Danny’s Girl

‘“IS Jose Mourinho the Barclays Premiership’s answer to Simon Cowell?” ask Joanna Taylor in her “the footballer’s wife” column in the Times.

Readers of these pages will need little reminding that Taylor is also known as Mrs Danny Murphy, the former Hollyoaks actress who married football’s Bash Street kid look-alike.

Taylor usually reserves her incisive comments on life for the pages of Hello! and OK!, but the Times has signed her up to give us the football bird’s eyes view of the game.

So we get Joe Mourinho as Simon Cowell and Wenger as Louis Walsh. Or are Mourinho and Arsene Wenger less like a pair of TV talent show judges struggling for something new to say and more like a couple of fighters on WWE wrestling?

Joanna is unsure. And the more she thinks about it, the more unsure she gets. She soon thinks that Mourinho and Wenger are like two school pupils.

Or are the managers like two hairdressers? “Whenever you go to a new hairdresser they will adopt mock horror and says, “Who did your colour last times,” says blonde Joanna. “Only once have I had someone say the previous stylist did a good job.”

Joanne thinks some more. She thinks that Mourinho and Wenger’s spat is a bit like the war of words between Charlotte Church and Girls Aloud. The group accused Church of stealing their style – which is a bit like Graham Taylor accusing Norway of copying his long ball game.

Joanna says Church and Girls Aloud are “a case in point”. She doesn’t say which of Mourinho and Wenger is Church, leaving us to guess – with Girls Aloud’s strength in numbers, Wenger must be Church.

“That said,” says Joanna, “I don’t know if Church has ever compiled a dossier on Cheryl Tweedy”.” Nor do we. But doubtless lots of teenage girls have scrapbooks full of all things Tweedy they can offer up should the Arsenal boss need it.

So much for all that. And Joanna, ever the footballing thinker, moves onto the second half of her article by offering up the opinion: “It’s is good to be honest and open.”

Indeed. But before Joanna opens up and tells us about her hairdresser, her make-up and how her acting carer is progressing, she wants to talk about Danny.

Showing a rare grasp of her husband’s profession, Joanna knows that Danny’s Charlton side lost as the weekend. “Afterwards Danny was in a foul mood,” says Joanna. “He didn’t feel he had played as well as he sometimes does and I knew it was not the time to talk about the match.”

Very wise. Best to wait until Danny cools down before you get the ProZone charts out and start dissecting Danny’s game in your neo-Tudor home.

But Danny was soon calmed down. “We were laughing about his mood by the end of the night,” says Joanna, “but I think the Charlton fans should appreciate how seriously he takes it.”

That would be those Charlton fans who had seen their team’s defeat and taken to their beds for the remainder of the weekend? Or those other Charlton fans who spent their Saturday nights grasping some masochistic pleasure in watching their side lose on Match of The Day and crying?

Whichever ones Joanna is addressing, we’re sure they’ll appreciate the news that Murphy, who by dint of being a well-paid player who can score a goal and affect the result, was upset for a bit.

And before she goes, Joanna would like to comment on Roy Keane’s verbal assault on his Manchester United team-mates via the MUTV channel.

“If I were in a long-running TV programme and the ratings were dropping, it would not be the shrewdest move to point the finger and say it was everyone else’s fault,” says Joanna.

Although Hollyoaks, like Manchester United, might have been all the better for it…’

Posted: 8th, November 2005 | In: Back pages Comment | TrackBack | Permalink