Unless England end up doing uncharacteristically well – or unless someone happens to invent a horrible-sounding musical instrument with a funny name – then I have to admit that a World Cup can often pass me by. So, really, hats off to Qatar. It isn’t hosting its World Cup for another seven years, but I’m already on the edge of my seat.
It’s probably worth clarifying, by the way, that I am actually on the edge of my seat. I haven’t moved beyond the boundaries of my seat. Please let’s not arrest me for trespassing.
For me, the only fun to be had during a World Cup usually comes from watching Fifa get to act like a terrifying cross between Galactus – the intangible planet-sapping Marvel comic entity – and the spivvy-looking one from Dad’s Army (Private Walker, now you ask). Once every four years it sweeps into a new country, drains it of cash and then hoofs it, leaving behind several hilariously oversized stadiums and a selection of embarrassed-looking politicians in its wake. It’s an especially efficient form of vampirism, one with its own official beer and a mascot that invariably ends up looking like some sort of obliterated genital.
But in Qatar, it seems as though Fifa might have found its perfect partner in unethical behaviour. They’re so well matched, in fact, that they’re probably enacting a rom-com montage together as we speak; skipping through meadows, having pillow fights with sacks of money, tying women to trainlines and then twirling their moustaches and then high-fiving each other. That sort of thing.
So, it would be a shame if Fifa suddenly had to sever its connection to Qatar. And it really might. After all, that seems like the logical thing to conclude, based on Fifa’s decision to investigate the arrests of the four BBC journalists caught trespassing on a worker-accommodation compound.
Because Fifa investigations are profoundly rigorous, aren’t they? It took 18 months for it to fully investigate allegations of corruption following the successful Qatari World Cup bid, and it needed every single day of that to collate 430 pages of evidence, bin nine-tenths of it and then exonerate itself to the dismay of the chief investigator. The man hours that must have gone into sieving the investigation for reputation-saving nuggets of semi-fact alone must be evidence of Fifa’s dedication.
This investigation, really and truly, might be what does it for Qatar, following on from the accusations of horrific human rights abuses that have cost over 1,000 workers their lives. So far, nothing has quite been serious enough for Fifa to pull the plug, but who knows? Suppression of press freedom might just be the last straw.
Qatar is certainly running out of places left to go. It’s already ticked off alleged corruption, mistreatment of immigrant workers and a frighteningly iffy attitude to the LGBT community, and 2022 is still miles away.
That can only mean one thing. To sustain this momentum of mutual awfulness, one can only assume that Fifa and Qatar have gained possession of some sort of giant radioactive egg that, when hatched, will wreak havoc across the world as we know it. Millions will die under this monster’s terrible feet, and the planet will be forced to build itself anew after its devastation is complete. But, still, at least if it’s Fifa the monster will have its own official beer. That’s something.
Mad, bad and dangerous to know
If you don’t hear from me this week, then it’s because I’ve dug a hole for myself in the park, crawled into it and encased myself in concrete. Because I’m not going to watch the Mad Men finale until Thursday and, based on the sheer amount of internet chatter in the hours since its US broadcast, that’s the only way I’ll be able to get there spoiler-free.
The dumbest thing is … it doesn’t even matter. To get knotted up about spoiling the end of any television series is simply a preposterous waste of anyone’s energy. But to get knotted up about spoiling the end of Mad Men is an act of criminal stupidity. Any trace of narrative dynamism the show ever had vanished in a puff of smoke about four years ago, and was replaced by a number of elliptical short stories about the circularity of negative behaviour patterns.
Mad Men isn’t Breaking Bad. Its ending was never designed as part of its whole. It isn’t a show about a druglord hurtling towards inevitable self-destruction. It’s a show about a bored-looking alcoholic slowly drowning in a sea of sideburns over the course of a decade.
It’s little more than a mood piece now. Any of its last 20 episodes could have reasonably functioned as its finale, and nobody would have been any the wiser. Unless this last episode ends with Don Draper unzipping his skin and revealing that he was actually three kids and a dog stacked on top of each other all along, very little will actually be spoiled by finding out how it ends before I watch it.
But still, don’t tell me how it ends. Especially if Don dies. He does die, right? No, don’t tell me.