A Different View
Pensioner who was king of all our younger days
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
Kevin Keegan was 65 last Sunday – Mighty Mouse is now an old age pensioner; the little imp who ran defenders ragged can now ride the bus for free.
For the generations who grew up following Liverpool at the start of their golden era, Keegan – fittingly for a man born on St Valentine’s Day – epitomised the romance of what was once the beautiful game.
He joined from Scunthorpe United, hardly the glamour end of the sporting world, Even now – more than 40 years later – their biggest attraction is their club mascot, the Scunny Bunny.
He cost all of £35,000 – or to put it in context, less than one-sixth of Wayne Rooney’s weekly wage. Even still, this was a risk – his hometown club, Doncaster Rovers, had considered him too short.
His dad worked in the mines before becoming a boiler-maker – solid, working class stock – and he fought in Burma during the war. So Keegan was ‘grounded’ and made a virtue of his humble origins.
And he wasn’t the greatest footballer of all time – or indeed even the greatest player to have pulled on that famous red jersey – but he might well have been the first star of the modern media era.
He was as famous for that poodle perm as he was for his football; he was the biggest star of Shoot! where his observations on anything and everything were gobbled up by the writers and the readers alike.
We all knew he was married to Jean because he was frequently photographed with her by his side, his Bay City Rollers-style jumper and wide-legged parallels showing that he cut a dash off the pitch as much as on it.
Shoot! had a weekly item where they asked a series of set questions of a player – favourite food, favourite music, favourite meal, most difficult opponent and so on – and they had two questions that a small fella with only a growing grasp of big words completely misunderstood.
Miscellaneous likes and miscellaneous dislikes could just as easily have lost the ‘miscellaneous’ prefix and it wouldn’t have led to any misunderstanding – but it sort of added an air of authority to an otherwise fairly standard feature.
Keegan never missed a chance to feature in Shoot! – on or off the pitch, standing beside his flash Ford Capri or sitting on his white leather sofa, Jean serving him tea in a china cup.
He was one of the first footballers to recognise the real potential of media exposure; up to then the best these stars could come up with was part-ownership of a nightclub, a pub or a boutique; Keegan charted a whole new world.
He appeared on Superstars, the BBC programme that pitted stars of different sports against each other in a sort of decathlon.
Such was his insatiable desire for victory, when he crashed his bike, he insisted on a re-run – and his second place finish was enough to give him overall victory.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
The only time in your life that you should ever utter the words: “Do you know who I am?” are if you’ve just had a bang on the head or you are unfortunately suffering from dementia.
Because, otherwise, the phrase ‘do you know who I am’ only serves to make things a whole lot worse.
Normally, the phrase is unleashed towards late night door staff on a wave of alcohol – and never once in the history of time has it produced the result the utterer had intended.
The doorman may well know who you are which is often the very reason you’re not getting into the place in the first instance – or if he doesn’t know who you are, he won’t be unduly influenced when he does, unless you’re a famous movie star or his long-lost cousin.
‘Do you know where I am?’ might often be closer to the phrase you’re looking for, because that would serve you well when you’re looking for a taxi.
‘Do you know who I am?’ is a threatening phrase that in truth wouldn’t frighten the cat. But if you’re anxious to dig the hole a few shovels deeper, you should follow up with ‘I’d like to speak to your manager.’
Managers can be elusive at the best of times, but they’re normally rarer than hen’s teeth when it comes to the small hours of the morning – and even if they’re there, they are most likely watching proceedings on CCTV…just so they know who you are, in case you yourself can’t remember.
‘I’d like to speak to your manager’ suggests that you and he or she are from the one social sphere which is several strata north of the one occupied by door staff.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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A Different View with Dave O’Connell
As it turned out, we were much closer to a Eurovision win than we could ever have imagined – not Ireland, of course, because we’ve now mastered the art of just sending cannon fodder to be blown out in the semi-final.
No, this was just two of us – myself and our eldest – who were lucky enough to be at Anfield for the Reds’ recent win over Brentford, where positioned in the seat right in front of us were four happy lads from Finland.
One of them, we now know, was Käärijä, the singer of the catchiest song at Eurovision, Cha Cha Cha.
But just a week before 7,000 people sung his catchphrase at the Eurovision Arena, he and two his mates – accompanied by an older bloke who had to be either his dad or from the national broadcaster – sat anonymously in the same corner of the lower level of Anfield’s Main Stand.
He was utterly unknown to us as well of course, and the only thing that saw him stand out was his green nail varnish. Live and let live, of course, but it still ensures that you make an impression even if it looks like you were just very late for St Patrick’s Day.
Käärijä may well be Liverpool’s greatest Scandinavian fan, although the bar for that is set fairly high, given that they invade the city in greater numbers every two weeks than the Vikings did just once during the first millennium.
Equally, he may not be a football fan at all – although, as the rest of the week proved, he sure loves a crowd.
Positioned as we were in the corner of the Main Stand, the next section to us, around the corner in the Anfield Road Stand – currently adding a top layer – was occupied by the visiting Brentford supporters.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
Contactless payments reached a record €17.9 billion in Ireland last year – up by 31 per cent on 2021, as people came out from under their Covid shell and appear to have left their cash behind them.
Figures from the Banking & Payments Federation found that – despite the cost-of-living increases – the Irish public made three million contactless payments a day, worth an average of €53 million in the final quarter of 2022.
Given that there are 3.8 million people in Ireland over the age of 18, that means that almost every single one of us tapped the card every day last year.
And again, on the presumption that there are a few who still prefer peeling a fifty off a wad of notes, the true figure may be even higher, as we eschew actual money every time we go into a restaurant, bar or shop.
Then comes the monthly morning of reckoning when you open your statement – electronic of course because, like paper money, banks don’t deal in paper statements anymore either – and your guilty secrets unfurl like a rap sheet before your very eyes.
Five taps of a Friday night in the local, followed by a five-ounce burger meal on the way home.
And just why did you need a family-pack of crisps when a small bag would have done? Was all that beer and wine really for a party, or a night in just for one?
Cash provided plenty of dark corners to ignore your profligacy, but there are no hiding places in the contactless world.
Worse still, until that morning of reckoning arrives, you’ve no clue how much you’ve spent, and handing over the card doesn’t hurt half as much as parting with hard cash.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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