Do you remember those schoolyard arguments in which physical threats would rapidly escalate into ludicrous fantasy?
"I'll set my brother on you, and he does judo!"
"Yeah? Well, I'll set my dad on you, and he's a karate black belt."
"Well my dad is James Bond, and he's got a licence to kill."
While most sane adults left such childish nonsense in the playground, Liverpool FC fans have resurrected it in their ongoing struggle to oust Tom Hicks and George Gillett, their hated owners.
This weekend, fans of the Merseyside club will release an internet film which they hope will "embarrass" (their words, not mine) the Americans into quitting Anfield.
The film will feature the spoutings of various Liverpool-supporting celebrities, possibly including Daniel Craig, the actor who currently plays Bond. Mike Jefferies, the established writer and producer behind the fans' film, confirmed that Craig was invited to take part but says we must wait and see if he agreed. Oh, the agonising suspense. "Maybe we can get 007 to go and pay Hicks a visit," he teased. "That would be fun."
The comment was clearly light-hearted, so Mr Hicks need not drain any piranha tanks in his volcanic lair just yet. However, it does seem indicative of the mental fragility of Liverpool fans as they watch their beloved empire crumble into mediocrity. Like children, they lurch from one naive fantasy to another: Let's all pitch in and buy the club ourselves! No, let's force Hicks to sell up by shouting slogans and holding banners! No, let's stage a sit-in or bombard his bank with emails - that'll show him! No, let's "embarrass" him into quitting by making a YouTube film full of celebrities he has never heard of!
Compared with some of those schemes, the idea of sending a fictional spy to negotiate the sale of an ailing football club sounds positively realistic. I hate to be snippy about this, I really do. I admire the passion of men like Jefferies, and the never-say-die attitude of the protesting fans. But they need a reality check. Hicks is a shrewd businessman seeking to make a cool £300million (Dh1.72billion) profit on his original investment. For that kind of money, he will weather a few unkind words on YouTube, even if they are spoken by - gasp! - a celebrity.
The problem here is that Liverpool fans have swallowed their own myth-making. They believe they are something more than a noisy, colourful side show. They believe that their collective voice can influence events both on the pitch, which is doubtful, and off it, which is plain wrong. Ironically, their numerical strength is their weakness. Less successful clubs must pander to the fans, to a degree, because without them they would not fill the stadium. But Liverpool fans, for all their talk of unity, will rush to fill any red seat vacated in protest.
The angry supporters may well enjoy the backing of a macho icon like James Bond (or at least the bloke who plays him) but their impotent rage reminds me of a slightly different figure from modern British literature: Violet Elizabeth Bott, the young girl from the Just William books, who frequently threatened "to scream and scream until I'm sick". She was portrayed in a television version of the book by an irritating actress called Bonnie Langford. Maybe Mike Jefferies should give her a call.
Gladiator does trick for Europe
Speaking of films influencing sport, I was intrigued by Colin Montgomerie’s use of Gladiator, the swords-and-sandals epic starring Russell Crowe, as a tool to motivate the golfers in his Ryder Cup team.
Monty, the captain of the European side, played the DVD – although, in my head, he still uses an old VCR – on the eve of the tournament, when perhaps Singing In The Rain would have been more appropriate. Or, by the first sodden morning, Das Boot, the film about a German submarine.
Gladiator hardly paints a picture of European harmony, starting as it does with the Italians (OK, Romans) "unleashing hell" on some hapless German barbarians. That must have been an awkward moment for the Molinari brothers and Martin Kaymer.
The Roman brutes then travel to Spain to deprive our hero of his loving wife, which must have stirred bad memories for another lonely Spaniard, Sergio Garcia, who blamed his poor form last year on being newly single.
Then we have the central theme of the film: army versus gladiator, team spirit versus personal glory.
Rory McIlroy, the Northern Irish golfer, could easily have interpreted that as a sly dig, after his ill-advised comments about the unimportance of the Ryder Cup.
As for that wheat field which starts and ends the movie, surely that would just cause nightmares about finding the rough.
Still, Europe won, so perhaps it did the trick. Maybe Monty had re-worked the film’s most famous speech in his own image: “My name is Maximus Waistbandius, Commander of the hackers of the north, general of the Pringle legions, loyal servant to golf, and occasionally the yips, owner of a droopy face, collector of long-handled putters, and I shall have my victory, in this world or the next. But probably not in a major.”
Or maybe they just liked the scene where the tiger got slaughtered.
Next time Monty should play it safe with an old family favourite. Mrs Doubtfire, perhaps?
Will Batchelor is a writer, broadcaster and self-confessed cynical sports fan
