Charity that begins with coping

EVERY now and again, like Bono in a library, I like to give something back.

Today then, a public service. Does the looming Premier League season fill you with dread? Do you greet tomorrow’s Charity Shield with the kind of foreboding one might ordinarily reserve for free Ed Byrne tickets? Will you spend the next week wrecking people’s heads about 200k per week salaries and foreign mercenaries and simulation? Do you jolt awake, fists clenched, from a recurring nightmare; Moycal McMullen on an infinite loop, leading the sports news with “encouraging news from the Reebok on the fitness of Gretar Steinsson” before affording a passing mention to that afternoon’s All-Ireland hurling final.

But, at the same time, you know well that you will be sucked into it all one more time; glued to Stelling, pouring over your fantasy team, banjaxing your laptop with spyware to play that feed you found on myp2p, degrading yourself by texting Stan Collymore.