"Information Services, Jeff speaking." They’re good, these people, as anyone who writes for News International will tell you. I asked Jeff Bagnall for a few items on, er, Wayne Rooney. A few clicks and a slightly fraught silence.
"I’ve got just over 7,000 in the system."
How many more will he have by the time Rooney is 20? Jeff sent me an artfully contrived selection. Among its 65 pages are claims that:
Rooney spat in a woman’s face.
His fiancée, Coleen McLoughlin, was a supermarket checkout girl.
The best goal he ever scored was a run from his own penalty area when playing as goalkeeper at the age of 12.
The great sadness of his life is that his gran never saw him play.
At a beach holiday, Coleen washed sand from his toes.
Coleen marked a hiatus in their engagement by chucking the ring (value £25,000) into a squirrel sanctuary.
As soccer’s boy wonder groaned with pleasure, there was only one thing on her mind — what pot noodle to have for supper (from a report on Rooney’s dalliance with a prostitute).
Amy, another professional, said that having sex with Rooney "ruined her life".
Rooney apologised to Coleen for these indiscretions by giving her a Mercedes.
Rooney’s favourite film is Grease.
His "dream house" will contain accommodation for an au pair.
He gives Coleen £100,000 a month pocket money.
His car was hit by a lorry on the way to training.
On a two-day trip to Paris, he and Coleen spent 36 hours in bed.
He has a donkey jacket that cost £2,500.
He has six cars.
And so Sir Alex Ferguson, Rooney’s manager at Manchester United, gave a press conference this week to discuss the matter of Rooney, lost his temper with an élan remarkable even by his own standards, dealt the innocent table a blow of hand-bruising ferocity and bounced the reporters’ tape recorders to the floor.
"He did nothing to deserve coming up before the FA, but because it’s Wayne Rooney and because it’s Manchester United, I can understand the focus," Ferguson said.
The proximate cause of Ferguson’s dismay was the clash between Rooney and Tal Ben Haim, the Bolton Wanderers player: Rooney’s intemperate hand-off, Ben Haim’s melodramatic reaction. The ultimate cause is Ferguson’s complex and disturbed notion about exceptional people and exceptional institutions.
It has long been Ferguson’s contention that United are the world’s great victims. It is his belief — you might even call it the core of his method — that becoming a great champion is a way of making yourself uniquely vulnerable.
It is a fascinating thesis, and the greatest argument in its support is the extraordinary Wayne Rooney. There is no ducking the fact that Rooney’s colossal gifts not only make him great, they also make him a victim. Rooney is perfectly entitled to tell us all that "I’m the most promising young footballer England has produced for a generation and more — and it’s just not fair".
Well, it isn’t fair, is it? It’s not fair on all the kids who are not the most promising young footballer for a generation and more, and it’s certainly not fair on Rooney, who is. It’s not fair, in the sense that he will never again be treated just like anyone else.
Right now, he cannot even be treated just like anyone else who is famous and talented. A prang with a lorry and a nation mourns, an allegation of spitting and a nation unites in fury. A series of sexual indiscretions is made public because Rooney is Rooney. It is the nation’s interest that causes the tiff between Rooney and Coleen, and that gives the nation the chance to settle back and take sides.
The money makes it worse, of course. Money also creates victims of those it befriends. The combination of Rooney’s youth and his wealth is an irresistible story, inviting envy, censure and a comfortable sneer at the vulgarity of it all. Jeff sent me a list of all six of Rooney’s cars and how much a week Coleen spends on facials. Money: the new pornography.