TRASHFUTURE - *UNLOCKED* Britainology 2: The Noble Football Hooligan

Episode Date: October 9, 2020

In this unlocked episode of Britainology, Nate and Milo are discussing the 2005 film Green Street Hooligans, in which an American played by Elijah Wood goes to Britain and gets inducted into a football firm, learning a lot about himself along the way. Is it a good movie? No. But does it accurately portray football hooliganism? Also no. If you want more Britainology episodes, you can get #3 on the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/40816290 and #4 here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/41670736 We support the London Renters Union, which helps people defeat their slumlords and avoid eviction. If you want to support them as well, you can here: https://londonrentersunion.org/donate Here's a central location to donate to bail funds across the US to help people held under America's utterly inhumane system: https://secure.givelively.org/donate/the-bail-project If you want one of our *fine* new shirts, designed by Matt Lubchansky, then e-mail trashfuturepodcast [at] gmail [dot] com. £15 for patrons, £20 for non-patrons, plus shipping. *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind GYDS dot com). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Trashfuture are: Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Hussein (@HKesvani), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum)

Hello Trash Future listeners, the following is Episode 2 of Britannology, a series in which Milo explains to me why Britain is the way it is. In this episode, we review the 2005 film Green Street Hooligans. Is it good? Well, it's complicated. However, if you want to hear more Britannology, there are two more episodes on the Patreon and another one coming out very shortly. The link to sign up for more is available in the show notes.

Hope you enjoy and thanks for listening. Hello listeners and welcome back to Britannology. We're joining you again for a second episode of looking into the peculiar psychoses of the British public. I'm Milo Edwards and I'm joined as ever by Nate Pathay. Hello, it's me. Welcome. Thank you so much for listening once again.

Before we get into the plot summary, I just have to say that it's always hilarious to me to watch a film for American audiences that tries to depict modern Britain. And while I realize that this film I think does better than most in terms of not selling you the sort of like Dean Crumpett's twee fucking genteel Britain, it definitely doesn't hide the shitness of Britain. There's so much going on in this film that I feel like we should just jump right into our summary of the 2005 Green Street Hooligans or Green Street. I mean, the reason why I picked this film out was I felt like for the second episode

of Britannology, it really like it really, it really behoved us to make an examination of the extremely, the extremely peculiarly British phenomenon of football hooliganism. Like they have football hooliganism in other countries, but there's there's a particular kind of football hooliganism that exists in Britain, and I think it warrants a certain kind of analysis, especially because of the kind of cultural weight that is taken on for some people, particularly in light of the recent Black Lives Matter counter protest, which was of course done by the famous Democratic Football Lads Alliance. I think it's I think it's time for a deep dive.

So just as a quick primer on football hooliganism for the uninitiated, it was like a really big thing from the 70s through the early 2000s, which is when the Premier League began seriously cracking down on it. And there would always be a bunch of guys at every match who were there to have a fight, usually with some added racism, if they could manage it. Like I can remember going to the football with my dad at Tottenham in like the late 90s or very early 2000s. And they were like definitely parts of the stadium that you would like hugely stay away

from because that was the bit where there was going to be a big fight and there would be like mounted police there and all that kind of shit. But I recall Joel Goldby telling a story about watching a England versus Scotland football match and being punched by a man who was like five foot four and covered in tattoos because he wasn't singing God save the Queen loud enough, even though Joel said I was singing it at the top of my fucking lungs. And that's a good enough. And that to me that there was another detail in that article where he talked about how

a Scottish player scored a goal against England and a guy in front of him was furious and ripped off his shirt and rage. And when he ripped off his Union Jack shirt, you then realize that underneath his shirt was a Union Jack tattoo. And so he also had a Churchill tattoo, a Bulldog tattoo. Like basically this guy was so fucking patriotic that like he couldn't, there was no way he could not be wearing a Union Jack shirt and that to me or rather a St. George's Cross shirt.

And that to me is maybe what we're going for here. It's sad to see that he didn't go for efficiency and get the Churchill, the Bulldog tattoo from the insurance ads. That would have helped a lot. And yeah, so amongst this, the club, the football club that is most famous for football who organism is undoubtedly the Southeast London Club of Millwall, who are, they're absolutely dog shit football, like really bad, but all they're known for, like if you support Millwall, it's because you love fighting.

Those are the only reason, like they are the only club that I think are still notorious for just having fans who will show up and beat the shit out of anyone they find. I live in Southeast London. I live in Peckham, which is not far from Bermond's Z. And in fact, if I take the Southeastern train to Victoria Station from my home station, instead of the Overground train, I have to pass the Millwall FC stadium. And it absolutely is still a thing. In fact, if you recently saw in the United Kingdom, the news story in which a piss-drunk

anti-Black Lives Matter counter-protestor statue protector got in a fight with a bunch of people who was getting his ass kicked and like a kindly black grandpa who also was yoked his shit, saved him from the crowd. That guy, you know, the spindly racist drunk guy is a retired Met police detective with a huge Millwall tattoo on his leg. That tells you a lot about, apparently he went out and drank 16 pints and got in a fight and whatever, because that's what Millwall fans do, but it is real as the thing. But like this film isn't making that up.

It's just dramatizing it a bit. If you're spending your Saturday in a Millwall shirt, you're spending your Sunday in a Spider Man outfit hanging off of Big Ben to tell Sandra to give you the kids back. Like that is the vibe of that football club. The last thing I wanted to bring up about this was I just clipped the last paragraph of the Wikipedia article about football hooliganism in the UK because I feel it just sums up how absurd it all is. In March 2002, the Seaburn Casuals, a Sunderland AFC firm, fought with hooligans called the

Newcastle Gremlins in a pre-arranged clash near the North Shields ferry terminal in what was described as some of the worst football-related fighting ever witnessed in the United Kingdom. The leaders of the Gremlins and the Casuals were both jailed for four years for conspiracy with 28 others jailed for various terms based on evidence gained after police examined the messages sent by mobile phone between gang members on the day. Which tells you everything you need to know about these people. First of all, that they are part of groups which have just like completely absurd like made up sounding names and that they literally text each other being like, shall we do crimes?

Yes, exactly. So I think with that in mind, it's time to talk about the amazing Elijah Wood film Green Street. Just by way of introduction to this film, my take on this film is that it was written by someone who googled Britain once. Fair, yes. So the film starts out basically, Elijah Wood is a character, he's a Harvard student, he's a journalism student, he's apparently two months away from graduating from Harvard.

He has a master's thesis, his bachelor's thesis, the professor has indicated that he's doing graduate level work and should get a media job because he's really talented. The thesis is about Princess Diana. Yeah, Princess Diana's death and the role of the paparazzi. However, he's getting kicked out of school and it turns out because his extremely blue blood politically connected roommate, it has gotten in trouble. He was dealing cocaine and blamed it on him and he took the fall for this guy because the guy is so politically connected.

It sounds like his father is like a senator or a governor or a house rep or something. And as a result, this guy who's played over the top, Unkshu is stupid Harvard guy character. He's like the villain in a movie where the hero is a dog, like he's that kind of like overplayed like, oh, you can't come into our club. Yeah, basically, like if you think of any movie like Little Giants, like, you know, children's sports game where the horrible rich kids lose in the end, basically, the horrible captain of the horrible fucking rich kid football team in Little Giants is this kid once he's gone to Harvard.

Yeah, also, the film opens with this like weird scene where there's two groups of football hooligans torturing each other on like the over underground platform. And it's just like so completely absurd because they're both like shouting like weird witticisms at each other. And then like, and then eventually it devolves into a fight as if any football hooligan fight has begun begun with anything other than like, oh, mate, and then just a punishment being thrown. Yeah, so people getting smashed through glass and fists, etc., like, you know, extreme violence.

So anyway, Elijah Woods character, Matt, correct me if I'm wrong, Matt basically decides to go to London to stay with his sister who's married a British guy. The sister lives at bank station, by the way. Now, like, that's like that's like in America living like, I don't know, like fucking like Wall Street. It's just it's like absurd. No one lives there. It's not a place where people live.

So basically, and the only reason why she lives near bank station is because that is where the fight takes place in the first scene. And so invariably Matt has to see the broken glass and stuff because of the football football hooligans. Yeah. So again, why would a football hooligan fight take place at bank station? No football clubs are there even remotely near bank station. So effectively speaking, he stays with his sister, his brother-in-law comes home.

He's got a romantic night planned for her with tickets to the musical Chicago, which dates this movie exactly to the early 2000s. And as a result, he has to hang out with Elijah Wood, has to hang out with Pete, his brother and basically his the brother of his brother-in-law, who it turns out is the leader of the Green Street Empire football firm. However, why love is that when he comes into the, so he just shows up at the house because he wants to like borrow money off of his older brother because he's like a deadbeat football

hooligan. And they're like the wife, like the guy, so like Matt's sister is like carrying their like one year old son. And he just comes over and starts singing West Ham till I die into this like one year old's face. And just to ram home like this man is football. One of the things also that was interesting to me is just the fact that, I mean, we'll get into this later about who his brother-in-law is.

But his brother-in-law has this very like, they're living in an incredibly posh home and they seem to be incredibly well off. But also his brother has this very like, well, my English kind of fucking vibe to him. And so that seemed a little bit incongruous until you figure out what happens later. Anyway, long story short, he fobs Matt off with Pete. Pete says, I'm just take, give me half the money. I'm going to go see football. Matt convinces him to take him to go see football.

Like trying to fight him. Yeah, it's weird. They go to, they go to the pub. He meets with the people apparently being, being American is bad in, if you're a West Ham fan. There's a weird intermediary part where like Pete tries to teach Matt Cockney rhyming slang, which like, I can't really explain to you enough how like Cockney rhyming slang is like not a way people talk anymore.

Yeah. Like it's like, it's like how my grandmother talks, but it's not like, it's not how your average like East End football hooligan would talk. No, not at all. So I'd say too, maybe we should just do a brief digression at this point, because one thing we have to talk about, if we talk about the unreality of the Cockney rhyming slang and like the general sort of vibes, if this film is taking place in 2004, which it is in terms of you watch the CCTV footage is sort of like a picture in picture kind of thing

as part of the way it's shot. And it's supposed to be 2004. So two things. Number one, that's not how people were talking then or now. And the other, Charlie Honham, who's from Newcastle, cannot do a Cockney accent. Oh boy, can he not? He sounds dutch throughout this film. It's like, yeah, mate, you gotta learn about the, you gotta give me the, you gotta give

me the bees, mate. And then the guy's like, what are, what are bees? Oh, you fucking yank, it's bees and honey, money. It's like full, full board Dick Van Dyke shit. So I did a little bit of digging. Charlie Honham is from Newcastle. He went to university in Carlisle. His mother is a ballerina, like a very, like a accomplished ballet dancer.

So this isn't, I don't think this is a case of, because there is obviously a tendency in the UK where if an actor is, is extremely not privileged, they're like, they'll rip on them for not being able to do stuff like this. When in fact, OK, if you go to like the Royal Academy of Arts, like you get trained to fucking do a lot of accents, among other things. So I don't think this is the case of this. I think this is just a case of Charlie Honham not wanting to fucking do the accent. And boy, can he not do the accent.

Oh, boy. Yeah. There's a part where he really shouts him and goes, and for fuck's sake, stop saying soccer. And the thing for me is that it was rubbing me slightly the wrong way, but it wasn't until Milo confirmed it to me. That was like, oh, wow, he's not convincing at all. Like this is this is a bit off. Most of the other characters are convincing because they're all like London London actors, like Mark Warren, who plays the brother-in-law is like, he's well,

I think he's from Northamptonshire, but I think he's like lived in London for a long time. They're all like, they're all kind of Southern actors, at least ish. Whereas, yeah, I can imagine if you grew up speaking fucking Cumbria. He's like, all right, you're going to struggle to do a cockney accent. Like I can I can. Or fucking Newcastle is where he's from. So can you imagine like that fucking accent? Anyway, so they go, they go to the pub and Matt manages to grow on these people. And generally, like, you know, they then he convinces them to go actually see the football.

They they go their friend before, which there's a scene where in the pub they're all like drinking and singing football chants. And it gets to such a crescendo that they're all just like literally throwing beer all over each other and are like, it gets like a weird like home erotic wet T-shirt contest kind of vibe. Which, again, I don't think that's what people do in British pubs. Probably not. Let's just say probably not. So anyway, they they then they then go to the football. Their friend, Bover, who apparently works in press for the football,

manages to go and like insult a bunch of the Birmingham fans with some racism taunts, calling black fans Zulus. And then they tell Matt to fuck off, basically, to avoid the fight. He's going to go back on his own. He he then gets caught in the street by a couple of Birmingham fans. They they start trying to kick his ass. But then it turns out that the the Green Street Empire guys knew this was going to happen and followed him and then beat the shit out of these Birmingham fans.

They try to get away in a van or like that they've hired. But then another fan throws a brick through the windscreen. So they then beat his ass. But in the end, they wind up kicking everyone's ass and they win. So he then goes back to the pub and celebrates some more because they get set upon by this like then much larger group of Birmingham fans. And then like Matt is going like, oh, God, I'd better go. And he's like, well, you're talking about, mate, you can't go now.

You've got to fight. We stand out ground and fight. And he's like, but I don't know how to fight. He's like, just think of something you ate. And then he just starts like windmilling through these guys. At one point, he fully headbutts a guy in the dick. That was my favorite part. Yeah. So apparently Elijah Wood's character, Matt, despite being basically

kind of a pushover discovers he's actually good at fighting or good enough at fighting to be able to go and throw some punches, land some punches and then go to the pub after. They do critique his punching style as gay. Kind of gay. Yeah, exactly. They then go to the pub. They drink more. And the next morning he comes back to his sister's place to get his stuff

because he's going to crash with Pete. They get in an argument with with his brother and he basically storms off. And you realize that there is some frustration with his brother, vice Pete, being a football hooligan firm leader. There's also that bit where Pete, I think that happened slightly before that where Pete takes him to get a full English breakfast on his hangover. And then he starts explaining what a football firm is. And he's like, you know, it's a firm like we beat up the other fans.

And he's like, you know, he starts going through like the different football clubs and who has a good firm and who has a shit firm and stuff. And he's like, and then there's Millwall. He's like the West End Millwall rivalry. It goes back years. It's like fucking Israel, Palestine. I really that was the point where I wrote, where is Pete from? He sounds fucking Dutch.

Yeah, so basically. What moving through very quickly, they Matt slowly ingratiates himself with the rest of the firm, except for Bavar, who distrusts him. And as things go on, you know, he gets more and more integrated with them. He also goes with Pete to his place of work. He is a schoolteacher. A base in history.

He teaches PE in history. He brings Matt out to play goalkeeper for a bunch of ten year old kids who completely destroy him at football because he's better. They, you know, apparently just being English makes you good at football. Just for being English. Exactly. And so this all this all culminates basically in two things. I would also I would add that that is the most realistic part of the film

that like some absolute moron would be teaching you both PE and history. That is like that is the British education system down to a T. So long story short, two things happen. We didn't talk about this previously. But when when Matt got kicked out of Harvard, he tried to call his dad, who's like a famous investigative journalist. His dad was reporting from Afghanistan and was unavailable like he had. He had he went to his voicemail.

But then his dad shows up in London and convinces him to at least go with him to get lunch with an editor from the Times. In the same period of time, they're announced that I don't know what the technical thing is, but there's going to be matchups between different football clubs. And it turns out that it'll be the first time in ten years that West Ham has gone head to head with Millwall. So they're all celebrating because they're excited to get the chance to beat the shit out of Millwall fans.

And but then one of the one of the firm members is a bike messenger and he spots Matt and his dad at the Times building and tells Bover, who had through the entire film, cannot stand Matt and doesn't like him. And basically makes it very obvious that he wants him to fuck off. Because he used to fucking yanks. Yeah, exactly. He hates Americans, which I mean, OK, fine. There's also where there's some stuff that happens in between that.

I think another important thing that's like a weird current through this film that is never like explained is that the thing that people in football firms hate most of all is journalists. And like, I feel like that is purely a plot device because he's a journalist. Yeah, I don't think there's any evidence. They're like, look at this, like the West Ham one free now and all they're reporting about is the fight we got into. It's like they would absolutely love their fight

being on the front page of the newspaper. But like, what are you like? That is exactly the kind of psychosis that these people have. And in between all of that stuff, there's a bit where like, so Bova goes to Millwall to like eat some disgusting food in a greasy spoon and like has an argument with like the lead Millwall guy about the fact that they have this American guy in their firm and the Millwall guy like fucking like beats up some random guy in the cafe

because his girlfriend won't stop talking. And then they go to Manchester for an away game and like Matt sneaks on the train. They don't want him to go. And then one of the guys who's already in Manchester, who's wearing an RAF uniform for some reason, like advises them they shouldn't get out of the station because there's going to be an ambush. So they get off like apparently 12 miles away from Manchester.

They get off in Macclesfield by pressing the emergency stop button. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Bova smashes the emergency stop. They get off the train in Macclesfield. They what's his name? Like they steal a decorating van. Well, no, they pay the driver because that's the thing you hear him say that like they pay the driver and they just say, hey, just give us, you know, they drive up to the thing.

Matt convinces them it's an American film crew. And then they pull up past where the ambush is supposed to happen, run and open the van and let the driver go. They all come out, beat the shit out of these guys and then run away while the cops come and arrest a bunch of them. So they've routed the the ambush of the of the Millwall fans. So Manchester United fans in that case. Yeah, it's like a very weird.

Yeah, because this happens in Manchester. Yeah, you're right. I was just wondering who that guy was because for some reason I thought that guy whose ass they kicked is the same guy that he was talking to in the Millwall, the diner and stuff like another guy who's Manchester, who really hates them because of some previous other thing that is like glossed over and yeah, fair, fair, fair. Well, I didn't understand about that scene is like, oh, these guys,

they're going to they're going to ambush us at the train station and beat the shit out of us. So like we can't go to the train station or get the shit beaten out of us. And then all they do is get off the train and then drive to the train station and then still fight the guys. So like why not just get off the train and they didn't gain any tactical advantage. But like I mean, the only advantage they had was basically not getting caught by the cops or getting caught in the in the like the foyer of the fucking

the station. They then they just come around the back of them. That's about it. Then they get away and so this is sort of like the big coup that has made Matt, you know, fully a member of the firm. And then Bob, Bob or rats him out basically and they go to Pete's place. They go through his shit or they go through Matt's shit.

They find his his master's thesis. They figure out he's a journalist. They figure out that he's been writing this journal about them. And so as a result, they've decided that he's actually an investigative journalist undercover and he's trying to blow the lid off them. So what happens is because because of the fact that that the brother has figured out what's going on and he goes down to the pub to grab Matt and talk to him.

And throughout the entire film, they've been talking about like their storied former leader named the major and then he grabs him and he's like, we're going to talk outside right now. And he starts walking him out and then someone basically rings the bell and there's a toast to the major because the brother is the major. He's just gotten out of the game basically. That's like the big reveal. Exactly. And so he he was once the leader of Green Street Empire,

but now he's he's he's he's gone legit. And so what happens is at the same time, they they they start the the guys who have been clued into the fact to include Pete start beating up Matt because they think that he's an undercover journalist. At the same time, Bobber has gone back to the Millwall pub to tell the Millwall guys what's going on and tells them also that the major is in the Green Street pub. So they all go out there to beat his ass.

They there's basically there's like a bit of back story here, which is that gets revealed where like the so the major or Steve is like was he's like, yeah, I go out at a game 10 years ago because I got into a got into a really tasty scrap down at Millwall. And then it cuts. You get these like flashbacks to 10 years ago where it looks like the 1980s. Like it's supposed to be 1995, but they all have like mullets. And they're like, they're just like, what was 10 years ago like in Britain?

I don't know. Steve looks like Jimmy Savile. That's the he has really long hair and he looks like Jimmy Savile. It's amazing. But anyway, and basically the guy, the Millwall guy's 12 year old son gets beaten to death by a West Ham fan, which seems I don't feel like you would be a 12 year old boy. I feel like even football hooligans wouldn't kill a child, probably not do that. And also if they had like, they'd all go to prison for basically fucking ever. Yeah. So these are not smart.

Like they're not organized crime. Like a lot of this movie, it spends a lot of time acting as though these guys are like the fucking Sopranos or something. And like so they keep getting away with all these crimes they commit. Like there's various points where they like steal cars and stuff. And it's like you wouldn't just get away with that unless you like really knew what you're doing, which these people do not. They are like literally some guys from down the pub.

Exactly. And so long story short, they then in this confrontation, the Millwall guys show up, they bring Molotov cocktails. They try to set the pub on fire. They literally they jump through the window through the windows, like like the fucking SAS or some shit. Yeah. And one of the leader of the Millwall who look in stabs Steve in the neck with a broken bottle. So in the in the resulting

basically punch up outside, they are able to get Steve out. They steal a car. They take him to the hospital. He's expected to survive, which is called the East London Hospital, which is not a real. Yeah, not a real. I was wondering. I was wondering if they were going to take him to the the Royal College London Hospital, the one that's right down the street

from our studio, but no, they did not. They took him to a fictional hospital. And what winds up happening is it was revealed previously, Steve said he got out of the game because once he married, he married Matt's sister. She said she would leave him if he ever got back into football hooliganism because of this, she's decided to leave to go back to the United States. He's in like the 12 step football hooliganism.

Very is that one? No, I can't touch her. I can't touch it. I can't touch a football match. I've got to slip back into my old ways. But he talks about hearing the roar of the crowd and really wanted to go back in and just beat the shit out of people. Because sometimes you get the taste. It's amazing. So anyway, after this happens,

Pete tries to get Matt to go back with his sister. And Matt says he's going to because they also like this isn't your fight, like you don't want anything involved with this. And they set up like a scrap to take place prior to the game that's going to happen, the match between West Ham and Millwall. Yeah, the whole Millwall game thing ends up being a complete red herring. Like the game does not take place in the film. They end up just fighting the Millwall fans anyway, way before the game is

because like the F8 because it's an FA Cup draw. And like there's a bit where they're all listening to the FA Cup draw. And like the FA Cup draw takes place ages before the game starts. So like this game would have been like at least a month away when they announce it. And so yeah, it just never happens. It's like a pointless plot point that does nothing basically. But but then the fight does happen. Matt obsconds from his sister's place.

He goes down to the joins the crowd. They decide to go have the fight in the fight. He winds up. People are brawling, being the shit out of each other. The the leader of the Millwall who again pulls out an asp, like a collapse, a telescoping metal baton and starts beating the shit out of Matt. He like breaks his arm. Yeah.

So then they have to go and like rescue Matt. And then like Bova shows up. This is after the previous scene, Bova is like having a mental breakdown on Tower Bridge for some reason. Because he's been kicked out basically because they because the Millwall guys, once he led them to the pub, they called him a grass and they just broke a bottle over his head. And then it's revealed that he he once once Pete figures out that he grasped them up to the Millwall people. He says, fuck you, you know, never come back.

And then so Bova decides to, you know, wrestle with his demons by drinking an entire bottle of vodka on Tower Bridge and sleeping on a park bench, truly a British energy. And then a vodka called Sputnik as well, which I really enjoyed. They didn't want they didn't want to endorse Stilichnaya. So they wound up getting a fake brand of vodka. And then he he he shows up in the nick of time. He is able to once Matt's sister shows up in the Range Rover, trying to get him out of there with the baby.

And then incredibly smart and just take it. Just take your fucking toddler in your Range Rover to like the lads having a fight. And the Millwall guys try to go after her. Bova basically steps in to like beat this guy's ass and get get get them away from him in the process. Someone goes, he's banging on the window. The Range Rover going, get out of here, you slag. I was like fully crying at that point. Oh, it was incredible.

And Pete basically taunts the leader to get him away from the Range Rover. He basically starts taunting him about his dead kid. They then they then scrap and the Millwall leader winds up beating Pete to death. While singing your nursery rhyme. Yeah, exactly. As though that's something you would do. Normal Pete and his or Matt Matt and his sister and the baby get away. Yeah, I should also point out slightly before this happens.

There's that bit where he draws the baton, right? But then what happens is is like kind of revealed that all of the Millwall guys have like sneaky weapons, which I guess is supposed to paint them as like a more evil group of football hooligans. And they're all like wearing matching Slazenger polo shirts, which again, one of the few accurate things like, yeah, Donne, Slazenger, the brands of football hooliganism. Dare I say it, Sergio Tukini, like anything that you could buy in sports direct.

Absolutely, motherfucker. Now I'm feeling really weird about all the times I've walked around going down the shops and like my Slazenger track trousers and wondering if people are like, who is this can't? And then someone and someone who hits Matt with a knuckle dust. And after that, he's like, oh, it's all now. And he just like picks up like a big piece of metal that's on the floor and just starts like going hog at them. And I'm like, it's like people are going to die.

Like this isn't us. You can't just hit people with a fucking metal curd. So basically at the end, what happens is Pete has died and Matt and his sister leaving all the football hooligans, including the Millwall ones form this like weird honor guard around his body with their little Donne caps on, like looking down solemnly at his body as though they've like they've realized like, you know, man's in humanity to man or some shit. It's basically the last scene of fucking gladiator.

And yeah, and then we'll help me carry him. And then the sort of code to the film is that Matt Matt goes back to Boston and he sneaks up on his former roommate. Wait, wait, wait, wait, before this is the best part of the entire film. I wasn't going to forget that. Don't worry, his roommate, who's a big cocaine idiot, who's like an investment banker is in some private club in Boston with his idiot friends. And they're telling him congratulations on the Epstein account.

At that point, my third eye was all the way open. Like what is like that? What did what did the makers of Green Street know? Anyway, he then the guy goes off to the bathroom to go do cocaine. And Matt Matt shows up and basically is like in his weird meek former way. Basically, even like you told me you'd hook me up, you know, I took the fall for you and, you know, the guy's just being a bitch or being an asshole to him and he's like, fine, fine, fine.

Yes, OK, I get it. Just call my assistant, whatever I'm in a meeting and he's doing cocaine and then calls him spineless, etc. But then Matt plays back that conversation. He's recorded with a tape recorder and the guy's like, what the fuck? And he's like, oh, this is this is my golden ticket to get back into Harvard. Thanks. And the guy acts like he's going to try to fight him. And Matt's like, oh, I wouldn't do that.

And then trips him and basically throws him down and is about to throw a punch. And you realize that Matt has now learned how to fight. And so this guy cours in fear and Matt walks away. And as he's walking away, he starts singing the whatever fucking one of the last forever blowing bubbles. Yeah, that is at least a genuine thing that West Ham fans do sing. I don't I don't really know why I don't know what the origin of it is, because it's like it's a very weird kind of like nursery rhyomy song

that bears no relation to football or beating the shit out of people. So anyway, that's the end. The film has concluded Matt has become a bigger person. He just had to experience the truly hardcore, but also deeply honorable life of being an English football hooligan. The end. Yeah, because there's these weird parts like throughout the film where but like not often enough for it to be kind of like, I don't know, aesthetically justified where randomly after half an hour of no voice over at all,

there'll suddenly be a bit of voice over from Matt doing like some weird like philosophical shit. Like there's a bit when he goes to Britain where he was like, I've been kicked out of Harvard, but I was about to learn something. No, Ivy League school could teach me the difference between a slag and a fucking cunt. My favorite bit is after the after the Manchester fight, there's like this scene where like he's like spiked his hair and put up a put on a polo shirt, thereby becoming English.

And so he's like, he's like in the pub and he's doing this voice over and he's like, news about the scrap in Manchester spread far and wide. People said it was bigger news than the death of Princess Diana. And it's like, what? I assure you that was not the case. No, I think guys drunk football fans have fight in Manchester. Nation Mourns. However, you do know for a fact that Dave Courtney found out and he's like,

it's a flat nose. Because Dave Courtney, Dave Courtney knows all of the crime under the world of London. So he understands that Matt is now an up and coming person and he's he's willing to make an exception for fucking yank. Yeah, I don't know how Dave Courtney would feel about football hooligans. I don't know whether they're like, I feel like, you know, the sort of the wannabe gangster types would feel themselves slightly

above the football. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's hard to be a football hooligan when dressed head to toe in like all white silk suits with a cane for some reason, which geese's noses aren't even fucking flat. So this is one of the other things is like a lot of the like football hooligan guys are like, not even big or intimidating. Like some of them are. But like one of the things that this film definitely glosses over a lot is

like the extent to which if someone is like 20 kilos heavier than you, you're not going to beat them in a fight. It's just not it doesn't matter how good you are at fighting. They're just going to fucking sit on you. Yeah, fair. And as a result, I would say we can we can now conclude the plot summary and talk perhaps about things we liked and dislikes. And I'll go I'll go very quickly and just say.

I liked the fact that this was at least given some degree of like location treatment that it was shot in the places where it takes place and they did get some details right that an American film about Britain probably wouldn't. There was at least enough of a pretty, let's say a British English partnership with regard to like how the plot is structured. There are some huge dumb things that wouldn't happen, but there are other things that it does actually catch the stuff with the school. Like you said that an idiot like him would be a fucking school teacher.

The like the detail about the CCTV, although that feels like a dumb headline bit, the fact that like there's CCTV everywhere in the UK, like that is absolutely a thing. And that was a relatively new thing in 2004. And also, I think that there is you do actually kind of get there are some location shots and things that make it seem more like the stuff that's set at Harvard. A lot of Harvard film or films set at Harvard are actually filmed at Brooklyn College because the campus looks similar and it's way cheaper to film at Brooklyn College than it is to film in Cambridge. I think this is the case.

The stuff that was filmed in Harvard doesn't feel authentic to anything about Massachusetts at all. Whereas the stuff in South London, for example, I mean, living in living in South London, I have never gone to a greasy spoon in Bermondsey, but I have gone to places in and around, Peckham, Nunhead, Dollich, et cetera, where I live. And a lot of the stuff that was filmed in location feels authentic to the UK. Yeah. I mean, I cannot express enough how grim the food Bob is eating in the greasy spoon. It's like, I couldn't even really understand what it was supposed to be. There was certainly a pie and there was gravy, but there was also like beans.

And some kind of weird green chutney or something. And they, of course, the football hooligans refer to the owners by a racial slur. So you get the impression that this is an Indian place, but it's serving or a Pakistani place, but it's serving shitty English food. So who even knows? But I do feel like one of the things that I would say is, this reminds me of the film Eastern Promises in some way, in the sense that Eastern Promises is a much better film. Even though no one has a proper English accent.

Eastern Promises is also a film where it over-exoticizes its subject matter, but it at least depicts the place in which it's set pretty well. And that's a thing I think is true. The football hooligan plot is completely jumped up and absurd. But in terms of capturing sort of the general feel of London, I think it does a pretty good job of that. I would also say, okay, Charlie Hunnam's accent might suck, but I do feel like he's convincing as that character. Yeah.

I think he does a very good job of being like, having gotten to where he is by just being charismatic. And that comes across very well. I think you do get the sense of the chemistry between the two actors. There is a sort of genuine feeling of fellowship between him and Matt. That I think is very well done. And I'd also say that I feel like coming into it, this would give you a lot of really stupid and wrong impressions about football hooliganism.

But I do think at least this is a more accurate portrayal for an American film than something like fucking Euro trip, for example. So if you have to choose between the two, I feel as though this at least is truer to the subject matter than other American films set in England that I've seen. But I mean, that doesn't mean it's necessarily true by any means. What I didn't like, huge plot holes, weird oversimplifications, and just generally like stuff happens in the nick of time to either save the characters or imperil the characters. And it's always by coincidence.

And that to me is just like the hallmark of weak storytelling. There are so many other ways that, for example, they could have found out that his background was in journalism, that he lied about it, versus his dad showing up in them going to the Times and them happening to be seen by somebody in the firm. Yeah, like just hanging around outside the office of the Times newspaper, as football hooligans want to do. Exactly.

There's so many odd plot points in it where all of these guys who are like football hooligans have really normal lives, which is just not the case. Charlie living in a fucking squat, basically seemed pretty true to life, but him having an actual regular job seemed a little bit weird. But then he said like the one guy having like apparently being an RAF pilot. I guess he was a net. He was like, I guess he looked like he was like a corporal or something. So he probably wasn't a pilot.

But like, yeah, like there's all this kind of like weird, a lot of them have like weirdly like normal jobs and stuff. Whereas I feel like if you're a football hooligan, like, yeah, you're not going to be in the RAF and be a football. I don't think you could get away with that. I don't think that would allow you to spend all weekend, every weekend just being pissed and like getting into fist fights, like just showing up to the army every day with like a huge fucking black eye.

And it's yeah, it's very strange in that regard, like the way in which that the football hooligans appear to be sort of preposterously well organized to an almost like criminal degree, where they're committing like serious crimes and getting away with it. But to like not really getting involved in any like actual profitable criminal enterprise, like just in the just in the name of getting in honorable fights with other guys with like fucking George Cross tattoos. So I'm wondering, Milo, do you do you have things you liked and dislike

that you could like tick down on the list? Well, I mean, what I did enjoy about the film was just like how absurdly kitsch it was. Like there was an extent to which just like, I would have believed it if at the end of this film, it was just like this guy just had a fever dream about Britain and just hadn't really gone at all because it's so it's so bizarre and dream like like the idea that this American guy who's like a nerdy Harvard guy who's like five foot four would show up and then suddenly like become a football hooligan and enjoy it.

It's like really, really bizarre in that respect. And also like that, I feel like it kind of had this an almost slightly charming misunderstanding of like what British people are like in their respect. It's just like everyone's using this like incredibly opaque rhyming slang. Like some of it I didn't even know. And like this is like again, this is like how my grandmother talks, but like there's this bizarre bits where he's like in the pub and he's like, Oh, but it doesn't even know what the apples and pears are.

And it's like, no one says that. Like that is technically real rhyming slang, but like no one said that since like 1962. It's just not a thing. There's a part of me that wonders if maybe the stuff about the stuff set in America that seemed oversimplified and weird is how I if I grew up in Britain would feel about the stuff that's set in Britain. But because like even though I live here, like I've only lived here for less than two years, I can tell when stuff is grossly inaccurate. But when it's like the general ambiance still feels completely fucking wrong,

like I wouldn't pick up on that. Yeah. And there's like, I think one of the things I found weirdest about it is that there's this continual, there's this continual obsession with two things, which is like, we ate journalists and we ate yanks, which is just like a weird, like of all the things that football hooligans would hate, it's just like weird things to pick out. I haven't really met any British people that really deeply hate Americans. I'm sure there are some, but like, unless you're a fucking asshole, like unless you you go into it extremely American Lee and just are a prick about everything and being like inferior,

like unless you do that, I mean, I don't get wrong, I do that online all the time. But for me, it's less, it's less like, oh, the houses look like shit and more like this is a country of psychos ruled by fucking inbred caterpillars that I mean, and I found that most most British people agree with me. So basically, yeah, well, yeah, I mean, I think that that that first scene where they go to the where they go to the pub and everyone's like, oh, he's a fucking yank, look at this prick. Whereas like, I feel like a much more realistic depiction of that would have been all of these people who've probably like never left Britain except to go to like a fucking holding pen in Benidorm are probably like, they're going to be like fascinated at meeting an American because

they probably never have a force. Oh, do you have, do you all have guns over there? They'll probably be like obsessed with him and hanging off as every word. That would be more what I would imagine that scenario. Yeah, like I said, I've never, I mean, I like I said, I know there's there's some British people that really don't like Americans, but it's, it's, I've never had somebody be you know, overtly shitty to me just because I'm an American. I think if people are overtly shitty to me, it's probably because of just of my own incredibly toxic personality. So in that regard, I can't blame them. But I felt like that was overstated. And I, I don't know why that was in there other than to have a sort of like mini redemption arc that he's the he's the American

who winds up being more of a football hooligan than the actual football hooligans, which okay. Damn. Winning the football hooligan war all by himself. Also, I find it weird that the villain, the Harvard villain is a huge cokehead and nobody in the hooligan clubs fucking does coke when have you met fucking football hooligans? Have you been to Britain? Yeah, exactly. Absolutely doing coke in the toilet is that pub. Yeah, that's another weird thing, isn't it? Like the way it kind of like it romanticizes football hooliganism is this kind of like order among thieves. It's about the lads and having an honest scrap sort of thing. But in real life, literally the anti-black

glass matter protests in Britain are all football hooligans. Yeah, it's just like getting, getting extremely drunk and taking out your rage about your ex-wife on some other guy who's also angry as ex-wife. Like it imputes a degree of sort of like, I don't know, shovel organizing. Yeah. And also like completely takes all the racism out of it. Like for some reason, all of the Birmingham football fans are black or almost all of the Birmingham football hooligans in the film. And it's like, football hooliganism is like really, really white. There's a reason why they're so tied in with like the EDL and Britain, Britain first. That I mean, to me, one of the biggest sort of, if you want to call it flubs was the idea that

in the final scrap, there were a bunch of black millwall hooligans. Like if you know anything about millwall, they are famous for being the most racist of the football hooligans or the football clubs. Like that is just not, I mean, recently with the stuff with the guys, there's the statue protector shit. I've been noticing a lot of commentary online from black British people who've talked about, you know, if you grew up in Bermondsey in the 80s and 90s, if you saw a group of guys coming down the street looking like those people, you knew you had to run for your fucking life because that is what they were out to do was beat the shit out of South Asian and black people. Like that's what that connotes. And so

the idea that just is never addressed or when it does happen, it's simply just bother calling them a bunch of black Birmingham fans, Zulus, like, yeah. Well, there's other words he would use. And yeah. Yeah. And there's another bit where he calls them northern monkeys, which I think if you didn't know would sound like a racial slur, but is like a southern slur for northerners, but also they're from Birmingham, which is like, I mean, I guess, I guess like some southerners, especially to take the piss might consider Birmingham the north. But the whole thing, the whole thing is just like weird and kind of glosses over like, yeah, yeah. The idea

of making a football hooligan film where they're not racist is seems like you don't know football hooligans. Yeah, like we, we actually, we have a complex system of asking everyone their pronouns before we get into a scrap down here. We believe we believe passionately in beating people up, regardless of their race, gender, creed or other religious beliefs. That's that's that is 100% AC Livorno. I don't know if you know about this, but there's an extremely hard left football hooligan firm in Italy that follows the team from Livorno, or people used to call leghorn. And they are like, to describe Livornos fans, there was a moment when there was some fucking Italian equivalent of the Premier League match

where they did a moment of silence for Italian soldiers who had recently died in Afghanistan and the Livorno fans were like, fuck the troops, fuck baby killers. Like that was the level of they are absolutely football hooligans, but they're basically Antifa. That does exist, but it's rare. It certainly doesn't exist in the United Kingdom. I love the idea of like, like psychotic, like moving, moving from like, you know, like the fucking, I don't know, like the woke KGB or whatever it is that Brendan O'Neill's worried about, but moving into like the, the, the woke football hooligans who were like, we've got, we've got 10,000 blokes and 50,000 genders. I love the idea. I mean, yeah, because Livorno, Livorno fans will, they, like their big thing is

if they, if they, if they're, they can't fly their flag or whatever, they'll fly the Palestinian flag and stuff like that. Like they are an extremely left-wing football club. But I mean, while that does exist, I feel like that it does not jive with my experience of anything related to football. It suddenly doesn't exist in Britain. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's just, it's such a perplexing film in so many ways. There are so many things that are just like not explained how like, uh, like his older brother, Steve, who is apparently this like legendary West Ham football hooligan, but 10 years later is like some super millionaire who like owns a flat and owns a house in fact in bank, which would be like worth just like absurd, like telephone

number amounts of money. Yeah, exactly. We've already talked about that. Like, first of all, why would you live in bank? Secondly, like, okay, there are some people who live in bank, but like, no, there aren't houses there. The only house there is mansion house. And that's the like ceremonial residence of the Lord Mayor of the city of London. There are no other houses there. The closest I could imagine is like, there is, there are some houses like down towards Blackfriars Bridge, but like, that's very different. Yeah. I'm just about new conspiracy theory. This guy is actually the Lord Mayor of London. And that's how that's how he's made all this money. And it's just like, yeah, just like a weird, it completely like glosses over like all

these issues of class and stuff. And like how like, yeah, I mean, you can give up being a fucking West Ham football hooligan, but you're not suddenly going to become like a super successful business. But what from, from all the connections you made with like fucking dodgy gas down at the pub? Unless he's literally selling coke to the current football hooligan. I mean, you never know. But then also you marry the daughter of a American journalist, you know, storied journalist whose kids go to Harvard. Like that also really misunderstands the American class system. I've come to this realization that America has a class system and Britain has a caste system. And we just don't want to fucking talk about it in those terms. But I'm just going

to say with the way you don't want to get reincarnated as a fucking Millwall fan. Happy shit. I just got to say though, that you absolutely, the person who goes the kind of people, the white people from the Northeast who send their kids to Harvard, like their kids aren't going to marry ex football hooligans from London. Like this is not happening. Like it's so in that regard, like it, a lot of weird things have to be thrown together in this like, like you said, fantasy dream sequence for this to be plausible in any way. Oh, daddy, when we met it was so romantic. I was in this place they call a boozer. And then some guy came up to me and he started calling me a slag. And then this guy came over

to him and said, Oi mate, and then just fucking headbutted him until he was dead. Anyway, now we're married. We found the one house in Bank and we bought it. Yeah, like that is the one thing about this. Well, I will say that is extremely realistic is just how much headbutting there is. I don't know what it is about British people, but they love headbutting you. I did like it's a, I've always found it to be, I actually, I knew a guy at university who like would sometimes get into fights. And he had this philosophy where he would say, always leave with the headbutt, because no one fucks with you if you lead with the headbutt. And I was like, I guess that makes sense. Like if your first resort is to hit someone with your own head, like where will you go next?

Weirdly headbutting, it hurts a hell of a lot less to headbut someone than to get headbutted. That's the thing that's really weird about it. Like if you do it correctly, which most people cannot. Yeah, exactly. But I mean, I strongly recommend not, not leading with causing yourself a brain injury, but I'm not sure for a lot of the characters in this film, it would make that much difference. There is one thing I wanted to point out that was hilarious to me though, with regard to Charlie Hunnam's terrible accent, is that the guy who was in the RAF uniform, the actor Ross McCall, he played Private Liebgatt or Sergeant Liebgatt in Band of Brothers. And in that film, he spoke with an absolutely dead on Brooklyn Jewish accent. Like my friend,

my friend who's his parents, so one of his, one of his parents was Orthodox Jewish, like who grew up in Borough Park in Brooklyn. Like that's how they talked. That accent, the way Liebgatt talked was dead fucking on. I had no idea that guy was Scottish. Absolutely no idea. Yeah. And so that was one of the weird things to me. His London accent is very good too. Do you know there's also someone else who is in Band of Brothers who's in this? Fucking Steve, the older brother was a Blythe in Band of Brothers. Oh my God. I didn't realize that. Private Blythe. That's where I recognized his face from. Yeah. That's incredible. There are so many, there were so many British actors in Band of Brothers and I mean like they managed to pull

off the accents way better than, I mean periodically you'll have American actors who can do English accents or British accents well, but it's rare because there's a certain specificity and that like even if you can coach an American to be able to do like a received pronunciation accent, it's pretty hard to be able to nail like a particular regional accent in the same way that like there's a lot of, a lot of, I feel like British actors seem to take the accent coaching stuff pretty seriously. And so they'll, they'll, they'll hone in on that stuff. Whereas you will also, I mean, a great example, Johnny Lee Miller. If you've ever seen the movie Hackers, he clearly did not work with an accent coach. Yeah. Even as I spent all his time with the

skateboarding coach, even, even, even as a kid, even like a 11, 12 year old kid when I saw that movie for the first time, I was just like, that guy is not American. Something is really weird about the way that he talks. As hackers always say, oh, I'm in you slag. I would have loved it if like in Band of Brothers with all the British actors, they just got them to do the accents from this film. Just, you know, an amazing scene where they're doing the assault on Foy and fucking Spears has to go and relieve Norman Dyke. And he just heroically charges at the SS and begins headbutting them all. Come out, you fucking cunts. Do you fucking want some then? You fucking crowd prick. Which is hilarious to me. There's a scene in Band of Brothers before

they jump in where like the one, I can't remember the name of the trooper, but basically he meets a British soldier who's got a Luger from a Nazi that he's like scavenged and God, yes, this is like he has like a correct me if I'm wrong, but he's got like a really, really strong scous accent. No, no, it's like, it's like cockney. Oh, he uses, he speaks to him in rhyming slang, which is why he doesn't understand a word he's saying. Yeah, because they cannot understand each other. Yeah, because he gives him Luger to look at and then he starts walking off trying to show it to one of the other American soldiers. And then I remember this line because it was like, it was actually very well done. They probably had a

British act to do it. It was like, oh, mate, you're having a fucking bath if you think you're half inch in that. And then he's like, he just sort of gets the gist and goes, oh, okay. Yeah, exactly. Cause like I half inch pinch, which means steel. Yeah. And that's the thing is it's like a laugh. Milo repeating that line now, I understand exactly what he's saying. But when I watched that series the first time when I was like 14 or 15, and when I, when I watched it again, was in the army before I moved here, I absolutely would not have understood a fucking word he was saying in the same way that like when I was a kid, I remember when we've talked about this before, my Depeche Mode fandom, when I'd see them on TV, I just remember like, oh yeah, they have British

accents. But then listening to them, I recently watched a documentary about them. And I realized that at, you know, the peak of their, their fame, three of them have incredibly strong Essex accents. And one of them has a much fancier West London accent. And you can definitely tell like there's a little bit of tension between the, the Basildon boys and the guy who's from Acton. And I would never have picked up on that shit before because if that feels like a detail, even though like the specificity of like an accent within London, or like the sort of different class accents, you wouldn't really know that unless you'd spent a lot of time here. It wouldn't, it wouldn't immediately occur to you to associate one with the other. And so in a way,

there are certain aspects of Green Street that like, I do feel does dial in pretty well to things that they seem like pretty well researched or like well observed. But those are the things that are completely just out of the like, the best way I could describe it is it feels like the screenplay was written by somebody who'd never been to Britain. And then someone toiled long and hard to try to make it as close as they possibly could. But by the time the movie was optioned, there wasn't as much room to fucking change the script. And so they just had to go with the absurd plot, but try to like make it slightly more realistic. And yeah, just just season it a bit with some half decent actors mixed in with it's just so funny to me that like one of the main characters,

like they use a British, a British actor for Pete, but just not a British actor who's like from that part of the country or whatever, like there's so many like East End fucking actors in like like all those guys like that guy Mark Warren, who plays the older brother, like he's like in he was always playing East End guys and everything like there are so many guys like that who are just in BBC shit all the time who are like not well known internationally at all, but like kind of, you know, staple actors who could like believably do that accent. But they were like, no, we're going to get this guy who sounds Dutch. Yeah, I mean, Charlie Hunnam's had a pretty successful career from what I can tell. But I mean, at the time, I mean, he was kind of

like his career was sort of on the rise. But it made sense casting him in Queer as Folk because like he can do a Manchester accent a hell of a lot more than an East End accent. And so like it makes sense, a guy from the North do it playing a Northern character, makes a little bit less sense having him play like the leader of the football hooligans. But there's a part of me that also wonders like how much the other actors had to just like fucking keep themselves from cracking up. Listening to this guy just utterly butchered the accent. Yeah, I love it when the leader of the the leader of the West Ham firm is like, Oh, I'm fucking West Ham till I day month. Exactly. Well, I don't necessarily know if

you could watch this and get an accurate understanding of what you might describe as the actual football hooligan culture. I do think that I've been in pubs and pub bathrooms that resemble the ones where this was shot. So yeah, horrible piss soaked pub toilets. Definitely. I do think that yeah, the location scouting in this film is good enough for you to get a kind of a sense of the feel of the place. Yeah. But I don't necessarily think you're going to learn anything you don't already know by watching this. It's just slightly more accurate than Euro trip. And since this is clearly an American movie centered on an American character, I mean, that's about as good as it's going to get.

Yeah, the most instructive thing about it, I think as a film is not that it portrays reality, but almost that it creates reality. Like I think that something you need to understand is that there's just like lots of like unironic like blokes like love this film because of the way it like glamorizes a kind of football hooliganism that never existed. And like weirdly, Russians love this film. It's like really popular in Russia. And like for that reason, all that shit like Stone Island and stuff is really popular in Russia because they're always wearing that shit in the film. Like all those kind of like, I don't know, like kind of sports casual brands. And it like this film was huge there and it like massively popularized that.

And you know what else is huge in Russia? Football hooliganism. Why am I not surprised? Yeah, except there it's just it's pretty much just racism. I feel like Britain and Russia actually have a strange affinity that they're European, but not quite. And that like they're there's more in common than people want to admit. And weirdly, you know, dressing like you've just rolled out of bed and you're throwing on stuff that would be damaged if you ironed it is definitely a way of life in both Russia and the United Kingdom and living in an absolute dog shit fucking accommodation somewhere.

That's probably a fire trap and going to fall apart. Also Britain and Russia. What was also hilarious to me was as a sort of a coda to this, I was living in Russia in 2016 when the Euro championships were going on and there was a game, there was an England Russia game, which I think they drew. I can't remember. And it was infamous because there was a huge fight between all of these like Russian altars and all of these English football hooligans. And it was hilarious because like all of the in Britain, everyone was like, can you believe how violent these Russian football hooligans are? And everyone in Russia was like, can you believe how violent these English football hooligans are? And the

football hooligans themselves develop this like weird respect for each other. We're like, finally, we've met our match. Finally, with the most psychotic football hooligans in Europe come up against one another and call it a draw. Well, there it is, everybody. We have we have provided another segment of Britonology for you. So for all of you listening, thank you so much for being Patreon supporters. We hope you enjoy this. We will do more of them because there's a fucking pandemic and both me and my wife's jobs are here. So I don't see us leaving anytime soon. So I will continue to discover Britain with London Voice, my wife, with the assistance of Milo. What's the right word here?

I think it's like the magic school bus of Britain, where going around terrible sick buildings and awful cultural exports. I think we should definitely do one on some terrible 90s and early 2000s TV. I definitely want to I feel like we should do one on Hot Fuzz because that was a movie that actually broke broke out in America. I also think doing one on like adulthood or something like that, like terrible made for TV movies. We could actually watch a good British movie like Attack the Block or something like that. You know, things along those lines could be fun, but long story short, we live on a diseased island and I appreciate that you're willing to listen to us talk about it. So until next time, we're off to go and piss

near a plaque, but near six inches to the right of it. Exactly. Yeah. I always piss six inches to the right. See you later. Bye.