Shallow Not Stupid

The Olympics follow me like a stalker poo that won’t flush. My size-two bum is still sore from sitting through the opening ceremony in Beijing, where I wanted to kill smug Bird’s Nest artist Ai Weiwei, or at least pelt him with dumplings from his overpriced restaurant. He took the Chinese government’s silver to help design their stadium, then whined when he was accused of playing dim sum with his taxes.

Now I’m home in London and the Olympics are here too. I really wish Danny Boyle had made a new movie instead of squandering his talent on the government’s massive mugging of taxpayers and tourists. It’s embarrassing to watch the sports minister Tessa Jowlie salivating over Olympic Ambassador David Beckham, who isn’t competing but could get gold for putting up with Queen Victoria. And David Cameron, who’s face has started to look like a bum since he became Prime Minister, sits on his ass doing mental arithmetic, wondering if this expensive fiasco will cost him his job.

Okay, I’m sounding like my Ranty Auntie, but I’ve suffered at the hands of sport since the last century, when I was forced to train every day during my American childhood, just in case I’d be picked for the Olympic team. Which was unlikely since they don’t give medals for being six and a half stone and sleeping late. As if having to do track with a psychotic cat following me, impersonating the way I run, and break my fingernails swinging from the trees behind the school (in an undignified display somewhere between Tarzan and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) wasn’t bad enough, the sadistic canoeing teacher always picked me to demonstrate being capsized.


Now that I’m older and more idealistic, I understand that coffee works like cocaine when I need an energy boost to lunge towards something in a sale. I could have had a triple espresso and escaped from the ski instructor, Marquis de Saddo, who forced us to take outdoor showers after the compulsory cross-country ski races he followed in his four-wheel.

Eventually the patron saint of lazy girls everywhere answered my prayers. I turned my headmaster’s wife into a paraplegic and we all got a day off from school. The way he whined you’d think it was my fault his missus was on the happy pills and reversed into me as we were waiting in a queue to escape the playground. Being permanently legless must be unpleasant, and did that bitch make me pay when she spotted me shopping. Cripples are so passive-aggressive the way they wield their wheelchairs, like they want to amputate not just your Louboutins, but your whole leg too. “I was running Marathons and now look at me!” she shouted, like she’d ever had any chance at winning anything. Now she can go for it, injuring her rivals in the Paralympics.

Since the Olympics farted into town, tourism is down 20% in central London and there are empty seats in the stadium. Is this really a surprise when the world economy is about as healthy as a can of Doom and—apart from football and maybe naked ladies who dance round poles—sports are about as exciting as Mick Jagger’s attempts at being the grooviest granddad.

Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner that I have an aversion to spourists descending on my hometown, their Olympic-sized asses stuffed into shorts. Travel vaccines are compulsory, so why not force overweight men who embarrass themselves watching athletics to have a moob job? Is that really too much to ask? Anything less is just discriminatory toward the sportophobic.

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