Tiger Baiting

Sunday papers are full of crap: I don't get the whole Tiger Woods or John Terry issue. If the CEO of, say, Marks and Spencer slept with the wife or girlfriend of one of his fellow directors, he wouldn't lose his job or damage the brand. Terry should sue, and Woods should just continue being the best golfer in the world and fuck the mimsy sponsors who won't back him.

I'm sure there's a 'squeaky-clean' or 'don't get caught' clause in their complex contracts, but what I don't understand is why Gillette should drop Woods from its ads, assuming that men who like sports and buy disposable razors are somehow horrified because some chest-enhanced 'model' has given Tiger a blowjob in his Mercedes. Surely they'd identify with him even more?


Photo: Paddy Briggs (Wikimedia Commons)

I suspect two things: Gillette's marketing tells them that their razors are bought FOR men but BY women, and it's tabloid-fed women who are 'outraged' by Tiger Woods' infidelities. As, probably, are the wives of directors of Gillette.

The tabloids' hand-wringing over the events is in a class beyond hypocritical. Nothing new, of course, but the way in which they salivate over the details is flesh-eating: after they effectively created the social climate in which 'football hunks' and 'page three stunnas' are so made for each other that every gymslip slapper in Essex invests her pocket money in fake tan, hair extensions and Juicy Couture in an ultimate aspiration to shag a third division reserve player.

A bright friend of mine says 'sports personality' is one of his favourite oxymorons. You could add 'professional footballer' to that.

If I've understood the story correctly, Terry has been stood down from his job as England Captain because one Wayne Bridge, the man whose former fiancee Terry is alleged to have bedded, might be unable to work effectively alongside him in the team, and their football playing might suffer as a result.

If so, they're not professionals because the definition of a professional is to do for a living something to a consistent standard that might waver and vary if you were an amateur. So if that does happen, sack Bridge for not doing his job, don't victimise Terry.

It is impossible to imagine any other profession, except perhaps the General Synod, in which the mating of Man A with the ex-fiancee of Man B should result in action for dismissal from his job. And why doesn't Man B accept that an ex-fiancee is just that, a girl you've finished with who is herself now a free agent. The only person with any rights of disappointment in this whole issue is Mrs. Terry. And she'll be the first to suffer now he's lost his job.

I'd never heard of Vanessa Perroncel, the 'French swimwear model' at the centre of the affair. But she's now represented by Max Clifford which guarantees blasting across the cover of all the cheap gossip mags available for 90p at your local supermarket and bought by women who really should be spending their child benefit on something more nutritious.