Above: photograph of Joey Barton illustrating an article about the player by Daily Telegraph journalist Sue Mott. For some reason this picture has a quasi-religious caption (“Awaiting a visitation..”). Like most of Sue Mott’s writing, the article was very perceptive.
All through the Christmas and New Year holiday period the news bulletins and newspapers have reported footballer (soccer player) Joey Barton’s arrest and incarceration following his involvement in a brawl in a fast-food outlet on 27th December. He was held in a cell until today (surely a ridiculous over-precaution) when he was granted bail. Joey Barton plays for Newcastle, and has also played for the England team.
The circumstances in which he was arrested are familiar to anyone who has walked through a British town or city centre on any Friday or Saturday (and increasingly Sunday) night. But you would be foolish to actually go into a town centre at night at the weekend - they are becoming no-go zones for ordinary people. You can get an idea of what they are like from the “reality” series Booze Britain (a salacious look at excessively inebriated young men and women fighting, vomiting and urinating in public - reported in a self-righteous tone that would not be out of place in The Guardian).
Anyway, I had been following the career of Joey Barton as a possible candidate for endorsing one of the upstairs PR clients (I am helping Rachel with the campaign plan). Their product has a brand personality that includes “edgy abrasive newcomer” with a prospective target audience of early-adopters, risk-takers, males aged 25 to 45. Plus there is a chance we might have negotiated a competitive rate all factors considered (the budget for this campaign is not huge).
His arrest meant we had to take him off the short-list, but there is a lingering sense that he is being treated unfairly.
In interviews he comes across as someone very intelligent, but who has been failed by the education system, so that he has lots of sophisticated things to say, but no real means of expressing them (which I suppose explains the frustrated violence). In one television interview he said he didn’t care about media opinion but referred his conscience to a higher power - this was a surprisingly independent line to take (even though it is never wise to dismiss the media, whatever you might privately think). Despite all the (many) set-backs he has experienced his character exhibits incredible levels of self-confidence, indicating he is either very stupid, or has an exceptional degree of personal integrity.
Above: one thing I have noticed is that Joey Barton has an unusual tattoo (a bleeding gash) on the right side of his chest. It looks like he has the stigmata (“a sword shall pierce your heart also” etc). Does he have tattoos on his hands and feet as well?
Apologies to the photographer - this is not my image but one I found on the web and didn’t note the url (if you send me your name I’ll put in a credit, or alternatively I’ll take it down if you object).
Above: Christo muerto sostenido por un angel in the Museo del Prado. Despite the sombre subject, this is one of the most beautiful paintings I have ever seen (one of the Paintings That Changed My Life) - this photo of a postcard doesn’t really convey the impact the original will have on you. Notice the stigmata wound on the right side of the chest.
4 comments:
Interesting Tidbit on Booze Britain... Call me Naïve, but is the weekendish drinking/ vomiting/ urinating in town centre's a recent development, or has it always been going on, I wonder?
Joanne,
All the pubs used to shut at 10.30 in the evening (11 o'clock on Fridays and Saturdays).
Then the stupid idiot government of John Major "relaxed" the licensing laws to make it later.
Then the even more stupid (and criminally irresponsible) government of Tony Blair "relaxed" the laws again so that we now have 24-hour drinking.
The result is disaster. But obviously being politicians they can never admit they made a mistake. Instead we have reports that "prove" the situation is getting better when it obviously isn't (you have government ministers blatantly telling you black is white, in the style of Comical Ali during the invasion of Iraq).
Basically Britain is a cold damp climate, and it is easy for many people to get depressed and start drinking to excess - same as in Ireland, Russia and the rest of northern Europe. If you have that sort of tendency then without a sensible cut-off limit you are simply going to carry on drinking until your money runs out.
What sort of people drink after 10.30 on a weekday anyway? Don't they have to go to work the next day?
But the idiots in the government want to make the country "more like Spain or Italy" - but without the mild climate.
Regards,
Andrew
The tattoo isn't 'a bleeding gash', it's actually a word in Sanskrit. So the stuff about stigmata is pretty off target.
Cheers :)
Well maybe the tattoo is a sanskrit word and the resemblance to stigmata is just co-incidence.
But as Jung pointed out, a lot of what we think of as co-incidence is actually synchronicity and has deeper meaning than first appears.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity
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