Over the last couple of weeks I’ve seen lots of pictures of David Beckham smirking at electronic devices.
There’s been Beckham smirking at a football match on his tablet, smirking on his mobile phone, and smirking at one of his televisions.
No doubt this avalanche of advertising, courtesy of Sky Sports, is not unrelated to current attempts by BT executives to storm their battlements. It’s the ad men equivalent of boiling oil.
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Now, for one thing, all this casts serious doubts over David’s range as an actor.
It’s apparent that he can run through the gamut of emotions only from S to S, and, indeed, some of his tattoos have greater psychological depth than Mr B’s face.
If Sky are looking for a decent actor to carry this campaign forward, they might have been better turning to Messrs Suarez and Ronaldo. They have been acting for years.
My second issue is with the emotional truth of this. I have never known anyone smirk at a football match. Indeed, it is a no smirking zone. Beside every true football fan, sat on his sofa – remote in one hand, can of lager in the other – are the masks of the Greek theatre.
Sometimes he dons the comic mask. My team are two-nil up, and I discover that I am the long-lost son of the richest man in Sicily.
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Sometimes he puts on his tragic mask. My club are losing three-nil, it’s not even half-time, and I have recently murdered my mother.
The word “wry” is not in his vocabulary.
And now, as the unexpectedly glorious summer turns into the football season of my discontent, I can reach for the two masks once more. After two successive seasons of relegation, I have had little need for the smiley one of late. Indeed, we are already bottom of the next division down through the cruelty of alphabetical order.
But as the Wolves begin their thankless wanderings to Stevenage and Crawley, Port Vale and Preston, I can console myself in the knowledge that (a) we have a ground (b) our owner is not in custody and (c) I have no tattoos. Perhaps I can smirk after all.
* Dr Chris Upton is looking sardonic at Newman University Birmingham