I don't know, ask your wife...

Goodbye Lionel

Asbo's back to the library. It'll be in a van by now being delivered to the next borrower on the reserved item list. I cam out with a copy of On The Road for MM, the original scroll, written in three weeks and with the original names and nothing cut out.

You 'aint singin' any...oh...you weren't singing in the first place

I've been checked out. Had all the tests. I'm fully immune. Won't be copping a dose of the contagion no matter what drivel the Westminster glory hunters spout between selling off our playing fields to their developer mates, or by that undersized toffee-nose Lord Smarmy of Coe. However they try to big it up the Olympics just don't cut it. At risk of being too frank, I think that every four years there's a fantastic sporting event. For people who are not very good at the sports that real folk care about. The sports that people obsess about. Off the top of my head these are:

1. Football. Global language. Inspires great passion. South American full back underperformed at a World Cup and was shot dead on his return home.South American nations' GDP dips about 25% during World Cup years. Never trust anyone without some sort allegiance to a club or without any knowledge of the game. “I know nothing about football and I've never played the game except at school under duress” translates as: “I'm a serial baby-killer who tortures puppies and kittens.”

2. Rugby. Two huge men, both over twenty stones, crash into each other at pace, and with aggressive intent. They dust themselves down. Prepare for the next collision. Zola Budd trips over and cries. Compare and contrast.

3. Baseball. American Football. Basketball. National (American) obsessions. Then there's...

4. Ice Hockey, to America add Canada, Russia, and etc.

5. Cricket. The game with the best sledging of all. Can you imagine any of these exchanges at the start of the women's 400 metre hurdles, or the synchronised swimming, or the prancing with ribbons thing?

Glen McGrath: Oy. Brandes. How come you're so fat?

Brandes: Because, every time I f**k your wife, she gives me a boscuit.

Malcolm Marshal to David Boon: “now, are you going to get out, or am I going to have to come around the wicket. And kill you?”

Shane Warne was struggling to get porky Ranathunga out of his crease. Healy shouted “put a Mars bar on a length. That should do it.”

A favourite:

Glen McGrath (again, playing on Sarwan and Lara's friendship): Oy. Sarwan. So what does Brian's s***k taste like?

Sarwan: Don't know. Ask your wife.

Apparently McGrath lost it and threatened to rip Sarwan's throat out.

Rod Marsh: How's your wife? And my kids?

Ian Botham: She's fine. The kids're retarded.

Merv Hughes told a batsman: Mate, if you turn the bat over, there's instructions on the back.

You won't get this from the stands in the Olympic stadia (all Barmy Army to the Aussies):

You're only good at swimming. (To the 'you don't know what you're doing song).

Get your s**t stars off our flag. (To the Stone's Get Offa My Cloud).

He's fat, he's round, he bounces off the ground, Shane Warne, Shane Warne.

Another sledge: Shane Warne tried to get at a South African opponent, “I've been waiting two years to humiliate you at your home ground” and got: “spent most of it eating by the look of it”.

And the Aussie crowd to Phil Tuffnel: “Oy. Tuffers. Lend us your brain...we're building an idiot”.