The Eurovision Footie! Contest

FOOTIE! Euro 2008, BBC One, 4.30pm, then daily (times vary) on BBC One and ITV1

Let’s face it, sport is hardly our strongest suit here at lowculture towers. We managed to cover Sport Relief the other month, but that was mainly because it featured mini-episodes of The Apprentice and Strictly Come Dancing and some people from Hollyoaks also turned up at some point. Still, summer 2008 is going to be very sporty indeed, what with Wimbledon and the Olympics and the start today of Euro 2008 (aka The Footie), so I thought we ought to at least pay some attention to it, as it will be on telly quite a lot this summer, and like many of you, I haven’t quite decided how much of my summer I want to give over to the bunch of reprobates in that house, so may well be tuning in to the sport a fair bit instead (And let’s face it, there isn’t much else on today that we haven’t already previwed lots in the past).

Because my knowledge of The Footie is a bit limited (I’m a Grimsby Town supporter and I live in Sheffield, so I’m not exactly used to world-class sport), I enlisted a SPECIAL GUEST PUNDIT today to talk you through why The Footie is actually somewhat lowcultural and give you the lowdown on who you should be lusting over, gossiping about and placing bets on over the next three weeks.

Take it away forum user Paulie…

When Martin “Chariots” Offiah squeezed his hard muscled body into a pair of tight sparkly trousers and waistcoat and took to the floor with the lovely Erin Boag during the first series of Strictly Come Dancing, the line between sport and celebrity became even more blurred, following David Beckham’s decade long sterling work to merge the two.

Fellow rugby players Matt Dawson and Kenny Logan took part in later series, as did athletes Roger Black, Denise Lewis and Colin Jackson, snooker players Dennis Taylor and Willie Thorne, and cricketers and series champions Darren Gough and Mark Ramprakash. The series have also featured two footballing greats, the shooting, scoring and rapping John Barnes and legendary Peter Schmeichal, one of the greatest goalkeepers ever to have played, a winner of the European Championships with Denmark in 1992, inspiration for a Coronation Street dog and one time BBC Eurovision pundit.

Whilst devotees of the lower side of culture wouldn’t consider themselves natural sports fans, there’s something incredibly lowculture about the staging of the big events, including Diana Ross’s “penalty” opening the 1994 World Cup, Kylie’s performance to close the 2000 Olympics and Victoria and Cheryl cheering on their boys in Germany two years ago.

So here’s a guide to the sixteen teams involved, showing that The Beautiful Game can be as sordid as Footballers’ Wives when it needs to be, mixed in with some actual factual footballing facts. (I’ve just realised that factual is like actual but with an f in front of it!)

Group A

Czech Republic
Captain Tomas Rosicky (injured for this tournament) and five of his team mates were fined £25,000 in March after partying in a hotel with six prostitutes, following their loss to the German team. Rosicky’s girlfriend, the incredibly beautiful Czech TV presenter Radka Kocurova, kept a dignified silence on the matter. The Czech Republic are the sort of team who promise much but often fail to deliver, a bit like a faceless gaydar profile.

Portugal
Cristiano Ronaldo is currently the best footballer in the world. He’d be even better if he didn’t fall over every time someone touched him, and then lay on the floor sulking if he doesn’t get a free kick. The most photographed footballer after Beckham, he’s got the body of Falcon exclusive and has inspired many a famousmale thread and countless crusty socks. His star will either shine, or crash and burn. I’m predicting the latter.

Switzerland
Switzerland managed to progress to the second round of the World Cup by not conceding a goal. They went out of the tournament when their final game went to penalties, and they failed to convert one. Their best known player in the UK, defender Philippe Senderos, speaks six languages and has a shaved head and an eight-pack that he doesn’t like to show off very much.

Turkey
Whilst the England team won’t be participating in the tournament, at least one English man will be. Walthamstow’s finest, Colin Kazim Richards, decided to play for Turkey out of allegiance to his Turkish born mother. Having moved from Sheffield United to Fenerbache last year, he’s known as Kazim Kazim in Turkey, but he’ll always be Colin here.

Group B

Austria
Austria qualified for their first Euro championships, and did so only by being joint host nation. None of their players have been caught up in scandals involving drugs, prostitutes, full gay sex or dating Danielle Lloyd, and they probably never will.

Croatia
Having beaten England both in Zagreb and at Wembley, in knocking out England from this tournament, Croatia awarded the England football team a much needed boost: the sacking of manager Steve McLaren, the wally with the brolly. Despite missing star striker Eduardo da Silva through injury, Croatia will be one of the teams to watch, and you wouldn’t bet against them getting to the semi finals at least.

Germany
There’s a 4 second clip of captain Michael Ballack on youtube, skipping in very baggy shorts, which has been viewed nearly 250,000 times. He has a very commanding presence on the pitch, as well as in his pants. Another youtube clip of former team mate Sebastian Kehl has attracted over 420,000 viewings. The Germans are big game players and tournament favourites.

Poland
Strictly Come Dancing’s Ola Jordan will be cheering on her home team, along with the 178 million Polish people now living in the UK (source: The Daily Mail). Making their debut in the competition, all three goalkeepers ply their trade in the UK, proving the Poles really are good with their hands.

Group C

France
The French football team are slightly more modest than their rugby counterparts when it comes to gratuitous male nudity, although striker Djibril Cissé, has appeared butt naked in the Dieux du Stade calendar, showing off his tattoos. Aside from “Mr Cissé”, he’s also known also as “The Lord of the Manor of Frodsham”, a title that came free with the country estate he bought. He’s married to a hairdresser from Anglesey and now plays for Marseille.

Holland
Goalkeepers are meant to stop things going past them, so imagine the media interest when uncapped Dutch goalkeeper Stefan Postma was featured in a sex tape letting one in from his girlfriend, with little chance of him keeping a clean sheet afterwards… And if you thought England went WAG overboard, when midfielder Rafael van der Vaart married tv presenter Sylvie Meis, it was broadcast live on Dutch television. Not even ITV2 could pull that off for Coleen. Could they?

Italy
World cup winners Italy have a lot to prove after going out of Euro 2004 with a whimper, and blaming their failure on a Scandinavian conspiracy. A week before the tournament, the team was “rocked” by losing captain, defender and Cosmo centerfold Fabio Cannavaro to an ankle injury. The second hottest man on the team, midfielder Gennaro Gattuso has lowculture connections: he’s the brother in law of GMTV’s celebrity reporter Carla Romano, whose colleague Fiona Phillips is a Chelsea supporter. Cannavaro and Gattuso successfully modeled Dolce & Gabanna pants in the run up to the 2006 World Cup.

Romania
Tattooed striker Adrian Mutu was sacked from Chelsea in 2004 for failing a drugs test and admitting to taking cocaine. His bad luck continued when a newspaper set him up by paying a “stunning blonde” porn star to “lure” him to a flat for “three romps” which were being filmed. Mutu, more Raging Stallion than Falcon, later said of his temptress “She is a low quality woman for what she did”. Some high quality photographs were produced, showing the woman to be less than stunning, and far from blonde. And for everyone who loves a happy ending, Mutu has since kept himself out of trouble and has a lovely wife and 3 kids to keep him busy.

Group D

Greece
Despite fielding a team of no household names, Greece won the tournament in 2004 and upset all the odds, as well as poor Cristiano Ronaldo, who cried like Jessie Buckley when he lost in the final. Greece play the sort of football you wouldn’t go out of your way to watch, lacking flair and star quality, grabbing a lucky break before milking it and going on the defensive. Like Jessie Buckley.

Russia
Russia won Eurovision and the Uefa cup, and therefore shouldn’t win this on principle. There’s no whiff of scandal about the team, perhaps thankfully, as they’re not known to be a bunch of lookers.

Spain
The Spanish team have only 5 players who play outside of La Liga, and four of those are at Liverpool, with the amazing Cesc Fabregas playing at Arsenal. Star of The Cesc Fabregas Show which featured Matt Lucas and Paul Kaye, he’s inspired many a chant at Arsenal, including a Salt’n’Pepa tribute “Let’s talk about Cesc, baby”. He used to have the most appalling mullet in football but since he’s sorted out his hair he’s earned many a comparison to Sylar from Heroes.

Sweden
Captain Freddie Ljungberg (who is hoping to be fit after breaking a rib in April) and defender Olof Mellberg had a fight before the 2002 World Cup after Mellberg “came in too hard” on Ljungberg in a tackle. They also had a tussle in the 2006 World Cup, which was described as “short but hot”. If they have another squabble this year, here’s hoping it’s both naked and filmed.

And you can’t attempt to be a pundit without making a prediction, so using my psychic skills, I’d go for with Germany-Croatia and Holland-Spain semi finals, Germany beating Holland in the final. On penalties. But I could be horribly wrong.

Good Sports

CHARITY! Sport Relief, BBC One, 7.00pm & 10.45pm and BBC Two, 10.00pm

What are your favourite TV charity marathon moments? This correspondent is torn. Would it be Comic Relief 1987 where she got to go to school dressed as a clown, which somehow meant being able to wear pyjamas, which was absolutely ace? Or ITV Telethon 1990 where Grimsby theatre group Stage One released a dreadful single, ‘Power to the Pupils’ in league with Jive Bunny that sold so badly every household in Grimsby ended up with at least three free copies? Or could it be Children in Need 1993 with the Doctor Who and EastEnders er, classic, crossover, Dimensions in Time? Or, you know, that time when Dawn French songged Hugh Grant? One thing it’s not likely to be, though, is any Sport Relief moment.

We are veterans of the charity telly marathon here, and yet we cannot remember a single moment of any previous Sport Relief event. Other than David Walliams swimming the channel, which we are assuming was for Sport Relief. That doesn’t mean we are against the idea of sport and charity collaborating. After all, we totally remember Sport Aid with its ‘Everybody Wants to Run the World’ theme tune. It just means this event has been less than memorable in the past.

Still, this year it seems they are pulling the stops out a bit with the telly extravaganza. Highlights include Jonathan Ross v Parky in a ‘battle of the chat shows’ (Wossy, obviously), Jimmy Carr hosting A Question of Sport Relief, the unlikely collaboration between Top Gear and the long dead Ground Force (that’s the bit on BBC Two when the ‘main’ channel goes to the news), and, best of all, the climax of Sports Relief Does the Apprentice when one of the hapless men gets fired (our money is on Kelvin MacKenzie - Sralan doesn’t seem so keen on former tabloid editors) and Sport Relief Does Strictly Come Dancing which includes Gemma Bissix (Dame Clare Devine/Bates) and Elaine Paige, although given that they would be in our dream line-up for Strictly proper, we have mixed feelings about them being here.

Anyway, lest we forget, this is all for a good cause - supporting a variety of projects in the UK and overseas. So don’t forget to go and donate.

Vote for them! Their families are NOT DEAD (probably)!

Now, lowculture has been accused in the past of not being very into the whole sporting thing. But that’s not true! At least one member of the board (Sparkle) does some running and another member (Paulie Paul) actually talks about sporty things in a manner that suggests he at least sort of knows what he is talking about. And even some of the more fairweather of us like a bit of the old World Cup, or Wimbledon, or the Olympics. So anyway, this is to prove that we are not elitist against sport (even though a lot of it is a bit boring and goes over our heads).

Last year there was a lot of coverage about how hardly anyone in the sporting world had done anything to merit this award, which was perhaps a touch unfair on the likes of Beth Tweddle and winner Zara Phillips, although it probably was fair to say that David Walliams’ channel swim was most people’s sporting highlight of the year.

Anyway, this year has hardly been much more exciting, but at least there is a bit more competition for this trophy than in previous years, which are often a shoo-in. Technically, there are ten contenders (including Andy Murray, which is a bit rubbish as his brother Jamie isn’t even nominated, despite WINNING WIMBLEDON which Andy will never do, nor any other Brits, come to think of it. OK, it was doubles, so no-one cares, but still), but the general consensus is that it’s a three-horse race between Joe Calzaghe, Ricky Hatton and Lewis Hamilton.

We think Hamilton might edge it because he is the prettiest and most media/granny-friendly. But there has been a lot of dissent because apparently he only came SECOND (don’t ask us in what race. Something involving fast cars). As we go to press, Hatton is about to fight in a very neatly-timed bout, so if he wins, expect this award to go his way instead.

And thus concludes your LC sporting action until a nominal nod to the the World Cup or the Olympics in the summer… or even Wimbledon, if we get really excited.