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LIFE CELEBRATING: Michael Owen
EVENT: That time he had to pay 30p to have a wee
YEAR: 2012It's high time that we started to sincerely and deliberately forget Michael Owen the footballer – the kid with the phenomenal pace and the unerring finish – and instead embraced his second life, as a spectacularly boring dad with more inoffensive V-neck sweaters than there are stars in the sky.Because that is who Michael Owen is now. At heart, that’s who he's always been. If you look at a 1997 Liverpool team photo, wee Micky Owen is fading like the family in Back to the Future, soon to be replaced by a man who tonelessly says "banter" and sleeps eight dead hours a night.Peak Michael Owen has been achieved twice, neither of which occurred on the pitch during his football career, but were instead documented by his incredibly boring Twitter account. First, when Michael ran over a rabbit and came as close to an emotion as he ever will (“Just ran over a rabbit. Devastated.”), and second, when – in July of 2012 – he was forced to piss at the paid urinals in Euston Station (“Succumbed again. Arrived at Euston Station bursting for a wee. Paid 30p to relieve myself. It’s the principle that infuriates me.”).How are we to remember Michael Owen: for that electric goal against Argentina at France 98? As the man stood next to Fergie like a school kid on sports day, wearing his full kit and ready to celebrate a United title that never happened? Or as a man in a polo shirt, so ready for a piss that he resorted to furiously pushing a £50 note into a change machine while trying not to soil his chinos?
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LIFE CELEBRATING: Antony Costa off of Blue
EVENT: That time he pissed on a cashpoint
YEAR: 2011Speaking of piss, Antony Costa did one once on a cashpoint near Trafalgar Square. The beauty of the Antony Costa cashpoint piss is how forever enmeshed with mentions of his name it is: when he took his Lil’ Antony out on that fateful night in February, 2011, he never knew that his Wikipedia page would be irreparably damaged, that he’d have to go to the newspapers and apologise for pissing.But there is iconography in Anthony Costa's cash point piss – significance, if you look close enough. Since he dampened that PIN pad back in 2011, 75 percent of his boy band, Blue, have been declared bankrupt; harmless man-child Lee Ryan remains the only financially viable member left. And the piss came at a career trough not only for the Blue – they tried and failed to win Eurovision that same year, their comeback turning slowly, inevitably into a death knell – but for British boy bands in general.Anthony's Costa's piss was a full stop on the era of Phixx, of Ultra, of Northern Line and V; of World's Apart, of O-Town, of One True Voice, of Upside Down. Anthony Costa literally pissed it up the wall, and got a bit on a cashpoint. Plus a blue plaque would serve as a warning to anyone using that particular ATM that they might want a squirt of hand gel after entering their PIN.
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LIFE CELEBRATING: Richard Dawkins
EVENT: That time he saw two dogs 69ing
YEAR: 2014If my kid cousin asked me to explain what a Richard Dawkins was to him, I would have no choice to explain that he was an old man who once got furious about some honey and who wrote a couple books about it for nerds when he wasn’t embarrassing himself on Twitter. But he wasn’t always like this. He once saw two dogs engaging in a 69.“I’ve seen a dog & bitch indulging in full 69. Males of many species including Drosophila lick female genitals before copulation.” – Richard Dawkins, 2014I’m still not sure what was going through Richard Dawkins' mind when he thought, ‘Hmm, I really need to win this point, here. I reckon I’ll tell a rando on the internet that I saw two dogs locked in a sex move’. But I’m glad it did. As with Michael Owen before him, it’s time we stopped thinking about Dawkins as a respectable professor or a leading atheist thinker, and instead as a doddering old man who once stood and watched two dogs lick each others’ lollipops for, what, ten, 15 minutes? The only way to do that is by burying a blue plaque in some mud – or perhaps nailing it to a nearby tree – right next to where it happened.- - -LOCATION: Camden
LIFE CELEBRATING: Amy Winehouse
EVENT: Death :(
YEAR: 2011There’s no doubt that Amy Winehouse dying was a totally sad thing and a massive shame. Which makes Camden’s collective effort to honour her passing in the most Camden ways possible even more excruciating. People light candles, put them in wine bottles and plant them next to trees in Camden Square. They stand outside her old house and sing that Mark Ronson song. They are making a bronze, beehived statue in The Stables bit of the indoor market. The only way they could be more Camden about this is if they fashioned a canoe out of a skanky old leather jacket, filled it with club flyers and sent it – burning, Viking burial-like – down the canal while that bloke made a chorus of clicking little bird sounds until it finally sank.
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LIFE CELEBRATING: Paula Radcliffe
EVENT: That time she did a shit around the marathon route, about mile 13
YEAR: 2005Paula Radcliffe is a former world champion distance-runner who boasts world and Commonwealth gold medals, an OBE and a BBC Sports Personality of the Year award. She also shat herself mid-marathon once, on TV.So how best to mark Paula’s career? With a blue plaque installed at the marathon finishing line on The Mall, saying something like, "Paula Radcliffe once ran down here, rolling her head all the while in that way she does"? Or one halfway around the London Marathon course, near some bins, reading "Paula Radcliffe once deuced out the side of her running pants somewhere around here; just shat right on the side of the road like it was nothing, and still went on to win"?I'll trust your judgement.- - -LOCATION: London street, unnamed
LIFE CELEBRATING: The Tango Man and the eardrums he inadvertently perforated
EVENT: The Tango advert
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LIFE CELEBRATING: Kinga
EVENT: That time Kinga enveloped a bottle
YEAR: 2005Some moments just define a generation. The moon landing. John F Kennedy’s assassination. That time Kinga put a wine bottle up herself in the Big Brother house.Here’s the thing: you never actually see Kinga stick a wine bottle up her – not as you remember it. It starts innocuously enough – it is 2.49AM; Kinga points to a wine bottle and asks, “Shall I stick that up my fanny?” Then, as with any great illusionist, you only see what you think you see: Kinga puts one leg stoically up on the sofa; Kinga approaches her own nightgown with a wine bottle, holding it by the punt; Kinga pulls the face you pull when you step on cold tiles with bare feet.
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LIFE CELEBRATING: Julian Assange
EVENT: That time he hid from his responsibilities for two years
YEAR: 2012 – PresentI like to think of Julian Assange holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in full bored-man beard, wearing pants and a vest and surrounded by old Pot Noodle cups that double up as ashtrays, with a slush of Daily Stars littering the floor in front of him. Even he’s bored of playing Candy Crush now. He watches Jeremy Kyle once in the morning, and then again when it repeats on ITV2, shouting along when Jeremy says, "PUT SOMETHING ON THE END OF IT."This is his life now, occasionally sweeping out onto the balcony to see if anyone still remembers he’s there, slowly working his way up to eight wanks a day. Sometimes he’ll do an e-mail, but it’s about as often as he showers. He basically lives inside the vista of detritus on the dashboard of a builder’s van, and I just reckon drilling a blue plaque into the wall next to him might wake him up a bit.@joelgolbyMore stuff by Joel Golby: Thing You Only Know When Both Your Parents are Dead'Vanishing Point' Was the Film That Made Me Want to Go Out in a Blaze of Glory
