Craig Bellamy wades put the John Terry scandal to rest. But what does Shearer think?

It was with huge relief that after weeks of stories about the Wayne Bridge / John Terry ‘scandal’, a short man has stepped in to provide some sense on the matter.

Yes, it has taken some time before the world’s media thought to ask what Craig Bellamy’s take was on the situation. And, in a live interview on Sky after Man City had demolished Chelsea, it took him 10 seconds to effectively put the whole matter to rest.

Craig said: “I know what JT’s like and nothing surprises me about it, so I’m not going to comment on that guy. I think everyone in football knows what the guy’s like.”

And that’s that. No more hokum. Terry is a scumbag and you either accept it or you don’t. Thank you, Mr Bellamy, thank you.

Bellamy is one of those naturally divisive short men. (Playing in England, it probably also helps that he is Welsh.) Whatever he does he either inspires hate or admiration, usually the former.

I cannot help but have the greatest of admiration for the man. As a small man (in football terms, that is – he’s 5ft 9in) he’s had a career of playing second fiddle to a big man. He makes them look good and they don’t thank him for it.

That was exactly the case when Bellamy played with Alan Shearer at Newcastle. Here was the deal: Bellamy skins two defenders, hares into the box, draws the keeper, and lays the ball off to Shearer, who taps in. Shearer then takes all the plaudits as Bellamy seethes. Shearer could never understand why Bellamy would not acknowledge their feudal relationship as landowner and serf.

For anyone who has heard Shearer’s mixture of inane platitudes and bumptious arrogance as a TV pundit, we can only applaud any man who gets under his skin. Famously, Sam Allardyce tried to sign Bellamy back to Newcastle, a decision met with shock and derision by the then-retired Shearer. So angry was the ‘son of a sheet-metal worker from Gosforth’ that he used his Geordie legend status to effectively halt the signing and, moreover, put the hex on Allardyce’s entire reign at Newcastle. Ultimately, the upshot of this was that Newcastle were relegated while Allardyce’s current team, Blackburn, are comfortably mid-table in the Premier League. That’s what can happen when a short man fucks with your head.

We can only hope that Shearer is at home now, seething at Bellamy’s attack on the reputation of another former England captain. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that he and JT might be sharing a text conversation about Bellamy, using the adjective ‘short’ as a casual pejorative.

Craig Bellamy: you are a modern-day hero.

Short men more likely to get lung disease

News today on the BBC that short people are more likely to get lung disease. A large study pulls out a stat that, on average, those with the nasty-sounding Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease are 1.12cms shorter on average than the general population.

No doubt the mediocre-sized population will sieze on this news as evidence that short people are inherently weak, diseased, heading to an early grave, our lack of height symbolic of an underlying ill health.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8446552.stm

From my point of view, maybe this means there are small people out there who could have gained that mediocre status of being average-sized, but because of smoking too many fags instead of eating broccoli, ended up being small. So perhaps there are two groups of small people, the genuinely small, and those who just didn’t eat enough veg to get up to their predestined height.

I can say for myself, I am genuinely small. I haven’t got this way by missing meals or being generally sickly. I eat a solid three meals a day, plus snacks, and am full of health. And yet I am my 5ft 4ins. I would contend that whether you are genuinely small, or small because of ill health, too many fags, or sheer lack of will to grow, it’s all good.

I look forward to the mid-sized majority regarding my brethren (Sisqo, Aston from JLS, and everyone else) explicitly as a troubling minority, misunderstood and avowedly different.

Calling all short men

I suppose by doing this blog I’m trying to work out what it means to be small.

So I’ve started gathering evidence of the short man experience. Google news alerts for the key subject matter: Sarkozy, Ricky Ponting, Jamie Cullum, Aston Merrygold from JLS.

I’m putting my bait out there to see what pops up. The first alert I received under “short men” was an article in the Los Angeles Times about malice in South Korean society. A Seoul college student, appearing on a popular TV show, stood up and said that “short men are losers.” Uncalled for, unjust, and unpleasant. But an internet campaign of led by short Koreans forced the student to withdraw from Facebook, apologising profusely as she went. Good stuff.

A fellow called Mohammed posted a plaintive open question on Yahoo: “Why did God make me short?”

Firstly, I’m staggered that someone should throw such a personal question out over the internet to see what random responses come back.

Typically, I suppose, he gets a mix of anti-islamic nutjobs, anti-short man jibes, anti-religious nutjobs. There is some support from women saying, don’t worry, at least you aren’t disabled or have AIDS. (I agree, being short is less bad than having AIDS.)

And then there are a couple of small chaps, putting an arm round the shoulder of Mohammed. Another guy who is really struggling with being small. He concludes that he wouldn’t wish being small on his worst enemy.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100102011607AACJ0ub

This is some heavy stuff, and I’m only just scratching the surface of this short man thing. The average-sized world really lays it on thick for the smaller chap. I’m here to get the small man to push his chest out, thinking of all the greats out there: Woody Allen, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino. And of course the R&B superstar, Sisqo, making his entry into the Celebrity Big Brother house…

I am a short man

I am a short man. About 5 ft 4 inches in my socks.

How small is that? Bigger than Prince, about the same height as Stalin. A touch shorter than Maradona and Tom Cruise.

The specifics don’t matter. I’m short. Below the 5ft 7inch mark: that line which marks the small from the respectably middle-sized.

I was the second shortest in my year at school. Then Ian Rutter put on a growth spurt at the age of 16, leaving me shortest.

At least it cleared things up. Got it out in the open. There was no false pride in not being smallest. I was short, titchy, pintsize. Little Rich. It’s my defining feature.

I’m little and you know the score. Mouthy. Feisty. Something to prove. Trying too hard. Don’t know when to stop. You have the final word, I’ll have the final final word. It’s the way it is.

I’m competitive, fiercely competitive. I used to play football and loved nothing better than felling a six footer with a sliding challenge. Did I leave my leg in? What do you think?

Now I ride my bike, walk up hills. That’s when my body type comes into its own. Light. Low to the ground. Nimble. I walked up Ben Nevis recently and stopped to chat with a big man who was struggling up the mountain. And then I kicked on with a winning combination of masochism and sadism. Bye-ee.

I’m funny too. If you’re small you have to be. It’s part of the game. Get the joke in first. Self-deprecate, just like Louis Armstrong laughing off his blackness to please the white folks. If you are a minority, and you want to get along, you’ve got to have a joke. You’ve got to make the majority feel comfortable.

What does this make me? Do I have small man syndrome? Do I have Napoleon Complex? I say: these are the tags of mediocre men sized between 5ft 8 and 6ft 2ins. (The really tall have their own problems.) These terms are lazy pejoratives hurled at small men. I refute them absolutely.

But it’s true that small men are either figures of fun (Dudley Moore, Ronnie Corbett, Nicholas Sarkozy) or figures of hate (Ricky Ponting, Tom Cruise, Nicholas Sarkozy).

I want to explore in this blog the condition of shortness. Why do average-height people consider us so amusing / objectionable? And why do we try so hard to win their affection and gain attention?