ZOE BALL AND THE WRATH OF KHAN

The one drawback of VIP tickets was having to wear a shirt and tie. However, this did start the day off nicely. Me and my sisters’ family were able to witness Steve showing quite clearly that he had never used an ironing board before. It was like seeing a three year old doing their first domestic chores, even my two year old nephew was in stitches.

We arrived at Wembley being on the one hand really overdressed (shirt and ties at a footie game!) and on the other really scruffy (all the other ‘VIPs’ were in full suit and tie). It was at this point that I knew things were gonna get really silly. I’d been suffering from the Wrath of khan for a couple of days and so therefore knew that while Steve was gonna hit the free bar for all it was worth, I was gonna have trouble even keeping a couple of pints down. So I just knew things were gonna get really bonkers, while I’d have nowhere to hide.

Things began to get really surreal once inside the Wembley function room. We were greeted by the sight of the legendary Tom O’Conner (our compere for the day, God help us!)in a voluminous purple jacket and pastel green trousers. Once seated with a table of more typical football fans, Tom began with the wonderful intro... "The Irish are great people, BUT..." Steve nearly spat the whole of his (second) pint over the entire tables’ entree. Off we drifted into the land of the Wheel Tappers and Shunters Social Club circa 1973. Most of the audience were in fits of uproarious laughter while me and Steve doubled up laughing at the crowd, and Tom.

The afternoon wore on, and as Steve went through his third, fourth and fifth pints I was both completely freaked by the bizarreness of our situation and stunned by Steve’s capacity to hit the bar. Steve got more and more lairy while I just got more and more embarrassed. Things really started to take on a bad light once Steve realised what we were in for next. Out of nowhere, people from other tables started to get out giant sized cheques - it really did feel like we were trapped in some nightmare bad acid trip from hell. One by one, dodgy geezers in suits started bringing these huge cardboard cheques up to the stage to present to charidee. Almost all the cheques were from some dodgy fucking company or other, either involved in killing babies in Africa, mining uranium for export to Libya or burning down rainforests in Central America. What happened next was just horribly, horribly inevitable: as Steve got more and more bolloxed and I got more and more paranoid, he began to heckle the cheque givers. Oww shit, I thought we were gonna get torn apart and fed to the Newcastle supporters waiting for us outside. Luckily, although it all seemed to last an eternity, things gradually calmed down and then, just when I thought things couldn’t get any more weird, in comes Zoe Ball and her boyfriend - Fuck me, what next?!

What happened next was that we were led to the stadium to take our seats - which on the tickets were ordinary bog standard seats. What we found, to Steve’s drunken amazement and to my vertigo suffering horror, was that we were in the Olympic Gallery, about 5,000 feet above sea level. It was also at this point that Steve, realising how close he now was to a blonde children’s TV presenter, made his move. Before I could think what to do to stop the inevitable, he was locked in oral combat with Zoe, watched with glaring green eyes by her trendy looking boyfriend. Fuckin’ Ell. He got away with it except for the fact that she queried why on earth he should be at Wembley when all the other guys with his haircut were on stage at Knebworth today. Yikes, I’ve never seen a ‘celebrity’ so close to death by strangulation with a pair of desert boot laces.

The match was pretty incidental, Steve spent most of the match either wondering out loud why the match was 22-a-side or going to the bog. After the game Steve continued to keep the bar staff busy while I tentatively sipped at a couple of pints of lager. We finally plucked up the courage to get our picture taken with the (real!) F.A. Cup. Zoe made here excuses (to Steve) and left for wherever famous people go when they’re not being famous and we spent a good three hours winding our way back through North London, managing to visit every tube and train station, bus stop and taxi rank South of Watford.