Soda - Keeping Curious

I’ll be honest. When England bumbled their way to non-qualification for Euro 2008 I would have rather spent the summer living in an underground network of caves than ‘enjoying’ the tournament.

But as my sulkiness is only outweighed by my laziness, I decided to moodily slump in my chair and watch the stupid football with the stupid 16 teams who are marginally less rubbish than stupid England.

To my surprise I’ve absolutely loved it.

Firstly, I’ve discovered that watching football is actually good fun. As a Newcastle and England fan I’ve literally met more monkeys in the last few years than I’ve experienced memorably happy football moments.

But as soon as you become a disinterested spectator, you discover that, without the miserable spectre of inevitable defeat and the crushing reality of your own team’s sheer awfulness, watching football is just a great bit of banter.

And if the team you side with at the start of the game looks like it’s in for a beating there’s no need to worry. You just switch your allegiance mid-match. Russians, Spaniards, Swedes - it makes no difference to the ‘floating fan’. If they’re buying the victory cocktails (and if they’re Russians they invariably are) then I’m happy to nail my colours to that mast. Well, stick them on with blu-tak at least.

It’s the same with Wimbledon. Now that the painful spectacle of the entire English middle-class pinning their sporting hopes on a hapless man-chimp simply because of his good manners and sensible hair cut has ended, I can actually enjoy the tournament. Let’s face it, no one really wants stroppy Scot Andy Murray to win so why not just be a floater and jump on the party bandwagon with anyone who looks in with a chance of winning?

Trust me, it’s the only way to enjoy sport – no tears, no disappointment, no swearing at professional athletes who earn 5,000 times my yearly salary but are still unable to kick a ball into a goal from 12 little yards. Just game after game of fickle, unburdened glory basking.

And if you think there’s more to enjoying sport than just being on the winning side, then you might as well jog on back to Henman Hill. Better hurry though, you might miss Cliff Richard.