Early Doors - Your morning briefing blog

Help The Aged

Thu Jul 24 09:00AM

Have Help The Aged got nothing better to do than dispute the claim that footballers over the age of 30 are not likely to improve much?

The codger-friendly charity have weighed into the debate on whether Chelsea are too old to win the title, with a clearly very bored spokesperson taking issue with Alex Ferguson's (pictured above, possibly at a bus stop) claim that Big Phil's side are a bit past it.

"In 2008, age is no longer an acceptable yardstick to measure a person's worth ot potential. There's a lot to be said for experience," said Kate Jopling.

"People should never be written off because of their age. Ageist attitudes such as this should always be handed the red card."

ED knows there is a school of thought that claims any publicity is good publicity, and without these fatuous remarks Help The Aged would not be on the back page of The Sun.

But, while it is one thing to increase awareness, it is quite another to increase awareness of how staggeringly ill-informed you are.

Early Doors pre-empted the age debate on Monday by claiming that it wasn't a factor in football.

Following Help The Aged's implication that Chelsea should bring back Chopper Harris and Robert Fleck, ED is starting to think that such a view is as far-fetched as Anne Darwin telling her children that their father was dead.

- - -

Next up on officially the slowest news day of the year is Carlos Tevez's claim that Cristiano Ronaldo should be allowed to go to Real Madrid if he wants.

Tevez sent shockwaves around Old Trafford with the outrageous claim that: "I understand Cristiano. Every footballer wants to play at Real Madrid. On the other hand, I also think that everyone wants to play for Manchester United."

- - -

And finally on no-news day is the revelation that Manchester United and Portsmouth will continue to take malaria tablets after Kolo Toure contracted the disease.

You see, Toure was in the Ivory when he was bitten by a mosquito, and United and Pompey are also in Africa which clearly, in the mind of the average tabloid, is just one big country.

Never mind that Abidjan is over 3,000 miles from Cape Town, where United played inexplicably award-winning indie-rock band Kaizer Chiefs the other day.

And with that, Early Doors will give up trying to find anything worth talking about and concentrate on the strangely alluring Lisa Burke's weather forecast. A balmy 28 degrees in the south-east, you say?

- - -

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "I can't say I can't wait to finish, but I'm looking forward to finishing and everything that goes with it. The only thing I will definitely miss is the football. The general life of a footballer is not for me I guess. People are just very invasive and are always wanting to know what you are going to do." Paul Scholes demonstrates the eloquence we are denied by his refusal to grant interviews. And also explains why he is unlikely to be pictured in a Los Angeles boutique wearing skimpy metallic shorts any time soon.

FOREIGN VIEW: There's no news either in Spain, where Real Madrid have denied a made-up transfer rumour. They don't want to sign Samuel Eto'o, according to Marca.

FEEDBACK OF THE DAY: Comment at the bottom of the 'Knife raid at Heskey house' from some bloke called karlbillo: "Heskey should know all about daylight robbery with Liverpool having spent £11 million on his services."

SONIA C hit back by claiming that the robbers "need removing off the face of the earth", while melaniejhutton put the sniggering likes of ED firmly in their place with this riposte: "The less sympathetics are idiots who have not been robbed before. I hope they experience this kind of robbery very soon."

TALKING POINT: inkwaster lived up to his/her name with two almost certainly fictitious stories of Larry David-esque misfortune, of which ED can only be bothered to print the first:

"When I was in College, I landed a date with this outstanding looking girl. The only problem was I worked this terrible night security job at Car Lot. So of course realizing the girl was more important than the job I called in and having used up my many I am sick routines in the past, I made the oh so obvious and callous move to informing that my dear gran had passed away. They of course being kind were saddened and gave me the night off. First off the date was terrible, the girl although being good looking was boring as hell and had nothing at all to talk about, ah well worth the risk I thought. The next day being Saturday I was sitting in the kitchen eating when someone came to the door. Gran answered it and it was two bouquets of flowers being delivered by the secretary of my work. I lost the job and gran didn't speak to me for a few weeks and my mom just kind of scowled at me for months after.

Today - Make up a story. Just pluck it out of thin air and bung it on the message board below.

'SEE YOU IN COURT' OF THE DAY: In yesterday's edition Early Doors was comparing the Norwegian Manchester United fans, not Daniel Levy, to Larry David. It didn't even occur to ED that Levy was Jewish, which may make it an idiot but not an anti-Semite.

FANTASY PREMIER LEAGUE PLUG OF THE DAY: It's here, join it. OK?

• Email
• Share:
  • Delicious
  • Digg
  • Facebook
  • Stumbleupon
  • Reddit
  • Newsvine