YOU CAN'T beat the internet. I've spent the week tuning in to endless reruns of last week's greatest sporting moment. No, no. Not Stephen McGinn's thunderbolt at Love Street. Or even Deek Riordan's pair at Pittodrie. I mean the tantrum on Tyneside, the tiff of the Toon, wherein Joe Kinnear, Newcastle's interim manager, slapped down the gentlemen of the press.
It's already the stuff of legend, 52 expletives in a rapid-fire burst of old Anglo-Saxon. And happily, if your newspaper omitted Joe's fruitier remarks, this great event is already plastered over YouTube.
A choice of listening is available. Fo
r those in charge of infants, there's a downloadable "clean" recording, with many a beep and buzz. Alternatively, busy commuters can tune in to a 90-second "single" edition. And then there's the full 10-minute "club mix".
It's this longer version I've come to love, something to be savoured, its discordant notes brought together in a sweary symphony. The opening is brisk: "Which one's Simon Bird?" bellows Joe as he marches in. "Me." "You're a c***."
The same knockabout tone runs on for a few minutes, before the tape breaks into a "slow movement" of verbal sparring, as the reporters fight back.
"We're all grown men, we can easily have a chat with you. But to come in here and call him a c*** …" whines a hack, as the encounter builds to its climax with a helpless plea from a Geordie official. "I trust lads, this has all been completely and totally off the record," he says. "What happens in here is not being relayed outside. The door was shut – even if anyone's tape was running." But Kinnear doesn't give a damn. "Write what you like. It won't affect me."
He's been proved right. Slapping down the press rarely does a manager any harm, as Sir Alex Ferguson has demonstrated over the years. And should his players follow up with a decent show in a televised game, as Kinnear's did on Sunday, he's on to a winner. Expect old Joe, whose deal is scheduled to end this month, to be retained and guide Newcastle to mid-table mediocrity by May. Before failing in the first five games next season and losing his job in September.
Kinnear is not the only mad manager to feature on the net. This week I went after clips of Ian Holloway, a highly quotable rustic, who turned up on Radio Five's Monday Night Club, comparing the failing Spurs side to a piano recital. The gist of his riff was that the club had bought in some hairy-arsed guys to carry on the piano, and some other geezers to operate the curtain and sweep the stage, but they hadn't found a virtuoso who could tickle the ivories and make sweet music.
This had a familiar ring, and no wonder. Holloway was quoting himself – he'd made similar remarks as early as 2004. Indeed, short of a wittier source, he often quotes himself, particularly the lines he dubs "world famous" after his old QPR side "won ugly" over Chesterfield.
You can find this everywhere on the web. Says 'Ollie', "To put it in gentleman's terms, if you go out for a night and you're looking for a young lady and you pull one, some weeks they're good looking and some weeks they're not the best. Our performance today would have been not the best looking bird, but at least we would've gone home in the taxi with her. She weren't the best looking lady we ended up taking home, but she was very pleasant and very nice, so thanks very much, let's have a coffee."
Some might call this outrageous male chauvinist piggery, but Holloway's rather proud of stuff like this. And worryingly for any journalist cowed by Kinnear's tirade, the equally pugnacious Ollie hates being misquoted.
"I know what I've said," he warns a reporter on YouTube. "What I was quoted as saying is 'If I'd had long hair I'd be a rock star'. But I didn't say that at all. What I did say was, 'If my auntie had had testicles, she'd have been my uncle'."
In this case he's not wrong. Unless, like me, your auntie won shot putt gold for East Germany, back in '84.
The full article contains 726 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
