John Nicholson

Apparently it's been hot. Up here in Edinburgh we've spent most of the week wrapped in fog, which in Scotland actually counts as sunshine in the same way Irn Bru counts as one of your five portions of fruit and veg. As also, controversially, does vodka.

But outside of what Jimmy Greaves used to call 'chilly Jocko land' there's been allegedly been some summer weather, which what with it being summer and all, isn't that much of a surprise.

People of my generation compare every summer to that of 1976 when all we had for air-conditioning was the flapping of our 26 inch flared Brutus jeans and we spent July and August licking dew off sparrows because there was a water shortage.

Apparently global warming hadn't happened then, so it was just a random hot summer and not the precursor to a cataclysm that will submerge Norfolk in flood water and allow grapes to grow in Inverness; both a huge bonus I would have thought. (I love Norfolk really - I was once propositioned by a transsexual in Wells-By-The-Sea.)

Rivers and water supplies dried up; there was a Minister for Drought - Denis Howell, who was also Minister for Sport oddly enough. He would walk around, point at places where water had been and shake his head mournfully. That was about all he could do, short of a rain dance.

Environmental scientists who had just got over telling us a new ice age was on its way a year or two earlier, now worried us all by saying it would take years for the water table to get back to normal. Then it whazzed down on 1st September. End of summer. End of drought. We never heard about the impoverished water table again and it was back to school and arguments about whether The Stranglers were really punk because they had keyboards and keyboards were the home of the mythical beast that was progressive rock, as any fool kno.

The one thing we didn't have at the time was government advice on how to cope with the heat, probably because it was assumed the population were not stupid and could work out such things for themselves. Not so today. The Met Office has issued us guidelines - apparently we have to drink water and stay in the shade! Who would have thought it, eh? 'Identify the coolest room in the house, so you can go there to keep cool or sleep' it says - so no sleeping inside the oven as you usually do, ok? It also recommends we 'stay tuned to the weather forecast and plan ahead with supplies.' But do we do that before or after identifying the coolest room in the house?

We need to know. We can't think for ourselves!

Supplies?! What kind of supplies? Candles? Crotchless panties? Turnips? It's more than bit pathetic.

Frankly if you can't work out that you need to take off your duffle coat, drink water, and stay out of the sun as much as possible when its hot, then surely that is nature's way of harvesting the most stupid people isn't it?

This is part of the modern culture of talking very slowly and loudly at what is assumed to be the slack-jawed populace which we get from all quarters such as BBC news - which to my generation at least now seems like John Craven's Newsround did in 1975 only without the intellectual content - to politicians, civil servants and a whole host of other people who make a living out of talking bollocks.

I even heard some sort of social worker yesterday referring to the act of parents talking to their kids about how not to get sun-burned as 'liaise with them; conduct an ongoing inter-personal dialogue about the dangers of excessive UV exposure and climate change.' Maybe these are the sort of people who forget to drink water when it's hot. Let's hope so.

Anyway, before I get all Clarkson on your ass, this was all brought into focus for me when reading about Newcastle United. Just as it is obvious how you need to behave on a hot summers day, it is equally as obvious that if you don't want a football club to be a shambles, then you need to first have an owner who wants to own the club, second have a manager, third have some staff, fourth have players you can afford to pay.

But it seems as though, even these basics can't be grasped by anyone at Newcastle, even now. St James Park is a baggy-pants farce. Ashley might as well give the keys to the club away to the bikers in the Percy Arms; they'd do a better job, or at least some kind of job because nothing at all is happening at Newcastle.

It's an impasse of extraordinary proportions with Ashley not prepared to sell for 60 million despite dropping the price by 150 million already, and worse yet, the only person really wanting to buy is Fat Freddie who was responsible for the whole whazz-it-up-a-wall culture in the first place. Three consortiums are supposed to be doing 'due diligence' but I suspect due diligence will reveal a financial nightmare of such horrific proportions that the idea of paying out any money for what is little more than a giant constantly flushing toilet will be shown to be a form of insanity.

They've had to lay off staff, you know, the people on normal wages who make the place tick, in order to afford to pay all the crapulous players, fifteen of whom are supposed to be on £50k a week or more. The managing director has had his BMW seized by the easing company and if that wasn't bad enough Chris Hughton is 'in charge' on a day-to-day basis because, well, he's the only one there and will work for food.

Christ on a bike, what a bloody disgrace for this magnificent temple to the people's game. I fervently want Newcastle United to emerge phoenix-like from this miasma of debt, hubris and infantile ego but it's very hard to see how that is possible and as every day passes it gets harder and harder.

As the summer sun of destiny over-heats the roll necked pensioner of doom and turns Mike Ashley's giant head as pink as a radioactive pig, Newcastle is in limbo unable to even make the most obvious, basic decisions. Perhaps they need a leaflet from the government to tell them what to do.