Jeff Maysh

“In classical literature the anti-hero is an evil misfit. In cinema he is a violent loose cannon. Yet we perpetually root for the bastard. From Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost to Schwarzenegger as the profoundly conflicted Terminator, cheering on the bad guy has never felt so delightful. And in football the anti-hero is Eric Cantona. The controversial Frenchman has just landed the job of Director of Soccer at New York Cosmos, but as far as I can see, America is blissfully unaware of Cantona—the footballing assassin sent from the past to wreak havoc on the Land of the Free. Let me explain: I’m an Englishman marooned in Hollywood, so it’s now my raison d’être to think of football as a beautiful narrative rather than a beautiful game. And Monsieur Cantona is an anti-hero straight from Central Casting….” 

Continued on Run of Play.

Rush hour, downtown Tokyo…The pink neon lights of Shibuya come alive as the wave of grey suits flood its famous barcode crossing. But against the commuter tide, a menace is loose. Weaving through pedestrians- elegant like a dancer, fast like a piranha- a lone cycle messenger is racing against the clock, pedalling towards Shinjuku like Genghis Kahn on a steel horse. He is one of hundreds of Tokyo’s Kamikaze messengers, who with no brakes, no helmet and no fear, risk their lives to courier letters and parcels across Japan’s dizzying metropolis. And what’s more, these feckless riders spend their free time too, racing through the city streets, competing against rival couriers in top-speed, illegal street competitions known as ‘alley cats’. These dangerous, rarely-photographed events like ‘Mixpression’, ‘Pillage’ and ‘Kyoto Loco’ are closely guarded by the messengers, as Loaded was to discover at our peril: Cling on. This is one hell of a ride.

Loaded arrive in Tokyo with a bike racing photographer, our translator, ‘Fat’ Phil, and our customised, £1,200, fixed-gear bike- to infiltrate the ‘scene’ and try to race in one of the city’s secret alley cat races. What we were to discover is a closely guarded community who will protect their sport at any cost. Our attempts at messenger-style cycling on Tokyo’s tough streets would prove irresponsibly calamitous and after two days in Tokyo, we are lucky to leave without a serious kicking at the hands of hostile bikers. Yet for one mad night, we ride with the top boys, tearing through Tokyo and clinging onto taxis for speed, jumping red lights, drunk on adrenaline, high on fear.

We tear through Tokyo clinging onto taxis for speed, jumping red lights, drunk on adrenaline, high on fear.

“Being a fast messenger…it comes from within,” explains 28-year-old courier Shino-San, his words translated by Fat Phil like a badly dubbed Kung Foo movie. “You need passion and skill to be the best.” And Shino should know, he’s the world’s most famous and successful messenger. Hailing from Chiba, Japan, Shino is the reigning world champion. He tells my translator that he used to be a nightclub host, but today he’s the reigning champ of the WBMC World Bike Messenger Championship, and this year has won Mixpression and Kyoto Loco, completing an impressive treble. Some say he has memorised the sequences of every traffic light in Tokyo. Others believe he controls them with his thoughts.

“We race once a month in alley cat races,” Shino says quietly, knocking back a strong beer. “It’s a competitive sport and I am competitive about everything whether it’s delivering a package or racing.” Loaded loves Shino- he’s a top geezer, and his cool colleagues “Hal” and Yoshi, (the president of the Tokyo Bike Messenger Association) show us a great time in a local messenger bar.
We learn that alley cat races are gruelling sprints through a city, stopping at various checkpoints in any order (as a messenger would deliver packages), often having to complete a task such as climb stairs, or neck a shot of hot sauce or vodka. But when we ask about the recent tragedy that occurred in America, the messengers go very quiet. A race in Chicago ended in tragedy when on February 24, 2008, 29-year-old chef Matt Manger-Lynch was killed by a collision with a car mid-race after jumping a red light. Chicago’s transportation department said the race was “unsanctioned” and “a solemn reminder that avid cyclists should adhere to the rules of the road just like motorists and pedestrians.”

This is why no one wants to talk about alley cats. Especially as the recent ‘Mixpression 8’ race was shut down by cops after many strong anonymous threats and calls to the police. While at the Wbase bike shop in Shibuya, we later meet an American racer, Zac*, who’s a former messenger and alley cat organiser:
“There’s a ton of bike accidents in Tokyo,” he says. “New kids jump on fixed-gear bikes with no brakes and no skill. They’re a danger to the real messengers. Messengers get heat because people ring up the courier companies complaining about fixed gear bikes, when it’s actually people like you fucking things up.”
He casts an angry glance over my bright blue, show-off bicycle with its needless Aerospoke wheels.

Sheepishly, we cycle off, as Shino has agreed to take Loaded on a run around Shibuya, Tokyo’s business and fashion district where much messenger work is based. Riding for top courier firm Cyclex, messengers like Shino deliver documents and photographs to everyone from real estate agents to fashion designers. Email may have wrecked the messenger business in New York, but according to Akira Tanaka, vice president of courier firm T-Serv, business is booming in Tokyo, because Japanese people still feel insecure until they see printed material or photos. And on Tokyo’s maze-like streets, pedal bikes are faster than motorbikes:
When Japan’s Imperial Palace was moved from Kyoto to Tokyo in the second year of Meiji (1868), the Emperor decided that the grid-like streets of Kyoto had been too easy to navigate for conquering armies. So, they built the streets of Tokyo into a winding labyrinth; check it, a map of Tokyo looks like someone’s thrown up their noodles. And now there’s taxis to contend with too.

Cyclex riders, however, are cool, street-wise pirates who’ll stomp into your office in a puff of Marlboro smoke and hit on your receptionist, but deliver your letter faster than you could fax it.

“Taxi drivers are not our friends,” says Shino, as we saddle up. “In Tokyo, messengers get arrested for hanging onto Taxis. Sometimes the driver gets surprised and swerves.”
As we take to the street by Tokyo’s famous Hachikō statue, Loaded notices how Shino has a kind of supernatural presence. It’s as if he somehow owns the road, as we pick up speed and tear down a hill jammed with black taxis. “Come on!” he shouts, as we whisper down the centre stripe just millimetres from motors on both shoulders, then suddenly traffic starts to move and we’re as one with the flow of cars! Shino, Yoshi, Hal and Loaded, legs pumping, like a school of dirty fish swimming with shiny black whales. The sense of being in water is indescribable, but apt. With fixed gears, there are no brakes and to stop, one must slow down by pedalling backwards- which takes a few yards. Not handy when a lady driver pulls out doing her lippy in the mirror.

The company he works for, Cyclex, have a reputation as the best in Tokyo, and the world champion is a prized asset. “There is no real competition to Cyclex,” says Shino. “We have no rookie messengers.”
See, rival firm T-Serv employ newer riders and offer customers service with a smile, a courier dressed in a uniform and delivery for 500Y (£3.30) within four hours. Cyclex riders, however, are cool, street-wise pirates who’ll stomp into your office in a puff of Marlboro smoke and hit on your receptionist, but deliver your letter faster than you could fax it.
“If we don’t get the package there on time, we don’t get paid,” explains Shino. So while T-Serv pay their messengers an hourly wage, 1,200Y (£7), Cyclex dudes get paid per delivery. More deliveries, more Yen. More Yen, more beer. I’ll leave you to imagine how red lights are observed by Cyclex riders.

Meanwhile, Loaded are speeding through Tokyo at a frankly frightening pace. What might feel like a gentle pleasure ride for Shino and the boys is punishing muscles in my arse and legs I didn’t know I had. I fall off, twice, trying to get my trotters out of the metal cages while waiting at a traffic light, and endeavour to learn the messenger technique of hitching a ride with a taxi to keep up with the other messengers. Zooming down one of Tokyo’s rare hills, in a two-lane street taxicabs jostle for position, forcing me into a tiny gap between two vehicles. Next to me in the back of the cab, I see a businessman watching a Japanese schoolgirl suck off teacher on a tiny TV screen, and I reach out and grab his door handle. Lift off! The taxi accelerates and I’m away! 5, 10, 15 miles an hour and the fixed gear is rotating the pedals so fast the bike is riding me, not the other way round. Yeaah! The wind whips into my jacket as I struggle to hang on, adrenaline squirting through my veins. This is amazing! Suddenly, two bandit Cyclex messengers appear alongside me, and quickly overtake with ease, killing my massive testosterone buzz.

More deliveries, more Yen. More Yen, more beer. I’ll leave you to imagine how red lights are observed by Cyclex riders

But it was Loaded’s intention to find an alley cat race and represent England against some of Tokyo’s finest, a mission that was becoming increasingly unlikely and dangerous. Although Shino and his boys are highly respectable figures, there is an undercurrent of violence among others in the community, one that we were to experience first hand. Firstly, messenger gossip moves as fast as their packages, and all of Tokyo became quickly aware there was a journalist among them, trying to do ‘a story’. To alley cat racers, Journalists are somewhere between a taxi driver and a cockroach, and much is done to prevent publicity of their races, which are then quickly shut down. We take Zac, an English teacher, and his messenger mates to an Okonomiyaki restaurant where he promised to tell us more about where we could find a race. In these authentic Japanese eateries, you squeeze around a table with a large hot plate built into it, below a dazzling light the Japanese police could use for interrogating suspects. Me, Fat Phil, our snapper and Zac, all sat hot and sweating as a waiter smashes eggs and noodles over the scorching hotplate. On the next table, four of Zac’s messenger mates keep looking over.

“So Shino was a nightclub host before a messenger,” I say to break the now unbearable silence. Zac’s face drops. “He told you that?” Phil nods. Zac goes on to explain that in Tokyo, nightclub hosts are young, good-looking fellas who are paid to entertain older ladies, at great expense. News to me, and it’s an unlikely start to a messenger career but I like to think Shino would have been good at it, like he’s good at everything. Apparently, there’s no shagging, just some cash for a bit of harmless rabbiting.
“I wouldn’t have known that if you hadn’t have mentioned it, mate,” I smile, nervously.
“I tell you, guys. You print that…if you fucking print that…” shouts Zac, a film of sweat appearing on his forehead. Loaded appear to be in some trouble. “You want to write about alley cat racing? You haven’t seen an alley cat race. You write about this, or alley cats, and I’m gonna fuck you up!” As Zac screams, specks of spittle shooting out of his gob and sizzling to nothing next to his egg.
“I’m gonna fuck you up. I will find you motherfucker,” he says as he storms out of the restaurant, sending polite waiters scattering.

Outside, my bike is left with two flat tyres. I’ve been warned, and I know the mission is over.
But this I know: Alley cats won’t be underground for long. In September the World Championships will be held in Tokyo: Legal, brakes-and-helmet required, beer sponsored and with journalists everywhere, this will be a nightmare- not for messengers, but for the uptight groupies who own fixed gear bikes and pretend once a month.

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“You just gotta smash them! Gotta let them know what’s up. You gotta show them you have no weakness, that you’re strong!” snarls Willie, 17, centre forward of California’s controversial football team, Aztecas. But the teenager is not talking tactics. Willie is speaking about battering his teammates, who include members of a rival street gang known as Sureños. “One time this guy pulled out a knife and told me to step-up. All they did was rip my shirt, so I grabbed the knife and turned it on him. I was trying to kill him. The next day, I was on my way home from practice and I got swarmed by the cops and they arrested me.”

Like most of the players on the Aztecas team, Wilfredo ‘Willie’ Maciel is serving probation for gang related crimes, including that near fatal stabbing. He is a member of the Norteños, a powerful gang who have turned the streets of Watsonville, California, into a war zone. In a desperate attempt to calm the running street battle between the Norteños and Sureños, in April 2008, probation officer Gina Castañeda had the idea to form a football team to encourage the two sides get along. What she created was one of the most unique- and dangerous football teams in the world. These boys can teach Ashley Cole a thing or two about bringing firearms to training, and tell Rio Ferdinand about drug tests. And today, FourFourTwo joins the Aztecas for the most important game in their history; a fiery play-off match in which this team of under-aged gangbangers could become the unlikely champions of an adult league, and the ultimate underdogs.

These boys can teach Ashley Cole a thing or two about bringing firearms to training, and tell Rio Ferdinand about drug tests

DEATH ON THE STREETS
“It is very sad that most of the kids on the team are involved in gangs,” admits Gina, who wears her police badge at all times during training. “They join gangs for the love, acceptance, respect, rights and rituals,” she explains, “but as soon as they join they’ll be lured into violence.” By making rival gang members play on the same team, Gina says she calls a ceasefire on Watsonville’s bloody turf war- if only until the final whistle. “Kids are killing their own, but we are trying to promote peace,” she enthuses, “to bring safety to the streets of Watsonville.”

Aztecas player Cristian, 17.

Watsonville is a miserable concrete slum rising out of eight miles of swamp and slough, just 17 miles south of Santa Cruz, an ugly hernia on the picture-perfect coast of California. A rural farming community, you could fit the entire population of Watsonville inside the city of Manchester Stadium. But among the 47,000 citizens live a complicated network of local gangs, all linked to the deadly Norteños and Sureños. Like the Los Angeles’ Bloods and Crips, the fight between these gangs has raged on for decades, a messy battle painted in graffiti and blood, fought against a soundtrack of aggressive rap music, fuelled by drugs and cold-blooded murder. All these gangs have in common is a love of soccer- and a hatred of each other….

The rest of the article is out now, in FourFourTwo.
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ACING THE RED CARPET in her trademark gold blouse, the well-respected Hollywood publicist kissed goodbye her glamorous friends and disappeared into the blaze of paparazzi flash bulbs. But the queen of publicity had no idea this would be her last ever premiere, and her last kiss goodnight. At 12.28am, Ronni Chasen was murdered: blasted five times through the chest as she drove home through a quiet Beverly Hills neighbourhood.

In Los Angeles’ most affluent and desirable area, terrified resident Nahid Shekarchian, 33, heard what she described as the “boom-boom-boom” of gunfire. She opened her curtains, told her daughter-in-law to call 911 and ran outside to see what had happened. There she was met with an awful scene: Chasen’s Mercedes E-350 had collided with a lamppost, and the publicist lay bleeding from multiple gunshot wounds. Blood was pouring from both her nostrils and her airbag was splattered with blood. “She couldn’t speak, and was breathing very heavily,” said Shekarchian. By the time medics had rushed Ronni to hospital she was dead.
Hollywood was rocked with the news. Ronni Chasen was a popular and well-respected figure in the movie industry: At the time of her death, Ronni was already working on the 2011 Academy Award campaigns for “Alice in Wonderland” for best picture and Michael Douglas for best supporting actor for “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.” And no one gets shot dead on the street in Beverly Hills. Not among the manicured lawns and the platinum-plated homes of magnates and movie icons. The knee-jerk reaction was that a car-jacking had gone wrong, but as day broke over Hollywood, more details had emerged that would make this one of the biggest murder mysteries in Beverly Hills’ history.

No one gets shot dead on the street in Beverly Hills. Not among the manicured lawns and the platinum-plated homes of magnates and movie icons

“She had a place in the solar system of Hollywood,” said Tom Tapp, a former editor at Variety magazine. “It’s kind of like one of the planets is missing.” A fixture of the movie industry circuit for three decades, Ronni was remembered as a workaholic and a perfectionist. She ate dinner every evening at 6:30pm, not only because she got a better service, but also so she could get home to start work again, emailing endless memos to her staff. “Her hours were hideous and she organized and went to all of those functions we dread,” Academy Award-winning producer Richard Zanuck told The Los Angeles Times.
“I really didn’t know Ronni when she wasn’t working,” said producer Mace Neufeld, a client and friend of Chasen’s for 35 years, “and when she wasn’t working she was working.” Though Ronni was married and divorced in her 20s, she had no family of her own. At the time of her death, she was single and without children: Ronni was simply married to the job she loved, a job she had dreamed about since she was a child.

Born Veronica Cohen in Kingston, New York, Ronni Chasen’s introduction to the entertainment industry came as a little girl, when she met cowboy actor Roy Rogers during a personal appearance in Madison Square Garden. Star struck, it was a meeting she later admitted inspired a childhood ambition to become a publicist. After a brief stint in front of the camera as a soap opera actress in Hollywood, Ronni’s dream career began in 1980 with publicity firm Rogers & Cowan. With her networking abilities and boundless energy, she quickly rose through the ranks and was later made a top publicist for Hollywood studio MGM. Launching her own firm, Chasen & Co., Ronni worked on campaigns for more than 100 movies, including last year’s Best Picture Oscar winner, “The Hurt Locker,” as well as “Cocoon,” “Baby Boom,” “On Golden Pond” and the 1989 Best Picture winner “Driving Miss Daisy.”

The Friday before her death, Ronni threw a glitzy soiree for her latest project, the film Black Swan, in the Polo Lounge at the famous Beverly Hills Hotel. In attendance were the leading ladies; Natalie Portman and Winona Ryder, among other luminaries, and Ronni had been in her element—working the room, introducing people, and mingling among a constellation of stars. Her last week was a naturally high-profile affair, and her slaying was a scene befitting the film classic, LA Confidential.

November 15th was an unusually cold night in Hollywood, and following the premiere for “Burlesque”, Ronni dashed from Grauman’s Chinese Theater to the W Hotel in Hollywood for the celeb-packed after-party.
She arrived at about 10:30 p.m., pinging off a to-do list for her staff from her Blackberry en route, reported her friend and longtime Hollywood publicist Vivian Mayer-Siskind. On leaving the after-party, Ronni steered her Mercedes Benz coupe west along Sunset Boulevard, down the neon-lit Sunset Strip, before hooking a left into the darkness of Whittier Drive, a residential street lined with palms, pines and sprawling mansions.

Her last week was a naturally high-profile affair, and her slaying was a scene befitting the film classic, LA Confidential.

“The street would have been quiet as a cemetery,” Ronni’s neighbour Claudia Berkeley, 43, tells Grazia, “local kids sometimes use it as a test track for their Father’s Ferraris, it’s that deserted,” she adds. Ronnie was heading south from Hollywood to her luxury apartment in the Wilshire corridor of Westwood, where she lived alone. Police recorded that she sent a second email from her car to staff at 12:22a.m, but six minutes later she was dead. And mysteriously no one knows what happened in those terrifying last moments.

Police sources confirmed that the car’s driver-side window was broken yet nothing was taken from Chasen’s purse. It wasn’t robbery, and Ronni hadn’t used her hands-free phone to report any road rage incident to cops. Then speculation that Ronni Chasen was murdered by a professional hit man gathered pace on Wednesday, when Beverly Hills Police spokesperson Lt. Tony Lee admitted, “It’s something we are looking into,” and that a professional hit was “absolutely possible.”
Former FBI Special Agent and Forensic Accountant Harold Copus concludes that the murder does ‘feel like’ a professional hit:

“It seems to be somebody who knows exactly what to do with no hesitation, somebody familiar with military or weapons who was watching their target closely. Investigators will now have to try establish anybody she may have had a problem with in the past.”
The New York Post reports that Chasen believed she was being followed in March and was “scared.” But songwriter and client Diane Warren dismisses the idea, saying: “She’s probably the most loved person in this town. Who would want to hurt her? Nobody would want to hurt her.”
John Nazarian, a former LAPD detective and Hollywood’s most famous Private Detective tells Grazia: “My first thought was ‘Jesus, five bullets? That is some serious rage. This is not the work of a professional hit man,” he says, “It’s like, Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam! Blam!”
While Nazarian admits the crime scene was ‘clean’ enough to be a hit man job, the detective speaks with some authority when he says: “Hit men use silencers and aim for the head.” It’s true.
Nazarian, also a ballistics expert, believes the weapon was a five-shot revolver. “This would mean the shooting was even angrier,” he tells Grazia, “it means the killer had to ‘pull and point’ five times. Each time, he enjoyed the experience even more. This is not a ‘hit’, this is a murder.”

With Palm Springs Film Festival offering a $100,000 reward and with Hollywood being the capital city of gossip, talk is rife of theories and hunches. Everyone in 90210 is an armchair sleuth this week, and a myriad comments on the LA Times website suggest the killing could have even been a gang initiation ceremony: Gang-bangers have been known to be sent on a mission to earn their stripes in an act of mindless violence, but to Beverly Hills? Another theory is mistaken identity.
“A petit lady with blonde-grey hair driving a black Mercedes through Beverly Hills? That describes half the population of the town,” says Detective Nazarian. “Whoever it was could have got the wrong lady.”

And so today Beverly Hills remains a city in fear, with a killer on the loose, while Whittier Drive has once again fallen silent. At the crime scene lay several bunches of flowers, all white roses- clearly Ronni’s particular preference. There’s also a dog-eared front page of the LA Times that reads: “Publicist Killing Stuns Hollywood”, and as a candle flickers, a packed “Haunted Hollywood” tour bus, quite morbidly, rolls to a stop by the flowers. Sixteen tourists stare and take photographs, and the driver announces: “Ronni Chase, publicist to the stars. Shot dead in cold blood. Case still unclosed.”

This article appeared in Grazia in England, and Australia.

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“Get your foreskins out for the Yids!” sing five Arsenal slags, as I hitch up my red replica shirt and silently urinate. Inside the khazis at The Gunners pub in Highbury, I’m praying for my life as the song continues, and the Gooners start waving their cocks around. I try to conceal my circumcised precious, which is enough to betray me as an infidel, for under this bastard shirt is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Cut me and my blood will run not red, but lillywhite and blue: I am a Spurs fan in disguise. “Gas ’em all, gas ’em all, gas ’em all!” sings a man on a mic, as the Sky Sports coverage of the north London derby dances to life on a giant telly.

What the merry fuck am I doing here? Today I’m part of an important magazine experiment: for one week, myself and three other writers will switch allegiance to our hated rivals. In the name of journalism, I’ve swapped my beloved Spurs for Arsenal. But as the game kicks off I realise this might be the most difficult 90 minutes of my life. Spurs fans are predominantly Jewish, you see, and today this Arsenal boozer feels more like a BNP rally than a screening of a Premier League match.

As the game kicks off I realise this might be the most difficult 90 minutes of my life.

Ordinarily, I’d never drink in The Gunners, not just because the sign outside reads: ‘Home fans only’, but because inside, the joint is decorated with decades of Spurs-hating memorabilia. Funny, I couldn’t spot one single print of Gazza’s 1991 FA Cup free kick sailing over Seaman’s head. I looked everywhere.
But this ‘local’ rivalry goes back much further than 1991. South London outfit Woolwich Arsenal moved north onto Tottenham’s patch in 1913, when the stench from an open sewer in their midfield got too strong. In 1919, Arsenal ensured Spurs were relegated due to some high-level corruption, and later, match-fixing, ensuring a bitter hatred ever since. Back in 2009, and the reek from the Arsenal midfield
is still suffocating the ’Whites. The south Londoners are bearing down on goal. I feign interest so as not to blow my cover. Shitsticks…

One-nil

Two-nil

Three-nil

As Van Persie’s opening goal (42mins) cruelly exposes Spurs’ defensive frailty, all hell breaks loose. Frozen to the spot, I get a full pint of ale in the face as 50 fans punch the air. “Come on!” screams a man in my face, hugging me. I want to ‘accidentally’ glass him, but my pot is plastic. People are falling over and screaming with delight, even as the match restarts. But my eyes are fixed on the screen as Cesc Fabregas picks up the ball and weaves through our entire team again. “It’s two!” is the cry, as another goal in just 11 seconds crashes in and The Scum are left delirious. I want to sob.

Even the bottle of water I paid for is ‘pure, Arsenal water’. It burns my lips like holy water does old Dracula

This gut-wrenching feeling began earlier as I entered the official club store, at the £460 million corporate cauldron that is the Emirates Stadium. This is what hell must be like: a red dungeon full of idiots, queuing to buy £58 replica shirts, Arsenal chocolate, and even a cuddly fucking Arsenal monkey. Their mascot is a giant cartoon dinosaur: the Gunnersaurus Rex, which is as inspiring as a collapsed sphincter. I reluctantly buy my shirt, and realise even the bottle of water I paid for is ‘pure, Arsenal water’. It burns my lips like holy water does old Dracula. I catch a glimpse of myself in a shop window, wearing red for the first time, and feel a cardinal shame. I told the Editor I’d rather go gay than wear the kit, but he made me. And I was right, it’s more painful than buggery.

Back in the boozer, Arsenal PLC are surging forward again. On the pub’s speakers, they’re playing an Arsenal bootleg of a Killers record. “Are we human? Or are we Arsenal?” goes the tune, as I ponder whether anything could be more appropriate: The shit, boring-boring sell-outs have found their official band. “Goooooal!” It’s 3-0 to the Woolwich Wanderers.

“Sit down, if you hate Tottenham!” comes the rallying cry, a moment that tests every fibre of my body. I’m the last man in the pub on his feet, but by refusing to sit down I’d face certain death. Arsene Wenger’s face fills the giant screen, but I cannot bring myself to kneel before their god. “We beat the scum 3-0!” the pub begins to chant, as I storm out the door.

Arsene Wenger’s face fills the giant screen, but I cannot bring myself to kneel before their god

They’re still singing this four days later, as I slip inside the Emirates for ‘our’ Champions League clash with AZ Alkmaar. Because this is a serious experiment, I’ve had to fully support the Gooners and sever my ties with Spurs. That includes visiting the website. I’ve been on the Arsenal one, which is better. They’ve got an iPhone app, which Spurs don’t, and looking at it objectively, I’m a little jealous of Arsenal. Against the Dutch, their football is, at worst, silky, and in two games I’ve seen seven goals, which, it pains me to say, is value for money.

It’s been a valuable experiment. But as I chuck my red shirt in an Arsenal-sponsored bin, I realise I’ll never understand the hypocritical racism of the Arsenal, a team with as many Frenchmen as Paris St Germain. Instead, I stick on my iPod, and drown out their cheers with Chas and Dave’s Spurs anthems, proud of my circumcised cockerel and thankful I’m not an Arsenal bell-end. For what a great team they are, ruined only by their fans.

Following this article, Jeff Maysh was banned for life from the Gunners pub, Islington.