Every One's A Winner

After last week’s blog about football, my thanks to the many of you who sent me emails with actual quotes from soccer players showing they can be unintentionally funny, or thick, for short.

They ranged from the silly, like David Beckham saying “my parents have always been there for me, ever since I was seven”, to the stupid with Neville Southall’s "If you don't believe you can win, there is no point in getting out of bed at the end of the day."

Beckham made another appearance with "Alex Ferguson is the best manager I've ever had at this level. Well, he's the only manager I've actually had at this level. But he's the best manager I've ever had."

Footballers are not, of course, renowned for being academic but we might have expected better arithmetic from Paul Gascoigne than to tell a reporter "I've had 14 bookings this season - 8 of which were my fault, but 7 of which were disputable." And Geography wasn’t high on Mark Draper’s school report when he said "I'd like to play for an Italian club, like Barcelona ".

The problem with abroad, of course, is that it’s, well, abroad. Former Liverpool star Ian Rush memorable came out with "I couldn't settle in Italy - it was like living in a foreign country."

Worryingly, former England player Stuart Pierce is now in charge of the junior national side, even after he said "I can see the carrot at the end of the tunnel”.

But the best one sent was something said by Barry Venison when he was asked about pre match rituals. At Liverpool, for instance, they all touch the “This Is Anfield” sign in the tunnel before a game. Venison’s ritual makes me wonder how he ever played a game. He said "I always used to put my right boot on first, and then obviously my right sock."

Thanks to everyone who emailed me.
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I thought I’d share the best wine critique of this week.

It came from my daughter Annalie who saw a wine taster on BBC’s Saturday Kitchen and decided she may want to do that as a career. For her first tryout we gave her a glass of Asti Spumante with her dinner last weekend.

Annalie tasted it, ran it around her mouth and then pronounced in all seriousness, “Yes, it’s light and fruity, with the after taste of dwarves feet.” I don’t know whether to worry more about my daughter becoming a lush or the fact she knows what dwarves feet taste like.
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With the movies’ awards season in full swing I was delighted to have dinner this week with Oscar winner David Puttnam, or Lord Puttnam to give him his business card title. What a fascinating bloke he is. As a former winner he gets to vote in the Oscars each year so I asked him which film he’s backed for Best Film. He has voted for The King’s Speech.

One winner on the night was Gerald Parkes, a man who had put in fifty years of service to British cinema and now owns his own multi screen cinema as well as a few others. He told the story of how he makes movies accessible to all incomes, even if it means he runs at a loss.

Gerald runs specially priced screenings for old age pensioners and a few weeks ago, as he thanked them for coming, he jokingly said that any OAP bringing their grandmother the next week would get in free.

Seven days later a woman turned up with an urn full of ashes.