C'mon, time to rebrand your life! by John Pilger

In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger continues his examination of the effect of 'extreme corporatism' - money - on sport. He contrasts the last of the great sporting stars who were not celebrities in the modern sense with the enrichment of Rupert Murdoch and the corruption of sports like cricket. The year before England won the 1966 World Cup, I interviewed its captain, Bobby Moore. Having not long arrived from the antipodes, where “soccer” was a minority sport beloved by Italians and Croats, I did not have a clue about the game. Nevertheless I had been assigned to write a “human interest” piece on the West Ham star by the same convivial assistant editor who had hired me believing I could play cricket, because I was Australian, and so assist the Daily Mirror team in its grudge match against the Express. I could swim and row and had done time in a rugby scrum, but cricket, no. (He forgave me). I met Bobby Moore outside West Ham tube station, and we walked round the corner to a greasy spoon that was filled with Woodbine fug. People beamed and shook his hand, reinforcing my impression of a gracious, modest man. Here was a star in every sense – talent, looks, fame – and yet he seemed genuinely surprised by the fuss. In the queue for tea and coffee he patiently engaged an elderly fan who was hard of hearing. When I unwisely feigned knowledge of the game, he let me down gently. As we parted, he said, “Look, this is a bit embarrassing, but I’ve got this agent and he’s asked me to ask for 50 quid for the interview.” I said I would pass it on to my editor; I don’t know if he was paid, and I doubt if he cared. I remembered Bobby Moore when I read about another sporting star, Lleyton Hewitt, the Australian tennis seed and famous air-puncher. For all his classy, often tireless play, Hewitt’s behaviour on court has always been difficult to watch, because he gives the impression only he matters. His aggressive “C’mon!” and fist pumping are his trademark, literally. He is not merely a tennis player; he is Brand Hewitt, which is owned by Lleyton Hewitt Marketing Pty Ltd which owns the rights to two “C’mon” logos. Lleyton Hewitt Marketing, or LHM, recently suffered a defeat against a sports fan in Australia, Josh Shiels, who since 2004 has used “Come-on” to promote his struggling sportswear business. In a statement, LHM says that it has no problem with other parties owning trademarks incorporating “C’mon” and “Come on”; however, having been “threatened” by Shiels and asked to “surrender” its own trademarks, it requested that the Trade Marks Office cancel one registered to Shiels on the basis that he failed to use it. At an intellectual property hearing in Canberra, Shiels said that his wife and daughters had designed the logo and his business had sold “about 10 shirts”. He pointed out that “come-on” had been a popular catch cry in Australia since world series cricket began in the 1970s; there was even a song. The hearing officer decided that, however meagre Shiels’s business, he had the right to make use of the words. Shiels is left fearing he will face a re-match. The stark contrast between Bobby Moore and Brand Hewitt is telling because it represents what has been lost and is a reminder of the ubiquitous nature of extreme corporatism. It seems that no idea, no event, no talent, no personality, no resource of nature has value unless it is owned and branded. When the public water supply of Bolivia’s second city, Cochabamba, was sold off to a foreign consortium, rainwater was included. The clouds became the property of multinationals – until the people fought back, and won. The pursuit of profit in sport seems unrelenting. Having said goodbye to foreign sports writers and their platitudinous eulogies for the “rainbow nation”, the South African treasury reckons it put $5 billion into the World Cup while corporate sponsors took home more than $4 billion in tax-free profits. All those corporate parties, free tickets, kickbacks and other “gifts” merely indulged a post-apartheid elite which presides over the most inequitable society on earth. Since 2008, during the feverish building of stadiums, several of them unnecessary, more than a million people lost their jobs. In the wake of the World Cup, 1.3 million public sector workers have struck for a living wage. The South African police now have paramilitary powers comparable with the apartheid era. A new Protection of Information Bill before parliament will conceal the corruption of the ruling African National Congress “wabenzi” (identifiable by their large silver Mercedes). “If journalists have to be fired [or go to prison], because they don’t contribute to the South Africa we want,” said the ANC spokesman, “let it be.” In India, a similar re-branding is under way for next month’s Commonwealth Games. In the country that has most of the world’s malnourished children, the capital Delhi has been re-branded a “world class city” at a cost of $2.5 billion. A school for 180 slum children has been bulldozed so that a vast estate of luxury apartments can be built for visiting athletes. “They told us we were a security threat so we had to go,” said the headteacher. “All my children were crying.” It is one of many demolitions; over 100,000 families have been evicted to make way for “security zones” around the Games and facilities that will mostly benefit India’s small but powerful managerial and technocratic class who, besotted with all things corporate, prefer not to be reminded that 77 per cent of their compatriots are dirt poor. Corporate sport has enriched Rupert Murdoch, corrupted cricket and much of football, subverted numerous other play and appropriated the Olympics and similar spectacles. Its language is that of business schools, PR companies, consultancies and banks. Its “philosophy” is that everything is for sale and monopoly rules. Just wear the logo, pump your fist and bellow, “C’mon!”

They all sell out in the end by Mark Steel

Now there must be loads of people who wish they'd be accused of making mistakes on purpose to satisfy a betting scam. Gordon Brown would love it if he could claim he wasn't really bafflingly useless, he'd thrown the election on the instructions of a crook with a drawer full of fifties. And the England football team would be delighted to reveal that of course they could have beaten Algeria if they'd tried, but you could get 50-1 against a draw in which England were shite beyond the power of rational thought so they couldn't resist.


But even so everyone in charge of cricket seems to be shocked at claims of Pakistani fiddling, in which the honour of the game was allegedly sacrificed for vulgar cash. The English Cricket Board must be especially horrified, because when Allen Stanford, on trial for fraud involving $8bn, offered several million if they took part in his Stanford tournament, they waited an honourable three seconds before replying "Ooooooh, yes, please, ooooh, of course, Mr Stanford, we'll change the rules if you like and play with a beach ball or play naked or allow a fielder to prod the batsman with a cactus anything you like, oooh, you're so rich would you like to grope the players' wives? We could have words with Mrs Flintoff. Oooh, so much money."


So their complaint about the Pakistanis must be "damned fools to bowl deliberate no-balls for £10,000. They should have held out for fifty". The current chairman of the England Cricket Board is Giles Clarke, who became a millionaire through investment banking, so you can imagine he must be appalled at how anyone could ignore the long term social implications of their actions and only consider short-term selfish gain.


Because cricket is about fair play and not trying to obsessively enrich yourself, which is why another recent chairman was Lord MacLaurin, former CEO of Tesco. Presumably they said: "This chap looks ideally suited as he's got an average of 14. That's nothing to do with his batting, it's his average place on the Sunday Times Rich List." If Richard Branson fancied it, he could probably wangle a place as England's wicketkeeper.


To be fair, this attitude isn't confined to England. The president of the International Cricket Council is Sharad Pawar, the richest politician in India, who's warned the Pakistanis should drop the suspected cheats because "if you have tainted players taking part it might lead to people not watching the matches and that has a knock-on effect for sponsors and marketers". And it is horrifying that players care more about money than the beauty of the game, with no thought for how hard that makes it to attract young impressionable fans such as npower.


The cricket authorities' current mania for 20- overs cricket is similarly driven by short-term gain, and it seems they'd promote whichever form of the game the sponsors and marketers demanded.


Next year they'll take advice from World Wrestling and players will all have characters, like "Wild Boy Pietersen" who bats on a horse, or "Secret Swanny Spinner" who wears a mask as he's bowling and sometimes the opposing captain tries to rip it off. Then the whole thing can be fixed as commentators yell: "Oh my goodness, the twelfth man's brought the drinks out but he's got an axe and he's swinging it at the batsman, who's complaining he can't see the axe because of bad light and now the third umpire's driving onto the pitch in a tank, have you ever seen anything like this, Sir Ian?"


The decision to sell the TV rights to Sky was based on short-term profit, although it removed the game from anyone who doesn't pay for Sky Sports. If the Playboy Channel offered a couple of million more, the English Cricket Board would take it, and the opening bowlers for the Ashes would be Candy, 25, and Ginger, 19, who'd promote the matches by sitting on the pitch giggling: "We can swing it both ways in the right conditions."


The philosophy that controls world cricket is the one that controls the world; to make as much profit as quickly as possible and never mind about what happens later. Perhaps the accused thought they were only following the rules of the game.

First published in The Independent on 1st September 2010

People would play golf if the sport wasn't so snobbish, Dress codes ban denim and inist on jackets and ties in the bar by Mark Steel

Mark Steel


As the Open Golf Championship is about to begin, the question everyone must be asking is, "Why is a splendid game still allowed to be ruined by stuck-up condescending suburban snobs, who probably think the most scandalous aspect of the MPs' expenses issue is that Douglas Hogg let his moat get dirty in the first place?".

For example many clubs have an 'artisans' club attached to them, which allows commonfolk to play in return for labouring on the course. The secretary of a club in Yorkshire was quoted recently as saying: "The artisans may play on a Sunday after raking the bunkers, but they're not allowed at any time to walk in front of the clubhouse."

Because who hasn't, if we're honest, had our day ruined by unexpectedly catching a glimpse of a hideous artisan? If they broke the rule the club secretary would probably ring environmental health and scream "Come quick for God's sake, we've got an infestation of the working class. We've put powder down but they walk straight over it, it's terrifying."

This elitism oozes throughout golf. Dress codes bar denim and insist on jackets and ties in the bar to "Protect standards". They must fear that if they let the working class in, they'd drag a piano to the hole and all dance up and down to "My Old Man Said Follow the Van", until the green was ruined. Then they'd tape all the clubs together to make one long pole and use it as a chimney sweep, getting dirt all over the fairways, then turn the clubhouse into a shop selling everything for a pound. The place would be WRECKED.

A typical dress code, at the Oxford club, insists: "Caps must not be worn the wrong way round at any time on the grounds." Because if you relax that rule the Oxford spire posse would be down there yelling "Hey caddie I don't want no four iron muthah, pass me my Uzi, I'm gonna SHOOT the ball out the rough."

Representing one side of this elite cosiness over the next few days will be commentator Peter Alliss, conveying an Edwardian amateur unworldliness completely at odds with the fierce competitive nature of the players. And everything revolves around charming lunches and everyone's lovely as long as they're posh and you can imagine him saying: "Oh there he is there he is, the dear old Duke of Middlebury, right by the clubhouse, splendid fellow, hasn't missed an Open Championship for more than 70 years, except for 1943 when he commanded a unit of the SS in Bavaria and even then he found time to pop in to the Munich Masters, delightful wife too."

To be fair to the golf elite, they haven't just been obsessed with snobbery. They've managed to promote every other kind of prejudice as well. Hundreds of clubs refused membership to women until forced to by new legislation.

In America the Professional Golf Association adopted a 'Caucasian-only clause', that barred black players until 1962. Even now, a player in Yorkshire, Jay Athwal, has set up an 'Asian Open', because clubs make Asian players feel unwelcome. He said "A steward at one club told me not only could I never join, nor could my children's children." Of course the clubs don't officially practise segregation. They'd probably say "Coloured folk are more than welcome to join, as long as on the first tee they're accompanied by a missionary who converts them to Christianity."

But the frustrating part is far more people would play and watch the game, if they could feel comfortable doing so. In Scotland and Ireland, where it doesn't have the same image, golf has a much wider appeal. Putting greens and pitch and putt courses are hugely popular. But somehow society is so riddled with division, the simple joy of whacking a ball is organised to exclude most of the population.

So the first step to popularising the sport should be to change the commentators. This year's open should be covered by a DJ from Kiss FM, going "Big shout out to Lee Westwood and the fourth tee massive, put that bunker behind you bro. And here's a text from MC 2wood of Oxford saying Tiger is FIT, now down to the tenth for some Ernie Els action".

Peter Allis can be employed at crazy golf courses, muttering "Oooo my my my she's over-chipped that right over the windmill, and well, well, well she'll be lucky to make it into the funnel in two from there, what a funny old game this is."


First published in The Independent on 15th July 2009