Dispatches from the Pavement Podcast

Toby Isaacs
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Because if I look up, I might have to make eye contact. Voiceovers of my Substack essays. tobyisaacscomedy.substack.com

  1. 3d ago

    Men's Football World Cup 2026 Season Wrap

    Introduction And the season finale of the World Cup of Men’s football 2026 has finally been broadcast. The last episode of the series dropped Sunday night, but I’ll try not to spoil the ending for those of you who haven’t finished binge-watching it yet. I will, however, give you a review that might feature on IMDB. Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This anticipated season put the British pubs on high alert, ensuring they could accommodate the droves of punters who were determined to come together and watch England lose. I can only imagine their disappointment when they kept not doing that. The reaction at each of these cliffhangers would reach fever pitch as crowds would spill out onto the summer streets and process the latest confusing outcome, a bit like when we were all trying to get to grips with the first season of LOST. The Narrative & Storytelling Due to the timezone in which most of the matches were played, I personally didn’t watch as many minutes, but it did, especially with my brain being trained to concentrate on nothing for more than 3 minutes at a time, which meant I got the general gist of proceedings each morning, watching the highlights packages usefully prepared by BBC Sport and the iPlayer team. Consuming “highlights” felt like a very appropriate Generation Alpha form of taking in the World Cup. This would also facilitate their bedtime, which I live in solidarity with. Overall, after the scene setting in the opening episodes, where most of the teams were playing with no real consequences, they all got a good go, and you mostly got familiar with the main groups and could have thought they would be regulars for the whole season, we had a shift in modes, and they started getting cut episode after episode. This became quite predictable and formulaic. To the point where you’d think they’d had a good idea for how to add a bit of tension halfway through and couldn’t think of anything better. However, the Argentina conspiracy b-plot was something that got the YouTube-sphere really het up, pointing out all the hidden details that really make a viewer want to root for any team that isn’t Argentina. This is some of the genius of this production. You’d think, given that it is based on the rules of football, the best teams would win through fair play, but that is the appeal of this season. It does justify why there’s only one series every four years. Establishing a true villain that you think is obvious when the President of the US interferes with how red cards work, and then that has no bearing on the future outcome and the real bad guys have been quietly rising through the tournament. This theme has been really well done, leading the viewer down the wrong path and making the whole journey simultaneously predictable and surprising. For all the well-laid-out through-story, there was plenty of improvisation, which is always welcome. A lot of it didn’t hit the mark and wasn’t very believable, but with a core cast of 1250 men, not including referees and coaching staff, you were going to have some duds in the mix. The commentators were doing the role you wanted because it is hard to keep track of all the characters, and I don’t think it would work at all without the voiceover, but they clearly had a very limited script to work with, which got very repetitive even if they delivered the lines with great passion. The show’s studio audience really played their role well, adding to the atmospheric cinematic nature of the show. The goal celebrations were well written, and I think they added to the flavour by each player having their own unique goal celebration written for them that could, in its own way, be surpassed at a climactic moment. Production Critique Some of the more disappointing elements: I think the VAR sequences, which I assume were supposed to add suspense to critical moments in each episode, felt overused and actually severely impacted the pacing of the show. Some of the product placement was excessive and frankly not believable or realistic in the slightest. At regular intervals throughout the episodes you would suddenly see an Hyundai Ioniq 9 driving up the pitch followed by an aeroplane. It took me a few double-takes before I realised this was just CGI. And if you were to look across the season arc, there are tonnes of continuity errors when it comes to the referees. One thing I’m not sure everyone noticed is a small Easter Egg over the course of this year’s drama revealed something that I’m sure will be part of the ‘making of’ documentary coming around the Christmas period: The pre-match briefing in the changing rooms includes a similar safety demonstration as there is before you take off ensuring that if they ever lose their balance for any reason at any point they immediately ball up into the foetal position and roll as far as they can towards the nearest emergency exit. Media Bias as Meta-Commentary An odd aspect to this in comparison to other TV shows is the coverage was spread over two entirely different broadcasters, in the UK at least. BBC and ITV shared episodes out, which only exacerbated the pre- and post- episode reaction podcast glut which was already covered by independent content creators worldwide. We like to pride ourselves, in the UK, with having impartial media, and the BBC is supposed to be unbiased in its programming. Politicians argue a lot about how the coverage of certain nationwide events is left-leaning or unsympathetic to certain groups of people with certain opinions. I do not believe this is the focus they should be wasting their energy on. You can spend hours arguing how Ian Hislop doesn’t present facts in a fair way on Have I Got News For You. You would be wrong, but you can argue it. But if they just focused on sports coverage, you would have a case right there. Unfortunately, it is likely that the people who dislike how Have I Got News For You covers current affairs, are actually very happy with the glut of sports coverage that has an overeager desire to discuss only one nation. A perfect illustration is my morning viewing of the past month. Every highlights clip selection is 8-10 minutes covering the core aspects of the game, key shots and plays, interesting decisions and moments and rounding out the celebrations of one team of the two. When England beat Mexico in the last-16 knockout match, the 8-10 minutes rule was broken, and I felt betrayed. The same thing happened for the Norway quarter-final. It was 26 minutes. Every other one starts with the first chance; this one starts with highlights of the team wandering out onto the pitch, then both team layouts, then the kickoff. All of which are nothing but admin, not highlights. To be true to the journalistic bias, the highlights should really have left out the Mexico goal, but it didn’t. Mexico get their fair share as well. 13 minutes of actual play 13 minutes of watching the England supporters sing a song by Oasis. I was not aware this song was about football. The BBC did get lucky, as the penultimate episode, as is often the case these days, far surpassed the season finale. Conclusion: A Season Worth Celebrating By now, to some of us, the World Cup of Men’s football 2026 will be a distant memory. I have no intention of rehashing old ground (apart from wanting to revise the minimum goals rule from 3 per match to at least 6; it seemed like matches with 6+ goals were the most enjoyable to catch up on.) Overall, we were treated to the absolute best men at kicking a ball towards a massive net with a measly success rate of 12.47%. This is inversely proportional to their earnings. About the same rate as ballot acceptances at the London marathon this year, and they didn’t even do anything. If I called the police requiring a firearms response and they were only hitting one in 10 of their targets, they would be derided for being specialists, yet they, right here, have a perfectly legitimate case to petition for massive pay increases. Time to put the European spin-off series in the diary. Though I hear it will use a lot of the same cast and have a simpler story with little-to-no corruption. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tobyisaacscomedy.substack.com

  2. Jul 14

    The VAPE Protocol

    My favourite moment from this Men’s World Cup Football Tournament is when France entered Senegal’s box, and Mbappé fell over. He was convinced it was a penalty, and the referee thought it would be a corner. I was hoping so hard that after being told to review the footage from multiple angles, he would come back onto the pitch and award a goal kick instead. He didn’t, but he did stick with his decision. France was in uproar. The fans were in uproar. The commentators were in uproar. The BBC ex-referee rules experts’ WhatsApp was kicking off with all the ‘best referees in the world’ being in uproar. For a long time, we lived with the odd convergence of the armchair managers across the country, who, from multiple angles, can criticise the home country’s actual managers’ decisions from the comfort and security of their own home or pub. The pundits’ analysis, sitting in their studios based on greenhouses surrounding the stadium far below, with expert commentary about how teams could do one thing or another, deciding whether a referee on the ground made the right decision about a foul or some other activity. Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. But now we have video assistants. Linesman positions have become almost redundant, with automated offside detection, and goal-line technology has been around for years. And now we have referees sitting on a Teams Meeting with each other while the lead ref runs around to be close to the action. I’m not sure when the ‘Ref Cam’ footage started being a thing, because I don’t watch football on a frequent basis. In this latest World Cup coverage, it must make the other referees having to watch that a little queasy. I can’t imagine having that as the fourth square in the online meeting room. Especially when the ref decides to pick his nose. But the progression of refereeing must surely, due to entrenched job security, mean that the only inevitable conclusion to this is that, at any moment, the referee committee decides they need to review a recent play and, due to the already significant spend on Gary Neville and Thierry Henry (Rooney was far cheaper), they make sure they get their money’s worth and ask broadcasters to simply contribute to the action and you get a 12 minute breakdown watching videos forwards and backwards while Rio Ferdinand (BBC) disagrees with Ian Wright (ITV). People who, previously, would not have changed the course of the game one bit. Now they are in arguments that get released as mid-game podcasts, and ‘stoppage time’ ensures each game is four hours or more, to accommodate this new evolution of the discipline. One option is to have a referee for every player just to be absolutely sure there’s nothing untoward happening that is happening out of eyeshot. This would make things a bit too crowded on the pitch, so it’s probably a non-starter, and they’d need a handful of refereeing referees to make sure the referees weren’t inadvertently interfering with gameplay, which they undoubtedly would. One YouTuber decided to go full rulebook on VAR after the Croatia goal was overturned because the ball temporarily turned into a hairbrush, detected by the in-ball technology known as a snicometer. To me, this sounds like something invented by Mars to measure Snickers Bar Intake (SBI) by fans at the stadium. The YouTuber didn’t like this method, claiming “clear and obvious error” was the true reason to invoke a VAR review, and this was clearly not an obvious error. By this logic, if it’s not clear or obvious, then VAR would never be invoked. Doing this via the medium of YouTube video commentary has its own irony that I think was not realised by the content creator in question. Of course, in this case, he felt it was a clear and obvious error in VAR judgment and therefore required a VAR review to be performed and produced by himself and supported by ads for IBS medication. In the same diatribe, he quoted the offside rule as being in place to stop goal-hanging tactics. I’ve written previously about my dislike of the offside rule, and think goal hanging should be actively encouraged in the modern version of the game. Either that or have the cutoff of offside be near the goal rather than the halfway line. How can anyone be accused of goal hanging if you’re barely near the goalkeeper’s area? Six yards would do as a compromise. Thanks to the current tournament introducing additional segments in the gameplay, forcing the 90-minute limitation to be effectively abandoned, we should be using this to our advantage. If the crowd are going to boo and jeer during an hydration break, I suggest the following to exacerbate things further. After all, this, apparently, is what the game is really about: Introducing the VAPE – The Video Assistant Pundit Edit At the slightest disagreement between referee, team and players, they throw their options over to the respective nations’ broadcasters and an additional impartial third-party broadcaster (e.g. the BBC), to provide full and complete discussion, analysis, unwarranted opinions, and general nonsense to help the teams on the ground get fully worked up about whether or not a player on the floor should stay there or be removed by the authorities for misleading the press. Thierry Henry will stand by a pretend screen and wave over a general area while describing how much it’s like a France ‘98 group stage match decision. Wayne Rooney will offer a couple of sentences up, without forming a useful opinion, but will be obviously very complimentary about how everyone is doing. Gary Neville will simply disagree with everyone. Once all broadcasters have submitted their conclusions, they are all disregarded, and they just settle on the one that is the most infuriating to the spectators. This is followed by an hydration break and more booing. Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tobyisaacscomedy.substack.com

  3. Jul 7

    Scribbles on the National Fridge

    We have sunk deep into the 2026 Men’s World Cup of Football and are now immersed in the daily tradition of people of all ages gathering to consume another match of titans. If you can call them that. Meanwhile, Wimbledon launched, and we are now unable to turn on the television without either sports or the news for the next two weeks. The cracks are beginning to show in the game that, apparently, “unites the world” by pitting nations against each other, with one victorious over all others. An odd definition of ‘unity’ that seems to think that, as long as they’re all in the same playground, they must be getting along. And this is basically what this tournament is showing. 1250 men from all over the world, for an incredibly expensive summer camp for boys. Thousands of Londoners, who couldn’t get the time off work, are watching these boys-who-never-had-to-grow-up misbehave in various different ways. I am now convinced, after watching mostly highlights (which is generous in games like ENG vs. GHA, where there is no possible way the 8-minute video could comprise more than 15 seconds of ‘high’ moments from the game), that Football is only for children. Grown-ups playing football professionally is like someone setting up a league for hungry hippos. Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Its infantile common name, ‘Footy’ is the first symptom that, perhaps, “Professional Footballer” is an oxymoron. Not Boots I start with my shoe rack, which may get a treatment of its own in a particular low inspiration week, but for now, I count my variety of footwear and notice that I have a few pairs of boots for important things like hiking. Boots are an important foot protector for extreme conditions, like rugged terrain and difficult trails. They offer ankle support and a solid, thick barrier between the foot and the unforgiving floor beneath. Not something you necessarily need when you’re jogging up and down a large patch of extremely level and well-cut grass. The delusion that football players are wearing “boots” when they are akin to slippers with their far-from-sensible colour schemes and lack of any reasonable defence against other players’ feet is only the opening case that football is played by children and is steered towards the immature. If they were truly boots, the conflict of defence to attack when one player may accidentally-on-purpose tread on another’s ankle would not be a foul, but just par for the course and play would continue. But no, they are slightly thicker than socks, with designs to match that elusive footwear. The carbon-fibre soleplate is utterly useless for going uphill. To ensure there is no confusion, please refer to them, in the future, as Football Booties. Not keepers In front of the goal, we are told, is the last line of defence of this most crucial game. The prestigious title “Goalkeeper” somewhat attempts to make one think of the esteemed custodian of the great gulf at either end of the grass that needs protecting from the monstrous onslaught en route. This is somewhat let down by the shorthand used. Let me illustrate: Wicket-keepers are not called wicketies Gatekeepers are not called Gaties Innkeepers are not called Innies Groundskeepers are not called groundies Housekeepers are not called Housies Lighthouse Keepers are not called lighties Beekeepers are not called beeies Zookeepers … I think I have made my point. This game, played by children, needs childish names for the player who wears a different costume from the rest of them. Booties and Goalies. It’s consistent. Not injured And these little grown children run around, avoiding each other, to make it from one side to the other. Unfortunately, as children, they seem to have terrible balance and the momentum of hybrid marble-dominoes; toppling over at the slightest breeze and then rolling for days. One player who currently has the larger marble between their feet is approached by another in another coloured outfit, and the mere air displacement is enough to send them flying into the advertising boards. This attention-seeking behaviour is derided by their parents until they get to middle-age, at which point it is considered fair play in this contest. They do this to draw the eye of the referee. If the ref happens to be looking somewhere else, like when his friend starts waving a flag in the sidelines, if a player is prostrate on the floor anywhere but not getting attention, they stop their wailing and get up again because they don’t want to miss out on what is presumably the promise of ice cream from the goalies’ cooler. Not able Which shows that all of these 1250 “men” are not really fit to do the one thing they’re supposed to do. At time of writing, there have been almost 2000 attempts at goals. The vast majority (~64%) have not even been within the confines of the frame. These are apparently professional athletes with a single purpose, and they have been training for it since they could barely walk (and, as explained above, still struggling with it) and still miss in most cases. They had one job and couldn’t do it. The number of times it just flies past the steel frame into the crowd above is just a demonstration of the disappointing result of casting children in this drama. This tournament has seen an average of ~3 goals per match, which the press are calling a “scoring boom” and the most exhilarating tournament since the 70s. I don’t think they have properly considered all the factors to make this statement the final death knell for Football. This is as good as it gets. We could have had 1968 goals, but the professional players, the best in the whole world, on the world’s stage, cannot do it. Because they never grew up. Exhilaration with a success rate of 12%, and yet these same people will have a meltdown if they have to scan an item at a self-checkout more than once. Not grown-ups Countless spectators stare at 22 kids running around on a flat grass surface, unable to do the one thing. Is football even really about goals? Sports pundits being so excited about 90 minutes of boredom shows that they should really be called sports surrogate “Parents” who celebrate their surrogate children having had a good old run around outside on world-wide sports month, and will pop their scribbles on the national fridge when they return. It is a childish sport played by children, and the surrounding industry should adjust accordingly. Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tobyisaacscomedy.substack.com

  4. Jun 30

    Colour Commentary on Colour Commentary

    It’s time to say what everyone else thinks as the BBC and ITV battle for who has the best coverage of the men’s football World Cup matches. The question isn’t who has the best coverage. The battle isn’t really a battle. It’s like a Labrador meeting a dachshund in Hyde Park. They will happily meet and sniff each other as domesticated animals, but we all know what would happen if civilisation hadn’t developed towards pet ownership quite the way it has. For those not following the analogy, BBC coverage is always far superior: no adverts and no Gary Neville. I resort to, should the video coverage be on ITV, attempts at getting the BBC radio commentary in sync, so at least some of the descriptions of what’s happening isn’t “good kick.” They have made one mistake in Danny Murphy, who will tell you, at some point during the matches he’s been asked to speak over, that at least one of the two teams is “under the cosh.” Often both. Often multiple times a minute. Often accidentally saying under the cloche instead. This can turn out to be true when a team does a surprising unveiling of a substitute or the French team, during a water break, has, instead, French Onion Soup, but this rarely happens. Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. The excitement that sports commentators have over the inconsequential (bar the economic boost from entertainment revenue generally) game is jarring, but there are always spaces in a football match where nothing is happening, resulting in the ‘colour commentary,’ where the less skilled orator will read from some notes they made a few days before, telling you things about one of the players that have been unverified on Wikipedia. I personally think that if we’re to add colour to this drab affair, why not pull some news stories about the players, to ensure they are humanised? Without mentioning anyone specifically, there are players that, on the football field, are considered towering Goliaths, that, anywhere else, you reflect on how someone escaped a jail sentence thanks to all that money. We enter a match, and within 15 minutes, one of the teams has scored. Thanks to what must be the commentators’ academy, where football becomes all-encompassing, the voiceover declares it’s “game over“ 16 minutes in after they concede a second goal. At which point, halfway through, the opposing team manage to sneak one in, and that is considered a “game changer”. Game changer, for me, is the most overused 2-word trope out there. The game has not changed. We are still watching a game of football. It would be a game-changer if we reached minute 67 and suddenly the losing team erect a mesh net across the centre of the field, hands everyone badminton rackets, and releases a swarm of shuttlecocks. This would also vastly improve badminton. When you’re just about adapted to the way the speakers are dealing with things in real time, we are subjected to them desperately trying not to repeat themselves as they watch a replay of everything that has just happened. This will mostly be the phrase “look at that.” Yes, Andy, we’re watching this with our eyes. Here are some other banned phrases for this year’s World Cup: * “It’s anyone’s game”; It isn’t, it is one of two teams’ games. * “They need a goal”; that is, indeed, the game in a nutshell. * “Fresh pair of legs”; to refer to a whole person, just by their lower appendages, is outrageous in today’s world. * Teams being on the “Front foot,” “back foot,” “mid-foot,” “top foot,” “bottom foot.” Unless you’re duct taping the whole team together, there are left feet and right feet. * The words “clinical,” “sloppy,” “danger area,” “cut out” are used as if this is some kind of action thriller. * “What a save!” “What a finish.” “What a disaster.” Let’s make an effort describing things, shall we? * “Gave the ball away.” Absolutely no generosity involved. * “Looking nervy.” It’s ‘nervous’, and they’re in front of all their mates, so of course they’ll have a bit of anxiety to do a good job. * “Off the woodwork.” Professional and regulated goals are made of reinforced aluminium or steel. You are permitted to use the phrase, “off the scaffolding.” * Any player names; they mean nothing to me, and you don’t pronounce them correctly. Just name the team and activity because I can’t tell which is which. Especially after watching the highlights of Canada v Czech Republic v Bosnia Herzegovina v South Korea. What is encouraged is the passive-aggressive British comments on the outlandish differences with international tournament hosts, like water breaks for ads, and the Mexican announcement for stadium attendances. e.g. “we’re in the United States of America, and we have a Mexican wave among the Switzerland supporters.” The only acceptable phrases, coming from the John Motson video game commentary of FIFA ‘97, are: “The ball’s in the air a lot today.” And “this is football, not boxing. ” Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tobyisaacscomedy.substack.com

  5. Jun 23

    The (p) is for Pedantry

    An architectural critique of modern British sports broadcasting, focusing on the bureaucratic sanitisation of human error and the insular narratives of the 2026 World Cup. I really wanted to make this feel like I properly researched for this one, just to truly ram home my point. But it just turned out to be too difficult to make things make sense. I just don’t think there’s an easy way to comb through all the numbers without causing yourself a serious migraine. I’ve been trying to consume the World Cup coverage and ended up getting overwhelmed as the first set of matches gave us the following: Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Messi now matches the highest scorer in the Men’s Football World Cup Goals. Mbappé did his own bit of work to be France’s all-time leading goalscorer. And all of this and more spews out of sports pundits’ mouths. I’m just at the back, getting pretty confused about the whole thing. Various records are being broken all over the place, and, to add to this, England is playing in the tournament, so the delusion of the commentary does some weird things in people’s minds. The usual thing happened in between matches involving 47 other countries that weren’t England, which was an insane amount of noise about the male England team. And it is just noise; incessant tolling bells of drivel that fill dead air while the England team just have to accept that they’ll never be as good as the women. When the match finally hit the screens, I could do little else than shake my head continually as the commentators got over-excited about the way England were playing, which hit its peak when Kane scored his second goal, and I heard: “Haaland: 2, Mbappé: 2, Messi: 3, Kane: 2… and counting.” The ITV Pundits presented the absolute elation at a second goal scored by Harry as if Kylian Mbappé, Lionel Messi, and Erling Haaland – who are not bound by the physical laws any longer – had left their opening matches and been met by Gandalf the White and led onto the ships to the Undying Lands. These immortal creatures were passing on over the horizon. This is now the age of men, represented by an incredibly tired gent from Chingford holding a ‘Powerade.’ I was particularly perturbed by the way the opening penalty was framed by the coverage I was watching. I’m sure others wouldn’t have said things in quite such an emphatic way. Before Kane stepped up to take this penalty (the first time) the statistics were, again, brought to the fore, letting the viewer know that Kane had only ever missed on a penalty at a World Cup back in 2022. What you may not realise is that there’s a series of qualifying factors to make up that number, which I became very quickly aware of as Kane’s penalty was saved by the Croat goalkeeper. Firstly, it’s called a “miss” even though he was definitely on target; it just didn’t go in. Apparently, when one is shooting a penalty, a few more dimensions come into play, and the target takes up space and time in a unique way so that if the ball doesn’t make it far enough towards the goal line, it is also like skying the thing into the fans behind. So now, we think he’s got another miss, and that’s ruining his streak, and are we now cursed forever, like trying to bend metal back to its original shape, only weakening the structure, and pretty soon the whole tent will collapse. But wait, VAR steps in and suddenly a technicality is seen by the coverage as cosmic destiny or superior tactical intelligence, or both: Kane is now a hybrid superhuman monolith. He knew he was going to miss, and his psychological mastery meant that he could force Croatia into the box before he kicked the ball to mean the first penalty was void, so he could have another go. And now Kane steps up again with what feels like double the pressure, somewhat invalidating his mental games, to have to do this all over. When he did score this time, it was as if everyone had used one of those ‘flashy things’ from Men in Black and completely forgotten that he had definitely missed a penalty 3 minutes before. The keeper had legitimately saved the attempt. But that now didn’t count, and Kane is lauded as not missing a World Cup penalty for “ages”. I, personally, think that penalties are their own thing, so shouldn’t count. The official graphics agree with me by just adding a little (p) next to the player name, just so everybody knows they didn’t do some magic strike from a crazy angle, or showcase incredible footwork to get past five defenders. They just stood on their own, in a large green box and had all the time and space to pop it in an exceptionally large fishing net. The (p) remains a reminder that no actual football took place. It’s like when Rooney, in his stop-start way, tries desperately to make excuses for Cristiano Ronaldo, who, at his age, shouldn’t really be taking up squad space, but has found a way to justify his presence by coming up with a new tactic which involves standing still and hiding from defenders. Madness. You can look forward to another reflection on how the BBC talks about England in a future publication. Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tobyisaacscomedy.substack.com

  6. Jun 16

    Office Sweepstakes

    It’s happened again. For some reason, morale was not boosted enough by the last windswept barbecue in May, resulting in 9 people from the office taking a couple of days off to recover due to undercooked meat. I spotted a chalkboard as I wandered past the coffee cart and thought nothing of it. When I got to work, before I could even perform my usual arrival routine of not sitting down and finding an unmarked coffee machine, I was told to pick a team, “James and the lads have already taken 7 of them. Only a fiver and it’s all for charity.” I couldn’t really say “I don’t believe in charity.” Although I think that would have been less controversial than what I actually thought, “I don’t believe in football.” Apart from anything else, it’s not all for charity. If it were for charity, you would just have a bucket there the whole time, and not cash in on some culturally interesting moment like an international football tournament hosted over three nations, one third of which we would rather not have to discuss the details of due to current ongoing political events. It’s not quite Qatar, but it does have a tinge we are avoiding. Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. “James and the lads” is something I hadn’t heard before. They were mostly just some colleagues who had Virgin Active memberships they talked about using, though I couldn’t see physical evidence of this, and enjoyed a sandwich from Birley. Undertaking a sandwich at Birley is a venture that contradicts what you would think of in a sandwich purchase. Whether you’ve been through the Subway production line or grabbed a pre-made Pret, walking into Birley is like stepping back and forward in time simultaneously. Imagine a rather careful and particular sandwich-making experience, handled by a specialised crew who will cradle your lunch through the necessary stages to build something remarkably simple: a sandwich. Imagine this experience in a small cobbled street, where you’ve spent a relaxed morning by a stream, wandered over for a meal, but discovered the entire population of London had the same idea. Queues out the door, moving so slowly because the Birley employees will not consider anything beyond what is directly in front of them. So if taking on that gauntlet makes you a “lad”, then yes, they are “lads.” I took internal pride in not being considered a “lad”, a triumph. Some idiot had chosen England in the sweepstakes. I had to check this was for the men’s tournament when I saw that the home team had already been chosen. We are in a political swirl where it’s hard to tell if people were really excited about England playing football a year ago, or something far worse, but it is now the case that wherever you go, you will be reminded that you are in England by all of the pubs. I didn’t know the odds, but could see a few other classic teams already favoured. As I continued down the list, I was more than a little excited as the list of nations had some representation I wasn’t expecting. Not just Scotland, either. New Zealand were on there. Had they retrained their rugby team? I’m assuming Canada, granted entry by default, were submitting their ice hockey team and hoping no one notices they’re not real football players when they aren’t fouled in the box and stay standing. Dead giveaway that. If you’re in the box, immediately fall down. It’s part of basic training. How else do you expect to not score and not get a penalty either? I went with Panama just for laughs. I wasn’t going to see the fiver again anyway. Kind of how Panama works, I think. Send your money offshore so it’s a bit like you have money, but you can’t ever actually use it for money, so why bother worrying about it? Entering the thing was my biggest mistake since pressing the wrong button on the lift and having to do the walk of shame past reception twice, and just to gett the stairs in the end. I was now in it. I was not in it to win it. I was in it to avoid conflict. I am known, as ever, as a team player. I got invited out for lunch to Birley’s, and I have regretted every subsequent decision from this point onwards. Please let this tournament conclude soon… Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tobyisaacscomedy.substack.com

  7. Jun 9

    Reform the Beautiful Game: An Intervention

    As the World Cup looms, I have a short treatise that I submit to the sporting professionals: The game of football is, on the whole, dull. Incredible skill is required by ~30 players (I include the subs out of a misplaced sense of respect) to last 90-100 minutes of running around in the grass and the entire result can be settled if one of them scores 1 point in the first 15 seconds. This is considered a national sport for many european countries, with religious followings that defy logic. Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. The evolution of the game from my perspective as someone who has no real affiliation with any football team (except the occasional confusing emotional surge when the England Women’s team do what the men’s team perpetually fail at), is one that requires todays players to have finesse, tricks, foresight, and a whole lot more to outsmart the opposing club. These displays of professional football-ness are occasionally entertaining and makes useful fodder for the social media teams that need to keep up with the trends of ‘content’. Hundreds of thousands of hours are spent pouring over statistics that feel like they go back centuries. Statements like, “Germany haven’t won against Italy after going 4 goals behind since the 1976 friendly where Italy had 7 players sent off for inappropriate use of rosary beads.” are presented as if that has any bearing on the team that has nothing in common with even the ghosts of the players aside from a vague sense of shared nationality. The gameplay has evolved, the rules have changed, the players have changed, the kit has changed. Throughout the match you will be given stats about possession, corners, fouls, offsides, the pass to tattoo ratio, kicks made by yellow football boots, which amount, in the end, to nothing. A team can have all of these in their favour and the outcome is: ‘so what?’ Goal or no goal is the only thing that matters. And I think everyone knows how misguided this obsession with statistics is, and spend careers not talking about goals for the majority of the time, with entire channels dedicated to the moving and changing of teams that players are doing, because they know, deep down, that this whole thing is really boring. Here is my proposal to finally make this game ‘beautiful’ without just being told that’s what the game is with zero evidence. Get rid of the offside rule. The offside rule is, frankly, the most annoying bit of the game. It is the most egregious, infuriating flaw in the structure of human competition. “Oh, they were offside.” Entire tactics and teams are built around the misplaced goal of making the opposition find themselves in an offside position, and the constant looking to VAR for offside checks is exhausting. Errant shoulder blades are not a thing. But the thing is, if the attacking players get closer to the goal than the defenders, then they’re more likely to score and that’s what the game’s about. Eliminating this rule will stop the nonsensical flags waving to put a stop to the genuine celebration and make the game a lot more dramatic. No goals means field attrition An important aspect to goal scoring is the way to make sure teams are truly, religiously, solely focused on goal scoring, because I don’t think they are. Under these new rules, any team that hasn’t scored a goal loses a player every 5 minutes from the 45 minute mark. This will make scoring a goal in the first half really important. The first player to be removed from either team is the goal keeper and the player can only be returned through substitution once the team scores. By the 85th minute there are 2 players in orange and pink high-vis vests so that they can 1) make each other out in the bleak vast empty grassland and 2) differentiation from the security staff. I can’t stress enough how much goals make the football matches worth watching. Minimum 3 goals. If you don’t score 3 goals after 90 minutes, another 30 minutes are played. if it’s still less than 3, another 30 minutes are added. The principle: just keep going. I’m sorry, but a game with only 1 goal is worse than a game with no goals, but I can’t be doing with settling for a draw. You’re watching Chelsea and Crystal Palace waffle about not scoring and you’ve got a barbecue planned later; the players need to feel the pressure from the crowd that goals need scoring for this to be a match, otherwise refunds. No more goal kicks; only corners Goal kicks are boring. Only penalties I’m not quite sure how to implement this gracefully, but, in order to suitably take the feedback on football from my wife, it’s important we acknowledge that, for some, penalties are truly the only good bit of football. The rest is fluff. In order to accommodate this viewpoint, the coin toss at the beginning of the match should not be to decide whatever it decides today. I know what this is for in tennis, but in football, it’s irrelevant… unless it’s to decide if we, in fact, decide the winner with just penalties. Flip a coin and then everyone floods to one side of the pitch to take penalties. This adds to the already inherent drama of penalties, by potentially meaning that after the 2 hour build up, getting to the stadium, finding your way through to your seat, listening to whatever it is you listen to while you watch the players warm up and the squad announcements, you are then presented with a 10 minute penalty shootout and head home. But you have equal chance of getting a game that could go on for days, finally giving you the quidditch experience you read about in those books. No more conventional penalties; only Goalies. Somewhat fixing the challenge set above of continuous play until the glorious 3 goal minimum, it does eliminate then penalty shootout in standard play; coin toss notwithstanding. While you probably think I want to have no more penalties because as a Brit I have the drama of losing at penalties drilled into me as someone who finds himself in England during the tournaments where England participate. The historic English penalty performance is always something used to fill a 15 minute quiet period in the coverage. This is drilled into you by every analysis on every channel and sports outlet. The message is clear: England and penalties is basically hell. You would be half correct. But if you’re going to resort to the modern equivalent of the gladiator appearances in the Colosseum, then make it interesting; only goalies. Strikers have had their chance and failed. Let’s have the two remaining players who can barely use their feet give us some physical comedy. But also, penalties for fouls in the box is silly. Just more free kicks. Add to the chaos. I’m hoping this reaches the FIFA World Cup referees before the tournament kicks off, because I have offered a blueprint on how to improve the game infinitely for the better, make it much more watchable, and make it about what it should be: Goals. I have wasted too many hours watching the ‘wrong’ game, where the team on paper classed as the better team is playing, only to have them play to the tactics of the tournament. I should have watched Iceland vs Serbia. Last time I missed many a glorious match of, and you will forgive my bluntness here, GOALS! Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tobyisaacscomedy.substack.com

  8. Jun 2

    The Commuter’s Grudge: A Tale of Two Coffees

    I have been living in what feels like a village, just outside of the M25 for a couple of months, due to… reasons. It is classed as a town and has a train station that is suitably functional; with the newsagent kiosk stocking the local papers as it tries to deny the proximity to the BIG CITY, with headlines that can be easily misinterpreted, due to the amateur nature of the journalism. One headline recently read, “Horror after teen stabbed by park”. This could easily be misread as a plot where a local park becomes sentient, starts stabbing teenagers, and that’s not even the worst part about the story… read on if you dare. That’s not what this is about. The scene is set. Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Just outside the entrance to the railway station there is often a long queue of taxis, hopeful for ad-hoc fares in a growing app-based culture. And tucked away, you’d barely notice it, which is part of it’s charm and joy and salve to my emotions of not being in the middle of zone 1, is a coffee cart. A three-wheeled number, with a barista and fully functional espresso appliance sticking out of the boot. I can still get a decent flat white. The relief is palpable But so is the familiarity as I get to the top of hill; another coffee shop. Confusingly, this one doesn’t open until 8am, so that’s already off to a bad start. Village life is being forced upon the local establishments, in a way that defies the surrounding area. And this coffee shop is, almost thankfully, modelled after the coffee shops of inner London. You may read about them in my previous work. This familiarity is welcomed. I can get a decent flat white and be served with the attitudes and elevated price that I thought would only be possible within walking distance of the Embankment. You would think this would be enough to convince people that this is what we should be doing here. Close enough to London, but I don’t have to hop on a train to be questioned about my milk choice. It isn’t. The management have put up a sign to try to justify their pricing structure. This is that sign. At first glance, it’s the passive aggressive nature that really doubles down on trying to be a big city coffee house with big city prices. But wait there’s more. Starting with: The coffee cart by the station gives me the same flat white for over a quid cheaper. AND he’s an easy bloke. “What would you like, mate?“ “Flat white, please, mate.” “Sugar?” “No thanks.” The sugar question is important. The man simply asks, ‘Sugar?’ and adds it during the brewing process—recognising, quite rightly, that the structural integrity of a hot beverage should not be left to the stupid person who bought it. And this whole interaction is ~25% cheaper which, in a “village” like this, is significant enough to be a class chasm. This man has set this up right by the station where city workers make it a morning routine to hover and chat around this cart before getting their train to the trading floors or whatever it is they think it is they’re doing that’s important in a suit in the city of London, and have this little extra community microchosm. I am invading that by being short, quiet, and untalkative, getting my coffee promptly, but not being made to feel bad about that in any way. The most beautiful moment is when I am handed the cup and I haven’t been asked “Eat In or Take Away?” I wouldn’t dare get so familiar that I get in to the only ‘eat in’ seat available, the passenger seat, because I wouldn’t even do this in a regular shop. I’m already feeling very exposed because I can’t hide myself in the generic hubbub created by the low conversation and background music of a brick and mortar coffee world. Let’s head up the road, shall we? It’s bad enough I have had to traipse to the top of the hill anyway, so let’s explore if this static version of coffee vendor can outdo the station cart. Spoiler: no. Maybe I’ve arrived by walking up the road from the station, or I’ve just finished a run, but either way, I’m making as much effort as possible to portray that I cannot get out any more words than I’ve already volunteered, “Flat white, please.” As if they’ve read my previous work, the next minute is spent what feels like completing an identity challenge when you call your bank. “What milk?” “Hot or iced?” “Cash or card?” “Eat in or Take away?” “Name for the order?” An internal invented desperation for coffee forces me through the answers, regular, hot, are you serious? Take Away. But I’m not happy. To be fair, my wife tells me to smile when I am happy, so I don’t think this would matter to them anyway. Order placed my eye catches the sign above. Let me draw you to the details of the justified cost of the oat flat white at £4.50: * VAT = 75p * Staff = 94p * Rent = 70p * Business rates = 32p * Ingredients and cup = 55p * Everything else = 66p * Profit = 13p This has serious problems. Presumably putting VAT up top is to point you to blame the government for the higher prices; kind of missing the fact that this is not an operational expense it’s a pass through. It’s a redirect that tries to make your eyes look away while they work on their margins. “We are in this financial tragedy together, we would appreciate you obeying our laminated instructions.” The everything else category is, supposedly, going to utility, merchant fees, insurance, that Spotify Premium subscription being put to incredibly poor use. Hiding behind an everything else is a bit of an odd thing to do. Especially when business rates is already called out. What else are they hiding in there? Are the beans being ground under the feet of private school children as part of their diverse education and extra tuck shop money? What started as a bit of a premium, but accepted, price has suddenly forced me into a guilt trip for thinking that this price was unjustified. Of course, for the eagle eyed among you, the price is, indeed unjustified. The sign doesn’t actually add up. “About 13p” tries to mask the terrible mathematics being performed in front of everyone, but, if this sign is supposed to make me agree to the price, then I’d like 45p back please. Total = 405p (£4.05) Why did they feel the need to do this? I don’t go into the local butchers and ask about the lease agreement associated with the sausages. I don’t get drawn into the interconnected legalities behind a green grocers celery sticks. I don’t get asked to drop some extra pennies in the coffee cart’s diesel fund. In fact, he’s got a little table for me to help myself to a free Biscoff biscuit if I so choose. The final moment of payment asks if I want to tip them. They are taking payment before they’ve made the drink and I’m already gritting my teeth at their questions that delayed them starting the process. So no, you are not going to get a tip. You’re getting a magical 45p anyway. I would like to hope that these businesses offering an outside moment for community in the form of hot bean juice by various names have a future, but a cart doing the core service feels like it’s got a better chance at surviving, especially if more people like me move into the area. The Shop may last but, more likely, the owner of the establishment will be appearing in court in 2028 for embezzlement. When they ask how on earth this could have happened, the sign will be the only exhibit required. It reads, “rising taxes and costs are killing independent hospitality.” This might be true in the general sense, but I think, in this case, it is abundantly poor accounting practices. Thanks for reading Dispatches from the Pavement! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tobyisaacscomedy.substack.com

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Because if I look up, I might have to make eye contact. Voiceovers of my Substack essays. tobyisaacscomedy.substack.com

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