April Fool

I was well and truly duped on April Fool’s Day this week, thanks in no small part to our design team (the head of the connivers being Matt ‘the bastard’ Andrews) who had me quite implausibly convinced that I had deleted all of the content from our website. The trick played out over several eager hours and, in my naivety, had me believing that not only was someone else operating my computer but, also, that a virus which I may have instigated was in threat of jeopardising our whole content management system. In my defence, if I wasn’t so busy at the time I might have in fact registered the absurdity of the charade and clocked on, but this is unlikely: I naturally take things at face value, can be a little too trusting maybe, and the set up was faultless.

The Guardian had fun on Photoshop manufacturing Labour Party poster campaigns which played upon the recent Gordon Brown bullying stories, using superb taglines like “Do you want some?” and “Step outside posh boy.” It’s been a viral smash, and to my surprise, the odd person even fell for it: “I wholeheartedly approve,” says one comment, “Excellent decision by the Labour team.” You see, it’s that easy. Other newspapers were less political: the Daily Mail went with an “AA rocket man” story - a new patrol of mechanics in jet packs - while the Sun brilliantly gauged the intelligence of its readership by getting people to lick one of its pages, claiming it had perfected a new printing technique which could inject flavours into the paper. And the name for the process: “Flair Spool”. Tasty.

Of course it’s hard for me to judge anybody given the circumstances, so if you sat there on your lunch break licking your copy of the Sun on Thursday then don’t worry, you’re not a fool in my eyes, you’re actually quite a trusting person, so well done you.

As an Easter treat for all Swindon Town fans (and there aren’t as many as you think), the Robins managed to tuck three goals passed a flailing Leeds United yesterday at Elland Road. We managed to get three seats in the away stand, despite some difficulty in trying to order them using a Leeds postcode. Clearly the Swindonian on the opposite end of the telephone had fears that we might be Yorkshire hoodlums in disguise looking to stir up some trouble amongst the away fans (a friend of mine tried to order tickets using his Leeds postcode when United came to Swindon, but also made the mistake of asking to sit in the Don Revie stand, which is at Elland Road and is named after the manager of Leeds United’s trailblazing team of the 1960s and 70s, instead of asking for the Don Rogers stand - a Swindon Town legend - which is what he clearly meant to say. Bizarrely, they still sent him the tickets).

I’m a firm believer that you should support the football team of where you were born, and through no fault of my own, this happens to be Swindon. Having watched them for many years at the County Ground with my Dad, with a Mars bar in my pocket for half time, through dominating Division 1 with Glenn Hoddle to promotion at Wembley Stadium into the burgeoning years of the Premiership, followed by a disastrous shit-storm of decline and relegation two seasons on the trot, I’ve kept a beady eye on their progress since leaving the town nearly seven years ago. Thanks to Leeds United being quite awfully shafted by just about everyone from the Chairman to the tea lady, their decline has meant that I’ve been able to watch a Swindon team of varying degrees of quality strut out onto Elland Road for the past three seasons in League One, only for our boys to be generally outplayed in the process. Leeds with delusions of greatness; Swindon, with their dedication and very limited skill.

But not yesterday, oh no. Experienced manager Danny Wilson, who is no stranger to top flight football after a spell at Charlton, has galvanised the players into a tight unit, forgoing the old tactic of booting the ball up the pitch for a spectator to retrieve in row J, to a cool, composed passing of the ball. Our forwards are good, too; Billy Paynter now back from injury and looking dangerous, scoring the first of our two goals. But it is Charlie Austin who grabs the headlines, scoring our third goal with a strong header, which is not bad for a player who was working as a bricklayer at the start of the season, plucked from non-league obscurity following a spell at Poole Town.

A word should be said about Leeds United, who have slipped considerably having been almost home and dry before Christmas. They’re now 11 points behind top of the table Norwich and fourth in the league. Swindon are now second - not bad for a team that have always been the underdogs for, well, just about as long as I can remember. Which is why yesterday was a proud day for anyone who has had to sit through years of soggy pies and consistent mediocrity. We’re now second in the league with a chance of automatic promotion. Maybe, just maybe…

We went to a press event for the Leeds and Reading festivals on Monday, and our editor couldn’t help but notice how old it made him feel, and he’s only 26. We normally go because the Cockpit in Leeds put on a good spread and you can drink free bottles of Tuborg. He’s right, of course, on two levels: the festival is essentially a mucky rock mosh for NME readers, so the turnout was suitably aged, but the line up doesn’t help. The Saturday at Leeds reads like the same line up from about ten years ago: Cypress Hill are there, for one, a hip hop troupe synonymous with many hazy prepubescent memories. Guns N’ Roses? Please. Limp Bizkit? Blink 182? And people are paying £200 for this?

Blink 182 are like one of those bands that you actually quite liked as a kid when you wore baggy skater jeans and DC shoes, but you couldn’t possibly admit this nowadays in front of, like, normal people for fear of extradition. They would drop their glasses in disgust, the room would turn silent: “I’ll get my coat.” And they’re headlining? Last year it was Radiohead for Christ's sake. Has our longing for nostalgia and irony stooped this low? Singing about going down on your best friend’s mum when you’re in your late thirties is no way to act - surely if you still listen to albums like Enema of the State then you should do that in the privacy of your bedroom without having to inflict such punishment on the rest of us. Honestly.