My old Oxford buddy The Swordsman (about the only person still keeping me company down there on the World Cup thread, since The British Cowboy is, presumably, far too busy preparing for his barbecue of the century next weekend) mentioned the other day that he'd been faced with the comment verification word 'gloatiol' - which I couldn't help thinking sounded like it would be a useful word to describe an over-protracted goal celebration in football, particularly one of those where an over-excitable South American commentator bellows his head off for 30 seconds without a pause for breath. You know the kind of thing:
"GOOOOOOOO-OOOOOOOO-OOOOOOOOOOO-OOOOOOO-OOOOOOOOOOOOO-OOOOOOLLLLLLL-LLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The greatest of all such gloatiols, though, surely, was this - not from a hot-blooded Latino but from the traditionally more cool and restrained far north of Europe: Norwegian commentator Bjørge Lillelien getting rather carried away after his side had sneaked an unexpected 2-1 win against England in Oslo in a World Cup qualifier in 1981 and deciding to taunt every famous English person he could remember. It's majestic. And a history lesson. Unparodiable, unrepeatable. And so goddamned funny that it even managed to stop us smarting too hard over our shameful defeat.
The greatest of all such gloatiols, though, surely, was this - not from a hot-blooded Latino but from the traditionally more cool and restrained far north of Europe: Norwegian commentator Bjørge Lillelien getting rather carried away after his side had sneaked an unexpected 2-1 win against England in Oslo in a World Cup qualifier in 1981 and deciding to taunt every famous English person he could remember. It's majestic. And a history lesson. Unparodiable, unrepeatable. And so goddamned funny that it even managed to stop us smarting too hard over our shameful defeat.
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