monkey tennis

Half a million people crowded the streets of central London today in protest at the England rugby team’s visit to the capital. I was there in spirit if not in body, and I do share the marcher’s concerns. Let’s examine the evidence:

  • Rugby is played by public school posh blokes, the type of Hooray Henrys responsible the lovely tradition of fagging.
  • The few non-public school players are usually corrupt policemen thugs (I’m referring of course to the era in which the players were still amateurs. In today’s professional environment they’re merely thugs).
  • Ex-England international Rory Underwood was a pilot in the air-force, and was reprimanded on more than one occasion for dropping napalm on innocent villagers in Kosovo.
  • New Zealand should have won.
  • Matchwinning ‘hero’ Jonny Wilkinson was formerly the leader of a gang of steamers responsible for a series of unsolved robberies across the Surrey stockbroker belt.
  • England centre Mike Tindall tortures cats.
  • ‘Captain Fantastic’ Martin Johnson steals traffic cones when he’s drunk. This is a regular occurance. The staff at the Bengal Lancer curry house in Leicester are terrified of him.
  • New Zealand should have won.
  • England coach Clive Woodward has a statue of Mussolini carved out of butchered baby rhinoceros tusks in his front room. Sometimes he sleeps with it.
  • Scrumhalf Matt Dawson owns an unscrupulous Northampton company that pressure-sells security systems to the elderly via scaremongering door-to-door methods. Investigations by the Office of Fair Trading have yet to produce a conviction, although several hundred complaints have been examined.
  • The clean-up bill for today’s little party comes to nearly ?12 billion, enough to buy several hospitals.
  • New Zealand should have won.

    What’s the big deal anyway? England are World Champions in a sport taken seriously in about five countries, only one of which considers Rugby to be it’s National game. Big bloody deal. You may as well celebrate a victory in the popular sport of, oh, I dunno… elephant polo.

  • 12 Comments

    1. speaking of monkey tennis, we hear the macaques are currently leading the gibbons 2-1 in the world inter-genus championships. its on eurosport +1 right now, if you’re interested.

    2. i’m no rugby expert, but after watching a couple england matches i was wondering: isn’t the way they made world champions a bit dodgy? i mean the only man scoring has been this wilkinson guy, and always by kicking the ball between the two posts, never, err, i don’t know how it’s called, i’ll call it it “touching down” like the americans do. of course, scoring from great distance, getting the ball between those two thingies requires great skill, i imagine, but somehow it doesn’t feel right. a bit like italian football. the result that counts and all that.

    3. Dear Editor,

      I have been a loyal reader of your hearty journal for many a moon now. Your laser-sharp wit and complex rhetoric have awarded me many friends in public drinking houses as I recant your sordid tales of jollity and hamusement. Why, your feature on the sofas of the 3rd Reich alone saw me hospitalised for much of 2004. As for the blind taste test of commercial herring a few weeks back, why I’m afraid that the resulting guffaws rather gave me very unpleasant indigestion, coming so close as it did to my breakfast of kedgeree! I shall learn from experience on that occasion I’m sure.

      So it comes as a very bitter-tasting disappointment to me to read this latest update to your chronicle. As I’m sure you’re concerned, the welfare of Her Majesty’s citizens is of the utmost importance, and I find your remarks both demeaning and vitriol-twisted. You sir, are a bounder for such remarks, and they do nothing but embarrass you and all who sail in you. It comes not down to me to demand a full and honest retraction of such spittle-flecked, urine-smelling words, but to yourself as a former gentleman and raconteur.

      Let me recount of a related tale that may admonish you in its moral. It is the story of an encounter that happened to me a few weeks hence. It is a tale of extraordinary virtue, of soaring spirits and earth-shuddering trust. A tale of hope, a tale of faith.

      It started when I was beating the milkboy for ill-aligning my daily order of delicious milk. It can’t have been more than 6 calendar weeks ago. As I beat him solidly with my ebony cane, his cried became less and less audible, until finally the little bugger fell silent. Impressed at my own ability to deliver important lessons to tradesmen, I stood back to take in the scene. As I did so, a most unremarkable cat (even now a description of said feline escapes me, such was its unremarkability) jumped from the roof of my conservatory and began to feast on the corpse of the boy. A neighbour who happened to be passing at the time on his horseless contraption shouted (most unseemingly) over my fence “I say Jenkins, you’ve enough cats to sink a frigate in your yard!”

      Of course, this was a most distressing verdict on the state of the front area of my property. Never had I been so affronted, and yet, it was damning in its veracity. It was true!

      So, I hope that this has shown you the error of your ways. Being a man of education and learning as you are, you hardly need me to expand upon the intricacies of the tale (indeed you could probably best me in a battle of words and thoughts on the subject), but I dearly hope that it has rather left a lump in your throat which only the reascendence into the being of a gentleman will soothe. Even as I dictate this, I feel a sense of glowing pride in my own humble state of social perfection.

      I am sure you will appreciate that I will be cancelling my subscription to your publication without further notice. The three shillings that I have been paying all this time will now find a more comfortable home elsewhere, where the debasement of Her Majesty’s willing servants takes less precendence. I would appreciate the forwarding on of such monies as have yet to be spent in this regard, and I will send my boy round to collect suchlike in due course.

      This decision has not been made without some gnashing of teeth, wracked with guilt at the unseemly way in which you must be admonished, but needs must and manners will prevail.

      Yours, Sincerely

      James Casterley, WC1

    4. So, you’re not bitter in any way whatsoever?

    5. Very very funny.

      Sadly I can’t even say the Springboks should have won.

      Oh well there is always 2007 ….

    6. Hey Look! My name is in Red!

      Prat.

      But the elephant polo link was funny.

    7. Come on Frase, let’s not kid ourselves about this. Only seven nations have ever won the real World Cup, and I can’t see URGay and Ingerland ever doing it again. Four sides have won the RWC in five tourneys, which isn’t a bad spread. It’s just that rugbo lends itself to mismatches in a way football never does. And yes, NZ wuz robbed. Now here’s your medicine Mr Lewry.

    8. if a dog’s born in a stable, it don’t make it a horse!

    9. But of course the Kiwis should’ve won! yey NZ. we rock. yey us. um……. the pommys are creating this big fkn fuss about Johnny bloody wankinson.. oops sorry wilkinson.. what about the fkn rest of the team who got the ball to him so he could kick it?
      Yeah he’s pretty and I wouldn’t mind a piece of ‘im, but geeze c’mon england… hmmm neva mind.. the kiwis still rock.. our beer is fantastic and our ladies are great. but I am one of htem so i am biased!
      xoxox

    10. Funny, very sour grapes, but very funny.

    11. Wilkinson won sports personality of the year here in England… shows you what mass histeria can do.

      we won though.

      Jodi, NZ women probably are the best

      Mr Casterly can i be your slave (i’m good with a mop)

    12. I hate Matt Dawson, the creepy bully is a thug, and a scumbag, I will cheer when the shit bag breaks a leg in a rugby match or gets into a coma,