Cod Almighty | Diary

Not you, Tom Tit! The Wizard!

5 May 2021

Rest assured that if the world's ecosystems suddenly collapse, or China explodes, or David Beckham sheds a reptilian skin and announces he is Prince Charles's love-child, it will happen late on a Tuesday. Then, first thing Wednesday morning, Bottom of the Barrel diary will be at the scene, trying his best to use his limited vocabulary and narrow emotional range to convey the seriousness of the situation. Yet again I feel like someone hired to write the cookery column suddenly finding myself looking straight up at the Hindenburg and wondering what might happen next.

Today should be a day of celebration, and indeed still might be, for the evil wizard who cast a failure spell on the club twenty years ago has been banished to the dark forest. Theoretically. I'm hearing rumours that the old board have wangled their way into staying on in some capacity. By three of the clock hopefully this will have been proved to be nonsense, and I can relax.

The reason I mentioned it is my source close to the club has told me over and over again that the problem with every takeover bid so far, going back years, was Fenty's refusal to leave the building, and every official statement to the contrary was a tissue of bollocks designed to camouflage this fact. Can you camouflage anything with tissue? I suppose if you were playing hide and seek at the Andrex factory you could. Actually, the recycled paper my wife bought this week is so stiff and rough you could use it to build a hut, paint it green and hide in it. But I digress.

So, FOF Day is here with the above hopefully bogus caveat. Of course the outgoing board had to release a statement blaming everyone else, because they have no class. The statement reads like Fenty's tomtit, Philip Day, has tried to write something reasonable – whatever you think of him, he is an intelligent man with a long and successful business career behind him – only to be interrupted by the shark-eyed grudgebucket looking over his shoulder, pointing and frothing at the chops.

Day: How about "we, the board, apologise for the relegation..."
Fenty: We paid our NI contributions! Make sure you put that in! And it was all Tommy Twattyhat's fault!
Day: "We wish our new owners the very best..."
Fenty: Covid! ITV digital! The Thailand Tsunami! Junior Mendes! 9/11! Girl power!
Day: "Fiscal responsibilities..."
Fenty: That kid with the flag! I own the floodlights! His lovely wife Kim! What about the orange juice? IT WASN’T MY FAULT!

A remarkable thing just happened. I wrote the above then nipped out on an errand. Quite by chance I bumped into a well known ex-Town player and I asked him how he feels about Fenty leaving. Turns out he feels very strongly – very, very strongly - that it is the right thing for him to do but he was cynical about him actually going. Indeed, he pretty much repeated the stuff contained in my second paragraph, apart from the bit about the toilet paper, which I decided not to bring up. He also told me some fascinating stuff which sadly will never get past the CA legal department so will have to be put in the back-fence tittle-tattle category. Best twenty minutes of the years so far.

So is Fenty going or isn't he? I'm going to end on this cliffhanger, because I don’t want our celebrations to be premature, nor do I want to be a Dreary Doris Downer. If my sources are wrong, including the juicy stuff from the fortunate meeting this morning, I humbly apologise to all.

Cross those fingers. And may the fifth be with you. Yes, I know that didn’t make sense, but in Fentyworld very little does.

Incidentally, if you have ever heard of the phrase "if you can’t say anything nice about someone, don't say anything,” you might appreciate the Peterborough chairman's comments in this article about their promotion, spotted by a CA stalwart.

"Bristol Rovers will get a six-figure sum for us winning promotion from the terms of the Jonson Clarke-Harris deal....the Bristol Rovers chairman took time out to send me congratulations on winning promotion by the way. He’s a classy guy.

And a team that's just been relegated from the Football League will get £100k from us"