The Sunday Sledge: Shane Warne

Every week the Sunday Sledge will bring you the Whinger of the Week Award. Making the Nut management takes a dim view of whingers, and have decided to undertake a weekly crusade against the worst offenders.

It is with great reluctance that Making the Nut focuses on Shane Warne as the first recipient of the Whinger of the Week Award. Warnie is, after all, a legend: the greatest spin bowler of all time and one of the sharpest cricketing minds. A fierce competitor that loved nothing more than smashing the Poms; he was the overweight smoker that rose to the top of his sport. The sexual degenerate whose text messages looked like they’d been cut and pasted from Penthouse Forum; the uncouth Aussie who took tins of baked beans with him to India because he didn’t like the cuisine. Warnie was the iconic larrikin: dancing on the dressing room balcony at Trentbridge waving a stump around after we smashed the poms in the 1997 Ashes, sneaking durries after practice, sledging opponents to the point of them needing psychological support.

A legend.

Sure, he had his faults. A bucket-load of them: he could be egocentric and ill-disciplined; politically incorrect and callous. But he was his own man, not some corporate shill or marketing creation; not some G-rated, family-friendly metro-sexual advertising skin care products and scented candles. For all his faults, Warnie was one thing above all else: genuine. That’s one reason why, for all his faults, he could be forgiven. He didn’t pretend to be anything other than what he was.

But not anymore. You’ve all seen it. The new Warnie. As the recent pictures in the press show, Warne looks lasered, injected, tanned, starved, suctioned and neutered in his quest for the greatest cougar of all: Liz Hurley. I don’t blame him for having a crack of course, but you’d think Liz hopped on the Warnie train because of his Aussie charm and larrikinism; not because he looked like a perfumed handbag carrier with an eating disorder.

He’s obviously been spending a lot of time in a solarium working up one of those fake Hollywood tans (unless we are meant to think the congenitally overcast London weather has miraculously found the UV spectrum). He has that trademark Hollywood orange sheen – so much so he’s starting to look like a shrunken mandarin with a tuft of peroxide hair surgically lasered to the top. His face is curiously puffed up, especially around the eyes: sure, I guess the wrinkles are gone, but it looks like he’s being punched around the head for a few years then had plastic surgery to fix the damage. Sort of like Mickey Rourke, but maybe without the brain damage.  

And for the whinge of the week? Well, here is Warnie complaining that pictures of him have been doctored:  

"Some of these magazines and newspaper articles have actually not put a wrinkle on my face, and as you can see… I've actually got some wrinkles, and I don't think it's right or fair to the public to put in some photos like that and portray me as a person who hasn't got a wrinkle,"

So you’re complaining because they made you look better? Mate, if they photo-shopped you they were doing you a favour. It probably made your efforts to re-cast yourself as the George Clooney of Bogans slightly less absurd.

Then Warnie got offended that people were suggesting that Liz Hurley was making him change his appearance, texting:

"I have always taken pride in my appearance and an attack on Elizabeth Hurley is unfair. I'm proud of how I look and worked my butt of [sic] for 4 months!"

Actually Warnie, once upon on a time you didn’t give a damn about your appearance: anybody who sucked down half a pack of Marlboro blues and a couple of four-and-twenty pies for breakfast could hardly claim they were too concerned about the way they looked.

Then Warne started making threats about magazines photo-shopping him:

"I've got some legal advice on that at the moment."

Legal advice? Warnie, as one of the greatest sledgers of all time you need to cop it sweet (let’s remember Daryll Cullinan needed psychiatric treatment after you finished with him).

But after he settled down, he came out with this text:

"It doesn't matter what anyone says about anything-never lose your sense of humor-be happy and enjoy life. I'm very happy – thankyou.”

How wonderfully upbeat. So not only have you physically transformed, mentally you’re starting to think like a 14-year old high school student who’s watched too many episodes of Oprah.

Warnie, as a millionaire ex-sportsman and man of leisure, now escorting the world’s most smoking cougar on this arm, you need to get out of the solarium and give yourself an uppercut. Life’s good.