British comedian Al Murray - The Pub Landlord - is your typical British pub landlord.
He hates the French, the Germans, the Americans....basically foreigners..... and that disgusting foreign food.
But he loves beer, beer, Britain, beer, beer, the Queen, beer, beer, fish & chips, beer, beer and also beer.
His trademark is to perform on stage standing in front of a bar with a pint glass in his hand.
Now he's also a guest columnist of The Sun newspaper. Here's his hilarious article about the Beijing Olympics...
How the Olympics started in a pub
Guest ... Al Murray writes for The Sun
By AL MURRAY
Pub Landlord & Guest columnist
09 Aug 2008
The Sun
THE Olympics were invented by the ancient Greeks, who were great drinkers, a race of publicans’ friends if ever there was one.
And if you look at them, it’s obvious that the Olympic Games were thought up by a bunch of blokes in a pub.
No question about it.
Take the javelin, for example. What’s that if not darts for show-offs?
The discus looks like a pretty pointless event these days, doesn’t it?
But in olden days that’s how ancient Greek publicans used to deliver a ploughman’s to the far end of the beer garden to save time when there was a bit of a rush on, which was all the time in ancient Greece.
The Marathon was originally a 26-mile pub crawl and used to take several weeks to complete.
That’s until the modern era, when telly schedulers got hold of it and insisted on cutting out all the pubs and most of the crawling, thus changing the nature of the whole event.
At least they haven’t changed the name to The Snickers. Yet . . .
Of course, the ancient Greek athletes used to compete stark naked and covered in oil. I’m sure somebody told me that once. Or did I dream it . . . ? I was never confused. Not while I was awake, anyway.
I reckon there’s still something to be said for the old ways, you know. Especially when it comes to the women’s beach volleyball.
But you have to ask: Are we going to win a thing? No is the answer to that one. “Why” is the big question.
Well, because we don’t have a young generation of stars flying the greatest flag in the world.
And we all know why, don’t we? It’s because they can’t relate to these pointless hobbies that are about to destroy the TV schedule for the next umpteen months.
We need to rebadge them, then maybe Britain will see gold in them there hills. It’s easy, take fencing for instance.
Just give young Barry a mask and a Stella, tell him the bloke opposite said something about his mum and let us make the most of “knife Britain”.
Shot putt? Just hand Lyndsey the ball and tell her there’s a shop window in front of her and the only reason she can’t see it is because it’s really clean.
Even more of a reason to smash it, surely? See what I mean, it’s easy.
And if you want Steve to win the hurdles, pop a car radio in his hand just before he sets off and tell him there’s a fella who wants to buy it the other side of them garden fences.
All it takes is a bit of empathy, Britain. Don’t put our young people down, just give them a reason to believe.
It’s no coincidence that our biggest haul looks like being in the sailing events once again.
We are, after all, a proud island race with great maritime traditions and a long history of glorious victories over our timorous neighbours.
I like to think that if the Spanish cooked up another Armada and sent them over looking for trouble, all we’d have to do would be to send Steve Redgrave out there to meet them.
He’d stand up in his canoe and bang on his chest like Tarzan and they’d all suddenly remember they’d left some paella in the oven and hightail it over the horizon.
The real reason why the sailing is our strong suit, of course, is that it’s the one sport where we have the proper facilities.
Miles and miles of beautiful coastline and the Government haven’t yet sold it off to developers. Probably because they haven’t thought of it yet.
*******************************************
THE Chinese have a basketball player who is 7ft 6in tall. He walked into my gaff a while back and came a bit of a cropper on my mock Tudor beams.
If you look very closely you can still see the imprint of one of the brewery’s standard-issue horse brasses on his forehead.
“Yao!” he cried, so it must have really hurt. Or else he was introducing himself.
***************************************************************
Oi! Beer is for fellas
ANNABEL SMITH, the professional beer taster from Wakefield, has visited 500 pubs in the last three years.
Still can’t make your mind up, eh? “Oooh, let’s try one with a garden, or that one that’s gone gastro out by the ring road . . .”
They say she’s got every bloke’s dream job, sampling 16 different beers a night.
I could do that. It’d be annoying to have to cut down so much, though.
The Spanish have an electronic tongue that can do all their wine tasting for them.
See, even the Spanish don’t want to drink the stuff. Anyway, I don’t know why they’re making such a fuss about it.
Electronic tongues have been available on the internet for years if you know where to look.
Though when all is said and done, it’s pint for the fella, glass of white wine/fruit based drink for the lady.
Rules is rules.
thesun.co.uk
He hates the French, the Germans, the Americans....basically foreigners..... and that disgusting foreign food.
But he loves beer, beer, Britain, beer, beer, the Queen, beer, beer, fish & chips, beer, beer and also beer.
His trademark is to perform on stage standing in front of a bar with a pint glass in his hand.
Now he's also a guest columnist of The Sun newspaper. Here's his hilarious article about the Beijing Olympics...
How the Olympics started in a pub
Guest ... Al Murray writes for The Sun
By AL MURRAY
Pub Landlord & Guest columnist
09 Aug 2008
The Sun
THE Olympics were invented by the ancient Greeks, who were great drinkers, a race of publicans’ friends if ever there was one.
And if you look at them, it’s obvious that the Olympic Games were thought up by a bunch of blokes in a pub.
No question about it.
Take the javelin, for example. What’s that if not darts for show-offs?
The discus looks like a pretty pointless event these days, doesn’t it?
But in olden days that’s how ancient Greek publicans used to deliver a ploughman’s to the far end of the beer garden to save time when there was a bit of a rush on, which was all the time in ancient Greece.
The Marathon was originally a 26-mile pub crawl and used to take several weeks to complete.
That’s until the modern era, when telly schedulers got hold of it and insisted on cutting out all the pubs and most of the crawling, thus changing the nature of the whole event.
At least they haven’t changed the name to The Snickers. Yet . . .
Of course, the ancient Greek athletes used to compete stark naked and covered in oil. I’m sure somebody told me that once. Or did I dream it . . . ? I was never confused. Not while I was awake, anyway.
I reckon there’s still something to be said for the old ways, you know. Especially when it comes to the women’s beach volleyball.
But you have to ask: Are we going to win a thing? No is the answer to that one. “Why” is the big question.
Well, because we don’t have a young generation of stars flying the greatest flag in the world.
And we all know why, don’t we? It’s because they can’t relate to these pointless hobbies that are about to destroy the TV schedule for the next umpteen months.
We need to rebadge them, then maybe Britain will see gold in them there hills. It’s easy, take fencing for instance.
Just give young Barry a mask and a Stella, tell him the bloke opposite said something about his mum and let us make the most of “knife Britain”.
Shot putt? Just hand Lyndsey the ball and tell her there’s a shop window in front of her and the only reason she can’t see it is because it’s really clean.
Even more of a reason to smash it, surely? See what I mean, it’s easy.
And if you want Steve to win the hurdles, pop a car radio in his hand just before he sets off and tell him there’s a fella who wants to buy it the other side of them garden fences.
All it takes is a bit of empathy, Britain. Don’t put our young people down, just give them a reason to believe.
It’s no coincidence that our biggest haul looks like being in the sailing events once again.
We are, after all, a proud island race with great maritime traditions and a long history of glorious victories over our timorous neighbours.
I like to think that if the Spanish cooked up another Armada and sent them over looking for trouble, all we’d have to do would be to send Steve Redgrave out there to meet them.
He’d stand up in his canoe and bang on his chest like Tarzan and they’d all suddenly remember they’d left some paella in the oven and hightail it over the horizon.
The real reason why the sailing is our strong suit, of course, is that it’s the one sport where we have the proper facilities.
Miles and miles of beautiful coastline and the Government haven’t yet sold it off to developers. Probably because they haven’t thought of it yet.
*******************************************
THE Chinese have a basketball player who is 7ft 6in tall. He walked into my gaff a while back and came a bit of a cropper on my mock Tudor beams.
If you look very closely you can still see the imprint of one of the brewery’s standard-issue horse brasses on his forehead.
“Yao!” he cried, so it must have really hurt. Or else he was introducing himself.
***************************************************************
Oi! Beer is for fellas
ANNABEL SMITH, the professional beer taster from Wakefield, has visited 500 pubs in the last three years.
Still can’t make your mind up, eh? “Oooh, let’s try one with a garden, or that one that’s gone gastro out by the ring road . . .”
They say she’s got every bloke’s dream job, sampling 16 different beers a night.
I could do that. It’d be annoying to have to cut down so much, though.
The Spanish have an electronic tongue that can do all their wine tasting for them.
See, even the Spanish don’t want to drink the stuff. Anyway, I don’t know why they’re making such a fuss about it.
Electronic tongues have been available on the internet for years if you know where to look.
Though when all is said and done, it’s pint for the fella, glass of white wine/fruit based drink for the lady.
Rules is rules.
thesun.co.uk