WELL BELL-ENDED

THICK-SKINNED JOSEPH “SEPP” BLATTER (pictured above), the unelected President of FIFA, the governing body of the world’s most popular sport, and thus one of the most powerful men in the world, has never been a stranger to allegations of corruption, bribery, shady underhand property deals and match fixing. In this sense at least, he has followed firmly in the footsteps of Jean-Marie “João” Havelange, president of FIFA for 24 years until more or less forced to retire after the publication in England of Andrew Jennings’ book Foul! The Secret World of FIFA: Bribes, Vote-Rigging and Ticket Scandals (Harper Collins).

SO POWERFUL ARE BLATTER AND HAVELANGE, who was simultaneously head of FIFA and of the International Olympic Committee, that one wonders why someone has not decided to have Jennings “taken out”, as Mafia-type people might say. Not, of course, that Havelange or Blatter should be considered in the same league as “Mafia-type people”; Havelange was keen to point out, as is Blatter today, that “love of sport” was always the driving force behind his “unpaid” consultancy and presidential work, and that becoming a multi-millionaire was a natural result of such genuine “big love”.

BLATTER’S LOVE HAS BEEN JUST AS LIBERALLY SPREAD over the ground, resulting in nearly 50 honours, awards, prizes, trophies, doctorates, honorary citizenships, knighthoods and now the Order of the Companions of Oliver Tambo, the highest award granted by South Africa to foreigners, for services to the country in managing to bring the Soccer World Cup circus to provide a little light relief to the squalor, debauchery and general unbridled street thuggery that is today’s South Africa.

BLATTER’S MANY INTERESTS, HOWEVER, have apparently not included making sure that the right team wins the game, which, in many people’s opinion, is why France was allowed to defeat the Republic of Ireland in the qualifying games and why the England “goal that never was” resulted in his beaming smile during the media conference afterwards, almost as wide as his smile at half time when AC Milan were beating Liverpool FC three-nil five years ago.

DESPITE NOT BEING WIDELY USED in English, particularly as a verb, “bellend” [penis], and “to bellend” [to wipe one's or someone else’s penis on something or someone] are extremely common in Liverpool, which by no means proves that it was an English football fan, and certainly not one from Liverpool, who went on to the Wikipedia entry about Mr Blatter and changed his name to Joseph Bellend Blatter, which was subsequently used by the South African government official site in order to announce the Oliver Tambo honour.

BY A CURIOUS COINCIDENCE, DESPITE the rarity of use of the term, the current issue of Private Eye magazine also has a short chronicle explaining how to “bell-end” someone and/ or something on page 16.