The real sting
I'M AMAZED at the naivete of Jacob Zuma's media advisors. The presidential entourage seem to have been genuinely taken aback by the vehement and vitriolic attacks on him from the British tabloid press for his polygamy and his peccadilloes.
He was described as a "sex-obsessed bigot" and a "buffoon", among other things. His touring party took great exception.
But they had not been properly briefed. The media advisors clearly do not understand that Britain's tabloid newspapers – the "red-tops", as they are known – are themselves obsessed with sex, they have bigotry down to a fine art and they write almost entirely about buffoons – footballers, rock stars, reality TV personalities and other celebrities. Ninety-nine percent of their reports focus on these buffoons' love lives.
All this goes, of course, with a huge dollop of hypocrisy because the red-tops always feign outrage about what they are reporting with such relish. But it's part of the game.
So there was no hostility. What the red-tops were actually saying was: "Welcome, Jacob – you're one of us!"
But it's a backhanded compliment, to put it mildly. The real sting of the tabloid treatment is that JZ is categorised along with the moronic footballers and third-rate celebrities who are the daily fare of those papers. That's where we need to worry.
The pitfalls recall the lines of Hilaire Belloc:
You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
Thank God, the British journalist.
But considering what the man will do
Unbribed there's no occasion to.
Hookers' jamboree
FORTY thousand hookers are heading for Durban for the Football World Cup, we're told. Do our marketing people still use that slogan: "Where the fun never sets"?
It's quite an influx and it could do a lot to alleviate concerns about the actual number of visitors we can expect during the competition. The hospitality industry can heave a sigh of relief.
The trick now is to persuade the hookers to also fill the stadium. Perhaps some kind of incentive scheme can be worked out.
Soccer ball
IT'S INTRIGUING to learn that the Jabulani football, which will be used in the World Cup, has apparently been adapted from the one used in the 2006 competition in Germany.
As a complete outsider to football, I had been puzzled to notice in recent years that the ball being used had changed in appearance. Whereas before it consisted of a lot of sewn-together small leather panels, suddenly it had a smooth, shiny, plastic appearance, often with a colourful motif painted on, which of course became visible only when it was not in motion. It looked almost like the kind of ball small children kick around on the beach or in the garden.
Did this affect its aerodynamics? They say a golf ball simply would not behave in the air, were it not for its dimpled surface.
Now, it seems, its smoothness did affect the new soccer ball's behaviour. The Jabulani has consequently been modified with what are known as "aero-grooves" to compensate. That's interesting.
Rugby ball
What of the rugby ball used today? It's nothing like the eight-panel leather one my generation grew up with, which became heavy as lead in the wet and slippery as a bar of soap. It also (I'm convinced) was pumped far harder and bounced more awkwardly than today's ball, which sometimes rolls almost as true as a soccer ball.
The modern rugby ball is no longer leather, it's some kind of compound, and it has on it tiny rubber nodules to make it handle better. Yet people still fumble. No names, no packdrill!
Great service!
MORE from Bill Bryson's Bizarre World (Warner Books):
While making a discreet getaway with a suitcase full of stolen jewellery, a burglar in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York stumbled as he came down the main staircase, dropped the suitcase and watched slack-jawed as a variety of glittering baubles spilled out. A porter and a house detective came over, helped him put the $5 million worth of jewels back in his case, escorted him to a cab and waved happily as he rode off.
Tailpiece
WHY DO owls not make love during a rainstorm?
It's too wet to woo.
Last word
There's a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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