If you’re anything like me you’ll often find yourself wondering if you’re the only one. Y’know, the only person who doesn’t like Heroes, Porsche 911s, Magners or Justin Bieber (I’ve yet to find out what the latter actually is).
A few of my own pet, and it seems rather individual, peeves are coming together in the shape of a John Barnes rap for Mars, in time for the 2010 World Cup.
I like football, but recoil at the absurd pageantry, hyperbole and jingoism that goes with it. I find the absolute obsession many have with football perplexing and vaguely irritating.
We will be made to believe over the next four months that football is the most important thing in the world, and we wouldn’t have terrorism if only everyone just had a bloody big game of footy.
Bollocks. Football is one of the most obvious tools for, and reflections of, capitalism in all its dubious glory. All of this, of course, will reach its apotheosis this Summer.
Second in my list is New Order. I think they’re pretty awful, as it goes. This perplexes me and most of my friends, as I love electronic music, new wave, pop – every imaginable genre New Order could be said to belong to. Barring a handful of songs, I can’t even listen to them. It could be Bernard Sumner’s voice.
Thirdly, I hate the middle-class fetishisation of football that really hit its stride in the 90s with Keith Fucking Allen popping up on television every five fucking minutes, looking like a masturbating monkey and telling us he was mates with Gazza. People like Alex James, Damien Hurst and Matt Lucas used to join in. Everyone else seems to think it’s hilarious.
Footy songs are the most obvious product of this middle-class football wankery. None of them are any good. And Don’t throw World In Motion or that Echo and the Bunnymen one at me – they’re shit too. The only half-decent one is England’s Irie, but that’s only because it’s not really about football.
Apparently, John Barnes’ rap in the middle of World In Motion is the funniest thing that ever happened in the history of the world. When I think about it I can just imagine a hundred shit radio DJs getting their posse to recreate it. I can’t stand John Barnes.
More prosaically I hate adverts, branding, idents, corporate shite, marketing. But you knew that already.
All of which means this news about a new song for the World Cup featuring John Barnes performing an updated World In Motion rap that contains references to Mars bars in it does not please me.
Twenty years after John Barnes became an unlikely rapper in the official song for England’s 1990 football World Cup campaign, Mars has signed the former international to reprise his cringeworthy World In Motion turn in a TV ad campaign, MediaGuardian can reveal.
Barnes will feature in a re-recording of New Order’s World In Motion for a new Mars TV campaign launching late next month. Mars is also launching a competition to give members of the public the chance to appear in the ad.
Apparently the line ‘Three lions on our Mars’ will be inserted into the rap. By US-based behemoth Mars. No doubt Keith Allen will be twatting around in the background again. I can’t wait.