THE NEW DICKENS HE AIN'T
“This slice of pizza came flying over my head and hit Fergie straight in the mush. The slap echoed down the tunnel and everything stopped - the fighting, the yelling, everything. All eyes turned and all mouths gawped to see this pizza slip off that famous puce face and roll down his nice black suit.
“I thought Ferguson was going to explode but then he stormed off into the dressing room cursing and grunting, brushing the crumbs and stains off his collar. We all went back into the dressing room and fell about laughing. All I can say is that the culprit wasn`t English or French, so that should narrow it down.
“By the time we were walking down that extendable plastic tunnel everyone was having a go at each other. There were shouts of ‘you fucking cheats'and players were running into a jostling huddle where the narrow tunnel opens into a wider mouth. I was jammed in the middle. I heard the boss [Arsene Wenger] hammering Ferguson; incandescent French, verbally sparring with the bullish Scotsman.”
Meanwhile in the Times, Martin Samuel takes a closer look at his literacy masterpiece:
“From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it” - Groucho Marx
So what is your favourite bit? Oh, come on, you must have one. We all do. OK, I'll tell you mine. It is the moment when Ashley is giving evidence to the FA Premier League (FAPL) inquiry. “A brief meeting with Pini Zahavi was interrupted by a knock on the door,” he told them. “In walked the Chelsea manager and chief executive, there was general chit-chat and then we left.”
Beautiful, isn't it? General chit-chat: football's equivalent of the yada, yada, yada. You don't know the yada, yada, yada? Oh, sit down. You'll like this.
There is an episode of Seinfeld in which George Costanza is dating a girl called Marcy, who edits every story with the catch-all phrase “yada, yada, yada”. “So I'm on Third Avenue, minding my own business and, yada, yada, yada, I get a free massage and a facial . . .”
At first, George finds this liberating because it allows him to gloss over uncomfortable events in his own life. “We were engaged to be married, we bought the wedding invitations and yada, yada, yada, I'm still single . . .”
(In fact, he accidentally killed his fiancée, poisoning her with toxic adhesive after buying cheap invitation envelopes.) “What's she doing now?” Marcy asks. “Yada,” George says. Then this happens.
Marcy: “My old boyfriend came over last night and yada, yada, yada, I'm really tired today . . .”
See where we are now? It is much the same with Cole. He yada-ed his illegal meeting with Chelsea to such an extent that compilers of the official FAPL report admitted grave difficulty in giving credence to his account, or that of his agent, Jonathan Barnett.
There is a more detailed version of it in his book “Ashley Cole: My Dear God, Does He Really Think Anyone Will Go For This Nonsense”, sorry, Ashley Cole: My Defence, but the reason Chelsea officials are happy to have it out there, in contradiction to their evidence to the FAPL is because Cole's yada, yada, yada description of the meeting is so incredible that no one will believe it.