Introducing - My Pet Guido

Everybody should have a pet Guido. I've had mine since before it was even fashionable. Shit, I've had mine before we even heard the word Guido.. almost five years now. Mine's not exactly authentic - yes, he's Italian, but as far as I know he's never been to New Jersey, and his tan isn't as good as mine. Also, he's studying for a double bachelor in Business and Communications. But apart from that, he's the real deal. The haircut, the muscles, the chauvinism, the bar fights, the tendency to think every girl he meets is 'the one', the noisy little car with neons, the nightclubs, the love of Lil' Wayne... he's basically a complete inversion of my personality. Many people have no idea how the hell we get on. I guess opposites attract... and thus, I have a pet Guido.

To avoid embarrassment, and a potential bro-down, I'm going to call him Tony.

Every so often, Tony opens his mouth and gold spills out. Yesterday I decided that he's going to be my Karl Pilkington... his very outlook on life is going to make me rich and famous. So from now on, I'm going to include a weekly quote, that you too can marvel in the complexity of the tapestry of thought which must go on underneath all that hair-gel. Ladies and Gentlemen: I give you - My Pet Guido.

TV - or - Why I'm starting to like American Football

One of the downsides to being in Switzerland: TV is awful. Most of the Brits here have installed Sky boxes (with varying degrees of legality), but in our house we have a system called Cablecom. To its credit, it's probably not a bad package for the multilingual Swiss. It gets a good 150 channels, but only eight of these are in English (the rest being Italian, German, French and Turkish). Of these eight, three are news channels, leaving:

 - BBC Entertainment (re-runs of the Carry On films, antiques programs, and old game shows. This channel is single-handedly responsible for the perpetuation of the stereotype that we all have bad teeth, shit haircuts and wear cardigans. )

 - The Extreme Sports Channel - Should be called 'SEEN IT'. So low-budget they can only run five different shows at a time, so re-runs make up 90% of their weekly programming.  Not bad for cool snowboarding videos, but they devote a lot of time to niche reality TV like Mantracker, or the mind-numbingly shit Final Fu.

 - Yacht and Sail - I have never watched this channel for more than 5 minutes - it appears to be devoted entirely to playing soothing music over sunset images of marinas, and people wearing linen trousers.

-Motors.TV - Yes, a channel with a name like a website, bringing you coverage of every possible motorsport in the world EXCEPT the F1 or the MotoGP (including.. wait for it.. RC car racing). Occasionally worth a look, just in case anything blows up.

-Technically, ITV 2 is an English channel - but I refuse to count this, because it makes me hate the world.
Which leaves, ESPN America.

ESPN is something of a shock to the uninitiated.. an affront to the more refined palette of the English sports viewer. The presenters are all called 'Brett', 'Brock' or 'Jackson' - square-jawed, clean shaven, fast talking and shiny-faced. Their teeth gleam like they've been scrubbed with peroxide, and aligned using lasers. They don't blink. I am convinced they are robots.

They speak an impenetrable onslaught of statistics-based jargon. I have no idea why Americans need to know "the top four third-down passers in humidity conditions over 80%... in the NCAA Eastern Conference pre-season... during the alignment of Io, and Europa and Ganymede..." but apparently they fucking love this stuff. God only knows who's keeping track.

But it's the spectacle of American sport is perhaps the biggest blow to my waifish British sensibilities - an incomprehensible blend of waving flags and cleavage. Red, white and blue graphics flash across the screen followed by trails of twinkling stars. Every sport has its own 'image'.. Baseball players are horse-legged, fat and walk with a cowboy swagger, doing a lot of squinting and spitting. Basketball is basically hip-hop, with every dunk or block followed by a lot of posing, arm waving and people going "OOOOOH WHAT?!". Hockey is a drunken brawl, with some guys with beards doing a bit of ice skating now and then. And American Football.. the grand-daddy of them all..  Two-hundred member brass bands sway in unison, occupying more room in the bleachers than the fans, who they whip into an animal-like frenzy. Topless men write huge letters on their beer bellies, and arrange themselves to form misspelled words. Organized, team-specific chants carry on throughout the entire game - for Texas University this seems to involve waving a white sock around your head while screaming, for example. Every  touchdown is accompanied by explosions and fireworks, and whole teams line up to celebrate with fully-rehearsed dance numbers. And just in case you were getting bored in all this pandemonium.. there's the cheerleaders... 

We don't have cheerleaders in Britain because all of our sportsmen come from Italy, Portugal, Spain and France, and nobody would get anything done. 

I didn't think I'd be saying this, but it's growing on me. I've still got a lot left to learn. I have no idea why coaches are obliged to chew an entire pack of gum at every game. I have no idea why everyone slaps everyone else on the ass, but apparently it's a good thing over there?  I still can't tell you all the rules, or why they have a giant pink exclamation mark that's tied to a bit of string and gets rushed onto the field every so often. I can't believe how many ads there are, or why every element of the game is sponsored. Time-outs are sponsored by Applebees. Field-goal kicks are sponsored by Coors Light. Imagine if every single element of the Premier League was like this. "This corner kick is brought to you by J.D.Wetherspoons", or..."look's like we might be headed for a Worther's Originals Penalty Shootout". 

It's alien, ostentatious, superficial, hyper-polished and all a bit mental. But it's a hell of a show, and I'm starting to enjoy it.  If anyone wants to get in there and insist I start supporting a particular NFL team, I'm open to suggestions. 

I will, however, maintain that you have NO say in the 'football/soccer' argument.