Ben Trovato

How about these bloody Cape coloureds, hey? A bunch of them lived quite brazenly in the suburb of Kirstenbosch until 50 years ago, when the National Party decided the area was unsuitable for non-whites.

The government was considerate enough to send around a fleet of bulldozers to help the families move to the infinitely more suitable Cape Flats.

The people were less than grateful, which came as a bit of a slap in the face for Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, who only wanted the best for them. After all, who in their right mind would rather live in an area cursed with trees, grass, natural springs and sweeping views when you could watch your new neighbourhood steadily progress from pre-modern minimalist to post-apocalyptic dystopia?

Four years ago, the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights, a hotbed of communist agitators, ruled that 86 families could return to their two plots in the arboraceous motherland. Celebrations went on late into the night. The oldies reminisced over bottles of Tassies and the air was filled with the smell of braaing snoek. Tik pipes crackled festively on every street corner and a 10-minute moratorium on stabbings was declared.

But not everyone was thrilled with the news, and the Nimbys wasted no time in setting up judicial roadblocks to stop the interlopers returning.

The problem is that one of the two plots – erf 212 – falls in Bishopscourt, a suburb where gardeners are required to have their master’s in landscape architecture. The criteria for domestic workers are a little more lax and these days most homeowners are prepared to accept diplomas in haute cuisine and advanced childcare.

Standing between the cheeky coloureds and the promised land is a white supremacist militia known as the Bishopscourt Ratepayers’ Association.

Leading the charge is William Booth, a criminal lawyer. Feel free to read that however you wish. Booth and his cohorts have filed an application in the Land Claims Court to prevent what writer VS Naipaul might call the “infies” from moving in and lowering the tone of the area with their, shall we say, devil-may-care ways.

Booth says the land – which is owned by the state – should remain a recreational space. This is understandable, given that the average size of a Bishopscourt garden is a piddling 5ha. As anyone with half a brain knows, this is hardly big enough to accommodate four children, two ponies, five dogs, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a thatched gazebo, two Jacuzzis, a tennis court and parking for 35 cars.

• Complete article in the Sunday Times

By the time you read this I will have crossed the finish line in the Cape Argus Pick n Pay Cycle Tour way ahead of Lance Armstrong, and if anyone is looking for me I’ll be in the Fireman’s Arms carboloading on Windhoek Lager.

I intend crossing the finish line on foot and will probably catch a cab to the pub. I don’t, you understand, own a bicycle. I believe that bicycles are for children and circus bears.

But even if I mentally regressed to the age of nine, or turned into a grizzly overnight, I still wouldn’t get one. Far less would I mount a sliver of a saddle and compete against 35000 pointy-headed people wearing disturbingly tight Lycra and gay shoes over a distance of 109km. I can’t even drive my car for 109km without falling asleep or stopping for a beer.

So my dirty little secret is out. I am not a cyclist. I’m glad that’s out of the way. I wouldn’t want racers getting halfway through this column and thinking: “It’s this kind of idiot who gives cycling a bad name.” Come to think of it, I am precisely that kind of idiot. And I can do it without going anywhere near a bike. In fact, I’m doing it right now from behind my computer with a jug of sangria at my elbow. If I open my window, I can shout: “Faster, you lazy bastard!” at every cyclist who comes heaving into view.

I have to make sure my gate is locked, though. Cyclists are renowned for their over-sensitivity to verbal abuse, and many a motorist has been grateful for a gap opening up in the traffic as an outraged peloton bears down on him after he had the sheer bloody nerve to overtake while they were riding 17 abreast.

As all serious writers do when faced with a subject requiring in-depth research, I turned to Google. “Cycling” throws up 52 million results. This was astonishing, especially when one considers that “sex with your wife” throws up 21 million results. Okay, perhaps it’s not all that astonishing.

The first website I encountered was a tremendous help. It said: “Cycling is an activity most commonly performed on a bicycle.” This is like pointing out that walking is an activity most commonly performed on the legs.

“I know what cycling is!” I shouted, giving my computer a swift backhand. It was more co-operative after that, and it wasn’t long before it coughed up a fact that I could use.

Did you know that the modern bicycle was introduced in the 19th century and numbers about one billion worldwide? What I find even more alarming is that the Chinese were introduced in the Neolithic era and now number about 1.5 billion. This means that bicycles are multiplying faster than the Chinese. You don’t have to be a genius to conclude that the threat of world domination comes from bicycles and not, as previously thought, Chinese people. Bicycle-riding Chinese clearly pose the biggest danger of all to the planet.

The first bicycle was invented by a Frenchman, an Englishman, a Scotsman or an American – depending on who you ask. One of the earliest prototypes was called a “velocipede”. It was designed by a German and had a wooden frame, square wheels and no handlebars or pedals. It just sat there, looking rather stupid. Perhaps I’m thinking of the inventor.

The penny-farthing was an improvement, if you can call anything designed by an escaped mental patient an improvement. Okay, I’m bored with that bit.

Let us rather look at the development of cyclists themselves. Early cyclists were covered in hair and had long, curved incisors which they would use to bite one another while bunched together at the start. In that respect, not much has changed.

The evolution of cyclists, from wild-eyed Neanderthals to red-eyed substance abusers, coincided with the evolution of performance-enhancing drugs. In the 1800s, the most popular drugs were morphine and cocaine. This meant that many entrants in earlier events, such as the Bordeaux-Paris race, carried on past the finish line and eventually had to be brought down by police snipers waiting at the Italian border.

• Complete article in the Sunday Times

Funny things, teeth. They have a lot in common with women. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them. If you don’t pay them plenty of attention, they fall apart. And they frequently bite the hand that feeds them.

Why am I writing about teeth? Why not? If I had to write about Julius Malema, I would end up drinking a bottle of vodka and opening my wrists in the bath. I may do that for a laugh, anyway.

Besides, teeth are becoming something of an issue thanks to a deprived childhood. We couldn’t afford milk so I have no calcium in my body. For a treat, my mother would give us strawberry-flavoured battery acid.

The other day I was gnawing on a chunk of biltong Brenda had tossed to me as a reward for good behaviour when the north face of my top right molar sheared off like an Arctic glacier succumbing to global warming.

I braced myself for the kind of pain one might expect to feel moments after sitting on a PMA-2 blast mine.

Minutes passed and I felt nothing. Then days went by. Still nothing. I cautiously unbraced myself. Brenda said she wasn’t surprised because it had been years since I had last showed signs of feeling anything at all.

I said this is what happens when a wife emotionally eviscerates and psychologically emasculates her husband over a long period of time. She made a cry-baby face and pretended to play the violin.

I kept my face the way it was and playfully pretended to cut off her oxygen supply.

She brought her knee up into my groin and, moments before I lost consciousness, I discovered that I could, in fact, feel.

And while you can’t take every traumatised testicle to the doctor, you do have to take mangled molars and crumbled cuspids to the dentist. However, I wouldn’t do it solely for cosmetic reasons. Broken teeth are nothing new to me and I have been told that they lend a certain charm to my face. Of course, people who say this sort of thing tend to view teeth as an absurd pretension of the upper classes and generally pass the time idly swinging from the bottom rung of the social ladder.

Frankly, like most married men, I no longer care what I look like. If you are in a monogamous relationship, which, if I value my life, apparently I am, there seems little point in spending time making yourself look presentable. I am blessed with a wife who doesn’t seem to notice what I look like. But, like all blessings, this comes with its own auxiliary curses. For example, she doesn’t seem to notice that I need regular feeding, watering and fondling, either.

So it is perhaps understandable that, as one lets oneself go, one’s mouth might begin to look as if a tiny car bomb had exploded inside it. I am left spitting out shrapnel while the Plaque Revolutionary Front and the Tartar Liberation Organisation bicker over claims of responsibility.

No, I do not need the perfect American smile to enhance my visage. The only reason I want teeth is so that I can eat like a real man. I am not one of your postmodern men whose diet is meticulously restricted to protein-boosted smoothies and high-energy gruel. I like my food like my women – hard and crunchy. None of this slurpy, sucky nonsense for me. When I eat, I want to hear things splinter and shatter. I want to feel as if I am pulverising something. I want to hear my food scream as my incisors tear it apart. I want to feel things struggle to escape the grinding of my powerful jaws. Brenda says I am an aggressive eater. What the hell does that even mean?

• Complete article in the Sunday Times

Fifa is worried that soccer players at the World Cup could use stimulants derived from traditional African medicines that aren’t on the list of banned substances.

Fifa medical committee chairman Michel D’Hooghe said he wanted the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to analyse African plants that could give athletes an unfair advantage.

“If we don’t have control over these specific traditional medicines, then we can’t say we have control over all the medication in football.”

Well, let me give you a hand, Mr D’Hooghe, if that’s your real name. After all, you can’t be expected to know the names and properties of everything that grows in the country.

• Dagga: SA’s most popular herbal remedy helps alleviate a number of physical and mental problems such as manual labour, premenstrual wives and Sunday afternoons. Not commonly regarded as a great performance enhancer outside of laughter therapy groups. Heightens perceptions, usually of being arrested.
• Juliusoria Malemaris: a stubby, resilient vegetable with a thick, fleshy epidermis. Does not do well in poor conditions and must be watered regularly with Moët & Chandon. More of a depressant than a stimulant. Repeated exposure leads to delusions of grandeur. Vomiting may result if taken in large doses.
• Jacobulata Zumarensis: has powerful roots but can be easily displaced every five years. Recognisable by its unusual style, swollen stamen and constantly growing stigma. Has a machine-gun instead of a pistil. A fast reproducer, it is part of a broader organic system that contains nuts. Has been known to provide users with an unfair advantage. Side-effects of prolonged use include immense wealth or imprisonment.
• Helenii Zillespora: a sub-genus of the Venus Fly Trap family, this small but perfectly formed flowering tree is capable of changing its appearance on a weekly basis. It thrives on attention and yet has no visible means of support. Has been known to cause indigestion among its natural enemies. Mildly hallucinatory, its bark is worse than its bite.
• Pieteranthus Mulderata: a non-indigenous hybrid that thrives on farmland. It leaves a bitter taste in the mouth and needs to be crushed, then diluted with one part tolerance and two parts acceptance. Its powerful properties have all but disappeared over the past 15 years. Moves are under way to permanently eliminate this alien growth. Limited in its performance-enhancing abilities, it is likely to find itself on the list of banned substances by 2020.
• Dannyosa Jordaanifera: an interesting genetic mix, this rather miserable-looking specimen should not be taken lightly. Eaten raw with a side dish of lightly grilled Bafanaspicata, it has been known to provoke feelings of misplaced patriotism. Approach with cautious optimism.
• Bennimonium McCarthyllum: a distant relative of Bafanaspicata, it should be taken with a pinch of salt. This rare, indigenous alien needs to be handled gently. Pay it a lot of attention or a lot of money and there is a good chance it will shoot.

Mr D’Hooghe, you should also be aware that sangomas are preparing a special batch of muti that will make our national side invisible. After the first round you won’t see them again.

• Complete article in the Sunday Times

The image of golf has suffered terribly as a result of Tiger Woods’ breach of marital etiquette. Yes, I can see how that might happen. I was thinking of taking it up, but then Tiger ruined it for me by making a billion dollars a year and sleeping with dozens of beautiful women.

I, for one, will have no truck with such filth. Instead, I shall take up a sport in which I stand to make no money at all and get to sweat so heavily that I attract stray dogs rather than hot girls.

You have to hand it to the Americans. You can get caught pimping underage immigrants to support your heroin habit, but if you squeeze a drop of glycerine into each eye and go on TV and apologise and say you’re taking gender sensitivity classes and checking yourself into rehab, the nation will rise up and applaud you.

This applies to celebrities more than it does to garbage collectors and other members of the proletariat, whose mea culpa is generally described as a confession rather than a courageous admission of their human frailty. It only works for Americans, though. When British actor Hugh Grant’s willy accidentally fell into a prostitute’s mouth while the two of them were discussing the Middle East crisis in a side street off Sunset Boulevard on June 27 1995, he never tried to “rehab” his way out of it.

His laddish grin on the Los Angeles police department’s mug shot said it all. What happened in the car that night – that was the treatment. Let us be clear on that. Suffering from a prolonged dearth of fellatio, Mr Grant had his ailment treated by the nearest qualified person, nurse Divine Brown. Tiger, on the other hand, speaks for 13 minutes and convinces the world he is a very sick man deserving of our sympathy.

Halfway into his statement, something very strange happened. I began feeling as if I had done something wrong. As he spoke, the burden of guilt lifted from his shoulders and settled on mine. He was pulling some kind of weird voodoo stunt and getting away with it.

He blamed the media for daring to suggest his perfect Swedish wife, Elin, had clubbed him like a baby seal on that terrible Thanksgiving evening.

“It angers me that people would fabricate a story like that.”

I hung my head in shame.

“Elin never hit me that night or any other night.”

Brenda snorted: “Some Viking she is.”

Tiger went on: “There has never been an episode of domestic violence in our marriage.”

Well, maybe there should have been. You would be surprised at how effectively sexual tension can be relieved by smacking one another around for an hour or so. It works for Brenda and me.

“I felt that I had worked hard my entire life and deserved to enjoy all the temptations around me. Thanks to money and fame, I didn’t have to go far to find them.”

And the problem is what, exactly? This is precisely why fame and fortune are a tad more in demand than, say, obscurity and penury. What is the point of being rich and powerful if you’re going to be like the rest of us and go home to a cold, hostile wife who puts your dinner plate on the floor and expects you to get down on all fours and eat it like a dog?

We are the way we are only because we are too goddamn lazy to work relentlessly at something until we are so ridiculously good at it that people line up to throw money at us just to watch us do whatever it is that we do.

Tiger apologised to parents who pointed to him as a role model for kids. What rubbish. Show me a teenage boy who spent weeks sobbing in his room after hearing his hero’s idea of relaxation was to check into a R40000-a-night hotel, drop a little A-grade ecstasy, and lick Beluga caviar off the quivering thighs of naked porn stars while cocktail waitresses queued in the corridor. Show me that boy and I will show you a pervert in the making.

My repulsive loin fruit, Clive, showed no interest in golf until Tiger got bust. Now all he wants to do is get his hands on a bagful of clubs, Ambien and one of those Thai masseuses who work in the house across the road. That’s my boy.

Instead of being lauded for making golf an aspirational sport, Tiger was forced to grovel. Shocking, really, and a scathing indictment on what kind of world we are bringing our children into. Hooking and slicing his way through the rough, he played a freaky shot that put him on the green and into the bunker at the same time.

“It’s hard to admit that I need help, but I do. For 45 days from the end of December to early February, I was in in-patient therapy receiving guidance for the issues I’m facing. I have a long way to go.”

Right there, the attitude of millions of people watching Tiger beat himself up went from self-righteous disapproval to a weird mix of empathy and pride. You did bad, Tiger, but you’re dealing with your problem and we’re proud.

• Complete article in the Sunday Times

Exhilarating is not a word that immediately springs to mind. First, President Zuma told us what state the nation was in.

During his speech, the dinosaurs became extinct, the Ice Age came and went and humans learnt to walk upright.

Then, just when I feared my heart would explode from the excitement, finance minister Pravin Gordhan wrapped up his budget speech after having been at the podium since Rommel was in Africa.

The only way I could stay awake this week was by wedging matchsticks into my eyes, smoking ridiculous amounts of crystal meth and drinking barrels of coffee liberally laced with amphetamine sulphate. Even so I was yawning like a hippo stuck in a mud pool with nothing to read.

At one point, things turned really wild. During debate on Zuma’s state of the nation address – which wasn’t so much an address as it was a felonious band of words with no fixed abode – COPE’s Mluleki George had the nerve to exercise his right to freedom of speech and suggest that the nation was “deliberately being led to lawlessness”.

Deputy Speaker Nomaindia Mfeketo ruled him out of order although he didn’t seem at all broken to me. Then she instructed him to withdraw his remark on the grounds that it insulted the president.

“But I never mentioned the president,” stammered the bewildered George.

“I don’t care. This is my house and I won’t stand for it,” shouted Mfeketo. “You at the back, put your hand down. This is not a debate.”

“Actually …” said George. “Right, that’s it. You’re out.”

So off he went, taking his party as well as the DA and the ID with him, leaving only the ANC and a smattering of perplexed MPs whose grasp of English prevented them from fully understanding what was going on.

• Complete article in the Sunday Times

ANC councillors in Durban have ordered work to be stopped on a R1.5-million sculpture of three elephants alongside a city freeway. They objected to the sculptures on the grounds that the elephant is a symbol of the Inkatha Freedom Party.

Councillor Bulala Indlovu said it was obvious that the sculptures were intended to brainwash people into voting for the IFP at the next election.

“I love the ANC more than I love myself but still today I cannot look at an elephant. If I see one, I hear evil spirits telling me to vote for the IFP.”

He confirmed long-standing speculation that IFP leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi was, in fact, an elephant in human form. “We have always known the truth about Gatsha. That man has the soul of an elephant. And the memory. But even though his is a selective memory, it is still a very good one. He can remember things that didn’t happen 20 years ago.”

ANC chairman in the eThekwini region, Pachydermatitus Vilikazi, said apartheid security forces were not responsible for fomenting the violence that rocked the KwaZulu-Natal midlands during the late ’80s.

“People still think the third force was made up of apartheid spies. It wasn’t. It was made up of elephants.”

Asked why nobody had noticed the elephants stirring up trouble between the two parties, Vilikazi said it was obvious. “They were very small elephants. Maybe the size of sheep. When the IFP warlords attacked ANC strongholds, the elephants were careful to stay in the middle of the crowd where nobody could see them.”

Pressed for an answer on the precise nature of the elephants’ role in the conflict, Vilikazi tapped his nose and nodded knowingly. Asked if he was referring to their trunks, he claimed to have already said too much and jumped into a passing taxi.

The minister of water and environmental affairs, Buyelwa Sonjica, confirmed that elephants were personae non gratae in the ANC.

“Having said that, there is no reason why tourists should stay away from our game parks. Let them come and see our elephants. After all, foreigners are not allowed to vote, so no real damage can be done.”

• Complete article in the Sunday Times

For years I have had to listen to hair-gelled, chino-wearing, smug-faced swine telling me that a Toyota is the most reliable car in the world and that I am a dribbling moron to have bought a Hyundai.

Truth is, the moment anyone starts talking about cars I turn into a dribbling moron and the Hyundai really has nothing to do with it.

I bought my car because I was tired of walking. I didn’t go out looking for a Hyundai. Nor was I particularly looking for a red car.

Brenda believes that men who buy red cars are trying to compensate for the size of their willies. What she forgets is that I was still a growing lad when she began averting her eyes at the first sign of my trousers coming off.

Besides, it’s a scientifically proven fact that red cars go faster.

Now Toyota is recalling half a million cars because their brakes don’t work. Jou ma se Prius. South Africans can safely ignore the recall because the last time anyone used their brakes on one of our roads was back in ‘93.

Toyota president, Akio Toyoda, whose fate was forever sealed by his name, said he never regarded his company as one that never made mistakes. Fair enough. Everyone makes mistakes. But brakes? That’s like a shipbuilder making boats out of papier-mâché and then being surprised at the sink rate.

This is not happening because some poor overworked Jap bastard had a reaction to his whale meat sandwich and went into a toxic trance while tightening the nuts. The company doesn’t even use people to put their cars together. A Toyota assembly line looks like a scene from Transformers. Giant mechanical creatures swivel and hiss, their metal arms swooping and stabbing as defect after defect rolls down the birth canal. My friend Ted Kaczynski warned about this sort of thing.

• Complete article in the Sunday Times

There is a blue-collar renaissance going on in America right now. But don’t get your hopes up.

Put aside those homoerotic images of buff workers breaking their shackles and rising up, each bearing an American flag and led by Bruce Springsteen singing Badlands all the way to Washington DC.

A renaissance is like a revolution, only more gay. The French Renaissance, for example, was a cultural movement that took place about 600 years ago. The African Renaissance, on the other hand, is more like a constipated bowel movement that has yet to happen. I’m sure things will get moving just as soon as someone discovers how to manufacture democracy in the form of a suppository. Shove one up yer president’s bum and wait an hour for the phone to ring. Odds are it will be the World Bank.

The blue-collar renaissance I’m talking about is an audacious fantasy being propagated by a prole called Joe Lamacchia. He has written a book snappily titled Blue Collar and Proud of It: The All-in-One-Resource for Finding Freedom, Financial Success, and Security Outside of the Cubicle.

Or, put another way, Uneducated and Useless: The Self-Help Guide for Idiots.

Helping the workers while exploiting them at the same time. It’s the American way, God bless him. Joe is a 43-year-old father of five – Catholic, I imagine –who runs his own landscaping business in Newton, Massachusetts. Newton is neighbouring Cambridge’s poor cousin and is home to people who couldn’t get into Harvard but instead got into lots of other things. Crack, for one.

Joe never went to college but was smart enough to write a book and flog it for $15 a pop to people who would be better off spending the money on a bag of crystal meth. At least, with tik you can spend an afternoon fantasising about a better life. Books are rubbish for that sort of thing, especially if they don’t have pictures.

Joe also has his own website featuring this loin-stirring tale: ”The next time you’re sitting at an intersection waiting for the traffic light to turn, look around. From the signs hanging off the storefronts and the jack hammering in the street to the electrical lines running across the road and the UPS driver unloading a delivery, blue-collar America is everywhere. We are the glue that holds the community together, the ones you call when your car breaks, your roads are full of potholes, your faucet is leaking and your grass needs trimming. We are America’s backbone.”

That kind of talk makes me nervous. It sounds like something Che Guevara might have said, had he ever done an honest day’s work, instead of sloping around Havana striking noble poses in the hope of getting his face on a T-shirt.

Listen up, bud. We always make a point of looking around when we’re waiting for the lights to turn. The only difference is we do it so that we aren’t taken by surprise when someone tries to smash the window, rip open the door, drag us into the road, set fire to us and steal the car.

”From the bodies hanging off the storefronts and the carjackers hammering in your head to the copper-stripped electrical lines lying across the road and the heistmeisters unloading their weapons into the security guards, no-collar South Africa is everywhere.”

• Complete article in the Sunday Times

Book details

• Blue Collar : The All-In-One Resource for Finding Freedom, Financial Success, and Security Outside the Cubicle by Joe Lamacchia, Bridget Samburg
  EAN: 9780757307782
  Find this book with BOOK Finder!

I had a momentary lapse of reason a few weeks ago and rushed onto the Internet to get two tickets to the semi-final in Cape Town.

Brenda told me to get good seats. I told her we would have to sell the house if we wanted good seats. So I opted for the dangerously cheap R900 seats, where I presume vendors would openly hawk Fifa-approved heroin while Fifa-approved hookers provided a half-time service to the Germans.

The days crawled by. Not knowing if I had secured the tickets was slowly killing me. I drank to forget and then drank some more to remember what it was that I had forgotten. It was a terrible time for everyone.

Then, on Tuesday, an e-mail: “Your ticket request has been entered into the random selection draw and processed by the ticketing centre.”

I sprang from the couch, shrieking and whooping, and went to hug Brenda. Fearing an attack, she rabbit-punched me in the spleen and went over to the computer.

“We regret to inform you that your application was unsuccessful.”

I was crushed. Still on my knees, I began going through the seven stages of grief, passing rapidly through denial and getting stuck at anger.

Like most South African men, I don’t respond well to rejection. But instead of going out on a date-raping spree or killing someone, I sat on the couch and cried. But these were not tears of grief. These were tears of such incendiary outrage that just one, dropped from a US drone, could have demolished a Taliban outpost.

I am going to miss the World Cup. How dare Fifa do this to me? Is it because I’m white? I am an African. Actually, I’m not. I am white. But for the purposes of the World Cup, I am an African. How did they decide that my application was unsuccessful? And who made the decision – a cabal of nouveau-riche Eurotrash bean-counters sprawled in luxury hotel rooms with their loathsome snouts buried in piles of Peruvian coke?

The e-mail went on: “However, the good news is that the next sales phase commences on blah blah blah.”

Oh, right. I should keep applying then, should I? Isn’t that the definition of insanity – doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?

Two million tickets have been sold, not one of them to me. My mother used to tell me that I am one in a million. She lied. I am not even one in two million.

According to the robber barons, there are still quite a few tickets available for those who are interested in catching, say, Bafana Bafana at the Peter Mokaba Stadium in Polokwane. I don’t even know where Polokwane is. How in God’s name would I get there? By boat?

The e-mail ends: “Make sure you can say, ‘I was there!’”

How about this: “I wanted to be, but you corrupt, double-dealing greedheads wouldn’t let me.”

You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me that my long struggle to secure a ticket has failed. Yet, I cannot believe that there is anything more or anything different that I could have done that would have been more successful. Consequently, I am at war with Fifa.

• This article originally appeared in the Sunday Times