One man who’d camped out since last night choked back the tears ‘It’s not just a tragedy for the nation but for the whole world of football. To have someone taken at such a young age, struck down with a rather achy ankle and forced to take it easy for the next five or six months it’s just unbearable.’

The group of bikers who rode through the town on Sunday raising £100,000 have pledged to give the money to the ailing hairdressing industry who will be devastated by Beckham’s non-appearance at the World Cup with a new whacky must-have haircut. The Chancellor also offered to work on an aid package for the fashion and male-grooming sectors who will be particularly hit.

Several dead servicemen who were due to fly in there today have been rerouted to the cargo terminal at RAF Valley in Wales. An FA spokesman said ‘these soldiers are really overpaid for what they do you know, I mean any fool can go out to Afghanistan or Iraq and shoot people. I think the public know who the true heroes are.’

MADJEZ

‘We’ve got lads who would die for Hull City,’ said Brown. ‘So I propose to take advantage of that loyalty. The first time we get a free kick within striking range, we put one of the lads in their defensive wall, and ‘kaboom’, young Seyi Olofinjana has an open goal to aim at. Normally Jimmy Bullard would take the kick, but if his injury doesn’t clear up soon he’ll be in the suicide squad.’

Brown said the use of suicide strikers would assist smaller clubs and create a more level playing field. ‘Or not so level,’ he said, ‘when one of the fuckers goes off in the six yard box. Talk about a flat back four, theirs will be completely vaporised.

‘Football is a religion to us. We have to stand up for the long ball over the top and outdoor half time talks, and fight a jihad against big club hegemony.’

Asked if he wasn’t being a bit extreme, Brown admitted he had been under stress, with sponsors threatening to withdraw from their shirts deal. ‘Apparently they noticed we were nicknamed The Tigers, and they didn’t want to be associated with a damaged brand. I can tell you, the only Norwegian models you’ll find round here are ships in bottles brought in by their fishermen.’

As a consequence of being the only Briton to medal at the Vancouver games last month, the 27-year-old from Bath has been widely tipped as a shoo-in for a Damehood in June, when the Queen’s Birthday Honours List is announced. Some have even predicted that Miss Williams will lift the much coveted BBC Sports Personality of the Year for 2010. However, Prince Harry’s bestowal of the royal ‘would’ has come as a complete surprise to most pundits, primarily because the honour didn’t actually exist until today. The closest award on record is when swimming star Rebecca Adlington was awarded a Royal ‘Wouldn’t’.

In a statement issued through Buckingham Palace today, the Prince stated that: ‘Miss Williams is to receive her award for services to Lycra clad babeliciousness, selflessly providing a welcome change to the usual lard-arsed Eastern European munters, and – in the face of an overwhelmingly dull winter sport – consistently managing to keep red blooded males up all night.’ The citation simply concludes with: ‘Amy Williams? I would!’

In a break with tradition, rather than the Palace, Miss Williams is to receive her honour on Tuesday afternoon next week, during a private investiture ceremony to be held in the Travelodge Hotel, at the Chieveley Services, just off the M4 near Newbury.

Even before the precise nature of the tournament is known, cash is flooding in from sponsors, lotteries and public donations, and great strides have been made in spending it, say organisers. Spokeswoman Fay Bartram said the first tranche of spending has gone on focus groups, steering committees, marketing consultants, PR advisers and several layers of middle managers.

In a statement released yesterday, Ms Bartram said, ‘We hope to set up a proprietary state-of-the-art IT system sometime soon, after which we intend to move on to acquiring protected land and buildings and establishing a spending taskforce with its own watchdog.’

Although arrangements are still at a preliminary stage, it is speculated that there will be a full range of throwing events with targets that start with the pocket-money demands of individual competitors’ children to full-blown global bank rescues, with a climax which has been billed as ‘an extravaganza of quantitative easing’.

The biggest players are expected to throw money at public projects, with President Obama and the UK’s NHS hotly tipped to meet in the final of the healthcare event. The United Nations and the European Parliament are also expected to feature strongly in the medal tables. Russian oligarchs are tipped to be major contenders in the commercial sporting arena.

Given the large range of events and size of competitors, the amounts involved will be varied, from ‘fivers’ at the bottom of the scale to billions at the top, which for ease of throwing will be round billions. The organisers hope to raise sufficient funds to purchase their own black hole for the larger events.

Asked about the still-undisclosed location and timing of the tournament, Ms Bartram said, ‘We don’t know if there will be a venue ready in time or quite what form the championships will take, but if we can ask everyone to dig that little bit deeper we should be able to get it over the line.

‘What we can say is that we expect to spend more than the organisers of the 2010 World Cup and the 2012 Olympics combined, which I think you’ll all agree is a massive achievement.’

Guitarist Pete Townshend was visibly shaken. ‘I know my on-stage antics can sometimes look aggressive, but I’ve never encountered this kind of reaction. It’s as much as I can do these days to whirl my arm around in my trademark ‘windmill’ without needing a rest afterwards, and wrecking our equipment on stage has become a bit passé, so yes, I was shocked by what I saw.’

Singer Roger Daltrey described the scenes in the stadium as approaching open warfare, with gangs of rival body builders dressed in casual sportswear lining up and repeatedly smashing into each other. ‘They even wore helmets and body armour. I’m surprised no one was killed. At least they stopped for commercial breaks and the National Anthem, but then this is America . What was most surprising was the way the crowd were not only unperturbed by the carnage, they actually seemed to be enjoying it. Many of them even interrupted their eating and drinking to cheer the perpetrators on.’

Daltrey said it was worse than anything they had witnessed in the Mods v Rockers battles of the 1960s or on the North bank at Highbury in the 1970s. ‘Someone said something about a game of football, but they never stopped for long enough to get a game going. Occasionally we did see people trying to run off with a small object that looked a bit like a toy rugby ball, or throwing it to their mates, but we think this must have been some kind of group bag-snatching training.’

Townshend admitted they had been concerned beforehand about adverse reaction to his ill-advised internet research some years ago, for which he was cautioned but not prosecuted, but any protests were overshadowed by the fighting. ‘Someone asked me what I thought about my pariah status, and I said I thought Mariah was a great singer but not in our league musically. Fucks your ears up, playing as loud as we do, I can tell you.’

Tottenham central defender Karl Nyarko has snapped up much sought-after glamour model Haylee Ashby from Sunderland striker Phil Letch for an undisclosed fee, while lapdancer Debbie Francis has moved from Portsmouth defender Chris Bevan to Aston Villa midfielder Kelvin Legg for £250,000 from a tabloid newspaper.

Meanwhile, highly rated former Big Brother contestant Laura Blakely has joined Liverpool’s Croatian midfielder Ivano Vokker on a six-month loan after previous trials with players from Everton, Fulham and Scunthorpe. And Manchester United were delighted to have secured the Essex swimwear model Daniella Stevens for their French centre back Jean-Pierre Bertillon.

‘Daniella’s great with her head and has scored with almost every club in the Premiership,’ said Sir Alex Ferguson. ‘She’s been experimenting in lots of positions but – hang on, I think this will work – she’ll be best staying tight on Jean-Pierre and will certainly stiffen up the United defence.’

Stevens was formerly a regular first choice in the passenger seat of the Aston Martin of United’s Nigerian striker, Carl Achampong. After failing a physical she was let go but now returns after extensive surgery. ‘She’s looks a natural up-front’ said Sir Alex, ‘and we can play Carl in the hole just behind her.’

Rumours that Danielle Lloyd would be on the move again, bringing the total number of players she has served into double figures, failed to materialise. She apparently remains affiliated to Jamie O’Hara, though O’Hara has admitted that Lloyd does not figure in his long-term plans.

Another high-profile move that remains on the cards is Colleen McLoughlin, who continues to be linked to Carlos Tevez, despite Wayne Rooney’s insistence that she is ‘going nowhere’.

‘I’m confident we can seal the deal in the close season,’ said Tevez’s spokesman. ‘I mean she obviously has a thing about blokes who look like chimpanzees…’

‘There is the famous incident of the controversial goal by the Germans that is well documented in these new letters. They show that despite the French referee having a good position to spot any offence, his linesman missed half of the advancing German army being clearly offside.’

The incident in Ypres is just one of several contentious decisions made on the day including awarding a penalty to Army Group Fabeck, even though the corporal who fell in the penalty area was under no challenge from any member of the British IV corps. ‘What is facinating is discovering the names of the soldiers involved. The german Corporal was one Sigmund Klinsmann, while the British sergeant who saved the spot kick was a Daniel Banks.’

It had been hoped that the friendly game on Christmas Day 1914 might offer a peaceful way forward for countries to play out their rivalries, and that war might be a thing of the past. However, the players were so angry about the dodgy line-call that a fight broke out after the match, all out hostilities were resumed, and the war carried on for another four years claiming millions of lives.

Still, that’s the thing about World Wars’ said German Chancellor Angela Merkel; ‘It’s not winning, but taking part that counts.’

ajblacker

In a multi-million pound deal, the estate of Arthur Thackwell; the author of such classics as ‘She Fell Over’, ‘The Referee’s a Wanker’ and ‘You’re Shit and You Know You Are’; sold the rights to his material to Harrison Multimedia, a company renowned for aggressively prosecuting unsanctioned performances of its ‘assets’.

‘Basically if we want to chant at a game, we have to pay a substantial performance fee – something that the average fan can’t afford these days.’ complained celebrity Arsenal fan Dermot O’Leary. ‘We all laughed at West Ham when Michael Jackson bought the rights to I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles, but with hindsight it was just the tip of the iceberg.’

The deal means that this weekend, the terraces will resound not to the usual taunts and tunes, but to a variety of ad-hoc communal activities as fans struggle to adapt. Birmingham City supporters club is said to be indoctrinating it’s members into the complexities of freeform acapella jazz, whilst Kidderminster Harriers are reported to have hired a number of mime artists for Saturday’s game against AFC Wimbledon.

However some supporters’ organisations have turned the situation to their advantage, with notorious hooligans the Chelsea Head-hunters securing a deal from Amy Winehouse’s record label Lioness Records. In return for substantial sponsorship, the Head-hunters will sing a selection of Amy’s songs during Chelsea’s next fixture, although some commentators have questioned the wisdom of associating the songstress with a drugged up, excessively tattooed layabout.