The Leisure Review: La Flamme Rouge

La Flamme Rouge edition 10; dateline 21 May 2015

The king is dead: long live the king
With the departure of Jeremy Clarkson from the BBC there would seem to be a vacancy in the role of laughably antiquated chauvinist that Clarkson had filled so admirably for so many years. Competition will be stiff with no lack of potential applicants but step forward Peter Alliss, the current holder of the title of Voice of Golf and a man who has to be among the front-runners. His suitability for the Clarkson Chair of Self-righteous Affrontery was recently highlighted by his thoughts on the wisdom of gender equity as it applies to the game of golf. Talking to the notoriously combative news machine that is the Radio Times, Alliss observed that legislation enabling women being able to play golf on the same terms as men had “buggered up the game for many people”. His reasoning seemed to be predicated upon the widespread increase in fees for women. “I’m told the Ladies’ Golf Union has lost 150,000 members since equality for women came in,” he said. Following Alliss’s bons mots, the LGU conceded that there had been a significant drop in its membership but that this was more like 30,000 over four years and that the men’s game had also experienced a marked decline in numbers. As so often in these matters, the reality of the situation proves to be a bit more complex than it appears to someone propping up the bar at a golf club the better to put his male friends straight on a few matters but we are confident that this will not dull the Alliss star as it continues to light the way of public discourse.

Getting ahead in the FA employment race
Recruitment is a difficult process for employers and employees alike, particularly for senior roles, and so the FA’s search for the right person to fill the post of head of education has been carefully planned and executed. The search began with the publication of the advertisement in the national press and the clever individuals in the FA’s HR department drafted an ad that will separate the Premier League candidates from the Vanarama Conference before the recruitment game even kicks off. Given that the specification of the role includes the phrase “It is essential that applicants are skilled communicators”, the HR team’s tactic was subtle but predictable: to produce an advert so littered with typos, questionable punctuation and obscurantism that any candidate who doesn’t accompany their application with a corrected copy will automatically have their letter binned. As part of our efforts to ensure that the best candidates are selected for the most influential roles in our sector, we offer Leisure Review readers a few hints regarding this first hurdle in the appointment process [see image above]. Good luck and we look forward to talking to you for a feature in a future issue of TLR.

The agony of the lost trophy
Turner-winning artist Grayson Perry recently revealed that away from his studio, and in marked contrast with the precision and finesse of his porcelain-based art works, it is the physicality and competition of mountain biking that really gets him going. Originally a skateboarding obsessive, Perry turned to a bike as a slightly less risky way of getting the adrenaline pumping and after ridiing his first race in 1992 he became a very focused competitor, training hard and winning the occasional local race. His views on the balance between the artistic and the sporting life make the article in the Guardian well worth a read but the most alarming aspect of his piece is the fate of one of the trophies he made for some off-beat competition categories in the Beastway race series that took place on the site of what is now the Olympic velopark. “I made a few ceramic trophies such as Most Average Rider and Slowest Rider With Most Expensive Bike,” he says. “After I won the Turner Prize in 2003, a rider who had won one shamefully admitted that he had thought the trophy was a bad joke and discarded it, much to his regret.” A quick browse through recent auction catalogues suggests that this may have been a very expensive sense of humour failure for one of Mr P’s fellow mud pluggers.

10 things you didn’t know about list-based articles and other kinds of clickbait
La Flamme Rouge was pleased to be invited to visit the Guardian building recently and thrilled to discover that their editor has a big glass-walled office, just as anyone who has seen All the President’s Men or who remembers the seminal hard-nosed-hack-with-a-heart-of-gold series Lou Grant might imagine. During the tour of Planet Graun we noticed a big screen in one corner, just where the website people live. Closer inspection revealed the continuous rolling details of the Guardian online, including the number of readers visiting the site, where readers are located globally and the subjects being viewed. The screen offered an interesting commentary on the modern newspaper industry but it was also notable that no one apart from us was paying it the least attention.

Philip Pullman, the talking bear and their lucky escape
The Leisure Review has its headquarters among the dreaming spires and once again La Flamme Rouge was persuaded to some literary event by the editor with the promise of something edifying and educational. For once, thanks to an audience with Philip Pullman, the promise was fulfilled. The celebrated author of the His Dark Materials trilogy and numerous other works offered a fascinating insight to the worlds of his most celebrated characters, Lyra Silvertongue and Iorek Byrnison included. Asked whether he had been irritated by being thought of by many as a children’s author, he revealed that in his opinion much of the success of Northern Lights, the first of the Materials trilogy, was the result of this happy accident. Fans of fantasy novels, he explained, tend not to read anything else and people who don’t care for fantasy tend not to touch them. Having been placed in the children’s section, Northern Lights and its sequels were found by children and adults alike, free from the associations, whether positive or negative, of fantasy fiction. It was, he admitted, something of a lucky escape because although he doesn’t think of himself as a writer of fantasy he does have to admit that one of the main characters is a talking bear, so he may be guilty as charged.

The mind of a writer
Pullman also offered some insight to the mind of the professional writer and the process of creating fiction. He explained that when he was writing well the feeling was one of discovering characters rather than creating them. It was also a comfortingly tyrannical process, a process in which he was in complete control of the lives of characters and their fates. However, he was adamant that this tyranny ended when he had finished his work. “Reading is democratic,” he said, “and whatever you find in the books is yours and you’re welcome to talk about it.” Asked about the film based on Northern Lights, he admitted that he understood the disappointment felt by many of the fans of His Dark Materials. He suggested that trying to tell only the first part of a three-part story was always likely to create a film that felt incomplete. He also admitted that when the film had first been proposed, the integrity of the story had not been at the forefront of his mind. “My first thought when the proposal arrived was, ‘What a lot of money!’ Then I thought again and thought, ‘What a lot of money!’”

Competition: an competitor’s guide
LFR spent most of our educational career among the kids picked last, and then only because they were discovered skulking in the changing rooms, so we have always enjoyed watching the competitive types go about their business from a polite distance, casting aspersions and cutting witticisms just quietly enough to make sure nothing could be heard from the other end of the pitch. One of the many things that has consistently amused us about the world of competition is how often those who swear by it demonstrate how keen they are to avoid it. The latest example comes from the ranks of Premiership Rugby, which is now contemplating the abolition of relegation from the top tier of professional rugby union, the better to preserve the interests of the competition. So often the owners of UK sports teams look to the example of the green fields of the USA where the unpleasantness of relegation and promotion is avoided the better to ensure that little interferes with the making of lorry loads of cash. Thus the competitive environment is neatly constrained. However, in the land of the free elite sports (sic) competitions protect their product with impressive zeal, taking a socialist approach (in fact more like a Stalinist approach) to the distribution of revenue and the most valuable players. Our message to the competitive types is simple: be careful what you wish for (oh, and leave us alone to read; it’s what we do).

Competition: a competitor’s guide
LFR spent most of our educational career among the kids picked last, and then only because they were discovered skulking in the changing rooms, so we have always enjoyed watching the competitive types go about their business from a polite distance, casting aspersions and cutting witticisms just quietly enough to make sure nothing could be heard from the other end of the pitch. One of the many things that has consistently amused us about the world of competition is how often those who swear by it demonstrate how keen they are to avoid it. The latest example comes from the ranks of Premiership Rugby, which is now contemplating the abolition of relegation from the top tier of professional rugby union, the better to preserve the interests of the competition. So often the owners of UK sports teams look to the example of the green fields of the USA where the unpleasantness of relegation and promotion is avoided the better to ensure that little interferes with the making of lorry loads of cash. Thus the competitive environment is neatly constrained. However, in the land of the free elite sports (sic) competitions protect their product with impressive zeal, taking a socialist approach (in fact more like a Stalinist approach) to the distribution of revenue and the most valuable players. Our message to the competitive types is simple: be careful what you wish for (oh, and leave us alone to read; it’s what we do).

Tennis: time for the bleeding obvious
Ructions at Roehampton as the chief exec of the Lawn Tennis Association says that it is too soon to say goodbye to the world ‘lawn’ in the organisation’s title even though the game has been merrily waving goodbye to hundreds of thousands of players in the past few years. Michael Downey took over the post of LTA chief executive from the much-missed (by LFR at least) Roger Draper in January 2014 and has waited until now to explain what a complete cartload of cack Draper and his predecessors had made of the job of persuading people to play tennis. The LTA mantra had long been “we’ll all be fine once we’ve got a Wimbledon winner” and it took 70-odd years, along with an actual British Wimbledon winner, for them to realise what a waste of time and numerous inflated salaries this had been. Downey has bided his time before stating the bleeding obvious: tennis clubs are the problem, not the solution. It will sound much better in a Canadian accent.

Lessons for Lord’s from Pyongyang
North Korea has offered inspiration to any nation struggling to hold its own in international competition. In April a marathon will be held in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, and the authorities have decided that no foreigners will be allowed to compete for fear that the Ebola virus might be introduced to the notoriously introverted nation. Given that they are thousands of miles from the centre of the Ebola outbreak and have had no reported cases locally, some have expressed surprise and disappointment but a light might just have gone on at Lord’s where the English cricket authorities are wondering where their next victory is going to come from.

Sauna so far
Research from Finland suggests that middle-aged men who take regular and frequent saunas may improve their chances of avoiding heart conditions. The research, from the University of Eastern Finland, can be found in the journal Jama Internal Medicine, future issues of which will probably include research from the Sorbonne demonstrating that wine is good for you and research from Oxford University illustrating the health benefits of morris dancing.

The case of the not very close shave
Rolf Harris being stripped of his Australian honours reminds LFR of just how close this now-defrocked national treasure came to another, leisure-related honour. One of the stories that may well be included in the alternative history of ILAM House is the tale of the patron and the not very narrow escape. After the death of the Queen Mother, who had served as the patron of the Institute of Leisure and Amenity Management (ILAM) and wielded the stainless steel spade with aplomb during her time in the role, the institute’s council were obliged to discuss in appropriately sombre tones the issue of an official patron. Keen to offer an alternative to the taxi rank of minor royals then available, one individual who happened to be sat at the council table (not, we should make very clear, a member of the council itself) offered the suggestion that a non-royal, non-political candidate might usefully be considered; perhaps someone who could stand above such partisan environments and who would therefore be less likely to associate the institute with any unpleasantness; someone who had a long-standing record as a champion of swimming, the arts and music. The minutes of ILAM Council, wherever they may currently reside, show that this suggestion was dismissed even before the sound of its speaking had died away and overtures were swiftly made to the Court of St James for a royal replacement.

The Open decides to be a little less
The departure of the Open golf championship from the BBC to Sky opens another chapter in the lengthy discourse on the value of free-to-air broadcasting as a sports development tool. Apparently the Royal and Ancient will be pocketing (or perhaps sporranning) about £15 million a year for five years, a figure that represents a doubling of the current deal with the BBC. The R&A has, of course, explained that a significant proportion of this revenue will be invested in grassroots development and that, in light of a two-hour highlights package to be provided by the BBC, this most prestigious of tournaments will still be free to air within the highly desirable early-evening schedules. This justification echoes that used by the ECB when live Test match coverage disappeared behind the Murdoch paywall. Within the cricketing context, the broadcasting revenue has been used to support grassroots development and shore up the creaking financial model of the county game but participation has been falling over the last decade and it is difficult to escape the feeling that somehow the escapades of the England cricket team do not quite hold the nation gripped as they once did.

For sale: at a very reasonable price
One of the most frequently quoted epigrams within TLR Towers is the truism that you never know the value of your principles until someone tries to buy them. This sprung to mind again when Tate lost its legal fight to keep secret the details of its sponsorship deal with BP. What emerged was a total donation of £3.8 million from BP to Tate but that this total represents 17 years of support. An annual donation of £224,000 equates to a considerable sum according to Tate but an embarrassingly small amount according to the campaigners who have been fighting to expose the terms of the relationship between Tate and BP. Down the corridor at the Leisure Review, the editor is well known for his affection for the elevated view afforded by a high horse but here at LFR we know just how much money would turn his head. It’s not much. He might as well work for Tate.

From Vicarage Road to the golden arches
After experiencing a fall in annual sales for the first time in 12 years, McDonald’s ushered a new chief executive into place in an effort to get the original burger behemoth back on track. The new man at the sesame-seeded helm is Steve Easterbrook, a 47-year-old McDonald’s veteran who was in charge of the company’s European division before taking posts as CEO of Pizza Express and Wagamama. He returned to McDonald’s in June 2013 as “global chief brand officer” and is now the man in charge of the whole business. For those working to tackle the impact of fast food on the growing obesity crisis, it may help to know that although Easterbrook is based in Illinois, he is McDonald’s first British chief executive and was born in Watford. Cut him and he bleeds the black and yellow of his beloved Hornets.

Mrs Smith