I Love It

Filed in Other by on April 12, 2011

There have been a number of achievements in my life I'm outwardly proud of. Academic qualifications, rugby premierships, published articles, close friendships – becoming a Nut Guru!

Then there's the swelling in my chest that comes from knowing I also helped create a monster, one perhaps best evidenced by this piece from that most infamous of British tabloid newspapers, The Sun.

Take a read, I'll still be here when you get back…….

Yep, my paw prints are all over this one. And while my responsibility for growing the UK's number one University Sports Party is but a sliver of the work done by many people over many years, I was there on the frontline when ILoveTour.co.uk wrested control of the beachside resort of Salou from a couple of gin-soaked Brits who'd outgrown their want to cater for the type of degenerate 'student' who takes part in these tours.

These halcyon days of the mid-00s now behind me and a career change well-and-truly underway, it seemed like a good chance to reflect on the days before mainstream media outlets were interested in the drunkeness, the debauchery, the fun and games, alcohol fuelled feuding and low-level sports action on offer.

If you're still struggling to rationalise the concept of a University Sports Party, think of something along the lines of Australia's Uni Games crossed with Schoolies. All roads lead to an unsuspecting resort town in Spain or Italy and all vehicles carry students by the hundreds and thousands. Once they arrive 'in resort', they spend their Euros on cheap drink and very little else.

My first festival was in Italy's beach resort playground, Rimini. Here I helped guide approximately 700 uni students through their four night odyssey, checking them into hotels on the first day and out on the last.

In between I ran the rugby tournament, shuttled students from pub to pub, bar to bar and club to club. I slept, on average, about three hours a night. I drove folks to hospital and tried to explain to confused medicos that the patient was suffering from one or more of alcohol poisoning, a broken limb, head trauma, chronic food allergies and hypothermia.

In short, I aimed to keep people alive when they'd lost the ability to do that for themselves. My reasoning for this was that, having sold the tour package in the first place, I was at least somewhat responsible for their welfare.

And, by god, did I see some sights that will stay with me forever.

At the 2004 rugby tournament I saw a bunch of female players bring a stray dog to climax as a bunch of guys chased a naked lad until he submitted and was gaffa taped to the goalpost for the rest of the day.

That night I saw Italian males masturbating in their cars as short-skirted British birds tottered along the sidewalk on their way to or from the nearest drinking hole.

I saw coach load upon coach load of students stumble out into the light of day following 26-hour trips from the UK. Then I saw the long-suffering coach drivers alight after them. These were broken men whose buses were often left swimming in pools of urine and stale beer, half-eaten motorway bratwurst and acrid smelling vomit.

And through it all I saw the punters revel in pure and consequence-free fun. Despite what The Sun would have you think, these are happy days!

In Amsterdam, at one of our expansion festivals, I confiscated a bag of dope from an over-exuberant tour rep. I subsequently dropped the bag at the feet of my liaison officer from the Amsterdam constabulary.

Without breaking his gaze, he bent at the knee and reached down, fingers groping for the zip-lock bag that moments beforehand came shuddering to earth.

Forget about my heart rising in my throat, I can assure you the whole damn thing sunk at this point.

And don’t worry about my forehead sweating, think more along the lines of every pore in my back unleashing torrents of cold liquid that poured south towards my quivering arsehole.

This was a bad moment. My clean record most-likely gone, my plans for the night about to take a hit, too.

And even as my instinct dictated words denying ownership of the bag and my lips began moving to deliver them, I stopped. The cop had beaten me to the punch.

“Hey, you dropped your weed… Here you go,” he said, slurring in that somewhat stereotyped Dutch fashion and smiling politely as he thrust the bag back at me.

Crazy days.

 

How, now, does this have anything to do with the wonderful world of sport? Because, let’s face it, Making The Nut readers care for little else.

Well, every serious athlete is goal driven and lots of the time these goals revolve around world records.

When pole vault great Sergey Bubka set his long-standing 6.14m mark in July 1994, he reached the pinnacle. And his is a record to be bested to this day. Similarly, Usain Bolt’s current benchmark for the 100m sprint could hang around for a while.

Even if the record you’re chasing is only to top the goal kicking for the fighting thirds at your local footy club, you want your name on the honour board for time immemorial.

And every kid loves the Guinness Book of World Records, right?! So much information to absorb, pseudo-facts to baffle your mates with and, from time-to-time, something sufficiently wacky to make you wonder ‘Why?’ as much as ‘How?’.

An example of the kind of useless record I’m referring to comes in the form of the world’s longest nougat (measuring a lazy 660m long) created in Italy in February.

Yeah, it’s delicious and nutty and chewy, but who in the name of Steven Segal decided it needed to be done on that scale? The how, here, is beside the point.

Sometimes, I guess, folks are just out to break a world record because they can, even if there’s no real fame associated with it.

Devotees of the AFL version of The Footy Show will have seen Shane Crawford ham his way through any number of world record attempts in 2010. They ranged from smashing eggs with his forehead to being bench-pressed the most times in a minute.

Those of you with sharp powers of perception may see this not only as an indication of Crawford’s current status as Channel 9’s resident rodeo clown and general jackass, but also an indicator of where the former Brownlow Medallist’s career is headed.

The point is that neither the nougat-toting Italians, nor Crawford and his particular brand of idiocy, are setting records that ‘count’.

But given the chance, a-la Crawford, you’d take a shot at a world record, wouldn’t you? To have your name immortalised on the glossy pages of the 2012 Guinness Book you’d juggle chainsaws, stick your head in a vice or perform ‘the worm’ across a bed of hot coals.

And this is exactly what the crazy cats at ILoveTour.co.uk have in mind at this year’s Saloufest. With thousands upon thousands of mindless students at their beck and call, the ILT team have gone about setting their very own world record.

Yep, they’ve organised for what they hope will be the largest ever congregation of Where’s Wally imposters.

There’s the potential for 5000 drunks dressed in red and white hoops, black-rim glasses and stripey beanies to gather at Salou’s Pacha nightclub this week.

And you’ve read about it here first. Just remember that when The Sun decides they’ve had enough of bashing the event, and the behaviour of its patrons, in favour of running a yarn on the world record attempt.

 

Go well, Saloufest. Go well.

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