So sang Lana Del Rey in her song “Video Games”.  Am fairly sure what she is crooning about concerns some boy or another, all tattooed and muscular and evil (I fulfil two of these requirements) and whilst I could easily settle down with the flame-haired pouty chanteuse, I can equally take her lyrics to sum up my love for – not a girl or boy – but Video Games themselves.

I’m 34 years old.  My Dad bought me a Commodore 64 at the age of 3 and played it with me (many a happy hour playing “Dynamite Dan”, I tell you) and the habit stuck. My first childhood memory is watching my Father play Pacman in an arcade in Weymouth (my second is the same day, watching a carnival parade with a car that looked like an Orange forefront in my recollection) and I still play games with him now.  I play video games with my eight year old daughter, and consider it one of the best pieces of parenting that I’ve ever managed when I taught her how to fire off a Hadoken and pull off a dragon punch. And of course, I play video games on my own. They’re the main reason in my house that things don’t get done – writing, tidying, opening the blinds, getting dressed, eating – as I sink further and further into my own little worlds, populated with pixels and polygons and many an avatar of me that is distinctly better than the real thing.

I have a ton of video game tattoos – from my Pacman ghost in honour of my Dad to my sleeve of gaming girls (Peach, Zelda, Midnah, Toadette, Morrigan, Felicia, Kitana, Tifa and Chun Li) and my favourite Streetfighter villains on my legs (Balrog (HE IS NOT CALLED VEGA, PLAY IMPORT GAMES) and Akuma) – and I’m bound to get more. Video games have long since ceased being a mere hobby. Some people are film buffs, some know everything about music. I just love video games.

However, for all my near-lifelong adoration of this art form, from my humble Commodore all the way up to my state of the art boy’s lounge with PS3 and Xbox 360, there remain things that make me angry. Proper, fist-shaking and teeth-clenching cross. Here are those ten things.

TEN: SPECIAL EDITIONS

“Hello sir, welcome to a branch of Game that still exists. Ooh, you’re buying Shoot Things 4. Would you like to buy the special edition? For an extra ten pounds you can have the game in a tin with an unlockable character that is of no use, a few tiny secret things and a soundtrack CD that you’ll never listen to?”

I would like to find the marketing genius that decided to make “limited edition” versions of video games and have him shot in the face with a blunderbuss. We live in a society where everything is technically limited edition. Think about it: Even the non-special version of the game is a limited edition. They’re not making an infinite number of copies, are they? It’s not ET on the Atari, for crying out loud.

I genuinely bought a box of breakfast cereal the other day that was a “special limited edition”. Cereal. Which technically makes my excrement from the following day a special limited edition (to be fair, it was impressive). Special edition video games prey on the most base instinct of a video game geek: We like shiny things and god knows we collect crap. Any proper gamer – I don’t mean someone who plays FIFA or CoD once in a while, I mean someone who has leather thumbs – already has a collection of something, and putting games in tins and telling us that they’re special is like telling a fat man that the local Greggs is flooded and they’re selling pies at half price. A friend of mine recently recommended a game to me and told me that if I got the special edition (which included an extra costume and some online code) then he would buy the extra content off me for the total price of the game. He was desperate. It was harrowing, seeing his face.

I got the game, of course. Didn’t sell him the special content though. That’s mine to hoard and covet.

NINE: NOBODY BUYING THE SEGA SATURN

The Japanese Sega Saturn is my favourite console of all time. It was a phenomenal piece of kit, trouncing the Playstation in every possible way. I regret selling mine to a friend every single day of my life, the beautiful sleek grey beast (the Saturn, not my friend). It was a dream machine for me – with a ton of 2D fighting games that I could sit and learn every single combo on in lieu of having an actual life. It also had the best wrestling game at the time (Fire Pro), a lovely controller, official Sega arcade conversions… twas a dream machine, I tells thee.

Of course, it sold bugger all in this country because it didn’t have a snappy advertising campaign like the Playstation, and the PAL version was ugly in every way.  It was spray painted black, changing it from a leisure machine of the future to something picked from the burning wreckage of a plane crashed in the Liechtenstein Alps. Or a corrective shoe. Only a handful of games – crucially, all of the shit ones – got released properly, and even the game casings changed from sleek and CD-like in Japan to this horrid plastic monstrosity in the UK. I swore at one of those cases more than once.

The machine failed, then Sega started to fail, and now they make games for other manufacturers and Sonic the Hedgehog is forced to give Mario angry handjobs for money.

EIGHT: TEKKEN

One day, upon Mount Fuji, the Gods of Gaming decided what the greatest fighting games were, in descending order:

The Streetfighter Series

The King of Fighters Series

The Marvel vs Capcom Series

The SNK vs Capcom Series

The Soulcalibur Series

The Dead or Alive Series

If we have to… er… The Virtua Fighter Series. That’ll do.

You’ll note that Tekken isn’t in there. Do you know why? Because it’s bobbins. The only good Tekken game is Streetfighter X Tekken, and there’s a fairly obvious reason for that. How many Tekken characters can you name? Everyone can name every character from Streetfighter 2 with ease. With Tekken you can normally remember King, because he has the face of a leopard.

As a rule, 3D fighting games blow harder than a whale with catarrh. 2D fighting games are fast, unrealistic and beautiful. If I wanted a slow, lumbering fight then I’d either buy the latest UFC hugging simulator, or I’d wander out onto the streets of my village and lay claim to someone’s sister. Add in the fact that you can look good at Tekken merely by pummelling the buttons and you see exactly why I hate it. Where’s the skill? The agility? The right to stand over a fallen foe taunting him because your manual dexterity is greater than his? It isn’t there with Tekken, because you can merely hold a pad at arms length and repeatedly mash it with your sausage fingers. Even my daughter thinks it’s simplistic, and I tire of the amount of times a winning blow is caused by one character jumping vertically and punching someone in the hair, or by kicking someone 3cm in front of their foot.

Why aren’t the other 3D fighting games singled out for such abuse? Simple. Dead or Alive has breasts and wrestling moves. Virtua Fighter at least invented the genre. Soulcalibur has Yoda and Darth Vader. Tekken ain’t got nothing. It even rips off Capcom characters left right and centre (Paul being the most obvious one, cloning Guile). The best thing about the game on the PS1 was playing Galaga while it loaded.

SEVEN: PS3 vs XBOX360

I used to be a teacher. Only twice did I ever have to throw kids out of my classroom, which is an achievement when trying to force 14 to 16 year olds to learn about such insignificant things as reading and writing. Once was for smoking a joint – in that case you have to admire the sheer chutzpah of the offender – and the other was throwing out a pair of lads for getting into fisticuffs. What were they fighting about?

Which is better: The PS3 or the Xbox 360. Seriously.

The main crux of my retort to their brawl was this: Who cares? Honestly?

When I was a kid, if you’d have shown me games on either console I would have exploded. Right there and then. You’d show me a screenshot and then *poof* I’d be a pile of ash. I come from a generation that got excited by the Dragons Lair games because they looked like jerky cartoons that you could kind of control. You go back and show 1988 Jim something like GTA 4 and I would have accused you of witchcraft. Both systems are brilliant. If you can discern between the tech specs of each one then well done, you’re geekier than I. It comes down to this: You can get Uncharted and Yakuza for the PS3 and Gears of War for the 360. That’s it, aside from having to pay for online access on the 360 that is more reliable than the free service on the PS3, and also that every time I switch my 360 on it doesn’t need to have a fucking update (unlike my PS3).

When I was a kid we had proper video game feuds with clear winners. Commodore 64 beat Spectrum. Amiga beat Atari ST. SNES beat Megadrive. These kids don’t know they’re born.

SIX: EVERYTHING IS TOO EASY

I’ve completed every video game I’ve purchased in the last couple of years. This isn’t a proud boast, I’m utterly appalled by it. I mentioned Dynamite Dan earlier on. I played that game every day for a year and never came close to completing it. Not once. I only ever completed a game if I cheated, leaving me disappointed in my own shortcomings. I once cried after completing New Zealand Story, a mixture of guilt and the fact that it’s got a really, really sad ending involving kiwis.

I guess the theory is that video games used to be created by one dude in his room, and now they’re made by hundreds of people in an office somewhere in California or Tokyo. These people WANT us to see their games from beginning to end, take in the fine plot points that they’ve conjured up and learn who had a production baby in the end credits (it’s nice to know game programmers can have sex, after all). LA Noire is one of the easiest games I have ever played, even when I was trying to mess up interrogations on purpose to see if I got thrown off the force and made to live a life of crime. Even supposedly tough games like Bayonetta and Vanquish don’t take long to beat.

Thank god I can still play old-school Japanese shooters like Ikaruga and Radiant Silvergun. Ten credits into either of those and my ship has moved thirty yards and I’m a weeping wreck.

FIVE: ONLINE GAMING

In my near seven years of being a comedian I have been on holiday just twice, and neither time for longer than a week. Why? Because I worry that if I leave the circuit alone for more than a week that I’ll be forgotten and all of my silly little ambitions will never come true.

This is silly, of course – but illustrates why I hate online gaming so much. It’s fun to take on a friend on FIFA, for example, or play co-op with a chum. It is not fun to buy a game more than a week after it comes out to find that every nerd on the planet has already levelled up by playing it constantly and you will never, ever catch up. I don’t own the latest Call of Duty for precisely that reason. Imagine if I bought it now? The shame of being called a “noob” by ten year olds from Arkansas who don’t even use guns to kill you? The dishonour of watching a replay of your onscreen persona trying to jump over an invisible obstacle and being sniped by a girl playing before she goes to school in Bangkok? It’s just horrible.

I spent much of my student years genuinely believing that I was good at fighting games. I can beat most fighting games these days on the hardest setting, but if I venture online then some dude called IAMHAXXOR or something beats me in a nanosecond with fucking Dhalsim. It’s the most inadequate I’ve ever felt since I had a threesome with two lesbians.

FOUR: ANGRY BIRDS

In every motorway service station that I stop in, there is always one of those claw-grabby things where you can purloin yourself a plush toy. Every single one I see contains bloody Angry Birds toys. Is it really that popular? I doubt it. Yeah, it’s sold a load of copies but that’s because it’s 69p or whatever it is. I’ve got it and I don’t even want it, that’s the level it’s permeated our existence.

The sheer amount of merchandise associated with our grumpy avians would suggest that it’s utterly massive, but then again there’s a woman who has sold over a million copies of her godawful “supernatural romance” books on the kindle because they cost a quid and people are stupid. Have you ever played the game for longer than a couple of stops on the tube? No. I’m not saying it’s a bad game, it’s just not a good one and anything that makes non-gamers think they are special because they’ve completed something involving as much luck as skill makes me vomit blood. From my eyes.

THREE: TOMB RAIDER

When people realise my tattoo sleeve shows loads of different video game girls, I often get asked about the whereabouts of Lara Croft. When someone does this, I like to tell them that since the Tomb Raiding business dried up she’s been forced into posing for soft-core “lads mags” and appearing on talking head review shows for E4.

I do not have a Lara Croft tattoo, because I hate her and her games.

Here’s my summary of the first Tomb Raider game: Angular polygon woman with massive triangular breasts wanders through some ruins. She shoots a few people, but mainly pushes some blocks around whilst pervy boys try to input a fake code to see a naked angular polygon woman.

That’s it. The rest of the series is the same – so boring and uninspired, and there are tons of stronger female characters in games that don’t rely upon having heaving blocky bazooms. Plus her voice is silly, with the only dafter one in the world being Keira Knightly saying “my name is Domino Harvey, and I am a bounty hunter”. I’ve dated a few girls who are as posh as Lara Croft and believe me, they have no interest in delving into dusty tombs – especially when they could use their trust fund to buy an Audi TT and wander around Shoreditch all bloody day.

TWO: NINTENDO (SINCE THE GAMECUBE)

I love Nintendo, I really do. The NES, SNES, N64 and Gamecube all have a place in my house, and I’ve still got my original Gameboy. These are pieces of technical wizardry that helped take gaming to the masses and then some. My favourite game of all time remains Super Mario World and I have an N64 set up in my bedroom.

Not entirely sure when they stopped caring about gamers like me though. The DS is fiddly and gimmicky and ruins perfectly decent games with its touch screen function. And then of course, there is the serious gamer’s Antichrist.

The Wii.

Video games are meant to be played sitting down. I do not want to swoosh my arm around when I could press a button, or pump my legs when I could move a stick. I play video games to relax – in the same way I don’t play driving games because I drive 1,000 miles a bloody week. Watch a Nintendo advert these days – all smiling middle class families playing together at the same time. What happened to taking your turn? To playing winner stays on and feeling superior to your siblings?

If you love video games you love the craft behind them. It seems that anyone is allowed a license to make games for the Wii these days. Remember the “Nintendo Seal of Quality” that meant charlatans couldn’t make games for them? That’s gone now. You can probably find a Coronation Street simulator for £20 in Tesco that looks like it was programmed on an Amstrad CPC.

Don’t even get me started on the games on the Wii that people say are classics, either. Mario Galaxy is travel sickness and migraine inducing. The newer Zelda games are too cartoony and require too much effort. And once I see Jamie Fucking Redknapp playing a Smash Brothers game then the franchise is dead to me.

Also: Leaning on a plastic board whilst pretending to do a ski jump does not help you lose weight.

ONE: THE REALITY OF RETRO VS THE MEMORY

I spend a lot of time in hotels. To cheer myself up recently, I downloaded a ton of emulators and games that I used to adore – Turrican, F Zero, Shadowrun, Armalyte and so on. I plugged in my trusty USB 360 controller and…

Well, it’s disappointing to say the least.

Much of the joy of my early days of video gaming is better left in the memory. They were good times but so little stands up to the test of moving on a couple of decades. Only the odd Mario and Zelda games do, along with the really simple classics like Space Invaders. I remember spending weeks playing Killer Instinct in my teens – I played it through an emulator the other day and can honestly say that I wish I’d have spent that time back then talking to girls or playing outside in the sun.

Take an utterly piss poor game on the 360 – let’s say FIFA Street - and compare it to Sensible Soccer. You may have loved that shit back then, but now… it’s rubbish. A terrible game is better than a so-called classic. This sort of reinvention doesn’t happen with films – Star Wars is still great, it doesn’t matter that technology moves on. Battlefield Earth isn’t better because it was made with better kit.

What can we do to combat this? Never, ever play old games. Ever. Remember the joy they brought you way back when.

And try not to think how pant-wettingly amazing games will be in five years time.

http://www.twitter.com/jimsmallman

The new show is called “Let’s Be Friends” and concerns how hard it is for a 30something loser like myself to find new friends when all of their old friends have grown up, raised families and moved on.  I’m still sitting around in my underwear playing on my SNES whilst eating jaffa cakes.

A big part of the show is called “Twitter friends are not real friends” and this is where you come in.  I’m collecting as many videos as I can from people who follow me on Twitter – be they famous, normal or bizarre – answering the following question:

“Why do you follow Jim on Twitter?”

If you want to take part in this, simply film a short (no more than 10-30 seconds long) video of yourself answering the above question.  Please note – I want you to prove that we’re not actually friends, so feel free to be as negative, inflammatory and insulting as possible (even my own daughter has made a video saying she follows me “just because she has to”).

The best videos will be used on this website and played before my show in Edinburgh.  If you know someone super-famous and can convince them to take part in this little project, I’ll also be happy to donate some money to the charity of their choosing.

You only need film your video on webcam or mobile phone, then email it straight to me at jim@jimsmallman.com.

Also, you’ll get a plug for your twitter feed if your video is used, so make sure that you tell me what it is!

Tell anyone you know about this, especially if they enjoy showing off. Go! Go! Go!

Of course, I’m aware that when writing this some of the people reading it may not be as big fans of the grappling arts as myself.  So this will be the first (and probably the last) of my blogs to include a glossary at the end to explain terms that you non-wrestling fans may not understand.

Anyway, for all my love towards those man-mountains clad in spandex and drizzled with baby oil, I could easily identify ten things that I despise.  So… here goes.

TEN:  A LACK OF MANAGERS

Eeh, when I was a lad it was usually quite easy to tell who the bad guys were when you watched wrestling on the telly.  Wasn’t just that the fans booed and they had hairier chests then the good dudes (that’s a FACT, go back and watch some videos) but they always had managers.  Sometimes male, sometimes female, usually evil (except Miss Elizabeth and to a lesser extent, Virgil).  There was loads of them – the best being Jimmy Hart, Slick and the legend that is Bobby Heenan.  Who do we have now?  Vicky Guerrero, whose managerial skills consist of being shrill.  I miss the managers, and this is in no way to do with wanting to work as one in the future because I have no wrestling skill whatsoever and I harbour dreams of being ringside for the heel stable of William Regal, Daniel Bryan and Seth Rollins.

NINE:  TOP ROPE FINISHING MOVES

You need a slight suspension of disbelief to enjoy wrestling, and to believe that two (or more) dudes fighting in a choreographed way with a completely fixed outcome is in any way realistic.  This is why the best finishing moves are either simple and can be done out of nowhere (the Stone Cold Stunner, RKO etc) or really complicated tie-you-in-knots MMA-like submission holds.  What isn’t realistic at all is when a fight pauses so one of the combatants can stand upon the top rope and jump off, usually twirling or somersaulting, and brings their body crashing down on their foe.  Which would probably injure themselves as much as their opponent.  I once watched a friend of mine in a fight, aged 12, jump open his opponent whilst screaming “ELBOW DROP”.  It ended the fight, but only because we were all laughing too much.

EIGHT:  KEN SHAMROCK

I don’t want to pick a fight with Mr Shamrock, mainly as he will hunt me down and rip out my Achilles before eating it in front of me.  However, if your glory years of wrestling are the “Attitude” era then Mr Shamrock was the constant ruiner of matches.  When he was new to wrestling he was too stiff (watch the footage of him vs Vader where they start knocking seven shades of shit out of each other), his facial mannerisms were either “calm and a bit angry” or “really really REALLY angry” and his promo skills were so bad that they made me want to make mini torches out of cotton buds and shove them into my ear canal.  At least his finisher was decent (see above) but he was living proof that the worlds of MMA and Wrestling are leagues apart.  After all, MMA is just enthusiastic hugging with the occasional punch to the temple.

SEVEN:  STEEL CAGE MATCHES

What could be more terrifying than two men fighting to the ABSOLUTE END within the four walls of a deathly steel structure?  Well, a gaggle of baby geese.  Good steel cage matches are hard to find – not Hell in a Cell matches, or Wargames, or even Elimination Chamber matches, they’re fine – but good steel cage matches?  I’m struggling to find any.  Out of the hundreds, probably thousands, that have taken place in history… I can think of two.  Bret Hart vs Owen Hart and Magnum TA vs Tully Blanchard, and the matches there were great because of the storylines involved, not the structure itself.  Plus, the old WWE cage was ugly blue steel and the formula was ALWAYS the same.  Good guy gets beaten up, bleeds a bit, recovers, climbs out as the bad guy tries to crawl out through the door.  Dull as fuck.

SIX:  THE TAG TEAM FORMULA

This point continues the one from above.  In the 1980s certain tag teams made that form of wrestling ludicrously entertaining.  For example, the Rock and Roll Express and the Midnight Express had a great feud where every single match was worth watching.  Trouble is, they got so good at the format that everyone else started to copy it.  The fact that you can now use the phrase “playing Ricky Morton” to describe the good guy in a match getting destroyed before he brings his partner in to clean up and get the win OR get cheated by the bad guys.  That’s it.  There’s no tension in a tag team match, not even in the indies.  Japan still kind of has it down, as does Mexico, but finding a decent tag team match in the USA is tricky (the last one I really loved was from Summerslam 91 – The Hart Foundation vs Demolition).  If you want proof, watch a match involving current WWE Tag Team Champions “Air Boom” (stupid, stupid name).  They all go like this:

*  Air Boom start out well

*  Bad guy team traps Evan Bourne

*  This stage lasts for about 8 minutes

*  Evan Bourne – after trying valiantly for ages – makes the tag to Kofi Kingston

*  Kofi jumps into the ring, top rope clothesline, SOS, a couple of kicks, Trouble in Paradise, he tags Evan back in, he hits Air Bourne (as it’s prettier to watch) and they win.

I’ve watched this match four times in the last month.

FIVE:  THE LACK OF PSYCHOLOGY IN INDIE WRESTLING

I’ve got a ton of DVDs from obscure promotions, from Japan, from all over the world.  I love watching all wrestling.  But you know what?  For however much I’ll get cross about the content of the WWE from time to time, at least they ensure that their talent understands psychology.  They’ve got guys who will work a body part and tell a story, rather than just hit finisher after finisher after finisher.  I adore indie wrestling – it’s incredibly entertaining but I can promise that there is usually one match on each card I own that takes this route. I sometimes think that wrestling in the indies is like being a new comedian – at every gig you feel you’ve got to smash out all your biggest, most offensive stuff and you’re afraid of telling a story.  Doing finisher after finisher is like being a comedian and shouting the word “cunt” repeatedly.  It might be entertaining to start with, but after the twentieth time at that show it’s pretty fucking tedious.

What makes this worse is that guys will take someone’s finisher and THEN GET STRAIGHT BACK UP!  No.  You are not Antonio Inoki and this isn’t the Tokyo Dome.  Watch the WWE.  You may hate it sometimes, but at least if someone gets hit with a GTS or RKO they stay down.  Finishers do exactly that.  A vertebreaker is not a transitional move.

Better still, watch a load of stuff from Japan.  Just not anything involving Inoki or Giant Baba.

FOUR:  PAST IT WRESTLERS

I’m a big football fan.  When someone can’t perform anymore, they retire.  They don’t end up playing in the top flight at the age of 50 just because they have a media profile or a film out.  Wrestling is a tough business – for all the fakery it’s hard on the body, tough on the mind and incredibly draining.  Guys that everyone should look up to got out of the business just in time – Shawn Michaels, Mick Foley, Edge.  They all knew when to stop performing and retired at the top of their game.  Bravo to them – walking away from good money to ensure that they can still walk when they’re 60.

Then you have guys who retire, come back, retire again, come back… and ruin any legacy that they may have by competing in AWFUL matches that nobody outside of their egos care about.  I’m looking at you – Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan, Roddy Piper, Kevin Nash, even Terry Funk.  Stop clogging up the system.

The Undertaker is excluded from this as he has the good sense to only wrestle once a year, and hopefully this year will be the last.

THREE:  TNA

I’ve been to watch TNA twice in this country, and enjoyed both of the shows tremendously.  You know why?  Because they weren’t taped for TV, so the wrestlers had time to put on decent matches, laugh at our chants and best of all, all the old deadwood stayed at home.  I watched some great matches and came away energised about wrestling.

Then, sadly, I watched their TV shows.  And their pay per views.  Sweet Jesus.

You know that your weekly TV show will be weak when you film it at a theme park in front of punters who haven’t paid to get in and just want to sit somewhere air-conditioned for a while.  Even worse if you look at some of their booking decisions:

*  Let Jeff Hardy anywhere near the top of the card, when he’s essentially a smacked-up waxwork

*  Build up a guy to become champ then decide against it because Hulk Hogan decides he isn’t ready (you should never listen to a man who clearly fancies his own daughter)

*  Wasting talent like Samoa Joe because he’s not Hogan’s cup of tea

Essentially I should amend this bit.  I quite like TNA, but until Hogan is living on a pacific island in an incestuous relationship with his daughter then I do feel that it’s quite doomed.  Hope not.

TWO:  PG RATING

I got back into wrestling at the age of 20 because I was flicking through Sky Sports one afternoon and happened to catch the Hell in a Cell match between the Undertaker and Mankind and was slightly turned on by the violence.  Stiff shots, death-defying falls, thumbtacks, blood, carnage.  Wrestling was like that all the time back then – racy storylines (sometimes stupid ones, but mainly good) and violent battles that appealed to the fanbase which was guys aged between 18-40.  Then advertisers started getting freaked out and the McMahon family decided that they wanted to get into politics, so it all stopped.  So what do we have now?  The same set of fans liking the sport (like me), plus a much more vocal amount of kids (who were there before when it was violent, just the same as they all play Grand Theft Auto when they’re 7).

This tactic strikes me as a bit stupid.  The boom time for wrestling was precisely when it had a “new rock and roll” vibe and it became cool to like it.  That’s what drove the viewing figures and the revenue.  Steve Austin was a rock star, for crying out loud.  It was a great time and you actively looked forward to watching wrestling.  Does that happen with the WWE now?  I don’t think so.

But who has the money?  I can afford to buy merchandise, DVDs, PPVs and event tickets.  My 11 year old nephew can’t.  What’s so wrong with violence?  For crying out loud, the product is American and when I was a kid we used to get told to not watch the A-Team because of the violence.  I still had a load of A-Team toys and ran around my playground spraying imaginary machine gun bullets at my classmates.  Nobody got hurt.  Just like in the A-Team.

ONE:  JOHN CENA

For those people who don’t like wrestling or have any frame of reference, let me tell you who John Cena is.  He’s essentially the golden boy of the WWE.  He’s often their champion, headlines most of their shows and is a fairly decent wrestler.  Fairly.

He’s also as charismatic as a slice of breaded ham and fans have been sick of him for the past two years.

When he wrestles, fans like me boo him.  Kids and women cheer him.  It then ends up in a feud between the fans as to whether he is loved or hated when there are more loved or hated wrestlers on the roster, but they don’t sell as many babygros or bibs to the slathering idiots in the mid west of the USA.  I’ve never met a wrestling fan who likes John Cena.  And when I say I hate him, I don’t hate him in a way that I’d pay good money to watch him get beaten up.  I’d pay good money to never watch him again.  I’m serious – I’ll start a whip round right now to try and buy him out of his overblown WWE contract.

He’s a square-jawed, white bread safe-option wrestler for the generic and bland product of 2012 WWE.  That said, there’s a revolution coming I’m sure.  I keep predicting that the glory days of anti-heroes and wrestling aimed at me is coming back.

Well, I’ve been predicting it for ages.

Then me and my mate Jon started this: THIS IS PROGRESS.

Plug over, here’s the glossary.

Follow me on Twitter.

GLOSSARY

Miss Elizabeth:  Manager of Randy Savage in the 80s and 90s.  Now sadly dead.

Virgil:  Servant of “The Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase (who was my favourite wrestler as a kid), eventually turned on him.  Was called Virgil as a dig at Dusty Rhodes, who booked the WWE’s rival shows.

Jimmy Hart:  ”The Mouth of the South”.  Genuine 60s one-hit-wonder who became involved in wrestling in the deep south Memphis hotbed in the 1970s.  Very good friends with Hulk Hogan, so has always been kept in work.  Wrote a lot of 1990s WCW wrestler theme tunes, and worked as both a good and bad guy.

Slick:  ”The Doctor of Style”.  Now a reverend.  Vaguely racist “jive-talkin’” manager from the 1980s.  Wore a flat cap to great aplomb.

Bobby Heenan:  ”The Brain”.  The greatest manager of all time, and one of the best colour commentators.  Referred to bad wrestlers as “ham and eggers”.  Despite being a manager due to his slight size, wrestled in many bloody and brutal matches in the 1970s.  Survived throat cancer recently, and is still tremendously popular with fans despite being retired.

Vicky Guerrero:  Current WWE manager of Dolph Ziggler and Jack Swagger.  Screams a lot.  Was married to the late Eddie Guerrero, former WWE legend.

William Regal:  British wrestler, billed from Blackpool but actually from Stoke.  One of my heroes, I remember watching him on “World of Sport” when I was growing up.  Incredibly funny and yet responsible for some brilliantly brutal wrestling moments.  Try finding footage of him roughing up Bill Goldberg in WCW, or his amazingly stiff fight against Fit Finlay where it seems obvious that they’re best mates with the amount of violence they trust one another with.  His autobiography is excellent.

Daniel Bryan:  Nicknamed “the best in the world” during his indie days.  Formerly called “The American Dragon” Bryan Danielson, changed his name for WWE copyright reasons.  Current WWE World Champion and one of my favourite current wrestlers (the other is CM Punk).

Seth Rollins:  Current WWE developmental talent (it’s kind of like a reserve team in football), formerly called Tyler Black in his indie wrestling days.  Cracking talent.

Stone Cold Stunner:  The finishing move of “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.  Usually prefixed with a boot to the gut.  It’s a three quarter facelock sit-out jawbreaker.

RKO:  The finishing move of Randy Orton, who looks a bit like David Beckham.  He does.  A three quarter facelock neckbreaker drop.

Ken Shamrock:  Former UFC champion that signed with the WWE in the mid 1990s.  Has a brother called Frank, who is also an MMA legend.  He had a storyline sister called Ryan, who was not really his sister.

Vader:  Born Leon White, a massive wrestler from Colorado who had his best times in Japan in the 1990s, but wrestled in the USA as well for WCW and WWE.  Responsible for Mick Foley losing his ear.

Bret Hart:  Legendary member of the Hart family.  Has a great autobiography (if a little bitter).  Was involved in the “Montreal Screwjob” where he was due to leave the WWE and they changed a match result without telling him in front of the rabid Canadian fans.  There’s a documentary about it called “Wrestling with Shadows”.  Now retired after a series of strokes.

Owen Hart:  Brother of Bret Hart, arguably the better wrestler.  Died tragically after falling from the rafters of the Kemper Arena in Kansas City at the “Over the Edge” pay per view in 1999.

Magnum TA:  Excellent NWA (the rival to WWE in the 1980s) wrestler who had a moustache to rival Magnum PI.  Hence the name (TA stands for Terry Allen).  Career was ended when he crashed his Porsche into a tree, but could have been the NWA version of Hulk Hogan.  Except he could, you know, wrestle and shit.

Tully Blanchard:  A member of the legendary “Four Horseman” stable alongside Ric Flair, Arn Anderson and Barry Windham (at least originally).  Lost a famous cage match against Magnum TA when he submitted after he had a wooden splinter jabbed into his eye.

The Rock and Roll Express:  Good guy tag team from the 1980s NWA that was most famously made up of Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson.  Morton would often get beaten up for most of their matches, coining the phrase “playing Ricky Morton”.

The Midnight Express:  Bad guy tag team from the 1980s NWA that was made up of two from Dennis Condrey, Bobby Eaton, Stan Lane and Randy Rose.

The Hart Foundation:  Tag team from 1980s/90s WWE.  Featured Bret Hart and his brother in law Jim “the Anvil” Neidhart.

Demolition:  Tag team from 1980s/90s WWE comprised of Ax (Bill Eadie) and Smash (Barry Darsow).  They were joined later by Crush (Brian Adams) so would sneakily swap their members around when it suited them.

Air Boom:  Current WWE Unified Tag Team Champions, comprised of Kofi Kingston and Evan Bourne.

SOS:  One of Kofi Kingston’s signature moves.  It’s a Japanese move called a Ranhei.

Trouble in Paradise:  Another signature move of Kofi Kingston, a jumping kick.

Air Bourne:  The finishing move of Evan Bourne, a shooting star press from the top rope.  Bourne basically does a reverse somersault and lands belly first on his fallen opponent.

Indie Wrestling:  Wrestling outside of the “big leagues” – in the past that would have been WWE, WCW and ECW, now it’s basically anything outside of WWE and TNA in the USA.  Smaller promotions – like Ring of Honor, which was featured a lot in the film “The Wrestler”.

Antonio Inoki:  Japanese-Argentinian wrestler, now retired, who has been running the top promotion in Japan for about 30 years.  Once wrestled Mohammed Ali.  Beating Inoki was incredibly rare.

GTS:  The finishing move of CM Punk, short for “Go To Sleep”.  Invented by Japanese wrestler KENTA, it’s a firemans carry dropped into a knee in the face.

Giant Baba:  Massive Japanese wrestler, died in the late 1990s.  Was Inoki’s rival both in the ring and outside it, running his own successful promotion.

Shawn Michaels:  Texan wrestler, known for being a bit of a bellend during his initial singles run in the 1990s, has since found God and mellowed out.  Now retired and a member of the WWE Hall of Fame.  Nicknamed the “Heartbreak Kid”.  Sang his own theme music.  It’s stuck in your head now if you know it.

Mick Foley:  One of the greatest human beings that has ever lived.  Great wrestler, now a writer and stand-up comedian.

Edge:  Top-level WWE talent from the 2000s who had to retire last year due to a neck injury.

Ric Flair:  The best wrestler in the world in the 1980s, now a bankrupt and tired husk of his former self.

Hulk Hogan:  An orange goblin.

Roddy Piper:  Wrestler and actor (he’s in “They Live”, which is ace) who has always been one of the best talkers in the business.  Still wrestles from time to time, and shouldn’t.

Kevin Nash:  Giant wrestler who is best friends with HHH (wrestler who is involved in running the WWE, largely as he married the owner’s daughter) and so still hobbles into a WWE ring from time to time.

Terry Funk:  Legendarily insane Texan wrestler who first retired in Japan in 1981.  He’s still wrestling.

TNA:  The main rival to the WWE’s output, owned by wrestler Jeff Jarrett and financially backed by Panda Energy.  TNA stands for “Total Nonstop Action”, but the company has recently been rebranded as “Impact Wrestling”.  Records its weekly TV show at Universal Studios in Orlando.

Jeff Hardy:  One of the former WWE Tag Team “The Hardy Boyz” (with his brother Matt).  The more successful of the two.  Fired by the WWE for drugs test violations, famously ruined an entire pay per view in 2011 by showing up in no fit state to perform.  The match was cut short to 90 seconds.

Samoa Joe:  Great wrestler in the indies, now languishing near the bottom of the card in TNA despite being their former heavyweight champion.  His gimmick?  He’s a big Samoan guy who’ll kill you.

Hell in a Cell:  A special type of cage match – the cage is wire mesh and has a roof.  Mick Foley was famously thrown off of the roof of said cell in the match I describe.

The McMahon Family:  Owners of the WWE.  Vince and Linda McMahon (who bought the company from Vince’s dad, Vince Senior), daughter Stephanie and her husband Paul Levesque (the wrestler HHH).  Her brother Shane is also still a shareholder, but no longer works for the company.

Steve Austin:  The biggest WWE star of the 1990s before Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson took his mantle.  Now a TV presenter and film star.

PPV:  Pay per view.  The WWE has one PPV event each month (as does TNA).  They cost $45 to order and watch live, usually on the last Sunday of the month.

John Cena:  A slice of breaded ham.

Well hello, nice people.  With me having lots of fun things that I’d like to tell the world about, I’d like to have a lot more followers on Twitter.  So I hatched a daft plan today…

If I can get up to 5,000 followers on Twitter I will get three – yes THREE – tweeps tattooed upon my person.  I keep getting asked for clarification on how this works, so let me explain…

NOTE THE SLIGHT RULE CHANGE!

The best referrer will be tattooed upon me – based on either number of references OR the most creative way of gaining me followers

I’ll also have an independent witness choose TWO (yes, TWO) followers AT RANDOM to be tattooed on me

I’ll then have each of the above “winners” inked onto my skin.  It’ll be both their little profile picture AND their Twitter username. Yes, even if it makes me look like a dick.

For those that don’t know, I already have the following things tattooed on me – Ron Burgundy, a trainer, a power switch, Princess Peach, Zelda, Chun Li, Akuma, my Edinburgh show and DVD title (Tattooligan) on my stomach (that was another publicity stunt), a heart over my actual heart, a pacman ghost (Blinky, the red one), Starscream from Transformers and loads more.  You get the idea.

You’ll be finding yourself on my arm somewhere (I still have some room) as long as I get to 5,000.  And I leapt up by 400 people today, so hopefully it won’t take too long…

Plus I try to be a nice person to follow on Twitter anyway.  I mainly talk about comedy, cake, wrestling, comedy, football, tv, films, comedy and tattoos (obviously).

The twitter handle you need is @jimsmallman, and the hashtag I’m using is #getjim5000followersandhewillhaveyoutattooedonhim (as it’s short and catchy).

Do join in.  I’ll probably film it again, like I did the last time I did something really stupid…

10:  Identikit Stadiums

This is especially apt as a Leicester City supporter.  Filbert Street may have been a dump, but it was out dump:  Unchanged in eons, horrible for away fans, tight and cramped on the pitch, wonderful acoustics keeping all the noise in – even if it only held 21,000.  The Walkers King Power Filbert Way stadium (or whatever the fuck it is called this week) may have stellar views from every seat but it’s just not memorable.  I could sketch you Filbert Street right now, like an autistic kid on a New York street.  Could I do the same with our current home?  Nope.  I’m vaguely aware that it has some cantilevers, and I know what colour seats we have.  But it’s just homogenised and dull.  For the 2002 and 2006 World Cups the stadium designers had the right idea, with grounds shaped like giant eggs and bubbles and the like.  I reckon you could put our stadium next to St Marys, Pride Park, the Riverside, the KC Stadium and so on… and not be able to tell the difference.  Not Coventry’s ground though, that’s easy to recognise by virtue of the depressing air that permeates from it being in, well, Coventry.

9:  Chips Inside Grounds

If you’re planning on eating chips at the football, it always worked that you would buy them at a chip shop outside the ground before going in.  There’s some great places:  The chippy behind the away end at Hillsborough where they still cook them in lard; The place at Watford where the owners give away fans a discount because they’re Luton fans; The Chinese chip shop at Crystal Palace that is next door to a brilliant second hand electronics shop – so you can spend ages checking out PCB boards, old joysticks and original BBC Micros.  However, there has been a recent development that has ended the camaraderie of the hallowed chip-run, and that is clubs selling chips inside the stadium.  And not even proper chips.  Shit chips.  A polystyrene cone of quasi-french fries with no room to apply sauce (and the sauce that they give you is always knock-off own-brand “red sauce”).  Plus they’re always too hot.  Hotter than the centre of the earth, and fried by a disinterested 15 year old who wanted a free ticket to the game and has probably spent the day trying to deep fry anything that came to mind.  I have never had good chips inside a football stadium.  I have, however, had good burgers, hot dogs, pies, pasties, chocolate and crisps.  Don’t diversify, please.  Chips are for outside.

8:  ”…We’re By Far The Greatest Team…”

A lot of football chants are stupid.  As a Leicester fan, I get wound up when we sing about our Japanese midfielder Yuki Abe the following:  ”Yuki, he’ll eat your fucking dog”.  No he won’t.  He’s Japanese, not Korean.  Or French.  He’d probably eat all of your seafood, and maybe any raw bear you may have (which is called Kuma, like the Bear in Tekken) but not your Dog.  Not even if he was really, really hungry.  One chant that really gets my goat is the one that every team sings to the tune of “No, Nay, Never” which states that [INSERT TEAM NAME] is by far the greatest team the world has ever seen.  Really?  If you support Port Vale can you afford to make that lofty claim?  If you’re watching Sheffield United when have you been able to say you were even the greatest team in Yorkshire?  It’s silly.  Unless you supported the 1950s Real Madrid team or possibly the 1970 Brazilian World Cup side then you cannot sing this song.  Ever.  Just stop it.

7:  Wayne Rooney’s Bicycle Kick

Ok, Wayne Rooney is a pretty good footballer.  He’s certainly the best English player in the Premier League.  I even admit to finding him exciting to watch when he’s firing on all cylinders.  However, last year when he scored that bicycle kick against Manchester City it was not the greatest goal ever scored.  It wasn’t even close to Cambiasso’s for Argentina in the 2006 World Cup, or Maradona against England in 1986.  In fact, it wasn’t even the best bicycle kick ever scored in England – as that is, of course, Muzzy Izzet’s goal against Grimsby when Leicester last got promoted to the Premier League.  Pundits drew attention to the context in which Rooney scored his goal, in a local derby – fine.  But Izzet scored his after City had been reduced to ten men and were under the kosh.  The goal put us 2-1 up away from home and took us to the top of the league.  The cross from Andy Impey was perfect, and Izzet’s finish (from the edge of the area) was so sublime that upon celebrating it I burst a blood vessel in my head and then had a migraine for the next 3 days.  Of course, the goal is always overlooked because it was scored by lowly Leicester City.  Don’t even get me started on Trevor Sinclair’s bicycle kick for QPR, or Stan Collymore’s for Bradford, or the entire canon of Lee Trundle.

6:  All Non Adidas Football Kits

In the beginning, God created man.  Then, he created football.  In about 1978, he created decent football kits after years of wearing horrible woolly ones.  Once this happened, it quickly became obvious that one brand really stuck out:  Adidas.  Which is pronounced “Add-E-Dass” and NOT “Add-Eee-duss”.  With the three stripes on the sleeves, I can think of countless classic kits:  France 1982, Germany 1990, Liverpool 1988, Milan for the whole of the 1990s, Arsenal in 1990.  Brilliant shirts, all of them.  And you get to have Adidas branded training gear too – oh, how I wish I had an Adidas Leicester City tracksuit top to carouse around town in.  If your kit is currently made by the following, let me explain what it means:

Nike – Your board of directors cares more about their bank balance than what you look like.

Puma – Adidas turned down the chance to make your kit.

Errea – You are either an Italian Serie B team or Middlesbrough.

Hummel – You are Danish.

Canterbury – Hey, dickhead, this isn’t Rugby!

Umbro – We’re so proud of our British heritage that we sing the dambusters theme tune at least once a day.

Kappa – Hey! My shirt doesn’t fit so good!

Burrda - Who the fuck?

Lotto – If we won it then we could afford a better kit.

5:  Craig Bellamy

Imagine a footballer who has never played more than 100 league games for a club, and yet has somehow parleyed his limited skills into several multi-million pound moves, swelling his bank account and ego each time.  Imagine a player who you can’t ever really remember playing well, but surely he must have done something decent at some point because God knows the press seems to think he’s the cat’s pyjamas.  Think of a footballer who has managed to turn whining and off-field violence into an artform.  Think of a player that is somehow back at Liverpool despite not even doing well in the Championship last season.  Think of a man who essentially looks like every single chav scumbag in your town rolled into one individual with no neck, shit tattoos and probably driving an Escalade or tricked our Range Rover.  Think of the one player that you definitely never want at your club, and if you had him at your club you were left scratching your head after the requisite 25 games or so.  Ladies and Gentlemen, the man you are thinking of is Craig Bellamy.  He’s a diminutive, bad-tempered little cock.  With, I’d wager, a little cock.

4:  Glory Hunters

I support my hometown club.  Most people I know support their hometown clubs.  As well as my Leicester City obsession I have friends that support Woking, Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest, Coventry City, Leeds United, Yeovil Town, Brighton and Hove Albion, Swansea City and so on.  I of course have friends who support the big sides too.  But you know what?  Everyone that I know that does support Manchester United, Liverpool or Arsenal has done so for their entire life, based on geographical or family connections.  I bear these people no ill will whatsoever.  What I can’t stand are the Johnny-Come-Latelies who latch onto the latest fad team and claim their undying love.  How many kids have you seen wearing Chelsea shirts in the last few years?  Or Blackburn shirts in the 1990s?  What about British kids who support Barcelona?  Unless you live in a Tapas bar YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DO THIS.  Admire their football.  Enjoy their games.  But do not – EVER – claim to me that you support them when your only chance of watching that team involves you going on a stag weekend with a distant cousin.  Manchester City are already a big club.  They don’t want your money or your support, nor do they need it.  If you go to football matches and you take a camera you’re a prick.  You should be fully aware of what your stadium looks like as you’ve obviously been going there since you were little.  If you ever utter the sentence “I used to support [TEAM NAME] but recently I’ve really started to like [TEAM NAME] then you are worse than dead to me.  You’re worse than Hitler, Dracula, Richard Nixon and the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang rolled into one.  Dick.

3:  The Man Who Sits Near Me Who Ruins Everything With His Constant Commentary

In my seat at the Walkers King Power Filbert Emporium of Soccer Based Games (East stand, block J2, row AA, seat 235) I can hear the constant musings of one man.  He dresses top to toe in Leicester City themed clothing.  He wears a hat that covers a balding blonde mullet ala Hulk Hogan.  His accent is as Leicester as it can be – he could effortlessly pull off the most Leicestershire sentence ever which is of course “Oohyah fighter, there’s a wabby in me plaggy bag” (translated as “I say, there is a wasp in my carrier bag”) – and he never, EVER shuts up whilst watching a game.  Firstly, he only seems to like players that aren’t brilliant.  He is the only man alive that believes that Matt Oakley is a footballer, for example.  He thinks Yuki Abe is lazy, Kasper Schmeichel is “dodgy”, Sol Bamba can’t defend and that our strikers are “league one level”.  Of course, he’s allowed his opinion.  What really gets my goat is when he tries to predict what will happen.  A midfielder will win the ball and switch the play to the far side of the pitch.  As soon as the ball cannons off his boot he’ll scream “great ball”… and it’ll go out of play for a throw-in.  If a striker has a speculative shot he’ll scream “it’s in!” and you can guarantee that it most certainly isn’t.  Then you have his stats, which he gets wrong constantly.  He once claimed that Manchester City had never beaten us in Leicester, while his idiot friends nodded in agreement.  He’ll claim that we’re buying ridiculous players – last season he told someone to bet their house on us signing Thierry Henry because he’d apparently seen him on the A46 Travelodge.  We can however rely on him to drunkenly fall up the stairs at least once a season.  Once he did so, spilling bovril over Tony Cottee.

2:  Fans Crying When Their Team Gets Relegated

It’s the last day of the season.  It’s come down to this.  Three points and you stay up.  A point and results going your way and you might be safe.  A defeat and you’re probably down.  Your lot go 1-0 up but with ten to go they equalise and it’s squeaky bum time.  Then in injury time – disaster! – they scramble it in from a corner and you’re listening to the radio as intently as you can, trying to find out what’s going on at other stadiums.

If this has happened to you – and it has me – then that’s fine.

When the final whistle goes, it’s all over.  The scores come in over the tannoy and that’s it, you’re down.  And as the cameras pan across your end of the ground, people are seen crying.

These people are idiots.

When City got relegated to League One a few years back it was harsh, but not a reason to cry.  In fact, the only reason I have ever cried at a football match was when we left Filbert Street and they switched the lights off (I think I hugged my dad and sobbed that “it’s all so final”).  My favourites to watch in these situations are fans of clubs from the North East.  Why are you crying?  You’ll still exist next season.  Also, what the fuck did you expect to happen?  If you’ve got relegated on the last day of the season then SURELY you’ve been fairly rotten all year?  How is this a surprise?  Could you not steel yourself just a little bit in expectation?

Pussies.

1:  Realising That You’ll Never Play

At the age of 33 I am now finally having to live up to the realisation that I probably won’t ever play professional football.  Probably.  There’s an awful moment when you realise that a breakout football star is a couple of years younger than you (mine was Michael Owen) and you lower your expectations.  Maybe you won’t make it in the Premier League, but you could get snapped up by a non-league team, score against a league club in the cup and then get snapped up by a League One side for the remainder of your twenties?  No.  It won’t happen.  Every single football fan wants to be out there, scoring the goals and living the life.  If it was going to happen to you then it would have happened when you were ten.  Not now, tubby.  You’ve not even managed to walk to the shops in two years, how are you going to boss a midfield for 90 minutes?  It’s over, dude.  You’re finished.  The dream is never going to happen.  Face it.  At the moment there is even a manager in the Premier League that is younger than me.  And more attractive, dynamic, successful and looks way better in a suit than I could ever hope.  That’s it.  Game over.  It’s just FIFA, Pro Evo and Football Manager for you now.  And even then there are a million people better at it than you.  Go online now and you’ll get your arse handed to you by an 8 year old in Venezuela.

Also, stop playing Sunday League.  It demeans us all.

http://twitter.com/jimsmallman

As a kid I’d imagine myself in films constantly – sometimes of my creation (I genuinely came up with an idea for a typical British farce at around the time A Fish Called Wanda came out called, and I’m not kidding, Bollocks!  Yes.  With the exclamation mark) and sometimes the sequel to a film I’d watched recently.  Never a prequel, because they weren’t in vogue as yet.  I invented central roles for myself in Back to the Future 4, Ghostbusters 3 and Commando 2.  I was always a hero, which is confusing as my only cinematic ambitions these days are as follows:

1:  Appear as a zombie in a horror film.

2:  Be a henchman in a Bond film.

Between the ages of about 14 and 33 (so, now) my little imaginary voyages have limited to three different themes dependent on my mood.

FOOTBALL

I’ve long imagined myself under cover of duvet as the star player at my beloved Leicester City.  The strange thing is that I’ve always imagined myself as being 28 years old, no matter how old I was in real life.  I had a backstory and everything, one that hasn’t changed in years (and is always applied to my footballing self in video games and Football Manager).

I wasn’t good at football at school (so far, so true) so I moved to Japan to study at the age of 18.  There I played for my university and was noticed for my prolific scoring prowess, despite my lack of height or speed.  I was an oriental Lee Trundle, if you like.  At 19 I was snapped up by Gamba Osaka and I broke the J-League scoring record in my first season, becoming an overnight sensation.  At 20 I was snapped up by Russian giants CSKA Moscow in a £1 million deal, but after 3 games (and 4 goals) I snapped my cruciate ligament and was out for a year.  New management meant that I fell down the pecking order so I left the club to sign for Pohang Steelers in South Korea.  There I had a brilliant comeback season, scoring 24 goals in the same amount of games.  Despite doing well in Korea my Russian wife (oh yes) was homesick so by 22 I was back in Russia playing for Zenit.

I topped the goalscoring charts in Russia in my first season in St Petersberg but split with my wife and fell out with the Zenit fans over their racist attitude to opposing players.  I asked for a transfer and was granted one, moving to Belgian giants Anderlecht for £3 million.  At this time I was selected for my first cap for Russia (I had been granted citizenship thanks to my estranged wife), who won the bidding war for my international services with Wales.  England showed little interest, which would come back to haunt them later on.  At Anderlecht I started brightly but then faded from view after breaking my ankle.  By the time I was 24, I was on the move again as they slashed their wage bill.  I made the move to Germany to play for second tier St Pauli, helping them to the title with 41 goals that season.  Due to financial irregularities though, I was forced to be sold by administrators (despite the fans coming up with various schemes to raise money for me to stay and me offering to play for free) and at 25 I moved yet again, this time to 1860 Munich.

I was sent off in my third game for Munich and reacted by grabbing the referee by his shirt collar and threatening him.  I was then suspended for two years, reduced on appeal to the rest of the current season.  1860 terminated my contract and I spent the rest of that year coaching kids in Japan and the USA.

By 26 my suspension was up and I was looking for another club.  I begged Leicester City, who were struggling in the Championship, for a trial and was granted one.  After scoring 5 goals in 2 pre season games I was offered a two year contract and took it, declaring my undying love for the side I had supported from birth.  As a relative unknown in England I started the season on the bench, but scored 2 goals on my debut against Nottingham Forest and never looked back.  In my first season we won the Championship at a canter, claiming the title by March as well as winning the League Cup and qualifying for Europe.

Despite our great promotion season we weren’t tipped to do well in the Premier League, something that we quickly confounded with an amazing 4-0 victory over Manchester United at Old Trafford on the opening day.  We remained unbeaten all season, winning the league, cup, league cup and Europa League.  Despite offers to move to so-called “bigger clubs” I remained at City as we started our first ever pursuit of the Champions League.

That’s normally where I start my adventures in my imagination.

WRESTLING

I know, it’s never socially acceptable to admit that you’re a wrestling fan but I bloody love it.  Yes, it is just men in their underwear pretending to fight but I’ve wanted to be a wrestler since a very young age and my imagination offers me the arena to come up with yet another great backstory.

Of course I don’t wrestle under my own name, preferring instead to compete as “Jimmy Barnett”, a nod to my ancestry and also a clever little reference to an old-school NWA power broker back in the day.  Starting my career in England, I reached a certain level of success before moving to the USA to attempt to find fame and fortune.  I had trials for the WWE but never made the grade, instead wrestling for independent federations all across North America.  After competing in a juniorweight tournament in Philadelphia I’m offered the chance to tour Japan with NJPW.

There I have to adapt my style, moving from my original high-flying tactics to a more grounded, hard-hitting style.  I develop an in-ring personality where if I get hit in the head too often I no-sell it and “snap”, smiling and laughing at my opponent before going on the offensive.  The fans and press there nickname me “The Ripper” because of my British accent and bad-guy lust for blood against their heroes.

I eventually return to the USA and my success in Japan has been picked up by independent promoters and geeky smart fans who have watched DVDs of my contests.  I get pushed well in marquee independent promotions like Ring of Honor and Pro Wrestling Guerilla, never being trusted to hold a title (as my alcoholic past is often in their minds) but taking part in bloody wars with Kevin Steen, Steve Corino, Super Dragon and Davey Richards.  I’m given the chance to talk more, getting a name for myself for my amusing and often foul-mouthed promos.  I debut my soon to be well-known and oft-copied finishing moves – the Straightjacket Clutch (cross-armed camel clutch), Drunk Driver (leg trap inverted sheer drop brainbuster) and The Living End (high angle clawhold STO) and receive the first of my four five-star matches from the Wrestling Observer.

I then secretly sign with the WWE, making my debut at a RAW taping in Philadelphia (the smart fan stronghold).  John Cena is wrestling a match when I merely walk down the aisle carrying a chair, and sit on it next to the ring, commentating on Cena as he wins his match.  The kids in attendance have no idea who I am but the smart fans do, chanting “Ripper” at me.  I curse a couple of times towards the end of my time at ringside (all planned, of course) and the broadcast is hastily shuffled to commercials.  The internet is abuzz over this.

I keep coming out week after week, calling Cena out and saying controversial, non-PG things.  I threaten to break the WWE PG rating initiative in “the most violent way possible”, eventually interfering in a Rey Mysterio match, where I severely injure Rey (he is retiring anyway) and unmask him, chaining him to the ropes and hitting him in the face with a chair until Cena comes out to save him.  The next week I attack Cena in the ring, bloodying his face with a chair and repeatedly hitting him with The Living End.  The fans barely notice that the rating on RAW has changed from “TV-PG” to “TV-MA” over the past weeks as violence between me and Cena becomes commonplace.  A match is signed for Summerslam in my adopted American hometown of Cleveland with the stipulation that if I lose, I leave WWE.  If I win, I can hire six wrestlers from anywhere to join my “Black Bloc”.  I beg the fans to show the world who they support, telling them if they love the Ripper and his violence to wear plain black hoodies to Summerslam and pull their hoods up as the bell rings for my fight with Cena.  80% of the crowd does, and I win after Cena’s best match ever (about time he had a fucking good one).

The next night on RAW I come out and choose my six wrestlers to join me, all of whom will be committed to violence, good wrestling and NEVER returning WWE to the dark days of PG ratings.  I choose two wrestlers that have never made it into the WWE before – Samoa Joe and Davey Richards, plus four that had recently been released – Awesome Kong, Giant Bernard, Bryan Danielson and CM Punk.

That’s where the imagining then begins.  We’re on the way to Wrestlemania at the moment with dissention being teased between me (World Champion) and Punk (WWE Champion).  But is it all a ruse?  TUNE INTO RAW TO FIND OUT!

GIRLS

I’m a man.  Of course I curl up some nights and think about girls.  You’d be surprised though, for a man of my admitted perversity it’s never filth.

There’s always one girl that I’ll be totally lovesick over.  It changes every now and then, but the sickness often lasts for a year or two.  It’s always someone that I’ll never tell, and has always been someone that I’ve never ended up with due to shyness, cowardice and a lack of faith in my own looks and personality.  For all the truly ridiculous things that I’ve done in my life, I often drift off to sleep imagining that I’m a character in some kind of awful romantic comedy, just one that has been slightly twisted by my acid-casualty mind.

I will imagine stuttered conversations and accidental brushes of hands, I do think about spooning the object of my affection while tightly gripping a pillow, and I do dream of unexpected kisses from a girl long after I’ve abandoned any hope of anything happening and they’ve fallen head over heels in love with me, all of me, warts and all, despite my limitations.

If my imagination is a film there are lots of shots of us laughing, chasing each other around parks and fields, and the soundtrack is usually by Mogwai or The Joy Formidable.

The sad part about this is that I’m now 33 years old.  I’ve been imagining these things for a long time and none of them have happened yet.  I have to face the reality that these things will never happen.

In fact, 2 out of these 3 things are guaranteed to never happen.  It’s just a sad fact of life.

Because let’s be honest, at 33 I could probably still become a wrestler.