My dad was a huge motorsport fan. Thus, I became a motorsport fan. My dad was also a Manchester United fan. I did not become a Manchester United fan. I did not become an anti-United fan. I’ve never understood the anti-fan way of thought.
I did like to tease them, though. In 1990, while at Rhodes University, we set about teasing our friend and United fanatic, Basil Spanoudis. Baz was from Welkom.
Baz was intense when United played. During the 3-3 draw in the FA Cup final on May 12, Baz was an emotional muddle. For the replay, I took an old T-shirt and wrote “Come on the Eagles” on it.
Baz told me he would eat it if United won. United won. Baz bought a case of beer for us at the Victoria Hotel, where we had watched the replay. Then he ripped two chunks of my T-shirt and tried to eat them.
Then we drank the beer. Baz really loves United.
I didn’t get my regular SMS from Baz when United won (the FA Cup) this weekend. He’s been a little quiet these past few years. I let him be when Liverpool beat United in the Europa Cup.
I think a truce has been called until both teams find their way again.
My dad would take us to watch motorbikes race when we lived in Northern Ireland. We would go to Kirkistown circuit, about halfway between Portaferry and Kircubbin where my parents were brought up.
Or the North West 200, the road race that winds through country lanes and claimed another life this year. We watched Joey Dunlop and Ray McCullough battle each other. It was magnificent.In 1977, my dad, a bigger motorsport than United fan, dragged me to the North West 200.
Liverpool were playing United in the FA Cup final that day. I wanted to stay at home and watch. I wandered off and found a bunch of people who had hooked up a radio to their car battery so they could listen.
Liverpool lost. I cried myself sore, as my mother said, sobbing face-down in the field, my face caked with dirt.
Maybe even Baz would have felt sorry for me.
Probably not.
Remembering Bo
Bo Moseneke never told me directly that his father was Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke. I think it was Neil Andrews who told me one morning after I had been a guest on Super Saturday, a show that was a wonderful jumble of mates taking the Mickey out of each other and sport for an hour.
Bo was a regular on the show. I was the hack who cracked the nod occasionally. And we clicked and I liked him immensely. I think everyone clicked with Bo. One of his best characteristics, in his own words, was his “ability to make others laugh, sometimes too charming, very accommodating and if there is a party worth being at, I will be there”. His worst? “Trying to please too many people at once, non-stop chatter box, too competitive and hyper-active. “Somebody stop me!” Christ, but he could talk.Bo passed away on October 1, 2005 at the age of 26 after complications from the diabetes he had lived with for most of his life. A speech given at his funeral revealed he called his father “Square” and said the Deputy Chief Justice was “his best buddy in the whole world”. Dikgang Moseneke has been lauded for his career in law this week, but he gave us a damn fine man to share some time with, too.
How’s about a foursome
The decision by Muirfield to continue to deny women membership of their club finally spurred the R&A to tell them they will never - well, maybe never - host the Open again.But, golfing chicks of the world, if you want to go to Muirfield, all you have to do is to marry a member according to Peter Alliss, the 85-year old golf commentator. “The women who are there as wives of husbands, they get all the facilities. If somebody wants to join, well you’d better get married to somebody who’s a member.”Or, as Marina Hyde of the Guardian wrote in reaction to Alliss, “… maybe just sit outside the gates holding a cardboard sign reading: ‘Will f**k for foursomes’?”The heartbreak of losing and the ecstasy of winning.
The Star