“And the Laboritoires Garnier gall”

Nothing else makes any sense

I might be wrong……..

I once foisted a book on him, but fortunately it was well after this song came out and anyway I’d already read it. So I think I get away with that one.

Having raised the goalkeepers’ apostrophe in another place, I suppose I should give my view. Many amateur teams seem to have a spare set of gloves in the kitbag for use either by the regular goalie, the emergency goalie, the rotating goalie, the ringer from The Plough, etc… . but they are thought of as the gloves of the goalkeeper, singular, of the team. Of the role. Not really of the person. The tossing of the gloves by the manager/captain is often in my experience the first dread moment when the allocation of the role is done.

A case can be made for all three possibilities, I agree Chris. But in the spirit of Milton, this is likely to have been a one-off game between good and evil, with the destiny of mankind at stake, and only one goalkeeper responsible for the ultimate damnation of the human soul, and thereby of the appearance of motorway cones, Davina, and other sins.

So I do believe that “goalkeeper’s” does the job slightly better.

Not that I give as much of a toss as I do about ‘lost’ (capitals in the title, lower case in the text please).

Tostare: My thinking was that they’d be stoned enough to conceive the plan, but too stoned to execute it properly. It probably doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, which is one reason I was wrong.

Dave F: I don’t think ‘for’ is redundant. Imagine replacing “stone” with “blame” in “Is it you who’s to stone for the motorway cone…”

While I’m here: this song contains one of the best anti-solos ever, up there with ‘Boredom’ and ‘Canyons of Your Mind’.

Also ‘Ah regain…’

I think it is the verb ‘to stone’ but that seems to make ‘for’ redundant?

‘To blame’ wouldn’t rhyme (nor would ‘goal’). Anyway, retribution in the songs often takes projectile form: flying bricks, figs, and in this case the miscreant is to be stoned for inventing the motorway cone and deciding that putting certain people on telly is a good idea. Suitably biblical.

He’s obsessed with eschatology and retribution in so many songs: divine retribution in everything from Dickie Davies Eyes to Evening of Swing to Problem Chimp to Bottlneck, social retribution in a good many ‘list of tw*ts’ songs like Breaking News and this one.

Barry Venison ? In 2004, he emigrated to Redondo Beach, California, where he is apparently enjoying life as a property developer in Orange County, and has taken on the stereotypical “California Lifestyle.” According to one reporter who met him recently, “He looks more like 23 than 43, and has a deep brown tan and is covered in tattoos. He’s been teetotal for about five years, and gets up at 6am every day and does yoga. Then he waxes up his surfboard and heads out to catch some waves.” He also has other business interests, and has recently worked the US Tennis Association summer tour for Hawk-Eye Innovations, which is a ball-tracking technology that essentially tells if the ball is in or out of play.

Barry Venison may not have been included in the official lfc.tv list of “100 Players Who Shook The Kop”, but he did make it onto The Liverpool Way’s “10 Players Who Shook The Kop With Laughter.”

(Neil – that was the edited version).