Painful Truths

I was just amused there on Twitter to see Barry Glendenning, once of Dublin's Hot Press and now of the Guardian, getting into a minor spat with the sort of Evertonian that lets the side down a bit. Glendenning began the affair by drily remarking that:

'Phil Neville tweeting that Everton's youngsters are the 'future of the club'. Aren't they the future of richer clubs?'

Sadly, this is probably all too true, unless we manage to get a whole brigade of brilliant ones, sell them for a fortune to Continental sides, and use that money to climb the Premier League, which, as I've said in the past, is basically a rigged game. Anyway, in leapt the sort of Evertonian who gives the rest of us a bad name, declaring in indignation: 'your just a knob ed'

And thus began a bit of a squabble into which I like a fool rushed in where an angel would have feared to tread. Somewhere along the way, it was pointed to Barry that somebody had had obviously had fun with his Wikipedia entry, and to have done so some time ago -- more than a month -- which is impressive, given how scathing it is:

'Barry Glendenning is an Irish sports journalist who currently holds the position of deputy sports editor on the Guardian Unlimited website run by the UK newspaper The Guardian. He is perhaps best-known for his work on Guardian Unlimited's football podcast Football Weekly hosted by James Richardson. He is well known for his smug, superficial style, and usually contributes little to the discussion beyond listless anecdotes from his personal life; for instance, spending 5 minutes discussing the curry house he went to the previous Saturday. He also regularly contributes to the site's satirical daily email service, The Fiver. He is also often found at the helm of the Guardian Unlimited "minute by minute reports", which feature live text coverage of Premier League and Champions League games and internationals. He also writes about horseracing and table tennis. In recent years, Glendenning has become a vocal critic of The Irish County Woman's Association.

Barry has also mastered one chord on the guitar, which is the chord of A. He hopes one day to master another chord, at which point he will turn his attention to his other great love, the castanets.'

I say it's impressive that it's not been corrected because, well, I once modified an entry and was swiftly told off for doing so. It was the page for Dominic Monaghan, he of Lost and 'Merry in The Lord of the Rings' fame, which had said that his family had lived in Manchester but had moved to Heaton Moor in Stockport. Given that I'd lived very close to them, I corrected this entry, and then whimsically went on to say that:

'[...] the local pub, the Moor Top, has a large sign saying "Eat, Drink, and Be Merry", in presumed reference to the local celebrity.'

This, as it happens, was at least partially true. The Moor Top did have such a sign, though it doesn't now. And it probably isn't connected with Monaghan, though I always liked to think it was. Anyway, hardly had I made the change that someone corrected it, switching things back to say that his family had moved to Manchester; I discovered this when I next logged into Wikipedia a few hours later to see a large banner plastered over the site, telling me off for mucking about. I contritely made another adjustment, so that it at least no longer falsely claimed the Monaghans had shaken the dust of Stockport from their feet, but I decided to keep my theories about the local pub to myself.

I hope Glendenning leaves entry as it is. That'd be an entry worth quoting in an obituary.