Great story, this – and one that I’m sure you’ll be able to read on 2oceansvibe in the ever so near future.

It concerns Paul Yarrow, who seems to be cropping up on British TV an awful lot.
Not heard of him? That’s because he’s never credited – he is always DA DA DAHHHHH! Background Man!

Here he is at New Scotland Yard. He’s on the phone and he’s on ITV news:

And then in “Central London”, not on the phone but on the BBC:

And on the phone again outside the High Court.

You can almost hear the reporter saying to her cameraman:
“The fat bloke in the off-white top… He’s behind me again, isn’t he?”

But this is just a tiny, tiny part of Paul’s existence as Background Man: he’s also been behind reporters on Sky, Al Jazeera and Channel 4. He even managed an appearance (in the background, obviously) on Antiques Roadshow. Kudos indeed.
How on earth are we ever going to be able to keep up with his exploits? Well fortunately, this being the internet, someone is busy collating his numerous appearances.
That someone is Steve from fidgetwith.com.

So if you see Pau… if you see Background Man, please email him, not me.

Drama! As spotted at a local Spar.

Obviously, I was only passing by the Ricoffy section on my way to the real coffee section.
For those of you who are unaware of what the product entails, it’s basically granulated ditchwater.
It’s bloody awful.

And now they can’t make it anymore, though quite what the “erratic supply of coffee” has to do with this is beyond me. I never realised that coffee was involved in the manufacture of Ricoffy.

But then I looked again. And I read more carefully. And they’re only halting the manufacture of the 500g products.
How bizarre.

Will this really affect the average Ricoffy consumer? Did it really warrant a SORRY with two exclamation marks?
Surely one could always share a couple of 750g tins with two other people? Or if you’re more independently minded, just double up on 250g jars.
Apparently, Ricoffy 100g will be produced in very limited quantities – namely 100g – so five of them would work nicely as well.

But the smart choice is still to buy none of any of them.

P.S. “Ricoffy Decaf”? Zero squared…

This from yesterday. Sadly the original online version is hidden behind their silently ever-expanding paywall so I will faithfully and accurately recreate it for you here.

It relates to the biggest thing to come out of Cape Town since the Holland v Uruguay World Cup semi-final: that already infamous collision between flying whale and sailing yacht. The question now being asked is whether the whale had been “harassed” by boats before the incident occurred.
Nan Rice, “Marine Activist” and CEO of the Dolphin Action Group (thought – is there a Gramps Rice as well?) is looking into those claims and, almost as an aside, has these wise words for us:

On behalf of the South African Whale Disentaglement Network (SAWDN), I would warn members of the public not to try to disentangle large whales.

I think we have all learnt something there. Many of us routinely try to disentangle whales of all sizes, without even pausing to think about it. I tried to disentangle a couple last week in Kirstenbosch Gardens. And one the week before in the Canal Walk shopping mall.
Now I find that I shouldn’t have done it – although Nan Rice doesn’t explain why.

I feel so ashamed.

There are a couple of other questions I have to ask though. What exactly constitutes a “large whale”.
Surely this is elementary tautology?
When was the last time you saw a small whale? Even the damn calves are 6m long at birth. That’s not small, unless you’re comparing it with a skyscraper. And when was the last time you saw a whale calf next to a skyscraper for easy comparison?

I think you get my point.

And then who came up with the bright idea of having a whale disentanglement network? Surely that makes them just get more entangled? Why not a whale disentanglement group or society?
But no, volunteers (specifically trained personnel, not just members of the public, obviously) arrive on the scene of a “large whale” which is entangled and presumably rather distressed and introduce themselves to the stricken cetacean.
But whales (even “large” ones) don’t understand a huge amount of English and thus, all they hear is:

Blah blah blah blah blah whale blah blah blah net blah.

With friends like those, who needs enemies?
Is it really any wonder they’ve started chucking themselves at our boats?

UPDATE: And now there’s video of the allegedly harassed whale doing its thing.

And he/she explains it in a letter to the Cape Times today.
Over to you, JD Bryce of St James:

The tirade against Bakkies Botha compels me to defend him.

Ti•rade [tahy-reyd, tahy-reyd] – noun; a prolonged outburst of bitter, outspoken denunciation.

Ok – I’ll give you the denunciation bit – and maybe a hint of bitterness because he was an idiot.
But prolonged?
He only did it 6 days ago (and therefore a maximum of 5 days before you wrote your letter). Prolonged is when something goes on for longer than it really should – like discussion over Luis Suarez’s goalline handball (which I’m still in awe of) or whether Jacob Zuma should have stood trial for corruption (still raised most days on Cape Talk).
And outspoken?  No. Everyone (including Bakkies) realises that it was a bloody stupid thing to do. Apart from you. But apparently, you are compelled and have a compulsion to defend him.

So I’ll let you continue, despite your initial foolishness and inaccuracy, because I’m nice like that.

I believe the real reason for his action is the New Zealand Haka.

Ah! Sorry – I misunderstood! This is a sarcastic letter. Amusement! Satire! Hilarity!
Go for it, JD!

The Haka is nothing more than a barrage of abuse in which the All Blacks threaten to beat the other team to a pulp and sever arms and legs. This raises the their [sic] adrenaline levels and creates a dominance over the other team.

Nice build up – and now deliver that punchline!

I believe Bakkies probably had a smouldering resentment to this.
His reaction is understandable.

Wait. What?
Is that it? Are you having a laugh, JD? Are you, perchance, “extracting the Michael”?

I have done some rudimentary calculations and seventy-four points as to why you are an idiot for writing this letter come to mind right about now. I will, henceforth and forthwith,address some of these below.

First off, Bakkies was not alone in facing the All Blacks’ Haka that day. There were 14 other players alongside him as the New Zealanders shook their little asses before kick off. If each of those 14 also harboured a smouldering resentment to the dance troupe, they hid it rather better than Bakkies did. And what’s with this “smouldering” stuff, anyway. You make it sound like he hid this supposed resentment rather well, when in fact he chose to smash himself headfirst into the back of Jimmy Cowan’s head.
While he was lying on the floor.
His reaction in this case is clearly not understandable.

Next up, a quick look at his Springbok Hall of Fame page, indicates that Bakkies had played for the Boks against New Zealand on 12 occasions prior to Saturday’s game. That’s 12 previous Hakas he has face without going completely LooneyTunez 2 minutes later. There was also a match against the “Pacific Islands” in 2004 which probably included a little dance up-front as well, because Pacific Islanders like doing that kind of thing.
Given this information, surely no jury would find that the reaction of Mnr Botha was “understandable”.

And then there are “other incidents” involving Bakkies, where he has tried to break players who haven’t even done the Haka. Gio Aplon of the Stormers, for example. Mind you, that was a long while ago – well, two months ago, anyway – in May this year.
I was there that day and watched as Gio (who weighs a mighty 75kg) was illegally taken out of a ruck by Botha (120kg) and was quite broken. Although, he got better.
But Gio hadn’t been dancing and threatening to beat the Bulls to a pulp. His only crime was to be on the end (corner?) of Bakkies’ shoulder in front of the Railway Stand at Newlands.
Maybe Botha had got him confused with one of the cheerleaders, who did have a quick boogie on the pitch before the teams came out.
We’ll probably never know. But since there was no Haka involved, his reaction in this case was far from understandable.

And what of this Haka and the threats and abuse it brings with it, anyway?
Have the All Blacks actually ever beaten anyone to a pulp during a Haka-prefixed game? Only on the scoreboard, methinks (32-12 last weekend).
And is there really any evidence that arms and legs – (is it ok if I use the collective term “limbs” here, JD? Is that alright?) – is there any evidence that limbs have been severed during an All Black game?

I’m no expert on rugby, but I can use Google and I can find no record of traumatic amputation of any limb during an international rugby match involving New Zealand. And that’s 462 games.

Ignoring replacements players and the complications that they would bring to the calculation and therefore working on the basis of 15 opposition players per game (and a rather obvious 4 limbs per player), that’s almost 28,000 limbs that the New Zealanders have – through the medium of dance – allegedly threatened to amputate during rugby matches and a grand total of zero that they’ve actually managed to tear off.

If you or Bakkies had actually done the maths, you’d surely realise that this Haka thing is obviously just an empty threat and nothing to get all wound up about. Sadly, that does mean that his reaction is anything but understandable.

I recognise that this blog post may seem to you to be part of the “injust” “tirade” against Bakkies, but it’s actually not. It’s simply a reasoned response to your foolish action in attempting to explain his foolish action.

And so, JD Bryce, your letter to the Times is therefore declared null and void and you are banned from 9 weeks from writing anything remotely involving rugby to any newspaper.

Save maybe for an apology.

One of the biggest eye-openers you can have is seeing a story in the press which you have personal knowledge of.
When you read the article, you can marvel at just how inaccurate and mis-representative the reporter or journalist is being.
Applying this new-found enlightenment to other stories in the media can lead to chronic cynicism when reading newspapers or perusing internet news sites. You may suddenly find that you want to take the content with an appropriately sized pinch of salt. Builder’s Warehouse sell 25kg bags of salt for exactly this purpose. Buy a couple – they’ll will last you a week.

Of course, it could be that you just got unlucky and that all the other stories out there are 100% bang on, deadly accurate.
But that seems rather unlikely, doesn’t it?

And it was with a heavy and cynical heart that I read the latest attack on Brazil’s preparations for the 2014 World Cup in the Guardian.

And so to 2014. Three years ago, when Brazil was unveiled as the host of the next World Cup, the country’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, promised a tournament so well organised that even his country’s greatest rivals – the Argentinians – would be unable to criticise it. Now, however, even Brazilians are starting to speak out against the lack of progress in stadium construction and infrastructure projects, amid concern over corruption and bad planning and calls for the number of host cities to be cut from 12 to 10.

It’s exactly what they were saying about South Africa 4 years ago. And that’s got me on the phone to my local salt mine.

Because the issues over crime and security were unfounded. The allegations that the stadiums would not be ready or would not be up to standard were nonsense. Our transport system upgrades were completed and well utilised. And when the media realised this, they moved on to more trivial, more foolish stories of snakes, race wars and the like.

I know you’re as thankful as I am that SA stayed free of significant seismological activity during the tournament.

The Guardian article describes Brazil’s 2014 bid as being “ambitious”. Well, good. What were they expecting? Brazil to submit their bid documents detailing six 50-year-old stadiums and hope that visitors will find their way around on foot, noting that it might be a long walk from Rio to some of the stadiums in the north of the country?

And then the dig at the transport infrastructure:

Even in the country’s affluent south-east, motorways are often crater-ridden dual carriageways; in the poorer north-east and mid-west their standard is frequently life-threateningly bad.

Has Tom Phillips actually relied on anything other than hearsay and his own creative licence before reporting that? Because it does sound like much of the stuff I was hearing about South Africa in the (elongated) run-up to the 2010 World Cup. And I know that a lot of that wasn’t actually true – or was at the very least blown out of all proportion. Who could forget Louise Taylor’s nonsense in the… er… Guardian (and which I dealt with ever so briefly at the bottom of this)?

Marcotti wrote of some long, unpleasant drives in the dark after covering matches. Commenting on the lack of dual carriageways and lit highways in certain areas, he described negotiating one road heading towards Jo’burg as “like snorkelling in a sewer filled with squid ink”. Shortly afterwards came the sad news that a German journalist had been killed in a car accident while driving to a Confederations Cup match.

Personally I’d have preferred the 2010 World Cup to have gone to Egypt. Yes, it would have been very hot (although it’s a dry heat) and it would, in places, have been dirty and ultra-chaotic, but it would also have been friendly and welcoming. And, in terms of crime, Egypt is extremely safe. Eyebrows would doubtless have been raised at the potential for organisational mayhem, the nightmarish Cairo traffic and the downtown air pollution, but surely if the Egyptians could build the pyramids they could host a World Cup.

Of course, the Egyptians did host the World Cup back in 4010 BC and it was a highly lauded tournament – but with their abilities as pyramid builders, it was always going to be a success. And this even though many of their roads were very poorly lit.
And South Africa’s success some 6000 years later was achieved despite it going dark at night. Amazing.

But I digress.

Maybe Brazil are behind schedule. Maybe the transport infrastructure is poor. Maybe there is political interference at every level (perish the though that this would occur anywhere else in the world).
But I don’t believe all I read in the newspapers. And I’ve seen what can be achieved in four years and thus I refuse to write them off already. Looking at many of the comments below Phillips’ piece, I can see that a lot of others are losing faith with these stories too.

Of course, when Brazil isn’t ready and the 2014 tournament is in disarray, Phillips will be able to look back and tell us that he told us so. But where is Louise Taylor’s admission that she got it so very hopelessly wrong about South Africa in 2010?

Força, Brasil!

Oh dear.
Some orange people aren’t very happy.

It seems that they weren’t the ones who won the World Cup last night and they think it’s the referee’s fault.
I don’t agree – they were rubbish and they deserved to lose – but let’s let them have their say.

Arjen Robben, for example:

We sat there in the dressing room and only talked about some of the refereeing decisions.
There were a few things which were hard to take, but there is no point talking about them now.

I can see why Robben was incensed. He made a HUGE error seven minutes from the end of normal time by inexplicably staying on his feet when Carles Puyol appeared to hold him back.
Robben’s decision was inexplicable for two reasons: firstly, that if he had gone down, Puyol would have been sent off, but moreover secondly, that he actually appeared to know how to stay on his feet.
Quite why it took him until 7 minutes before the end of the final game of the tournament to realise he had this ability is another question completely. But football365 agrees with me:

Had Robben gone to ground on the edge of the box when Puyol reached an arm out, Holland could have had a free-kick and Spain could have been reduced to ten. As it was the status quo was retained, and Robben’s complaints deservedly fell on deaf ears. The man goes over so easily, how does he expect to receive decisions when he stays on his feet? Surely a referee can only assume the challenge was incredibly light.
He made the kind of protest that is only made because things didn’t go his way. Imagine if Howard Webb did stop the play before he reached Casillas. He’d have been furious to have been stopped in his tracks. If you let the play go, allowing the advantage, you can’t then come back and send Puyol off. The advantage was allowed, Robben didn’t capitalise. End of story.

But anyway, as Arjen correctly states, there’s no point talking about it now. Although he is.
And so am I. And so is Arjen’s mate, Nigel.

Yep, Dutch number 8 Nigel de Jong was also unhappy, because he felt that the major calls went the Spaniards’ way:

There were a few curious decisions in the game, but that is football.
Football is football, maybe I am a little old school, but I remember the games back in the days when there were worse fouls which never even got booked.

Hang on, Nigel – are you saying worse fouls than this? [youtube]

Because if you are, I’m struggling to recall at what point in the “old school” of football this sort of thing went unpunished. Perhaps you’re getting it confused with the old school of Tae Kwon Do, in which “one point is scored for an effective attack to the trunk“. Or perhaps you’re just looking for a scapegoat.
Let’s bring in the  impartial football365 again:

Dutch fans who feel they have been hard done by should hold their tongues, frankly. I thought Howard Webb’s biggest two mistakes were not sending off players bedecked in orange. Nigel de Jong’s almost neck high, straight-legged assault on Xabi Alonso was nothing short of a red card. There is dangerous play, and there are tackles which you know when you commit them are capable of seriously injuring someone. This was in the latter category, and should have resulted in Holland being down to ten a long, long time before the game’s conclusion.

But if Webb sends him off then the Dutch are down to 10 men for most of the game and the match as a spectacle is ruined.
And who gets the blame for that? Well, Howard Webb, of course. It’s a classic no-win situation. Which Spain won.

The Dutch certainly didn’t hold back with their challenges and they can have no complaints with the number of yellow cards (and the one red) they received. But of course, in any big game, emotions run high and games don’t come any bigger than this. And when your own frailties are exposed and you let yourselves, your country and your fans down, then you’re bound to say some things you might regret later.
Blaming the referee conveniently deflects the attention away from a poor Dutch effort and attempts to trivialise their approach to the game, which was nothing short of thuggish. World Cup finals are rarely pretty – there’s too much at stake (compare and contrast the free flowing football of the “no pressure” third place game the previous evening) – but this one was at least full of incident.

That the Oranje caused most of that incident and then tried to blame it all away on the referee is a disgrace.

UPDATE: Not overly dramatic from Kevin McCarra in the Guardian.

Holland were already being rebuked prior to the final but these events were on a wholly different scale and Fifa should take additional action considering the harm done to the culmination of a tournament that means so much around the globe.
After a World Cup final of so toxic a nature the stadium is in need of decontamination more than the regular clean-up.

And some good stuff from Richard Williams in the same place.

UPDATE 2: And the more I read that football365 post, the better it gets.

“When I’m feeling blue, all I have to do, is take a look at you, then I’m not so blue.”
So sang Phillip “it is here” Collins in his hit Against All Odds.
Quite why he couldn’t find another word to rhyme with “blue”, particularly with the massive lexicographical selection available to him, I have no idea.
But it doesn’t matter, because that’s not relevant to this blog post at all.

No, because I meant to start (and sing along with me here):
“When I’m wondering what to write about here, all I have to do, is take a look at the letters page of the Southern Suburbs Tatler, then I don’t have to wonder what to write about anymore.”
It’s like Phil Collins’ efforts, but far more pertinent to this blog post, because it’s exactly what I did (and have done previously). And it was there that I found a letter from P During of Newlands.
It went a little something like this:

Counter Attack
Here is a simple solution to counter Table Mountain muggings (“Mountain Safety Concern”, Tatler, June 17).
Or armed forces must have special people trained in unarmed combat.
Dress some of these people as tourists with valuables such as expensive cameras and watches.
Unsuspecting muggers could then be roughly handled and handed over to the police.
Perhaps people highly skilled in karate would also be prepared to help out.

This issue of muggings on Table Mountain is hugely contentious. People like me lament the fact that each incident (in single figures each year) gets front page news, while the other lot are annoyed that more isn’t made out of it – as if it could be. It’s perfect fodder for the local tabloid though – drama, crime, dismay and the opportunity to prompt letters from P During of Newlands.

In just 5 lines, P During delivers well-considered and powerful advice. You can’t almost see him sitting at home, smoking his pipe and slippers while reading the Tatler’s story on June 17th. He’s thinking that there’s surely some way he can help in sorting this situation out. And then suddenly, it hits him: bring in the army!
“Yes, back in my day, we had to learn what to do when we ran out of bayonets behind enemy lines. A little unarmed combat. Of course, back then you could whip Fritz’s gun and shoot him in the face, but if I suggest that, they probably won’t publish my letter.”

And he’s right, of course. But no-one is fooled by his clever line “Unsuspecting muggers could be roughly handled”. Despite the fact that P During is – in all likelihood – a lovably harmless 80-something year old granddad, that line is clearly unsubtle code for “Unsuspecting muggers could have seven bells of sh!t kicked out of them” (sorry Mum).

But it’s his last line that takes the biscuit. It’s almost as if he thinks that having members of the Special Forces beating up muggers in Skeleton Gorge might not be enough. And while he doesn’t actually use the ‘N’ word, we all know what he’s thinking.
Yes, P During of Newlands wants Ninjas on the slopes of Table Mountain.

And it might not be a bad idea, but it will never happen. Because ninjas (as we all know) are covert agents or mercenaries of feudal Japan. And Table Mountain is a National Park. There is no way that the authorities will allow an alien species to be introduced to the area. Last time they did that with the Himalayan Tahrs, they changed their minds and went out and shot them.
Release some ninjas and if you change your mind, you’ve got problems. Ninjas would obviously be a whole lot more difficult to locate than tahrs once they were released on the mountain.
And you’d have to find some very brave or very stupid marksmen to go after them. While tahrs are known for their sure-footedness and small horns, ninjas are known for stealth and their ability to kill people very efficiently. Get too close when hunting tahrs and while you might get butted, you’re unlikely to find a shuriken embedded in your forehead, flung by a hand you never even saw.

I don’t have the answer to these over-publicised attacks, but I will be writing to the Tatler this week to advise the National Park Board against deploying ninjas for the reasons I give above.

Dear Uruguay,

As an honourary South African, may I first apologise for the huge amount of anti-Uruguayan sentiment that has been demonstrated amongst the locals here since Luis Suarez’s last-gasp handball against Ghana. Labeling the whole team as “cheats”, ”scum” and “cheating scum” due to the instinctive actions of one player is rather foolish and unnecessary in my humble opinion. Equally as bad are the appalling and unamusing puns around the name of your country: “Ur-a-gay” and “Ur-a-gone”, which of course, you’re not, although last night’s defeat means that you will be exiled to Port Elizabeth for the weekend. I’m sorry about that too.

The popular perception amongst the nouveau riche of footballing knowledge (and by nouveau, I mean “I’ve learnt everything there is to know about soccer in the last 4 weeks”) seems to be that Suarez was at fault for Ghana’s exit. However, this is surely only the view of those who watched that game through African tinted spectacles. When viewed through neutral eyes, Ghana’s defeat was actually due to the fact that they couldn’t score any goals – especially from the penalty spot.
I’ve done some rudimentary calculations and it appears that statistically speaking, 85% of penalties are scored. In that quarter final, Ghana managed to pop a whole 40% in. Quite how that pitiful inaccuracy has been twisted and turned into apparently being Mr Suarez’s fault is somewhat beyond me.

The cheating allegations continue. That your players dive in order to get fouls. Like dear Luis again, for example, when SA goalie Itumeleng Khune tripped him up. Although, in fairness, that one was because he was tripped up by Itumeleng Khune, rather than because he dived.
But anyway: diving. It’s ugly and I dislike it.  We all do. Uruguay are, of course, the only nation whose players do this. Well, apart from Arjen Robben and Robin van Pear-See of Holland. And Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal. So Uruguay, Holland and Portugal, then. And maybe Fernando Torres a bit as well. So add Spain too.
(We’d probably include France, but they weren’t really here long enough for anyone to notice.)
But Uruguay are definitely the biggest cheats at diving, because South African fans say so (while conveniently ignoring Teko Modise’s pathetic 3m springboard antics).

And talking of Teko, we can also add to this growing list of reasons that we hate each and every one of the 3,500,000 inhabitants of your country so very much, the fact that you effectively ended Bafana Bafana’s dreams of World Cup glory by comprehensively outplaying them and scoring three more goals that they did in Pretoria on the 16th. How dare you?
Of course, that’s what you came here for – to win as many games as possible.
But against the host nation? Don’t you study history at all?
Do you not recall how Germany declared war on Italy after their semi-final defeat in 2006? How Japan refused several shipments of rose-flavoured candy after Turkey knocked them out in 2002? Or how France didn’t actually take any action whatsoever after they weren’t beaten on home soil in ’98?
No Uruguay. You got lucky when South Africa just decided not to like you very much after that 3-0 drubbing in Tshwane. We could have gone a lot further, like giving your kids vuvuzelas.
(Note to parents: Just. Don’t.)

And then there’s the personal insults. Mainly about Diego Forlan’s hair. Obviously, none of the other players playing in the World Cup here have silly hair (Siphiwe Tshabalala) (cough) so this makes Diego a prime target. This is exacerbated by his annoying habit of scoring really good goals. Siphiwe only struggled with that goalscoring issue rather briefly way back when.

All in all, it’s clear to see why some South Africans have suddenly discovered this hatred from all things Uruguayan. The spirit of Ubuntu only goes so far and the bottle had obviously run dry by the time we got down to U in the alphabet. Wait til you see what they  have in store of the Zimbabweans next week – a bit of booing and some hairstyle abuse is going to seem like a game against Bafana… er… I mean like a walk in the park compared with what they’re going to get.

All in all, I think you were hard done by. Quite what people expected you to do when faced with opposition football teams in an international football tournament escapes me. I would have stopped that shot with my hand if I’d have been on the line that night. So would David Beckham, so would Lionel Messi, neither would Robert Green.
That’s just part and parcel of football. And that’s probably why so many people here just don’t get it.

UPDATE: Some more posts on this, from Jacques Rousseau and Jeremy Nell.

UPDATE 2: More – Incoming from Jacques:
From a good football blog I’ve just discovered:

Then, Ghana. This is my sixth World Cup, and I have watched a lot of football over the last 20 years. (Time I’ll never get back, Isuppose.) And I’ve never seen an ending weirder, more arbitrary and more cruel than the freakshow of missed penalties and evil-doing rewarded that brought the Black Stars’ inspirational, continent-uniting underdog run to an end. I loved it.
See, Ghana distinguished itself by becoming the only African team that knows how to get a result, come what may. Dating back (at least) to their cold-blooded 2006 elimination of the United States, they’ve always been willing to do the business. Dive in the box? Waste a little time with a fake injury? Why not? It’s a Man’s Game, after all.
Football’s message to Ghana: “Oh, you think you’re hardboiled? Meet Luis Suarez’s hand!” I’ve been wracking my brain for a Hand-of-God-style sobriquet for Suarez’s last-second “save”—someone will get there, I’m quite sure—but in the end, it was just the kind of bizarre intervention that twists history one way and not another. Plan all you want, and you cannot plan for Suarez’s hand.
Sorry, Black Stars—but you had 120 minutes to win it, and you didn’t, so fare thee well.

He’s right, you know?

Oh for a politician with a sense of humour. Or at least one with my sense of humour.

It’ll never happen.

We had a great time at the game on Saturday. Beers and prego rolls at &Union, heated debate over the Luis Suarez handball, the awesome Cape Town fan mile and then an entertaining, if rather one sided match at the Cape Town Stadium.
I wouldn’t have even thought about Helen Zille on Saturday if I hadn’t spotted her walking down Bree Street on the way to the match. This is one of the things that impresses me about Zille: she’s so down-to-earth (or if she’s not, she’s a damn good actor). I couldn’t see Zuma or Mbeki or even Tony Leon ever wandering down the back streets of Cape Town CBD to the stadium before heading up to the VIP section.

Anyway, I saw her, I tweeted, I moved on, stadiumward.

The first half went by and we further watched football, drank further beer and had further heated debate over the Luis Suarez handball. I took a quick pic of the front row of the VIP section: Blatter, Zuma, Merkel, Khosa, Zille, Jordaan – they were all there.

It was only when the second half began that I noticed a problem. Helen Zille had not returned to her seat. I was (obviously) filled with concern and I told my followers so:

7 mins of 2nd half gone. @helenzille still not back in her seat. Bad curry last night?

The first two thirds of this was first hand eyewitness stuff. The final third may have been pure speculation, but it was at least based on my own football watching experiences. Why else would anyone miss the first 7 minutes of the second half of such an important game? Or indeed any game?
Surely Delhi Belly is the only reasonable excuse for such behaviour.

11 minutes later and there’s still no sign.
Germany are planning their second goal and Helen is going to miss it.
I let people know:

@helenzille still stuck in toilet. Wilderness Search & Rescue have been called.

By now, “Where is Helen Zille?” and “Bad Curry?” were trending topics on twitter. Possibly.
Concern was mounting, as @simonwillo’s tweet testifies. Germany were anxiously passing it around at the back waiting for Joachim Louw’s signal that Helen was back in her seat and that they were now cleared to go up and pop another one in. The Rand had dropped 2% of its value based on the political instability caused by having the leader of the opposition MIA in a VIP toilet and Mayor Dan Puppet Plato was wondering who was going to tell him what to do now.

But thankfully, the chaos was averted as Helen returned to her seat:

@helenzille is back, but can we have some new loo roll to the Ladies in the VIP please? Thanks.

Dan breathed a huge sigh of relief, the Rand recovered instantaneously and the JSE rose slightly on buoyant toilet tissue sales figures. On the pitch, Miroslav Klose effectively put Argentina out of the World Cup.

All was right with the world and I thought nothing more about the whole politician stuck in the toilet saga until I got up on Sunday morning, all bleary-eyed and bushy-teethed, and checked my email.
And there it was:

At first it seemed as if my somewhat purile tweeting of the previous day had been taken out of context; that somehow, Helen thought I had been poking fun at her. But to unfollow me seemed like a huge over-reaction and wholly pointless, since now she’s hit the QUIT button, everyone can still read what I’m writing about her (or anyone else for that matter), except Ms Zille.

But then I saw the serious side of things.
What if Helen Zille had had a bad curry the previous evening. How would I have known that?
Not only would I have had to have followed her to her restaurant of (poor) choice, I would also have had to have been sat close enough to her to gain the knowledge that she was unhappy with the quality of her main course.
And then – how would I know of the unfortunate and dramatic half-time repercussions of that dodgy balti?

I need to go on record right now and say:
I did not film Helen Zille on the loo on Saturday afternoon.
Nor was I stalking her on Friday evening. I was watching the Ghana game, like the rest of you.
If my tweeting was suggestive that I had access to the VIP loos at the Cape Town Stadium, a la Pavlos Joseph, then it was never meant to be that way. It was merely speculation and if it was actually 100% accurate, well, that was just the fickle nature of fate.

Helen, if you’re reading this (and you surely are), I’m sorry if – by chance – my supposition around your temporary disappearance was concerningly correct in its allegations. I didn’t mean to scare you or insult you (I know you have issues with toilets).

I just didn’t want you to miss the football.

Number 1 in a series of 1 (so far).

It seems that Sunday Mirror hack Simon Wright was behind the much-publicised “Fan in the Changing Room” incident after England’s pisspoor showing against Algeria in Cape Town.
This from local paper The Times (which is no paragon of virtue or accuracy either, I might add):

A British reporter from The Sunday Mirror has been arrested by the South African police for “orchestrating” the incident at Cape Town’s Greenpoint Stadium where UK citizen, Pavlos Joseph trespassed into the English team’s change room.

Simon Wright was arrested for “booking hotels for Mr Joseph under a false name and also harbouring and interviewing Mr Joseph for seven days after he made news,” National Police Commissioner General Bheki Cele told a press briefing in Pretoria this morning.
Cele told both local and international media that police had evidence that Wright had orchestrated the incident and ” involved the cooperation of a number of individuals”.

Cele said observation of CCTV footage from the English change rooms and investigations confirmed this.

“They just wanted to put the World Cup in a bad light and to profit from this act- we expect to arrest more people in this case.”

Wright wrote several articles in the run up to the World Cup, criticising South Africa security and dissuaded people from attending the tournament because of crime.

Furthermore, Cele said that since the start of the tournament, countrywide, there have been 29 cases of unauthorised ticket sales. 33 people were arrested for their involvement, of which 14 were South Africans and 19 from other countries. In total, Cele said police have arrested 316 people, of which 207 are South Africans and 109 foreign nationals, including people from Mozambique, Algeria, 8 from the UK, 5 Argentinians, Denmark, France and Australia. Cele joked it was a “United Nations in Crime”. Most of the arrests were related to theft charges.

Cele said that security had been successful and that both World Cup security and normal policing were as important as each other.

“The SAPS are good ambassadors. And I would like to encourage SAPS members to ensure the Fifa World Cup takes place in stable and safe environment.”

And here’s Wright’s article on that changing room incident, complete with (and there’s a clue here) a picture of Pavlos Joseph on the pitch at the Cape Town Stadium – which is obviously the place that most trespassing English fans are taken to directly from the changing room area. Right.

This is merely evidence of the campaign of negative and sensationalist reporting that has been waged on South Africa by the British tabloids. It’s nothing we haven’t seen or heard before, but it’s nice to see some action has been taken against one of the amoral and unprofessional “journalists” behind this repeated nonsense.

UK readers of 6000 miles… please share this with your friends via facebook, twitter or email. Or any other method, really.
I have this sneaking suspicion that you’re not going to be reading much about it in your papers. Especially the Sunday Mirror.

So I’ll keep you updated.

And here’s an update now:

“It was an absolutely legitimate story that he was involved in.” said Nick Fullagar, spokesman for the British newspaper group Trinity Mirror.
He believed that the journalist “conducted himself perfectly properly as he would have here in the UK. We have spoken to him and he’s got a lawyer,” he said, adding that he would appear in court on Wednesday morning.

And that’s their defence? That Wright conducted himself as he would have done in the UK?
That’s about as good an admission of guilt as you’ll ever see.