Did you know that they actually played competitive badminton? Really, I had no idea. I thought it was just a laugh, like shove ha’penny and tiddlywinks. But apparently they have, like, proper Badminton competitions and they even play it at the ‘lympics. I thought it was a joke when the BBC Olympics Channel number 1064281 was showing Badminton, but no, really, they’re doing it for, like, medals and stuff.
And blow me, they’re serious about it. So serious that they’re willing to lose matches, too. Yeah, I didn’t get that either, but apparently everyone in Wembley Arena went apeshit mental last night because China, South Korea and Indonesia tried to lose their matches.
Brilliant! I remember playing Badminton on holiday in the south of France and frankly, I was bored waiting for the shuttlecock to come down, I could have been doing something far more interesting like reading a book or washing my nasal hair or something like that, yawn – but hey – each to their own. Anyway, I was only 12 and my mum was beating me and I thought – well, let her enjoy the moment – and I hit the shuttlecock into the net. When it eventually came down. I mean, it took half the afternoon to come down anyway.
So apparently these teams had already gone through to the next round and they thought that by losing, they’d have an easier match in the next round. Christ, who organised these games? Oh, we did. Shit. Anyway, so what they did was they started hitting the shuttlecock out of the court and into the net, which is probably harder than hitting it back into the court, so kudos for that.
Next thing you know they’re setting up panels to investigate it and they’re having talks about the “scandal”. Maybe they’ll get chucked out for “not having tried hard enough” which is probably the most embarrassing way of being thrown out of the Olympic Games. I mean drugs is bad enough, but not trying hard enough. That’s a lifetime of heads hanging in shame.
Here’s a potential solution – make them play each other, but load the shuttlecock with dynamite. That’ll make for an interesting game for the public who paid fuckloads of cash to sit next to the empty corporate seats, and for anyone who managed to find Channel number 1064281 on Freesat.