170: Gay Sports - Football 1

Well, since I’m sort of English, we might as well start the ball rolling with football. Not that I like football. Ball goes one way, then it goes another, and at the end of it all you’ve lost some ninety minutes of your life. Big fun, I’m sure.

There was, in the 60s and 70s, a tendency for on-pitch celebrations by footballers to become a little over-intense. Rolling around, hugging and kissing each other borne aloft on the ecstatic wash of victory. Which of course aroused some discomfort among the supporters and fans. Since these are the heroes of the working man and young boys everywhere they couldn’t quite come out and plainly call their country’s top players a load of old poofters. But they almost wished they could - so now there’s that little germ of irritation from which result all the following comedic pearls. Or something.


from “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” 23 November 1972
(play from 4.07 – 4.40)

A little light music, some slo-mo, and the whole farrago becomes an awful lot more romantic, dontchathink.

Bernard Hollowood, in “Punch” 20 November 1968.