Tom Peck: Without a trombone in sight, Bronson spread the Lurpak on thick

It’s amazing what Arsenal winning the FA Cup can do to a man

Voice of the people Joey Barton appearing on ‘Question Time’ this week (BBC)

One of the greatest joys in these rarefied weeks before a World Cup finally kicks off is watching football arrive like the mothership from Independence Day over the TV ad breaks, ruthlessly soccerising everything from pizza to lawn mowers to plug in air fresheners.

To that end the ad men at Lurpak will be hoping the CCTV footage from Full Sutton prison’s solitary confinement cells can be prised into the public domain.

What better way to reposition a brand still living in the shadow of a miniature buttery Plasticine trombonist called Douglas tweely patronised around the breakfast table by the voice of Penelope Keith than to see Britain’s most notorious criminal sneakily slathering himself in the slippery stuff so as to evade capture at the hands of the 12 prison guards he is about to start a fight with.

Such clear distaste for good behaviour is among the many reasons the dainty moustachioed Charles Bronson is now in the 40th year of his seven year stretch for armed robbery, at least 35 of which have been in solitary.

He’s also a Spurs fan and, as he has now written to Ronnie Kray’s ex-wife Kathy, it was his unquenchable rage at the Gunners’ reversal of fortunes in the FA Cup Final that had him reaching for the butter, though not, mercifully, in the Last Tango in Paris sense.

“‘I got Lurpak and spread it on thick. Then a small cloud appeared. I swear I see Ron’s face. It was eerie. Go on son, let ’em have it!’,” he wrote, in a missive that raises more questions than it answers.

As any frustrated middle class breakfaster knows, anyone wishing to spread Lurpak in haste will first need to hold a knife over a naked flame for some time. If Bronson has access to such facilities, well then his warders deserve all they get.

Barton philosophises himself into a tight nightclub corner

Is he a genius or is he mad? It’s a question that perplexed the doctors at the psychiatrists clinic in Basel in 1889 when a probably syphilitic Friedrich Nietzsche was plonked on their doorstep not long after he collapsed hugging a horse on the streets of Turin. And it’s the same question that perplexed viewers of the BBC’s Question Time were asking when Joey Barton finally made his debut appearance on the show.

To liken Ukip to the least ugly of four women in a nightclub is at best clumsy, particularly when the party’s representative on the panel is a woman conceivably still of night-club attending age, but as is often the case with Barton, the genius lies so deep that the man himself is unaware of it.

Clearly, Barton swung and the ball landed on the foul ball side of the sexist diamond, but it was still a shock to see Madamoiselle Ukip MEP so genuinely taken aback by such a carelessly sexist comment. She is, after all, according to her thrice-per-minute claims not ‘from the establishment’ or ‘the political class’, and draws a modest six figure salary and expenses package to sit in a parliament that 90 per cent of its electors couldn’t tell you what city it’s in. Mr Barton’s careless outburst and a whole lot worse gets said every night of the week in the Essex pubs her party leader loves to frequent for two quick sips of IPA in front of the pre-booked paparazzi before limo’ing it back to Kent for a glass of claret. Presumably she too has never stuck around long enough to find out.

Diamond geezers disappear with a swoosh of pink

Whatever fortunes befit the England team in Brazil, the tournament will be noted with sadness by many an armchair fan as the first in which the Three Lions joined the mass ranks of ubiquity. This is to be England’s first major tournament under the swoosh of Nike. The concentric Umbro diamonds used to be as synecdochical to England as the sleeved chevrons of Hummel were the Danes. What’s worse, is the Americans are going through a particularly erratic phase, apparel wise, at the minute and already the signs are discouraging.

One is presumably right to imagine that the Vauxhall logo all over the training kit is the badge of the proud British car manufacturer not the sauna-filled enclave of South London, but each time Rooney and Roy and even Gary Neville have appeared in front of the cameras in Nike’s curious combination of Plymouth and Schiaparelli pinks there has been cause to wonder.

This from the people who forced Team USA’s medallists into lime green trainers and dark grey tracksuits, and whose mahogany and pine green ski jackets made its otherwise effortlessly cool Sochi snowboarders look like the inside of the Butler Cabin at Augusta. If the unthinkable happens and history is made, expect to see those tragic pink tops wheeled out for millennia to come. The horror.