The new football season is now upon us, unless you’re reading this from Russia or Ireland or somewhere, in which case “the new football season is almost half over”. Anyway, the 2009/10 season means an entirely new collection of garish polyester T-shirts are going to confront anyone wandering near JJB Sports over the next month or so – and they’re possibly the worst bunch of shirts seen since the dark days of the mid 1990s.

The fact horrid new football kits are taking to the shop shelves possibly isn’t that surprising. After all, Umbro have decided to proudly display a load of their very worst excesses on their Flickr stream. Maybe our suspicions of the time were correct, and the following examples really were designed by a class of educationally subnormal seven-year-olds. Such an altruistic policy is the only possible reason I can think of for Umbro putting them proudly on display now.

RC Lens (Away, 1996-7)
Around 70% of the Pantone Colour Chart on display here. A football shirt so bad, it must surely have clashed with almost every other kit in Ligue 1.

Nottingham Forest (Away, 1995-7)
With this shirt, the designer had actually put together a relatively tasteful plain yellow number. Sadly for the Umbro designer responsible, his four year old son had crept into his home office and gone scrawl crazy with a black marker. With the proofs already past the printing deadline, the designer had no choice but to post them out regardless. Luckily, as it was the mid-1990s, such a revolting football shirt merely blended into the crowd, and no-one really noticed.

Wales (Away, 1995-6)
The mid-90s weren’t a happy time for Wales supporters. After missing out on USA’94 by a about four inches (i.e. the diameter of the crossbar Paul Boden’s penalty against Romania slammed into), the principality’s national side lurched from crisis to crisis. Terry Yorath asked for a few more quid for getting Wales as close to qualifying for something as anyone since 1958, and so got the boot from the FAW. John Toshack took the managerial reins, only sticking around for as long as it took Norway to deliver a thumping in an international friendly. Mike Smith subsequently took charge, seeing the team fail laughably in the qualifying rounds for Euro ‘96, before Bobby “Max Clifford” Gould took over. Highlights of Gould’s stewardship included: making Vinnie Jones captain of the national side, and a 7-1 default in Holland, which both happened in the same week.

To mark all of this, Umbro blessed the Welsh team with this… rag. In much the same way a lot of people claim Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon complements a viewing of The Wizard Of Oz, the above garment is pretty much a piece of clothing that screams ‘we’re about to get thumped five-nil away to Georgia’.

Aberdeen (Away, 1994-6)
Excerpt from a transcript of  Umbro (Scotland)’s Marketing Division monthly meeting, February 1994.

“…and I believe Gavin has got the preliminary designs for next season’s Aberdeen away. Gavin?”

“Thanks, Dougal. Here we have the design of next season’s away kit for Aberdeen. As you can see, I’ve gone for the navy blue seen in some versions of the Saltire, with white lettering for their sponsor…”

“Excuse me for interrupting, Gav. What’s… that? On the shoulders?”

“Ah, well spotted Don. You see, given the – shall we say, rather rambunctious nature of many football fans, which is what we love about them, of course. Those crazy guys! Anyway, given that, I’ve incorporated a subtle ‘vomited pizza over both shoulders’ motif. After all, who hasn’t been out on a night out, leapt into a crammed minicab at the end of the night, only for two passengers in the back seat to honk up all over them? I know I have!”

“Erm, yeah. Right, sales projections.”

Manchester United (Away, 1995-6)
Ha ha! Is there a football shirt in that picture? I can’t see anything! (©1996, everyone on the bloody planet).

Anyway, the new season is here, and what has it brought us?

Turkish outfit Besiktas, there. Seemingly, they hate your eyes.

Serie A side Atalanta. They’re well known have having a club badge that looks like it belongs on a bottle of shampoo. So, putting a huge version of it on your away kit isn’t the best idea. It’s not as if Sampdoria would put a huge version of their badge – a bloke with a scruffy beard smoking a pipe, quite infamously – on their new away kit, is it? IS IT?

Bugger. Here’s Udinese’s new kit:

Ugh. It’s a look Lotto have also foisted upon Deportivo de la Coruna.

Reading seem to have unveiled their new kit in a series of photos used to illustrate the problem page in Gay Times.

“I first noticed our number nine making odd glances at me in the changing room, and couldn’t help but wonder if he felt the same way.”

“I fancy my straight mate ‘cos he looks a bit like a drunk Danny Dyer. But how do I let him know how I feel?”

Meanwhile, Partick Thistle have gone for (quote) “Scottish football’s first ever camouflage kit”:

Firstly, I’m not sure exactly where on the planet we call ‘Earth’ that kit could be considered ‘camouflage’.

If you’re stuck in a swirling vat of melted Neapolitan ice-cream, perhaps? Secondly, if no other club has came up with a ‘camouflage kit’ in 120 years of Scottish league football, it’s likely there’s a damn good reason behind it. The paramount reason would be: “being able to see each other”. Possibly that’s why such a bad camouflage was chosen.

Elsewhere in Scotland, Celtic seem to have utterly misunderstood the concept of “away kits”.

No, they’re meant to be different to the home shirts. If another team’s shirt clashes with your green and white hoops, putting on a shirt with green and lime hoops won’t make any… ach, what’s the point?

Anyway, things aren’t as bad in England are they?

Sigh. And that’s without mentioning the Newcastle away kit.

Lastly, a new offering from Joma, for La Liga outfit Getafe.

A nasty shirt on its own. Being sponsored by Burger King doesn’t help, but it gets worse. Much worse.

Yes, when a Getafe player scores a goal, they can pull their shirt over their head (like footballers did back in the mid-90s) to reveal a picture of The Burger King, marketing’s fifth shittest idea of all time. After all, what better way to celebrate an 88th minute equaliser than by chowing down on corporate pole?

The only saving grace for this complete and utter stunt is the choice of Getafe – given their 17th place finish in La Liga last season, one place above the drop, it’s quite possible Burger King won’t see their unpopular mascot unveiled quite as often as they’d like.

Why you should be afraid of these.

Because if you ever find yourself in a football stadium on matchday, seeing any of those above sights, only multiplied by several thousand, on overweight football supporters unaware that wearing a replica shirt to a football match is as bad as wearing a T-shirt of the band you’re going to see play live, is a hugely harrowing experience. It’s more than likely seeing multiple instances of any of those shirts will cause your optic nerves to go haywire, and instantly perform a ‘hard reset’, leaving you blind for a week, at best.

Replica shirts: avoid them at all costs.

Each General Election night, terrestrial viewers are treated to the sight of two brothers, raging a seemingly eternal battle across the waters of political discourse like a besuited Fionn mac Cumhail and Benandonner. Each time the voting stations close, families all over Britain sit around their television sets in eager anticipation as to which brother will win this Election’s results show ratings skirmish. Will it finally be Jonathan’s year? Will his helming of ITN’s "looking over the shoulder of the people counting votes to bring you the results first"-led coverage bring in a decent slice of the viewing figure pie this time? Or will big brother David shove him out of the way in order to scoff up all the BARB-compiled goodies himself, as per usual?

It’s a tale as old as the ages, or more accurately, 1997. However, one thing you might not know about Richard and Jonathan is that they are but two of ten siblings to spring from the loins of the late Richard Dimbleby, and that each pairing also work in similar fields.

Alton and Shelton Dimbleby are both bakers. Alton runs the most successful bakery in all of Ludlow. Shelton is forever trying to lure customers away from Alton, by way of a heavily-postered marketing idea of "making loaves of bread more quickly than anyone else in Ludlow". This involves having his luckless assistant Horace actually knead the dough whilst actually inside a huge oven, whilst wearing an asbestos bakers uniform. It has yet to catch on in a big way, sadly. The bread being delivered while still smoking hot, whilst having a crust flecked with bits of asbestos and burnt skin is considered something of a downside to the whole end product for the customers.

Clancy and Bruno Dimbleby are lifeguards at Clacton-on-Sea beach. Clancy is one of the most celebrated lifeguards in all of Essex, having an uncanny ability to spot someone in trouble from hundreds of yards away. It is this, coupled with his astonishing ability to swim quickly in even the choppiest of waters that led to him being named Clacton-on-Sea Lifeguard Of The Year on three non-consecutive occasions. Ever keen to compete, Bruno is not put out by this. Since 2007, he has pledged an oath to rescue people at an earlier stage of drowning than anyone else. Unfortunately, this has yet to prove much of a success, with the younger of the two aquatic Dlimblebi (that’s the plural, look it up) routinely pouncing on unsuspecting bathers and dragging them back to shore should they so much as cough politely whilst up to their ankles in the foam.

Gladys (L) and Ethel (R)

Gladys and Ethel Dimbleby are emergency telephone number operators. Gladys is a much celebrated employee at the 999 call centre, thanks to her uncanny ability to understand the most garbled of surnames and addresses from panicked callers. Sadly, Ethel is currently on her second written warning from HR, due to her idea of simply phoning people up at home to check if their house is on fire or not. She remains adamant that this approach is sure to pay dividends eventually.

Lastly, we come to Generals "Spanky" Spiffington and "Dimples" Dewhurst Dimbleby. As their full titles would suggest, this last pairing each occupy important positions in the MoD. Throughout the British Armed Services, “Spanky” is renowned for his cool head under difficult circumstances, having once managing to coax the entire Argentine Navy into postponing a fresh invasion of the Falkland Islands indefinitely over tea and scones. Conversely, “Dimples” prefers a more pro-active approach, loudly proclaiming quite loudly after one too many sherries at the Reform Club how he’ll happily wade into conflict with any nation speaking with an accent he doesn’t like.

Sadly, it was not “Spanky”, but rather “Dimples” that then Prime Minister Tony Blair contacted in late 2002, with a view to gathering evidence on (“Right, that’s it sonny. Get in the van, you’re coming with us” – The Outdated Satire Police.)

The Daily Mail has today included the following report:

Essentially, ‘we have nothing to fear, but people telling us what to fear, itself’. I say: good on them for bringing some of this stuff to light. In case you don’t feel like reading the article, there’s even a jolly little cartoon underlining what you should think:

Swine flu! Terrorists! It’s all nonsense, isn’t it? Just a bunch of busybodies trying to make us all terrified. And over what? Over the infinitesimal risk of being blown up by a terrorist who has got the swine flu. Well done, The Daily Mail! I’m sick of seeing scare stories from the gutter press. Scare stories like…

(Yes, “the French”. All 65 million of them. In unison. And in French, presumably.)

Or even pointless scare stories trying to stir up ill feeling between the Muslim and immigrant community, and Everyone Else:

And no, that last headline isn’t made up. So, yeah. Thanks, The Daily Mail for, I presume, agreeing never to run a scare story like the above ones ever again. And surely that’s the subtext here, as otherwise you’d turn out to be a bunch of enormous hypocrites.

Front page images taken (but not hotlinked) from the excellent MailWatch.

Argh!

As any skinny-wristed geek will tell you, going outside is hugely overrated. You only have to look at the facts to back this up.

In comparison, look at the stats for things that happen indoors:

Looking at these figures, you really do have to wonder why on earth anyone would actually go outside, ever. Sure, there will always be a need to visit shops and workplaces and other people, but surely a series of subterranean tunnels can simply be built for this? I for one am more than willing to see VAT increased to 20% in order to pay for this. It’s only once everyone is avoiding the, let’s face it, archaic practice of ‘going outside’, and instead shuffling their way to places in dimly lit tunnels can society truly progress. The people live underground, while wildlife can frolic around freely up above, finally free from the threat of being mangled beneath the wheels of a Ford Focus.

Ugh.

At this point, you may posit the theory that the tunnels would be dimly-lit, with little oxygen, and would be populated by the muggers, warmongers and cricketers who caused all the problems in the first place. Therein lies the beauty of this plan. Ever tried starting a war or a cricket match in a corridor? There isn’t enough room, and nor would there be in these tunnels. As for muggers, the stiflingly low amount of oxygen in these tunnels would ensure Johnny Ruffian won’t be able to run more than a dozen paces with your wallet before doing a very different type of ‘running’ (running ‘out of breath’), allowing you to stroll over and clip him around the ear. Johnny Ruffian would duly see the error of his ways, and join a community arts centre instead.

In all, it’s a perfect plan, and one I fully expect to see in the manifestos of the three main political parties at the next general election. I would expect there to be a smattering of disquiet amongst claustrophobics over this plan, but unless they’re an especially politically active bunch, they should pose little threat.

That’s better.

We’ve all seen the adverts for Ronseal Quick Rinse Fence Wax, or whatever it is, backed up with the slogan "It Does Exactly What It Says On The Tin", as if to suggest a hidden subtext of "because otherwise you’d be flummoxed, wouldn’t you? You frigging idiots". This phrase has since become part of common usage, with it currently returning some 65,200 results on Google, and even its very own Wikipedia page. The not-quite-correct usage "It Does What It Says On The Tin" returns even more hits – 159,000 – which goes some way to showing how much attention people really pay to advertising (i.e. not enough to get slogans exactly right).

It’s interesting to note that the original 1994 Ronseal adverts featured quite an angry bloke, who almost growled the slogan at you. If you don’t remember the specific commercials, think Trevor from EastEnders, Jamie from The Thick Of It, or Roy Keane from football, but less celtic.

Ronseal Bloke 1.0 (artists impression)

After what I’m going to unfairly speculate were a bewildering number of complaints to the ASA, Angry Ronseal Bloke was replaced by a more Steve Davis-grade affable Thames Valley type of D.I.Y. chap. The sort of neighbour who’d happily insulate your loft and ask for nothing more than a cup of tea in return (i.e. the sort of neighbour that only exists on television). This softer approach led to an upsurge in sales for Ronseal products (I’m guessing – I have done absolutely no original research to back this statement up), and subsequently the adverts have played out between Emmerdale and Coronation Street ever since.

Ronseal Bloke 2.0: Affable ‘Arry

So, where’s the danger? Well, it’s in the very success of this marketing strategy that nastiness lurks. Firstly, it means the group of marketing twonks responsible for the campaign have probably been busy slapping themselves on the back for the last fifteen years, which is always annoying. Secondly, what with other marketing twonks forever struggling to come up with their own ideas, the campaign is sure to be ‘reimagined’ (i.e. stolen) for other products. It’s already happened in Ireland – Wikipedia claims a 2004 Colgate advert used the slogan “does exactly what it says on the tube”. Do quite what, we’re not sure. “Paste teeth”? Anyway, like a virus, it’s now out there, and other lazy ad agencies could well decide five years is long enough for everyone to have forgotten about the previous usage – it could well strike again.

“So? What’s the big deal? If nothing else, it’ll stop advertising ‘creatives’ stealing their ideas from pop videos for ten minutes”, you may well be saying. Well, picture this futuristic tableau:

2011. Your local ASDA, or as it’s now known, ‘WalMart Concerted Effort To Break Into Tesco’s Near Unassailable UK Monopoly’. Hey, it does what it says on the sign, just like 54% of everything nowadays.

You walk down the tinned foods aisle, pushing your Wheeled Product Transportation Unit. Some of the products retain their original names, such as “Heinz tomato soup”, whereas some products have come around to the Ronseal way of thinking, such as “Baxters’ Provide You With Adequate Sustenance At Lunch Squeezings (tomato flavour)”. It’s a logistical nightmare.

By the time you get to the frozen food section, your head is swimming with what you might or might not be about to consume. Did the Fox’s Crunch Creams in the biscuit aisle actually contain the ground up bones of the genus Vulpes? Will the Death By Chocolate gateau prove fatal? Will the own brand Spotted Dick actually give you nob-acne?

Arriving at the savoury meats freezers you look down. You see a silver foil container topped with a lid made of card. The lid is printed with the legend “Mr Brains Faggots”. What’s this? Is it going to be the traditional British type of meatball? But what type of meat? Brain meat? Worse still, the brain meat of gay men, packaged in a distastefully homophobic manner? After all, New Labour did have to swing even further to the right than ever before to sneak back into power at last year’s election, so maybe that’s legal now? Bloody hell!

So, in summary: the continued success of Ronseal’s “Exactly What It Says On The Tin” marketing campaign could very easily lead to the distinct possibility of legitimised homophobic cannibalism. It’s quite obvious, really.

Passwords. Those little asterisky sods that prevent every Thomas, Richard and Harold from getting into everyone’s email, Facebook or tentacle porn site accounts. They serve a very clear and useful purpose, surely? What could possibly be scary about them? What indeed.

Think about it. You’re putting every little piece of information about you in the hands of a simple string of text. A string of text that, in all likelihood, is the name of something that was on your computer desk at the moment you were asked to think up a password. Hackers like to pretend they’re ultra-leet bitwizards capable of bringing a nation to its very knees like in Die Hard 4.0 or 24, should they fancy it. In fact, they’ve just tried lots of different account names until they’ve hit one that uses “pepsimax” as the password. (Note to hackers: only joking, you’re brilliant, please don’t hack this site.)

When it comes to message boards, the whole password thing is often worse. If a member of a message board spends at least a third of their post count furiously arguing why Nickelback aren’t pedestrian rubbish and are actually the most important rock act of the last twenty years if you’d listen to their complex lyrics actually, then their password is probably either “n1ckelback” or “chadrockz”. Either that, or you choose something like “kljsdng0sdf” as a non-guessable password, which leaves you feeling very superior indeed. Right up until the point where Firefox stops remembering it for you two years later, and you realise the email address you’d used to register with the site isn’t one you’ve got access to any more.

The very worst type of password is The Work Password. At work, there will generally be a policy of changing your password every few months. As such, your fragile brain in its brittle bony cage will need to remember an entirely new password (or more than likely, the old password followed by a number you’ve just increased by one, until you run out of numbers and have to think up an entirely new word). As anyone familiar with the art of remembering workplace passwords will attest, the practice of using a new password involves a number of different processes.

• STAGE ONE: Typing in your old password and pressing enter before realising your error. (Days 1-2)
• STAGE TWO: Typing in your old password, but remembering about your new one before pressing enter. You audibly mutter something to yourself, and input the correct password. (Days 3-4)
• STAGE THREE: You start keying in your old password, but remember about your new one almost immediately. You tsk to yourself whilst stabbing backspace, slightly annoyed that you’re still getting it wrong. You’re not an idiot, after all. (Day 5)
• STAGE FOUR: You finally begin to key in your new password first time. You now continue to do so with a cocky impunity. (Day 6 onwards)

(There is also a sub-stage between stages one and two. This is where you mistype your old password and press enter, then after cursing yourself you enter the old password in full, pressing enter again. Then, realising that you’re not even using the new password, and that if you enter the wrong password a third consecutive time your account will be locked, your fingers need to walk an ASCII tightrope of meticulous typing if you’re to avoid a ten minute call to the helpdesk explaining what a cackfingered buffoon you are.)

A number of scientific studies have examined the small percentage of people who start using their correct new password without even once trying to enter their old one. These people invariably go on to become quantum physicists, psychopaths, or both.

An additional and very real password-related problem occurs when the “new password required” prompt pops up on a Friday afternoon. Sure, typing in “KYL1EROOLZ” might appear to have the twin benefits of adhering to company ‘passwords must contain at least 8 letters and one numeric character’ policy while being largely memorable, but will it be so memorable when you lumber into work the morning after that ill-advised Sunday pub lunch that sprawled wildly out of control? Let’s face it, it doesn’t matter how memorable your new password seems on a Friday afternoon. Your hungover brow is going to be perplexedly furrowed come 9.03am on Monday, as you try to avoid having to make that call to the company helpdesk (“Press one if you’re a dimwit unable to remember a simple password for three days”).

The obvious solution here would be to leave a subtle reminder to your future self before you leave work on the Friday afternoon. However, there are two main lessons that society should have learned from the 1983 movie WarGames. Firstly, no matter how good you are with computers, it probably isn’t going to help you get off with Ally Sheedy (yes, she was in the film right until the end, but Broderick didn’t even get to first base). Secondly, and probably more importantly, it’s that writing password reminders on little bits of paper then hiding them under your desk will ultimately lead the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation. And don’t go around saying “ah, but the Cold War was in the past”. The nukes are still there, primed to burst your face with the ferocious fieriness of forty-four suns.

The entire problem with passwords can essentially be compressed into the following nutshell: if you choose a hard to remember password for your workplace PC, you’d better hope your local nuclear weapons silo contains a supercomputer more than willing to understand the inherent futility of noughts and crosses. If it doesn’t, or if it’s got solitaire installed on it instead, we’re all going to die. All because of you and “KYL1EROOLZ”.

Passwords. The little asterisky fuckers.

As you may have realised if you’ve glanced at any of today’s spittle-inducing tabloids, bile-fuelled current affairs websites or puce-faced media commentators, the world is a very scary place. Sure, that might seem like an unrealistically hyperbolic thing to say, what with iPhones, pretty flowers, Jaffa Cakes and all the other lovely things out there, but this blog aims to PROVE INCONTROVERTIBLY the SECRET TRUTH. The truth that everything, absolutely everything is utterly, terrifyingly SCARY.

Yes, really. The labelling on tins, batteries, home shopping networks, shoes, you name it – you bloody well ought to be petrified of it, and if you’re not, you’re not doing it right. This blog aims to expose the harrowing facts behind everyday events and objects, with the aim of turning everyone’s bowels to watery jelly. If it does its job properly, you’ll be scared to ever leave your house. Your house where, of course, you’re almost certain to be murdered in your sleep by hookhanded methadone-crazed intruders.

In short: enjoy the ride!