Military planners were puzzled and perplexed when in the build up to a major battle in the Great War they received the request; “Send three and fourpence, we’re going to a dance.”
The story might be apocryphal and embroidered more exotically than Rock Hudson’s cushion covers, but there’s no doubt there is plenty of scope to mishear things as in a message which was originally transmitted as; “Send reinforcements, we’re going to advance.”
The term for misheard words and lyrics is a mondegreen, and for cloth-eared clots like Fifty Shades, it’s a source of embarrassment.
For years at Christmas, Fifty Shades has been entertaining friends and ‘rellies’ by singing; “Jeff’s nuts roasting on an open fire”, convinced they were the real words to the opening line of the Christmas song, while he enlivened carol concerts with his adulterous version of that old favourite “Get dressed ye married gentlemen.”
Nobody told Fifty Shades that Bonnie Tyler was singing; “We’re living off powdered eggs and giving off farts” and he always suspected those standard bearers of clean-living, anodyne pop ABBA hid a dark and vicious Swedish streak which Wallander would have unearthed when they belted out; “See that girl, watch her scream, kicking the dancing queen.”
Even now, Fifty Shades’ iffy lugs can still hear things hopelessly wrong. He was convinced that in the vocoded bit of last summer’s huge hit, Daft Punk were singing; “We rub a Mexican Monkey” (go on, listen if you don’t believe me).
So what is the message going out from Old Trafford as Manchester United hand Wayne Rooney a contract that could be worth £300,000 a week? And is it a message that can be misheard?
The message that United want everyone to hear is that in the middle of a mundane season that is in danger of evaporating into anonymity, they are still the big kahuna, the big cheese and are still around.
The smaller kids have woken up to the fact that the red-shirted playground bully is nothing to be scared of without his big brother Alex to back him up, and have begun to refuse to hand over their lunch money.
If The Lord of The Flies has taught us anything, it’s that the law of the blackboard jungle dictates that a new king of the playground will arise to take the place of the deposed one.
While the former bully is hauled off to detention, that smarmy kid Jose with the big, strong Russian pal, or that geek Manny with his Arab gang of muckers will meet behind the bikesheds to duke it out for the right to run the block.
But even as he’s dragged by the collar down the corridor, David feels obliged to scream out one last reminder that he’ll be back soon, and he’ll have some bigger mates with him. And possibly his dad.
An institution as well-run as Manchester United can rarely be accused of panicking, but clearly they needed to do something. After all, there are shirt sales at stake.
The natives are restless (especially those in Devon and Surrey), and the vast swathes of fans in the Far East who regard football following as little more than a face-saving fashion statement to be seen on the streets of Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Yokohama and Mumbai backing a winning team, could soon swap those fragile loyalties from red to either royal or sky blue.
So the message going out is that following United’s January window signing of Juan Mata (which wasn’t prompted by any sort of panic at all. No, really, it wasn’t) they want to prove they have the financial clout to hand out to one player every week the price of a 50metre Sunseeker Manhattan motor yacht, or the wherewithal to buy a four-bedroomed farmhouse in Aberdeenshire complete with 1.8 acres.
In the Alice in Wonderland world of football, that is supposed to send out a message of power. It says; “We’re Daddy Warbucks, we’ve got money to throw around, not only can we keep our best players but we’re coming for yours and we’ve got a pair of cojones so big we can’t fit them in our underpants and have to tote them round in a wheelbarrow.
But if that message is designed for the rest of football to take note, what are the rest of us hearing?
The word ‘obscene’ has been bandied about to describe Rooney’s contract and in cold financial terms in times when we’re told we all have to tighten our belts, it is.
Try telling those struggling by on minimum wage rates, or those on zero hours contracts who never know from one week to another whether they will even have a wage, that he deserves every penny for kicking around an inflated lump of leather.
Rooney will earn in a week what a dozen of his fans will earn in a year, and while apologists will point out that it’s money earned by the game in terms of television revenue, it doesn’t hide the fact that contributors towards his £300,000 weekly bunce, will come from those whose purchase of a season ticket to watch him, will be a significant sacrifice.
Apologists will also say Rooney is ‘only’ getting a £50,000 a week increase on his current contract.
Only £50,000 a week. Take some time to digest that. Go ahead, take as long as you like.
It’s futile to say that the £80m Rooney will earn from his four-year deal is enough to build a hospital wing because it’s Manchester United’s money to do with as they want, and they are not in the business of constructing hospitals.
One person you cannot blame too much for being offered this amount is Rooney himself. If somebody is stupid enough to hand him such a ridiculous sum he would be daft to say ‘no thank you’.
Who of us, wouldn’t? And for those who ask if Rooney is worth the money, the simple answer is that he is worth whatever the market will stand.
And the chances are that United’s investment of £80m over four years will produce better value for money than the £14m Sport England spent on bringing the four most precious pieces of metal ever, back from the Sochi Winter Olympics.
United may well have created a rod for their own backs and David Moyes may soon hear the sound of a clog kicking his office door and open it to find Robin van Persie there with a demand to be paid the same.
And it’s a bit of a cheap shot to sit down with a calculator and do the math to work out how many hair transplants £300,000 a week will buy Rooney, or speculate how many Manchester ‘MILFs’ will be rubbing their hands at the prospect of the boy Wayne being out on the town with money burning a hole in his pocket and keen to spend the evening in the company of an older lady.
A weekly wage of £300,000 provides a fair degree of insulation against jibes of being a potato-faced poltroon, which he clearly isn’t.
He might have had the odd indiscretion expected of a young man with money, but he’s clearly been well brought-up in a hard-working, working class family.
Most professional footballers come from similar, or even more deprived backgrounds, and suddenly giving them large amounts of cash can be as dangerous as sending an alcoholic on a self-guided tour of the whisky distilleries of Scotland.
For some, a weekly stipend of £300,000 would quickly disappear up their noses before you could say “Columbian marching powder.”
But for those – like Fifty Shades – who are a bit short on memory and can’t remember where they put the car keys, or on which foot their shoes go, let’s wind back a bit.
United have just divvied up £300,000 a week to a player whose prime aim back in the summer was to get away.
The messages from Rooney’s camp was that he was prepared to take off his clothes and run naked through waist high cacti to get to Chelsea and it’s not the first time he has expressed a desire to head south faster than Vanessa Feltz’s boobs.
Unfortunately, this sends another message out – that if you kick and scream like a spoiled toddler long enough and hard enough, even a club with ambitions of regaining its status as the world number one, will eventually give you what you want.
So which message are you receiving, and are you hearing it loud and clear or does it sound as though you have a dose of Swimmer’s Ear?
Not surprisingly, Fifty Shades is confused so it’s best summed up by a line from Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, that describes Wayne Rooney rise from a humble background to the point where he can dine at the finest restaurants, and hire chefs like Heston Blumenthal and Gordon Ramsey to cook for him.
At least that’s what it sounds like.
“He’s just a poor boy from a poor family, spare him his life from his warm sausage tea.”
By John May
These picuters were provided by Hase don, Joscarfas, thesportreview and Joscarfas.
