School boy humour

Shut down the humour workshops, close the satire magazines and fire all the stand ups. The absolute pinnacle and utter zenith of all comedy has been reached and it happened last night when the global spotlight fell on a football team called Young Boys who play at a stadium called the Wankdorf.

The world will now surely be darker place from here on in. Sure, we'll still be able to see guys getting hit in the balls by their children on You've Been Framed, and we may even manage to raise the odd smirk at the sight of a monkey masturbating on an internet link your colleague has sent you, but at the back of all our minds we'll have the heavy resignation that sexual innuendo about pre-pubescent boys thrown into football commentary has now been done and will never be bettered.

I was lucky enough to attend the game, taking place near the Swiss capital of Berne, in a little place called Wankdorf, in the Wankdorf stadium. I knew Wankdorf existed of course, but have, for a reason that I cannot begin to understand, never actually visited Wankdorf. If you'd have told me I would one day live within two hours train journey of a place called Wankdorf, I would reply that surely if that were to be the case then I would have no choice but to actually move into Wankdorf itself. I would take fresh pictures of the train station sign everyday, and begin to send postal letters regularly just so I could sign each letter 'in case of non delivery, please return to Wankdorf'.

The game itself was a blur of talk about being tight at the back, playing with spunk and keeping clean sheets. Afterwards I collapsed, a deflated and exhausted wreck. I think the football was supposed to have been pretty decent too.

The point I think I'm making here, as the lithium starts to kick in, is that to laugh at such things is not necessarily an indication that you have a ready built Friztel cellar in which you keep a selection of boy scouts for each occasion. The British press, reporting on the game, were the worst of all offenders, with a lot of the headlines feasting on the opportunity like a bulimic after a particularly cutting insult. But perhaps most of all, it's comforting to know that so many others sense of humour has evidently also stopped developing around the same time they starting crapping in a toilet.

Apparently in some cases, now that I am growing old and embittered, such jokes are 'inappropriate'. I strongly suspect that I'm not the only person who sometimes feels like the have woken up a decade or so after school, in an adult world in which they don't truly belong. I can do my job ok, even occasionally without the sort of incompetence that could bring the company crashing into oblivion in a heartbeat, but I am sometimes struck by a belief that at any moment someone will come around the corner, drag me out of my office and tell me that the game is up, this job isn't for someone who still secretly laughs at his own farts.

It was a relief therefore to see that this game with the unfortunately named Swiss team, seemed to reveal a similar outlook in humour from most people. And if you don't agree? Well you can address your letter of complaint to Mr A. Hole, Around the Corner and Up my Bum Street.

Beer Festival: Facial Hair and Regrets

I write this the morning after the Great British Beer Festival and have a message for those people who seem to think that real ale doesn’t leave you with a hangover. I say to them, come take a deep smell of my overpowering body odour and nauseating breath, behold the dark, viscous urine I am liberally splattering over the toilet seat, admire my reddened, sunken eyes and renounce your views forthwith. The stuff may be a far more pleasant drink than your standard tinned piss that is a Fosters or Carling, but I could be told right now that I was drinking poison direct from the fangs of the world's deadliest snake and I would believe you without blinking.

I attended last night with half a mind on Oktoberfest, the world’s largest meeting of liver haters, which is only a few weeks away. It’s important to try and avoid injuries and this would be a good warm up session, a chance to loosen up the drinking arm and see if I can push on to a more beer festival acceptable C cup before the main event.

We have though been going to the British festival since we were 17, before the weight of the world and full time employment broke and raped our spirits before being acquitted in court of all charges. This is still the one annual event that has us feel that glimmer of childhood excitement, the kind you used to feel before a birthday or Christmas when you were allowed out of the cellar and the beatings would subside just long enough for you to fight the dog for spilt leftovers. Good times.

Most of the charm of the event stems from the startling eccentricity of it all. It slaps you in face from the moment you are greeted at the main entrance by an old man wearing a deer stalker and a handlebar moustache, screeching in an impossibly high pitch voice that people should not linger by the doors. This bat-shit madness is further apparent in the bizarre, invariably sexual names, given to the beers by all the ancient breweries in attendance. Old Scrotum, Titty McCockle, Old Stoat Wobbler etc etc. The strangeness of the beers is seconded only the by the strangeness of the people. For some reason all the oddest of the nuttiest mentalists are attracted, dragging their ponytailed, pot bellied, cloak wearing arses from every small village and wood cabin in the country. These are the sort of people who would normally be ostracised from mainstream society, chided for their morbid obesity and fondness for wearing 18th century clothing. At the British Beer Fest though, these men are kings. Some of the examples of facial hair you see leave you no choice but to stand up and applaud.

The auction is always one of the highlights, during which the organisers ruthlessly exploit the inebriated, highly excitable groups of men, who invariably end up bidding hundreds of pounds for a collection of dirty beer mats or a rusty tray. Last night for instance, I came away the briefly proud owner of one ticket to a tour of a brewery, to take place mid week at a place hundreds of miles from where I am going to be on the day. In a different country.

We left having sampled barely a fraction of the thousands of available beers. The worst of which was a 12% European ale which might as well have been a melted car tire poured into a glass. Which reminds me, I must go for another piss.