Hold The Back Page:PLUS CA change . . . last week, Britain's gay glitterati turned up in numbers at a central London venue in solidarity with Gareth Thomas, Wales's most-capped rugby player and former captain, who came out as homosexual before Christmas.
On party night in the Movida nightclub, actor Ian McKellen, telebrity Graham Norton and activist Peter Tatchell went cheek to cheek with the rugger-burly likes of Matt Dawson, Lee Byrne and Will Carling.
It was a year in which Cork hurling goalkeeper Donal Óg Cusack and Welsh international rugby referee Nigel Owens also declared themselves homosexual, the latter pair en passant selling autobiographies.
If you couldn’t remember otherwise, you’d swear – given coverage of 2009’s gadarene helter-skelter from the nearest closet – that sport had unearthed its first non-heterosexuals – or, at least, the first with the bravery to come clean.
Women’s tennis, of course, was a sporting zone in which parents of young hopefuls refused for years to allow their tender offspring anywhere near the locker-rooms.
It was a milieu from which Martina Navratilova was outed by her good “friend” and former lover, writer Rita Mae Brown, and in which France’s Amelie Mauresmo almost casually acknowledged at the Australian Open in 1999 she was in a lesbian relationship.
Her declaration was particularly courageous, given she was just 19 at the time, and she maintained a pleasing dignity in the face of remarks by bitchy opponents at the tournament.
American Lindsay Davenport, after losing to the strong Mauresmo in the semi, said the Frenchwoman was “playing like a guy”; and the Swiss Martina Hingis, who took the final, commented that she was “half a man”.
The sniffy girls clearly did not do irony: Mauresmo was a relative sylph beside “power” players of her time, relying much more on subtlety, variety and a Federeresque one-handed backhand; and she’d be dwarfed by the Williams sisters.
In December, Amelie Mauresmo retired aged 30, revered in France not just for a fine sporting career, but for her ability to talk intelligently and knowledgeably about anything from current affairs to politics, or vintage wines and the extensive cellar in her Geneva villa.
Those of us with longer memories will also recall Emile Griffith, welter/middleweight champion of the world six times, and a fierce competitor. He also lisped, walked effeminately and was originally a milliner: our Emile was as camp as a row of pink tents. (Not many people slagged off the lisping Mike Tyson, or questioned his sexuality; but I’ll bet he couldn’t make women’s hats.)
Griffith also literally beat the living daylights out of Benny “Kid” Paret after the Cuban taunted him with the word maricon – Spanish street-argot for ponce or faggot – and even punched an unconscious Paret on the ropes until he had to be hauled off him. Paret stayed unconscious, and died ten days later.
The 71-year-old Virgin Islander Griffith only confirmed his homosexuality in a recent biography in which he mused on the paradox:
“I kill a man, and most people forgive me. However, I love a man and many say this is unforgivable.” . . . Plus, as Mauresmo would surely add, c’est la même chose.
Hunters staying ahead of the pack
REGULAR READERS of my occasional offerings will be aware that one of my avatars is food and television critic AA Gill, who got into some hot water of his own heating last autumn when he confessed that he’d shot a baboon during a safari in Tanzania.
Describing the animals as “no stupider than Piers Morgan”, he admitted: “Baboon isn’t good to eat, unless you’re a leopard. The feeble argument for cull and control is much the same as for foxes: a veil of naughty fun.”
Those Irish folk who hunt on horseback for the pure naughty pleasure and thrill of it, have been looking sympathetically across the Irish Sea as anti-hunt campaigners hotly pursue hunters who by-and-large successfully duck, dodge and weave to avoid prosecution under the Hunting Act.
Enforcement has been highly problematic, for instance, when a British hunt lays an artful artificial trail the pursuit of which quite often manages to flush a fox which is – but of course – then and inevitably chased by the hounds. If that fox is subsequently killed, it has proved difficult in the extreme to establish intent to kill.
A crucial weapon in the armoury of the anti-hunt activists has been the capacity to mount covert surveillance of hunts, but an as-yet-unreported judicial ruling in England has now sparked considerable optimism in the Countryside Alliance. In effect, it found that third-party covert filming of a hunt must be authorised in line with procedures of the Regulation of Investigating Powers Act – which must in turn be used in accordance with the European Convention of Human Rights.
Thus speculative surveillance of hunts cannot apparently be authorised if it cannot be justified as “necessary or proportionate” under the Hunting Act.
In Britain, the hunts are meanwhile content to keep on keepin’ on, confident the Conservatives will soon be in government (the Tories having pledged a free vote to repeal the Hunting Act). The Meath and other Irish hunts who watched John Gormley turn on his incinerator spit this week, as his Green Party struggles to assert itself in a bumbling coalition, are doubtless harbouring similar thoughts.
Press box wind-up too much for angry Algerians
THE AFRICAN Cup of Nations was something of a damp squib as a televised entity.
A handful of surprising results, a few handsome goals, lots of first-touch skill, yet all the worthy but dull system and euro-discipline inculcated by non-African coaches made many games tedious.
And still! The valiant press box took up the gauntlet of duty to provide colour and divilment.
I’d have paid to see one particular journalistic fracas during the game between Algeria’s Desert Foxes, newly qualified for their first World Cup in 24 years, and Egypt’s Pharaohs, non-qualifiers in a year when they yet again franked their continental ascendancy.
I’m obliged to the Indy’s Jonathan Wilson for an account of what happened to cause a pharisaic rout among rival scribes of the Mediterranean littoral.
In the pharaonic corner, one late middle-aged Egyptian journo, complete with waxed (and presumably Poirot-style) moustache, and sporting substantial double cuffs; on the foxy side, an increasingly irritated group of Algerian soccer reporters.
The genius of the Egyptian gentleman journalist was to make a major show of shooting his voluminous cuffs every time Egypt scored (I like to think he also smirked as he roguishly twirled the needle-sharp ends of his moustache, but this may be wishful thinking on my part).
Each goal and preen notched up the Algerian ire levels, and so successful was his wind-up strategy that it culminated in a good old brawl at game’s end: manbags at one metre’s range, doubtless, all in super slow-motion.
I think Paul Galvin should be told about this moustache-waxing lark.
Rolland a shining example to his peers
WE ARE truly twice blessed in this hemisphere in terms of international rugby fare. The national pulse is scarcely back to base levels after the palpitations of the Heineken/Amlin group stages, and already we’re into the glorious uncertainty of the Six Nations. Bliss! And despite Luddite complaints about The State of The Game, rugby at the top level has, in general, become a magnificent spectacle in the professional era. The present phase of safety-first kick-tennis will in time go the way of all such phases as coaches and ambitious teams will, of necessity, find routes to high-scoring strategies.
In the meantime, the game has double trouble. The IRB lawmakers have made it difficult to referee well; yawing scrums between undisciplined packs are at times downright dangerous, and often chaotic in terms of how far particular props will push refereeing patience until that day’s ref draws a line in the green sward. And there is little or no spectator-evident consistency in the reffing once ball and players break to ground.
He’s not perfect, which is almost reassuring, but Alain Rolland is far and away the best whistler the game has had in years, but look at the others. Slim pickings. Alan Lewis? Fine batsman in his day. Nigel Owens? Okay, maybe. Jonathan Kaplan? At a pinch. Bryce Lawrence? If we were stuck. Romain Poite? Don’t even go there. Chris White? Hot and cold. Wayne Barnes? Don’t mention Paris in the springtime.
We’ve got the dilettante Poite this afternoon, and cocksure Barnes next week in France. I’d bet the farm that Ireland’s video analyst Mervyn Murphy will have put more work into sweating their idiosyncrasies than the foibles of any opposition player.
That’s the pretty pass we’ve reached. But the great game will survive them, too.
PS On the matter of obituaries . . . literary correspondent Eileen Battersby reassured me with her recent far-from-iconoclastic but grounded assessment of JD Salinger, given that even as a teenager I found Catcher in the Ryea poor read, and Holden Caulfield an irritation.
Which brings us to Bill McLaren. Did no one else find his cloying and coy Scottishisms gemütlich and twee to the point of nausea long before he retired?
Terry's latest escapades simply a Bridge too far
MY FAVOURITE quote this week: “Okay, sure, there’s not much to like about John Terry; a weasel-faced troll with a shoplifting mum, [and] an idle drug-dealing dad; a man who tried to prevent the publication of revelations about his extramarital shenanigans with a team-mate’s girlfriend – not because of the hurt it would cause his supposed loved ones, but because it might harm his sponsorship deals . . . However, all of us – aside from Wayne Bridge, I suppose – might well commend him for his unquenchable desire to get inside the box and score. “ – (Rod Liddle, Sunday Times)
