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The Beware! Encyclopaedia of International Celebrity - Sam Allardyce

The world of football is a muddy globe, a polished rounded scarab ball of muck, and you'd have to be mad to work in it. However, amongst the ranks of con artists, cheaters, hookers, hustlers, pimps and their johns, a few shining examples stand out, undigested vitamin pills in the effluent. One such supplement is the new England Crystal Palace Everton manager (Article a long time in the works? Ed). Trust Beware! to give you the lowdown on a high man amongst low lives. In mid-table.

Sam Allardyce (General Stout-Drawers; Lord Hoof of Route One; Grimlock Ironhide)

Step forward Samuel Allardyce, one of Italy's finest cultural exports. Brought up hand-to-frock in the haute couture world of Milan, small Sam foreswore the fashion industry of his fastidious forebears, instead pursuing an instinctive passion for the transcendent possibilities and balletic beauty of chess. There were no chess clubs in his town (the philistines!) so Sam reluctantly signed up for football class; but for the first term he mainly pretended to be a castle.

As this may hint, Allardyce's first break was not in football, nor chess, but acting. Talent-spotted by a very confused agent, for five long hard years Sam strove as Stan Magnum in "Magnum, I.P.", the cult cop splash about a stout-tached Bermuda short-sporting detective researching intellectual property rights in the Caymans. (The girls, the glamour. Check it out on Kodi!)

It is said that when he shaved off his Magnum tache, he gained 10 years and lost all his acting ability. Acting's loss was surely football's gain.

At a door-busting 8'2" and having absorbed several other defenders, and a manual on stone-masonry, Sam's playing career was predictably static as he perfected the art of spreading himself wide in front of the goal, planted hard, legs and arms and bellies. "None shall pass!" was his pithy catchphrase yelled from the top of his own turrets. Opposition players feigned nosebleeds to avoid facing him. Balls spontaneously deflated in order to stay out of harm's way. Later he played in the United States and frightened the Yanks off the game for a decade. Allardyce paid for some coaching badges and built a new career at pitch-side.

Big Sam has managed some unfashionable clubs - Limerick, Blackpool, Sunderland, Wisbech, Skaro - and has maintained a good rapport with Mackems, Fenlanders and Daleks alike, but insists: "There is no way I should be managing dour drab teams. I should be managing Real Madrid and Barcelona. If I managed Real Madrid, we'd win the Premier League every time."

Sam became noted for his pioneering use of scientific management. Players spent more time doing pilates, inhaling incense and sweating in Turkish baths than the more standard "run into the box and fall over" or "curse the referee's parentage". In the late 80s, Sam got "well into all this new fangled computing" and used pioneering Sinclair technology to track player movements and calculate e.g. the precise position from which each player was most likely to score. Unfortunately, the laser pinpointing was highly temperamental due to Sinclair's insistence on shoddy over-miniaturised parts, but Sam persisted and eventually worked out his players' best scoring positions were on the opponent's goal-line following a long hoofed clearance. Now there's tactics.

Players became used to foregoing alcohol, instead washing down bottles of vitamin pills with avocado smoothies. Big Sam prefers his vits in chewable form and often gets through 12 Haliborange - always Haliborange - in the course of one match.

Indeed, it is often overlooked how cultured Sam is. When he first applied to be England manager in 2006, Allardyce's application was written as a stand-alone app for high-end PCs combining C++, Pearl and Haskell. When it turned out that the FA system ran on DOS-based 486 machines, Sam had to run home and print out the entire thing, only for it to transpire most of the FA couldn't read either.

Away from pitch-side, he started a comedy duo with his friend and colleague, Portuguese deadpan Jose "No Comment" Mourinho, where the two saucy wags pretended to hate each other's guts. Their "stone age football", "bus parking tutor" and what an effing liberty" routines remain firm favourites. Sam also likes taramasalata, feng shui and The Mikado.

After the debacle of his short time in charge of the national team - it turned out that the FA had blacklisted Haliborange from pitch-side, unbeknownst to Sam who in his first match chomped through a pack of them on camera - an early retirement seemed on the cards; and there was a short-lived diversion into pro snooker, where his extreme no-potting tactics combined with dangerously long balls led to a life ban from the green baize; but the lure of football was too strong.

Now at his latest desperate club, Everton of Manchester, Sam discovered that the reason for their recent woes was an inability of other players to simply pass to star striker Mickey Rooney ("That lad has got goals coming out of his arse, he just needs some feeders"). Sam fixed that with his patented "effing-pass-to-Rooney" strategy, tested in computer simulation and aided by drones and magnetic boots. Long may this thoroughly modern innovator continue to tear up form books, rule books and record books. No cooking of the books implied.

Excessive consumption of Haliborange may cause laxative effects. Always squeeze the maypole.

Beware! Micro-Tales: L. Ron Hubbard and the Ghost of Truth

Beware! wants you to be happy in the brain. Using our patented Micro-Tales technology, 50% of our test sample reported being clear of thetans within a fortnight. You could be next!

L. Ron Hubbard and the Ghost of Truth 

Hubbard peered sickly at his hands. They swum in front of his woozy vision.
          The frog-faced fake-flâneur scrabbled sufficient sense to cross-examine the rebellious page in front.
          Page? Would mere paper disobey him, the world's most prolific author and head of church (for tax reasons)? Or was it the typewriter?
          He fell like a slavering animal onto the machine, one of his signature devices installed in every Org worldwide, customised for ease of speed-typing. He turned it upside-down to confirm the maker's mark and the state of the fixing screws. Squinting, he creaked the carriage return, fingered the platen, checked the action of each key in turn and the letter on each typebar. He released the spools and held the ribbon up to the dim interior light, coating his hands in thick guilty ink. Absent-mindedly he scratched his shiny head in bafflement, before realising his sticky mistake, with an expletive and a release of anal fear.
          What the hell was going on? Normally this stuff just wrote itself without a second glance.
          Hubbard attempted to re-read the day's output. On each page, beneath the pre-typed header "Scientology OT Level X: CLASSIFIED", he had been typing - not the usual mishmash of psychotherapy 101 with a sheen of space opera - but financially suicidal statements such as...
          "...This organisation is built on a leaning tower of lies. It is arrant rubbish. If you read this, do not pass go. Do not hand over 200 dollars. Especially if you have less than 200 dollars..."
          "...Every cent of Scientology's profits has been swindled out of the mentally unsound and easy victims..."
          Hubbard frowned further, clumsily dialled reception and slurred out an order for all his typewriters at all the Scientology Orgs to be brought in for maintenance.
          As he replaced the handset, he saw the empty clear glass bottle. Amytal sodium.
          Goddamn truth drug!
          Then he saw a cowled figure rise from the shadows. Must have been 8 foot or more.
          "Thank you Mr Hubbard for your confession. It's sure to be your bestselling work of all time!"
          Candlelight glinted in alien eyes. Hubbard realised the horrendous identity of the powerful intruder. It was as it had been in his original near-death vision in the 1930s.
          "L- L- Lord Xenu", he stammered, shivering and shaking.
          "Silence, mortal. You have been profiting off my legend for too long. It's time I dictated this last section. Assume the typing position! Now, begin: This is the Last Will And Testament of L. Ron Hubbard. Being of sound mind, I henceforth order the dissolution of the Church of Scientology, its assets to be shared amongst the poor thetans of the seven galaxies..."

One-to-One With... The Conman Philip Green of Arcadia

In the voluminous category of Great British Arseholes, one of the most notable (and punchable) is Philip Green, the chairman of Arcadia Group and inexplicably knighted for his services to gobshitery. Beware! tracked him down by tracking deposits from his camel-hair coat.

B!: Thank you Phil for agreeing to this interview.

Phil: (glancing around nervously) You what? I didn't, and it's Sir Green.

B!: (pulls a face) Not what I've got down here. That's your name?

Phil: My name - you nonce - it's Green.

B!: Shits green? How much spinach would you need to... No wonder you looked so uncomfortable at the Select Committee.

Phil: What an unprofessional start. What publication do you -

B!: Hahaha (obscures press pass). Incredibly ironic, that, isn't it, you talking about professionalism.

Philip Green sweats sperm. (Andy Brain)
 - this design available via MoMoJaJa

Phil: Can we make this quick? I've got a massive yacht to go and view.

B!: Quick as a crash. Tell us how you got started.

Phil: I worked myself up from the ground.

B!: Bought up the stock of several bankrupt companies, stuck your own labels on, bish bash bosh right? Not a bad start. Reckon people will do the same with BHS stock?

Phil: It breaks my heart that things have worked out the way they have.

B!: So how does it feel to be the biggest con-man in Britain? When you're actually here that is.

Phil: Security? Who is this clown?

B!: (Being manhandled away) The voice of your swindled employees pricking at your conscience!

A few days later, we had another go...

Phil: Which one are you?

B!: Jeremy Bullingdon-Scythe from The Financial Arselick Times. (Belatedly crosses fingers behind back)

Phil: Oh are yer. Nice one. FT eh? That's the one that got sold off to the Nips. Shame that. Proud British publication. An institution.


B!: Taking good care of British institutions. That's something you would know all about of course.

Phil: (Missing any irony) I would, yes. I have advised the government on many things including productivity and efficiency.

B!: Did you perhaps advise them to drive wages and conditions down while extracting hundreds of millions of pounds out of failing businesses and spreading it around your family before leaving the country?

The face that appalled Philip Green so.
OK - our reporter had a mask on. (Andy Brain)

Phil: Eh? Actually would you mind not looking at me? It's really putting me off my pork pie.

B!: Not look at you? Fine fine - anything else you'd rather we didn't look at, like your tax arrangements?

Phil: Say what?

B!: Can you explain why your companies are registered to your wife's name and Monaco address?

Phil: What yew asking me about that for? Lady Tina is a Monaco resident and highly qualified to own ownership by name of the companies I own except I don't own them. Nothing could be clearer.

B!: What do you say to the term "asset stripper"? To those who think you should plough some money back into the BHS pension funds?

Phil: They have taken blood, sweat and shit from me already.

B!: Difficult stains to shift. So. A pound. You - let me get this straight - of your own free will, sold BHS for a pound. You wouldn't do that if you were playing Monopoly on your solid gold set, would you. What is it, a shop or a grab bag of sweets?

Phil: Now I've already said, we don't want any shit over this. I am willing to sit down with the regulators and give it a damn good go.

B!: A damn good go eh?

Phil: I'm giving up my free time for this.

B!: A lot of people would like you to give up a lot more free time, "Sir".

Phil: A lot of people never worked an honest day in their life. I built myself up from nuffin.

B!: Talking of honest workers - David Lachappelle eh? What does he know about fashion?

Phil: Dominic Chappell, actually, you cock.

B!: Oh you remember his actual name then. Did you know much else about him eh?

Phil: Dominic Chappell had all the qualities required to steer BHS through a difficult time.

B!: Christ you couldn't even pick someone who had a bit of retail experience! Might have gone better if you did sell BHS to David Lachappelle. They might have started stocking 30" trousers for a start.

Phil: There's no way you're from the FT.

B!: It's not FT any more, it's FAT. Pronounced "phat" because we like the way it sways off the lips and the hips.

(Phil washes his hands and exits.)

Not to be deterred, we gave it one last shot...

Phil: (Drops brandy) What the bloody cock...

B!: (Climbing in through the yacht window) Hello matey. *whistles* So is this the holiday home-from-holiday home? How is Monaco these days?

Phil: You've not been invited -

B!: Alright, no sweat, eh, No Sweat. But hey, with a sweat problem like yours, you can mop it up with a Topshop flannel made in one of your hellhole factories.

Phil: You should know better than to talk about hellholes when there's people like Idi Amin in the world. I've given tons to charity.

B!: Drop in the ocean.

Phil: (Advancing) You'll drop in the ocean.

B!: (Retreating) Missed out on The Apprentice didn't you! Ere I've got another lifestyle format, you'll love it: Brass Neck UK. The candidate who cocks everything up and keeps getting bailed out but still manages the most brazen cheek gets an excrement badge, how about that? Alright I'm leaving.

Phil: F*** off and stay f***ed off.

B!: (in the water) Are you Alan Sugar's little brother?