In the Independent today, an interesting column from Terence Blacker on the Manchester United party.
It is all rather different from the way things work in the dull, real world. Down here, a group of people supplying attractive girls to a party of moneyed men would be seen as rather more than events organisers. Hosts who book all the bedrooms of a hotel and then inform their wives and girlfriends that they are not invited might be regarded (not least by the wives and girlfriends) as rather more than boisterous. The sexual overtures said to have been made by the footballers to their multiple blind dates, nearer outright harassment than crude pick-up lines, would have seen lesser men ejected into the night or into a police cell.
Obviously I've no idea whether anyone was raped or whether the nineteen-year-old who's been arrested has done anything. But regardless of any of that, if what Terence Blacker says about this party is true, the Manchester United party was a pretty shameful affair. He ends up being too kind to football and footballers, in my view, and I say that as someone who admits to supporting United, in a lukewarm way these days, if pressed. But I've lost interest, to be honest, as football in England has lost my respect in recent years. The excess and dodginess that goes hand in hand with the game isn't about unfortunate poor people "caught up" in some sort of vortex of fame. It's about obscene wealth, amassed by mainly stupid, undertaxed men blessed with a talent that has market value uniquely out of proportion to its social worth, and who are turned into arrogant, glamorous "celebs" by it. And whose whims are pandered to by suited hangers-on who cream some of it off, poor silly girls who want some of it to rub off, and, most stupid of all, the fans whose money bankrolls it all but who'd be better off putting it in savings account. Football is sleazy and tawdry, and won't be put right until it's bled of its excess of money.
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