This week I arm-wrestle a leftie wimp, pat a dandie wee ginger dug, and topple into the art void
Tofu at the top
AS any card-carrying football nerd will tell you, alongside those teams whose size and glamorous “brand image” brings them vast international support – Real Madrid and Juventus, for instance, who’ll contest this Saturday’s Champions League final – are others whose cult appeal has nothing to do with their on-field achievements.
Here you’ll find teams like Soweto’s Orlando Pirates, who owe their name to an Errol Flynn movie. Or punk rock-loving German lefties St Pauli, who play in brown (and you can’t not love a team that plays in brown, right?) with a skull and crossbones as their logo. Or Rayo Vallecano, also socialist-minded and the only Madrid side it’s OK to like. And the Portland Timbers, a bunch of hipsters whose half-time treats include smoked tofu sandwiches and chocolate-covered bacon.
Now there’s a new team ready to join the ranks of these cult clubs. Step forward Forest Green Rovers FC, newly promoted to the English Football League for the first time in their history and – here’s the groovier-even-than-chocolate-coveredbacon bit – the world’s first and only vegan football club.
They’re owned by eco-tycoon Dale Vince, have an entirely meat-free match-day menu (big thumbs up from Paul McCartney, according to the local paper), use recycled rainwater throughout their 5,000-capacity stadium and have the world’s only organic pitch. This feat is achieved by spreading manure all over it (insert your own “Our manager does that with his team selection every home game” joke).
They might not pick up too much support in Scotland, where the half-time pie is a ritual adhered to with something approaching zealotry and where veganism, like not wearing socks with shoes, is still looked on with suspicion. But in more enlightened territories I expect they’ll be truly loved – and this despite the fact that some team members have been “papped” scoffing pies outside the local Greggs.
Their home ground sounds lovely, too. It’s called The New Lawn and yes, they do have a solar-power robot mower to keep it all neat. Forget the Bovril, mine’s an organic soya latte. Go Rovers!
Lanky lefties
IF universities were like football teams, I think I’d support Aarhus. It’s not showy and flashy like Harvard or Oxford. It isn’t even the best university in Denmark – it ranks third there, and 117th in the world – but what it lacks in clout, famous alumni and rowing ability, it more than makes up for with its steady supply of quirky, tabloid headlinegrabbing scientific studies.
Remember the one about how germophobes are more likely to be anti-immigrant? How psychopaths are statistically more likely to study either business or economics? How teenagers can’t smell sweat, which explains their perceived lack of hygiene? These were all based on Aarhus University research.
Their latest – and it’s a doozy – is that the stronger and more muscled a man is, the more right-wing his political views tend to be. Surveying hundreds of men in Denmark, the US and Argentina, researchers collected data on bicep size, socio-economic grouping and levels of support for economic redistribution – in other words how people feel about the welfare state. The more upper body strength a man had, the more right-wing he seemed to be.
Take from that what you will. But think twice in future before calling Jacob ReesMogg a lanky, effete milksop. If right-wing political views and muscles are connected, under that buttoned-up pinstripe shirt and Churchillian double-breasted suit he has the body of an Adonis. Or even a Popeye.
Emperor’s new art
HAVE we reached “peak conceptual art” yet? If not, will it happen tomorrow when a show opens at Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) consisting of nothing but an empty room?
Hard to say through the sniggers and whatever sound conceptual art-hating critic Brian Sewell makes as he spins in his grave. But hopefully the answer is yes. It’s been a while since we had a decent “ism”, so let’s get one started. One that fills rooms in art galleries, for example.
The GoMA show, for the record, is called This Exhibition Has Been Cancelled, it’s by Berlin-based Dutch artist Marlie Mul and GoMA curator Will Cooper has this to say about it: “By removing what would traditionally be considered an art object we are presenting the gallery as empty space, giving us a moment to question the value in turning over exhibition after exhibition after exhibition.”
As they line up £12-per-ticket summer blockbuster shows like buses, that’s not a question bosses at the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh will be asking.
Still, if the idea behind the GoMA show is to make us think, it’s working. I certainly have some questions as a result. Like: if GoMA decides it wants to buy Mul’s artwork, would they have the room? Or: if I empty my front room, can I tell people it’s on loan from GoMA and charge them to see it? Like: if someone then stole it, how would I ever know?
Beauty is woof
SO, how far down the list of Things Scotland Is Crying Out For would your eyes have to travel before you found Another Dog Statue? My guess is your scrolling finger would be swollen and you’d be well south of items like More Rain, Another Five Years Of Theresa May and Craig Whyte: The Musical.
Still, another dog statue is exactly what we’re getting thanks to the Queen’s Sculptor in Scotland, Sandy Stoddart. This week he unveils a bronze effigy of Old Ginger, father of one of Scotland’s most esoteric breeds, the Dandie Dinmont, named after a character in a novel by Sir Walter Scott. The statue is in honour of the breed’s 175th anniversary.
And what of that other famous Scottish dog statue? Well, if you’ve recently passed Greyfriar’s Bobby in Edinburgh you’ll know it has a very shiny nose, usually a sign of health in pooches. But in the case of statues of pooches it isn’t: it’s a sign of lots of tourists thinking they’re partaking in some ancient Scottish custom by rubbing their salt’n’sauce-covered digits on it for luck. The trend supposedly started when waggish philosophy students began rubbing the toe of another Stoddart work – his sculpture of arch-rationalist David Hume, “the scourge of superstition and religiosity” according to the artist – as an ironic joke. Then it spread to the statue of Greyfriar’s Bobby, lower down and easier to reach.
If we have to have another dog statue let’s at least protect Old Ginger from this fate. Hands off the mutt’s sniffer, people.