So I'm trying to get into football.

I don't know why, it just feels like some rights of passage thing that wasn't fulfilled during the flirtation I had as a teenager.

First up, I'm a Spurs 'fan'. That means fuck all to me now, but as a kid I had the strip and I knew the names of all the team members.

Then I grew up and realised that anyone that had any interest in football was probably a rapist. It said nothing to me and essentially represented everything I hated about how I was supposed to act as a white male in England.

This weekend I watched two whole football matches in the pub. On Saturday it was Spurs vs Man U. I felt some tinge of passion, but nothing more powerful than say, the ejaculation of a woodlouse. I was with good friends, pretty girls, and in a setting that I didn't imagine was welcoming of bobble hats and rattles.

Today, I met with some wonderful friends who have only a couple of downfalls. Two of them are from the north and all three of them are avid fans of 'the ugly game'.

This was a whole different situation. There was no blart, just elderly Maltese ponces.

Everything I hated was summed up in 90 minutes of wank. Ugly scouse skinheads in the crowd on TV singing along to 'you'll never walk alone' with more passion than they could ever manage to muster for their wife and kids. Overpaid titboxes on the pitch diving for the ground if any other player came within six feet of them, instilling dishonesty in every kid watching, and keeping companies like the National Accident Helpline going for years to come. Management staff jumping up and down, punching the air like extras in Top Gun when someone scored a goal.

Bollocks, all of it. I'm sure you'll agree.

Some very smelly men seated in front of us seemed obsessed with engaging my friends in a conversation about how their team's new stadium held 7,000 more arseholes than the other team. It was like watching 90 year olds engage in a bout of 'my dad's harder than your dad'.

But the worst thing was the fucking windowlickers surrounding me in the pub. People SCREAMING at the screen like a particularly powerful episode of The Two Minutes Hate. Men, exasperated that THREE MINUTES had been given as extra time. I can't imagine they could manage even 10% of that disgust should they be confronted with limbless Palestinians from Israel's latest bout of mass slaughter.

I hate everything about football.