The Wayne Rooney Saga: A Guide For Dummies

Wayne Rooney has just proved it. Football is a gentleman's game played by hooligans...and watched by Dummies.

For football to be referred to as a game, there has to be footballers. For footballers to make a living out of football, they must be good. And since thousands, even millions, of footballers worldwide make a living out of playing football, then logic demands we assume there are a lot of good footballers out there.

But even among these good footballers, there are some that are better than the rest. From these very good footballers we can further identify some that are better among the better ones, and from this cream of the crop, even more exceptional elements can still be isolated. These are the players who make football magical, the players who keep football purists believing that despite the horrifying influence of Russian gas, American loan and Arab oil money, there is still hope for football.

Wayne Mark Rooney definitely belongs to this last category. At only 25 years of age, the lad has won more trophies than Liverpool football club has won in the past 25 years, and he is just getting started. Commensurate with his unbelievable talent, he earns more money in a week than the entire annual sports budgets of all three East African countries put together, and despite the fact that he looks the way Shrek would look like when he has just thrown up, Coleen McLoughlin, a stunning beauty who looks like she could stop traffic just for the heck of it, actually agreed to marry him and have a child with him. The natural way.

Surely, Wayne has it made. His looks notwithstanding, he has money, talent and the affection of billions of fans worldwide, not to mention a wife that could stop traffic just for the heck of it. Why then, in a stunt that was sure to go through his reputation like an elephant through a glass cage holding his young, did he procure the services of a thousand-pound-a-night hooker when his I-can-stop-traffic-for the-heck-of-it wife, who agreed to have a child by him the natural way, was sitting at home pregnant with his kid?

Some questions don't have answers. Not answers that make any sense, anyway. This is definitely one of those questions, so we will let it slip and focus on a more important question: How does a world-famous footballer that was stupid enough to procure the services of a thousand-pound-a-night hooker and afterwards stupid enough to get caught, come out of the entire saga with his reputation intact and sellability unharmed?

Easy. Create a diversion.

You see, Wayne knows that millions of y'all like to watch him play, and some media mogul somewhere that knows companies would pay good money if millions of y'all got to see their products. The media mogul will then put two an two together and figure that if he put a picture of a product in the same TV screen that shows Wayne Rooney playing, millions of y'all will tune in to watch Wayne Rooney play, and therefore Millions of y'all will also see the company's product. Wayne knows that this media mogul will sell this idea to companies, and then approach him with offers of more money in a week than the entire annual sports budgets of all three East African countries put together if he could agree to appear in the same TV screen that shows that company's products. Easy as ABC.

But Wayne also knows that y'all don't like it when players cheat on their wives, especially when players that look the way Shrek would look like when he has just thrown up cheat on wives that look like they could stop traffic just for the heck of it. He knows that if y'all don't like what he did, y'all won't tune in to watch him play, so y'all won't get to see the company's products. If that happens, the company whose products appear in the same TV screen as Wayne won't be willing to give the media mogul enough money to pay Wayne more money in a week than the entire annual sports budgets of all three East African countries put together.

And this presents a problem, because you see, Wayne loves his money, every single last dime of it. It would rip his stocky Scouser heart to pieces if many of y'all stopped watching him and forced the companies to reduce his check to, say, the entire annual sports budgets of only two East African countries. But he cheated. On a pregnant wife that looks like she could stop traffic just for the heck of it. With a thousand-pounds-a-night hooker. And y'all don't like that.

So how does Wayne keep the money flowing into his pockets? Easy. Create a diversion.

Wayne might be stupid, but an idiot he most definitely is not. He knows that y'all care about reputation and all that bleeding heart morality, but y'all ain't the ones that cut his check. The companies do. And the companies don't give a rat's ass about reputation except when it interferes with their bottom line. All they care about is that their products get advertised because when their products get advertised, their products get sold. Wayne is smart enough to know all this, so he figures the way to keep the companies interested is to keep y'all watching him.

How does he do that? He creates a diversion. He enlists the help of his best friend and father figure, sir Alex Ferguson, and together, they concoct a feud. Accusations about lying are made, counter-accusations about insubordination are fired back. A rejoinder about a lack of commitment is swiftly issued and quickly countered by the one about latent disloyalty. Then comes the big one; I want to leave, and the even bigger one; The door is to your left, baby. Throughout all this, the media mogul's cameras are furiously keeping y'all updated, and y'all are thinking, Gosh! We haven't seen such action since Ali took on Foreman at the banks of the Congo River! So what's next?

And when he is sure he has you where he wants you, i.e eyes firmly trained on him and interested in only him, there is a sudden cooling of tempers and a truce is called. The companies are happy that y'all want to see him, so they resume giving him money in a week than the entire annual sports budgets of all three East African countries put together. In the meantime, y'all have forgotten that he cheated, with a thousand-pound-a-night hooker, on a traffic-stopper of a wife that chose to have a baby with him the natural way despite the fact that he looks like Shrek after he has just thrown up.

Like Redd Foxx would say, you big dummies!

Of Gonads, Communication and Cell Phones.

I wanted to start with the bit about my gonads, but that part doesn't become important until exactly four nanoseconds before I wake up. So I'll begin with the anecdote about the wife and the husband.

Once upon a time, two people, a man and a woman, got married. And as it normally happens with one hundred percent of all matrimonial interactions, there came a point during their relationship when these two people had a slight difference of opinion over something or the other.

Normally, such matters are resolved by the more assertive partner, usually the wife, imposing their opinion on the less assertive one, usually the wife. [It's complicated. I'll explain later.] However, this relationship was one of those very rare ones where both partners were evenly matched in willpower; so naturally, the difference of opinion continued and in due course, the two were not on speaking terms. Literally.

But since they lived under the same roof, ate the same food, used the same bathroom and slept on the same bed, some form of communication was necessary. They therefore worked their way around the issue and finally settled on writing as the most effective medium for their circumstances. Whenever the husband required anything of the wife, he would write it down on a slip of paper and vice versa.

This method worked OK until one day; the husband had a very important meeting to attend and had to catch a very early flight the next morning. Unfortunately, he was the kind of person who attached a great deal of value to a good night's sleep, and was rarely known to awaken before 10am in the morning. The meeting was however really important, so to work his schedule around this flaw, he requested his wife, in writing of course, to wake him up very early the next morning...

How this tale ends should be obvious to anyone with pretensions to anything that even remotely approaches a double-figure IQ, so we'll leave it there and move on towards my gonads. But before we get there, let's first talk about phones.

A friend of mine from the Northern hemisphere was once quite shocked when he read a report on the internet which said that at least 70% of all Ugandan adults each have a mobile phone. The poor fellow couldn't understand how a backward country like Uganda could have such an extensive mobile telephony reach, and he e-mailed me to ascertain the veracity of these claims.

"The report is inaccurate." I mailed him back. "The figure is closer to 90%, and at least 60% of them actually have TWO mobile phones."

I happen to belong to this percentage that possesses two mobile phones. One is a sexy Nokia 6300, which has a lot of really awesome features but goes through its battery with the speed of a Mike Tyson bout in the early nineties, while the other one is a plainer Nokia 1100 whose swankiest feature is that it is able support M-Pesa, but with one bar of battery power can sustain an entire call from Pet without disconnecting it midway. [And that is saying something.]

Quite obviously, this isn't exactly an ideal situation. I love the ravishing 6300, but for purposes of functionality, I find that I utilize the plain Jane 1100 more frequently than I do my beloved 6300. And that has me really terrified of the implications on my social standing the revelation of this little fact would occasion, so whenever I have to use the 1100, I try to be as discreet as possible. Silent mode, excusing myself and running to a secluded area whenever I receive a call in public, etc...

I risk digressing, however. Let us now connect the married couple anecdote to the mobile phones and then quickly move on to my gonads.

Like the husband in our anecdote, I am also the kind of person that attaches a great deal of value to a good night's sleep. Once I get into slumber land, I will always need help to get out of it. But unlike the unfortunate husband, I don't depend on my wife to wake me up when I've got issues that really have to be sorted out at a time when only chicken thieves are supposed to be awake. The reason behind this is quite simple; I'm not yet married,

So whenever I need to wake up early, which like a Liverpool win happens only in the rarest of occasions, I can always rely on the infinitely cheaper yet infinitely more reliable alarm system on my two mobile phones. With them, unless somebody calls me earlier, I can always get up at the precise moment I intend to wake up. And since my Nokia 6300 is permanently on silent mode for purposes of being discreet, the early caller isn't always a problem...

Unless I somehow go to bed with my phone still in my trouser pocket, and there is a hole in that trouser pocket.

In my defense, I was dog tired and didn't strip like I usually do when I went to bed last night. I also didn't take my phone off my pocket which, as is common with people as careless as I am, has a hole somewhere in its person. Therefore as I slept, the phone slipped through the hole and came to rest on my inner thigh, just below the nether regions.

And then very early today morning, my dear Pet, who works similar hours with the shadier elements of society, decided to send me a text message...

Do you have any idea how unbelievably powerful a vibrating 1100 can get, and how tremendously horrifying being woken up by a Nokia 1100 vibrating against your gonads can be?