and you're not only confronted by a the bewildering, myriad corner brasseries in which to drop in for a livener, but also an ambience as unique as your fingerprints. 

The thing with Paris is that even though you know what you'll get when you turn up, you still can't feel dissatisfied. It's like a theme park you never tire of revisiting. It's all there for you, waiting as you walk through its gates - the Seine, the Louvre, the Champs Elysées, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame and the royal palace. All these landmarks are within one open-topped bus ride of each other, a Universal Studios tour without rubber sharks.

No city can offer the same scale of overwhelming drama in its vistas as, say, Yosemite, but the grandeur of the buildings lining the Seine and the almost audaciously ornate architecture surrounding the Louvre and the royal palace (despite its inherent anachronism) will leave anyone in a state of awe as gape-mouthed as any other world wonder.



Now, before you think I've been retained by Nicolas Sarkozy himself to big up his capital city, let me state that I still hold affection for my native London: I'm proud to have grown up in its leafy suburbs, proud to have worked in its choking midst, and proud to have spent some of the most enjoyable days of my life in its music venues, restaurants, art galleries and all the other places the make visiting and living in London such a rich experience. And, while I'm at it, I still hold candles for Amsterdam, New York and San Francisco, the other cities I can enjoy unconditionally. Paris, however, holds different currency. In overhauling a medieval city - some say for the better, others for the worse - Haussman's renovation worked wonders in creating a city for its people.


There is, though, more to the appeal of Paris than urban planning alone. London is comparable in bustle, New York equal in vibrancy, and Rome, Vienna and Prague in architectural interest, but what all lack - and Paris has by the bagload, oversized, WAG-style Vuitton bags - is romance. It flows through Paris like the Seine itself; it is alive in the character of every street, every street corner, and every street corner cafe.


It is also, surprisingly, more laid-back than you might expect. Of course, being on the Metro at 8.30 in the morning carries its proximity and claustrophobia issues, and by laid-back, I don't mean the way Madrid, Barcelona or Milan ooze chilled-out cool. But there is a subtle, even gentle manner to which Paris carries itself: at 11am on a Monday morning, when the office-bound in most other metropolises would be cursing the mountain weekend e-mail clogging up their inboxes, the Parisian is in a bar quietly sipping a thimble of coffee, perusing Le Figaro or conversing with a neighbour about national politics. Or Carla Bruni.

Its tempting to scoff at such apparent reluctance to take gainful employment seriously. Or show fear at the sight of gangs of wealthy, elderly (and almost exclusively) women marauding through the 8th arrondissement on shopping trips, all Gucci sunglasses and Prada handbags. "Haw," you might say, "these are just actors, hired to manage the expectations of gullible American tourists".

It would generally be wrong to look at Paris only through rose-tinted RayBans. It is not totally the chocolate box cliché it might think it - and  apparently, I - would like to think it is. Driving is mostly easy, but there are times when you can't help hearing the voice of Alec Guinness intoning: "Use the Force, Luke", as you squeeze between  taxis hell-bent on competing for your lane, regardless of you actually being in it.

Not all of it is so attractive to look at, either: the downright ugly 'grand arch' of La Defense, not to mention the neighbouring mountains of steel that house this district's ghetto of banks, corporate HQs and management consultancies are, thankfully, a sideshow, a mere reminder that big business needs big buildings in which to make big money. 


Straddling la Périphérique are edges to the city that have grown tougher in recent years, with racial and social tensions venting themselves periodically and the far-from cosmopolitan French melting pot boiling over. 


Then is also the French propensity for industrial militancy; a day's journey into, out of, or across Paris can swiftly be irritated by wildcat strikes breaking out over the most trifling of issues. But even being the capital city of post-industrial Europe's most unionised economy cannot detract from the copious reasons Paris is rivalled by a scant few and probably bettered by none. 


Paris has mastered the art of intertwining modernity and classicism. The Louvre extension, with its remarkable glass pyramid (and, now, its own subterranean Apple Store), exemplifies this perfectly. Throughout the corporate Parisian landscape, offices sit behind traditional street façades, hiding the cleverly incorporated modern architectural designs within- the use of natural and artificial light.

It is a wonder anyone gets any work done at all in Paris. There's a cafe, bar or restaurant on just about every square meter of real estate, and from petit-dejeuner until last knockings, they all seem to be full and bustling. Again, temptation makes you think that it's all an act, but it's not. Parisians really do make time to enjoy the finer things in life.

Paris isn't a city, it's a novel that engages you and won't leave you alone. It is the most enriching cinematic experience you will ever pass through a box office to see. As you witness that Parisian strut - a combination of elegance and indifference - you realise you're not walking through a living museum, and you're not even looking at a place, but you are watching the most well-rounded, multi-layered and intrinsically fascinating character ever written. Perhaps that's what's drawn writers, poets, philosophers and intellectuals of all shades over the decades to its dens of discourse. I know I can't wait to get stuck in.

Swimming outside the cage

When my father retired after some 30-plus years of service to the BBC, he, like many of his generation, provided continuity to the convention of remaining with the same employer "as man and boy". 

I doubt anyone would, could or should claim such servitude today. Sure, companies big and small throughout the world can and do boast admirably of lifelong employees, but it's clearly no longer the rule.

US statistics show that the average employee will work for between eight and ten employers throughout their working life. Redundancy, restructuring, ambition, migration and social mobility all play a part in the ever-lengthening resumes many or most have by the time they reach the mid-point of their careers. Quite which category I will now fall into is open to debate, but - at risk of shocking some people - I am this week bringing to a close a near-16-year association with my employer.

It sounds hackneyed to say you don't know where the years have gone, but it really doesn't seem all that long ago I left behind life as a freelance scribe to accept the corporate shilling, and hawk TV sets to unsuspecting audio-video magazines. My motives then were quite straight forward: I wanted to buy a house, and no bank would lend to an unsalaried oaf, no matter how lucrative his work was at the time.

There was no careerism about it. "Why not?", I believe was my somewhat sleepy reply to the job offer I received over the phone after a particularly gruelling nightshift. With that agreement I placed a foot on the first rung of a new career ladder, starting my own digestion through a corporate system that has placed me in various professional positions in a number of locations in an ever-ebbing landscape of internal political, commercial and structural transformation.

At the end of this week I'll be leaving the company (Philips) and, by the end of the month, the adopted country (the Netherlands), moving to Paris for a new role in a totally different line of business. The political, commercial and structural landscape will be the same, however. The job - largely - will be similar. I will have to quickly navigate my way through a labrynth of new org charts to identify who-is-who, while calibrating the political radar to track who might not be a big fan of who. It will be a little like learning to walk all over again: actually it will be like a juggler learning to juggle again after a medical procedure that went wrong and wiped clean his mind. It will all be just a little strange.

First of all, there will be the learning curve of new cultural behaviours. My first birthday in a Dutch office led to something of a social faux pas when I failed to bring in a birthday cake for my colleagues - "You mean you don't buy me cake?". In France, I suspect, the worst of these will be, apparently, having to double-kiss everyone in the office each morning before you've even taken off your coat. Not being the most gregarious individual in the world before either my first coffee or 11am, depending on which comes first, I suspect this may be the first test of the office cordialement. Then there will be the adjustment to no longer being a part of the furniture, but part-idiot savant, part-Victorian curiosity - poked, prodded and stared at by suspicious and unsure eyes.

Someone asked me the other day how I felt after completing my final press event for my employer of the last decade and a half: "Oddly relaxed", is how I replied. So far I haven't blubbed, and firmly expect that to remain the case. Actually, it feels more like a state of grace. Mission accomplished, whatever that mission might be.

I've packed a lot into the last 15 years and 50 weeks, professionally and personally. But in truth, the fact that it has flown by is a good thing. I don't have time to reflect and, as cold as it might seem, I don't want to wallow. It's time to open the shark cage and go swimming.

Imagine

I was just 13 years old when, 30 years ago today, Mark Chapman fatally shot John Lennon outside his New York apartment building. At the time, I knew of The Beatles, of course: I was familiar with their hits, though not yet the more interesting diversions of The White Album, Revolver and Abbey Road. I'd seen Help!, A Hard Day's Night and the animated Yellow Submarine. And I knew some of Lennon's solo material, like Imagine, Whatever Gets You Through The Night and (Just Like) Starting Over, which had been a radio hit in the months leading up to the release of Double Fantasy, just two weeks before his death.

Lennon's murder on Monday, December 8, 1980 clearly shocked the world, but it has taken me a lot longer to fully appreciate the cultural impact Lennon had had on that world. The Beatles weren't just another '60s pop band: they'd turned music on its head every bit as radically as Elvis Presley's arrival in 1955. Between 1963 and 1970 they led the charge of evolving the Top 40 from sacharine puppy love songs to bluesy wigouts, transforming themselves at the same time from mop-topped, besuited boys next door, to bearded, long-haired rock musicians. Incredible to think that just seven years separate Please Please Me and  Let It Be, albums which sound as if they'd been made by two different groups.

Lennon may - or may not - have been the chief architect of this transformation, but as arguably the most charismatic of the band, he certainly gave the band their edge. Look back at vintage footage of The Fabs on The Ed Sullivan Show or with Morecombe and Wise, and Lennon stands out as the gum-chewing rock'n'roller. He may have swapped his Quarrymen leather biker's jacket for a mohair suit, but he was still the teenage rebel.

For all the acknowledgement of McCartney's apparent "normality" and his ability to craft a perfect melody, for all the justified appreciation of George Harrison's musicianship and quiet creativity, and for all of Ringo Starr's often underappreciated rhythm and percussive colour - John Lennon was the Beatle with something to say. He was the gobby one, unafraid of courting controversy with a cheeky quip and a wry aside here, and a reference to being bigger than Jesus there.

Lennon represented what I've always felt are the most important qualities of a rock star: artistic talent, a questioning view on the world, and an edge. At the time of his murder, Lennon appeared to be mellowing. He'd learned to accept his fame and Beatle legacy and was moving comfortably into middle age as a devoted father. After five years' in semi-retirement, Double Fantasy was his comback album. While it didn't compare with any of his better known work as a solo artist or band member, it restored him, at the age of 40, to the top table of the rock firmament.

What caused Mark Chapman to murder Lennon at, perhaps, the musician's most settled and contented time of life may never been known. Like Lennon, Chapman had endured a challenging upbringing. Diagnosed with autism as a child, he developed suicidal tendenancies in young adulthood, along with fantasies about replicating Jules Verne's Around The World In 80 Days, as well as an unhealthy obsession with J.D. Salinger's The Catcher In The Rye (on the morning of the murder, Chapman bought a copy of the novel, inscribed "This is my statement" inside, and signed it "Holden Caulfield"). Amid this gathering storm, a switch flipped and Mark Chapman decided that John Lennon, that most vocal advocate of peace and love, must be killed.

Chillingly, Chapman was photographed just a few hours before the murder asking Lennon to sign a copy of Double Fantasy, believed to be the only Lennon or Beatles album the killer ever posessed. Chapman had approached Lennon and Yoko Ono as they left their apartment in The Dakota building on New York's Central Park West. They'd just taken part in the iconic Annie Leibovitz photoshoot for Rolling Stone, in which a nude Lennon curled up against a clothed Ono.



After spending most of the day working on new songs at The Record Plant studio, Lennon and Ono returned to The Dakota, shortly before 11pm. As Lennon followed Ono into the building's lobby, he caught sight of Chapman, just before the killer fired the fatal rounds of hollow-point ammunition from a .38 Special revolver he'd purchased for the occasion. Lennon was pronounced dead less than 30 minutes later.

Rock stars are meant to expire through their own volition: Hendrix, Morrison, Joplin, Moon, Bonham - you know the list. "Death by misadventure" is their prescribed demise, the result of some drug or alcohol-induced craziness, or sexual experimentation gone horribly wrong. Some, as Keith Richards famously (and defiantly) said, are never meant to exceed the age of 30.

Lennon did, and was well on his way to elder statesman status. In the 30 years since his death, it has been the subject of conjecture, conspiracy and outright cobblers. Daft theories abound that Chapman was a CIA assassin, and that despite his apparent diminished responsibility, was fully in charge of his faculties and took out Lennon for being a subversive influence on American society. Lennon was a charter member of the Awkward Squad, for sure, but even now it's hard to understand what made him a target for murder, irrational or rational.

Whatever or whoever Chapman was, he has taken a place in the infamous history of nobodies who became somebodies through some devilish act, alongside Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr (whose attempt on Ronald Reagan's life came just three months after Lennon's death) and Gavrilo Princip, the young Bosnian who plunged the world into four years of carnage in 1914. Thankfully, however, Chapman must be considered a footnote in John Lennon's 40-year life.

Lennon would have turned 70 in October. He might still have been making music; he might have turned to art, produced challenging documentaries about human rights, or become a riotously opinionated author or newspaper columnist.

In the 30 years since his death, the world has experienced profound change and events: the fall of communism; Thatcherism; two generations of Bush in the White House; the end of apartheid; two wars in and with Iraq; the continuing bloodshed and bloody-mindedness in the Middle East; 9/11; Obama; the rise of China as an economic power; the Internet. Imagine where John Lennon would have stood amid this all.

Blattered beyond belief

So now we know who will host the World Cup Finals in 2018. It won't be England. It won't be Spain and Portugal. It won't be the Netherlands and Belgium. It will be Russia.

Sepp Blatter has, like the Vatican chimney, issued forth the puff of white smoke that has identified which country will enjoy the lucrative host nation status, seven years and eight months from now.

The inevitable media inquest is already blaming the media itself. The BBC's decision to screen a Panorama investigation into alleged FIFA corruption, just four days before the vote, is bearing the brunt of this backlash. Even Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin has helpfully chimed in that the British media was to blame (a kind of reverse of the famous headline IT'S THE SUN WOT WON IT). But I disagree.

Panorama's somewhat underwhelming exposé and the original Sunday Times scoop may well have coloured opinions within FIFA about England as a nation, but I don't think it made a blind bit of difference to the vote. FIFA had wanted to see a World Cup staged in Eastern Europe, as much as it chose Qatar - a nation smaller than the Falkland Islands - over the United States to host the competition in 2022.

If FIFA had simply come out and said that they wanted Russia to stage it, they could have saved us all the bother - and all the nudge-nudge, wink-winking about what's been going on behind closed and not-so closed doors in the run-up to the Zurich vote. 

Rightly or wrongly, the Sunday Times and the BBC have shone the spotlight on an institution which is, at best, out of touch with modern corporate transparency, and at worst, rotten to its core. Alleged bribery nothwithstanding, the World Cup voting process has been carried out with all the objectivity and probity of the Eurovision Song Contest, determined by hotel corridor politicking and schmoozing amid clouds of cigar smoke and the fumes of a glass of Remy Martin.

To learn, as we have done now, that England failed at the first round of voting makes a mockery of some of the early optimism and even positive indications coming from some of the voting members. England, we're told, had the best presentation, the best bid, and the personal involvement of Prince William, David Beckham and David Cameron (whom, we were told at every opportunity, had shuttled between Zurich and Westminster for PMQs and back again. Bravo, Dave! You're clearly one of the people).

England's 2018 bid ticked - on paper at least - all the right boxes. It would have rewarded the world with the authentic football experience in the very country where it all began. Football would have come home: there's a reason the English Premier League is the most televised football league around the world; there's a reason the FA Cup is one of the most popular annual events around the world. It would have all been good. Even the Dutch and the Spanish - who were also bidding for 2018 - were saying that England should win it.

Sadly, England's fate was sealed long before Wills straightened his comb-over and made any awful jokes about his own "big event". We English pride our sense of fair play. We take pride in queuing and pour scorn on any Johnny Foreigner who disrespects our love of manners, decency and refined order. We dislike cheating and dishonesty. The World Cup is not just a sporting extravaganza, but an enormous enterprise for FIFA and host nation alike. And yet it's location is determined by a process akin to a chief constable "seeing what he can do" about the parking ticket of a fellow mason. 

And what of the winning bid? We should, I suppose, congratulate Russia. No, really. We know that it will be a shambles; the fan experience will be dreadful, the racist culture in Russian football will not be solved, the public transport will be a disaster, the hotels will be inadequate, the stadia will be badly built with Mafia money, the visa process will be inflexible, and the overall infrastructure a mess. But FIFA has got what it wanted - a World Cup in the east.

So why go through a bid process in the first place? Why not accept the bag of roubles and have done with the circus that rolled into Zurich this week? The probity of the FIFA voting process should be called into question. It obviously has nothing to do with integrity, national reputation or even the ability to present a viable proposition, but personal favours, personal interests and...well, who knows what else? It's clear the whole thing is as bent and crooked as a DVD sold at a street market. 

FIFA is not an administrative organisation, but a political gentlemen's club where networking and influence is currency. It is run with stunning arrogance by a leadership that considers proven acts of bribery worthy only of the equivalent of wrapped knuckles. Perhaps, on reflection, England shouldn't want to be awarded a World Cup as a result of the back-handers and two-faced deceit that went on.

This is the second World Cup disaster England has suffered this year; but whereas the England team's ejection from South Africa in June was rightfully blamed on poor performance, few could fault the impressive show put on by the England 2018 bid team to try and swing votes their way.  

The sad part is that England won't get an opportunity to bid again until the process begins for the 2030 World Cup. 66 years since the Jules Rimet trophy was last presented on English soil to the world champion of football. And that's an awful lot of hurt.

Sort it out, you Muppets - Part II

Call me suspicious. Call me a conspiricist. Call me a cab. But something stinks in SW6. No sooner has Carlo Ancelotti charmed sports hacks into defusing speculation about his future at Chelsea Football Club, than Frank Arnesen, the shadowy 'Director of Sport' (er...what else does a football club do?) announces his resignation in order to "seek a new challenge".

According to Chelsea's currently overworked communications department, the Dane's exit at the end of the current season will be amicable and "no surprise" to the club's hierarchy. Admittedly, Arnesen probably feels his job is done, now the stated aim of getting at least one member of the club's academy into first team action has been achieved. The sight of Josh McEachran (17), Patrick Van Aanholt (20), Jeffrey Bruma (19) and Gael Kakuta (19) all turning out last week in the near-nasty 2-1 Champion's League win over Slovakian minnows MSK Zilina shows some progress. But, at risk of taking a cynical tone, this is not much of a return on the investment.

When Arnesen was poached from Spurs in 2005, he was quoted as saying: "Our target is to find an academy player and bring him through to the first team in two years' time." Clearly that was a stretch target. In the absence of any major 'marquee' signings over the last couple of seasons, Chelsea have - to their credit - given more prominence to the younger squad members this season. But a lengthening injury list - with the likes of Terry, Lampard, Benayoun and Alex undergoing treatment, Bosingwa making a slow recovery from his long-term absence, Carvalho sold to Real Madrid, Mancienne put out on permanent loan, and Michael Essien falling to a three-match suspension, there has been more necessity to pressing the cadets into service than just their individual development.

Although the official announcement of Arnesen's resignation was probably brought forward by The Sun  and others running the same  "EXCLUSIVE" on Saturday morning, the timing is nonetheless unfortunate. It came on the back of the PR bungle of Ray Wilkins' dismissal, three league defeats out of four matches, and preceeded Manchester United moving ahead of Chelsea on points in impressive style with their 7-1 hammering of Blackburn.

This weekend's away fixture to Newcastle United will pile even more pressure on an otherwise relaxed Ancelotti: a club losing two key backroom figures, league games and the top spot in quick succession, is one in desperate need of a morale boost. Whether that will come at Newcastle's expense remains to be seen. But as the Christmas season looms, and fixtures against Everton, Marseille, Tottenham, Manchester United, Arsenal and Bolton before the year's out, Ancelotti will need some festive spirit to keep Chelsea - which had been seemingly running away with the 2010-2011 Premier League title - even in a European place for next season.

Much, it has to be said, depends on one Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich. Players win games, and managers choose the players to win those games; but with so much of what happens in and around Chelsea dependent on, or influenced by, an owner with little or no tolerance for failure - or indeed anything he takes a dislike to - it's no surprise that Ancelotti is currently the bookies' second favourite manager to get sacked (the favourite, ironically, being West Ham's Avram Grant, another former Abramovich victim).

I couldn't comment on whether something is rotten in the state of Denmark. But something is definitely not right in the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham. A short walk up the Fulham Road from Fulham Broadway tube station will lead you to all the Shakespearian tragedy you could ever want to experience at a single football club.