TheNamelessThing.com

Reading the latest installment of United We Stand fanzine, I see a few FC United supporters are very much upset with "Dr" Hough and the piece he wrote from his "luxury" location in America. They talk of my accusation that FC United's mafia are "laughing all the way to the bank".....HA!!! This is better than laughable. If they took the time to read that bloody thing, they'd quickly see that I was referring to their complicity with the Glazers in butchering a once proud animal called Manchester United FC, not slyly trying to profit from FC's heroic expedition into the little leagues.

Talking of better than laughable, one very cheeky chap (called "Scoreboard", what an odd name!) wrote in and didn't just pan my FC article, but panned my book Perry Boys as well! Apparently the whole business induced in him a strong compulsion to "lie down" (precisely the opposite of what the lads still going to OT are doing). He said I'm obsessed with "writing over-long bollocks to prove" I've "got a degree..." He also said that the chapter about drugs in Perry Boys was comedy genius. By accident. Two things here:

1) Any half-witted fucking idiot can buy a degree these days from an accredited institution, such as the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where I earned mine. You pay the fee, fill in the forms, do the courses for a few years, and (unless you're completely non-cognitive) you receive your diploma in front of your adoring friends and family, whilst wearing a mortarboard hat and gown. By degree here, of course, I refer to a BA - a Bachelor of Arts. Not every BA is a walkover, but I'm sure someone like Scoreboard could find one - Sociology; there's a cracker, if you want to sit around a room and talk about the unfair culture we live in all day. Or basket-weaving, that perennial fave of the "let's mock the academic establishment" jet-set. Some BAs are a piece of piss. "Scoreboard" could easily go for it and be awarded one if he so desired. Unless he was just too hard for the SAS and couldn't stand being around poofy students for four years. The degree I earned wasn't a BA, but a BS (short for bullshit in many circles) - a Bachelor of Science. I'm not sure if you can just buy one of those. There's a bit more numbers and symbols and abstract four-dimensional concepts floating around, not just words about how unfair people are to each other or protracted debates about the commercialism of schools in America whose corridor floors actually contain advertisements, and illuminated billboards for Coca Cola line the cafeterias. If you're good at calculus, chemistry, and molecular biology, you could probably roll yer sleeves up, get stuck into the bastard and have a result though.

2) Ask yourself this, my friends: Would a guy who writes a book about football hooliganism which features graphs, as well as at least two chapters dedicated to surrealistic excursions into the cockney bootboy-to-Casual mythos and the northwest trainer obsession, as well as a suggestion that Manchester should be the capital of England and Manchester United have verged on using alien technology to construct Old Trafford, actually write a chapter on psychedelics and not see an opportunity for irony, humour, and other forms of tongue-in-cheekness?????? No, Mr Scoreboard, nothing in Perry Boys was written "by accident" let me assure you. But I'll take the comedy genius bit thankyouveryfuckinmuch...even if you only meant it by accident.

I think it is I that needs a lie-down. When my wife read the letter from Mr Scoreboard, she said, "Luxury? What fuckin' luxury? We live in a shithole!" before also going for a lie-down. It looks like we all need one. Nice work Mr Scoreboard. Well done, son.