I’m drifting off at the Guardian Hay festival as Al Gore tells us how to save the planet — turn off the lights, cut down on private jet trips, listen to me, just about sums up the message. Gore had started off so smart and funny, too — the politician as stand-up comic with a brilliant schtick on failure.
”I am Al Gore. I used to be the next president of the United States.” We all laugh. He pauses. ”I don’t find that particularly funny. I am a recovering politician step nine. They say you win some, you lose some, and there’s that little-known third category … ”
An hour later and we’re in drearsville. He’s carbon-neutralled his way through a quadrupling population, new technology, moral responsibility, and now he’s on to the thank-yous. He thanks the president of the festival and a man called Graydon Carter. Didn’t he play for Villa? Turns out he plays for an American team called Vanity Fair.
Hay-on-Wye is pretty much a sport-free zone. The only thing I can see vaguely sport related is a book called The Best of Times: What Became of the Heroes of ’66? There are five copies in the Guardian store. I buy one. A couple of days later there are still four left. Which is rather sad — not least because I wrote the sodding thing.
But as Al so beautifully puts it, this is the Woodstock of the mind, and as we all know it’s far too muddy and cerebral to even think about football, let alone play it at a Woodstock of the mind. Not unless you’ve got wellies anyway. Still, as I hear the words ”excess” and ”consumption” I can’t stop thinking about Posh and Becks and the fund-raising bash they recently had at Beckingham Palace.
Al is morphing in front of my eyes. As he continues with his thank-yous, his hair is blonding, his belly flattening, his impassioned grimace segueing into a sheepish smile. The former vice-president, or Mr Vice as we call him here in Hay, has evolved into the England captain. ”I’d like to thank my beautiful wife Victoria for hosting this lovely little bash, and I’d like to spank …”
Oh dear. In front of 500 of the greatest sporting and non-sporting brains of our time, at his very own Woodstock of the mind, to make such an epic Freudian slip. ”I’d like to spank …” It was the most impressive sporting slip-up I’d heard since Dickie Davies’s legendary FA Cup plug on ITV when he said: ”And for all you football fans, we’ve got cup soccer for you next week,” but got his ”cup soccer” in a twist and said something quite different. There were record viewing figures the following Saturday.
”I’d like to spank!” What was Becks thinking of? Or who? It gave us a brilliant insight into the life of a mega-successful footballer. I loved the auction presided over by Graham Norton. It was just like our school fair — except instead of offering £50 for Simon and Karen from next door to pop round and cook for 10, we had Ivor Fortune offering 100 grand for Ozzy Osbourne to cook him up a treat.
Then there was Ashley Cole casually bidding £75 000 for Becks’s second-hand watch, as if he never let a weekend pass without dropping 75k on a decent watch. He was topped only by Wayne Rooney bidding £150 000 for a session in the studio or a night on the tiles with Diddy (the artist formerly known as P Diddy). Should do the metatarsal the world of good.
Meanwhile, Becks was lovely and sheepish and compliant. It was obvious that there was only one captain in this household — Captain Posh. He came across as the sun god version of Frank Spencer. Becks is perfect for the remake of Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em. ”Ooh, Vicky, I done another woopsy.”
Which is endearing, but not necessarily the stuff of World Cup-winning captains. Becks is no Bobby Moore.
Back in Hay, Al is coming to the end of his lecture, and despite the initial burst of humour and the undoubted intellect, he has reverted to type — the politician’s Frank Spencer has done another woopsy by raging about the environment before suggesting the solution lies in reading his carbon-neutral book and seeing his carbon-neutral film. He’s no Bill Clinton.
The solution? Give the England captaincy to Steven Gerrard or John Terry. As for the presidency, I’m stumped. — Â