Arsenal to unveil statue of man checking his texts

THE next statue to be unveiled outside the Emirates Stadim will be of someone looking really bored.

Sculptor Wayne Hayes was asked to capture the spirit of a typically sepulchral afternoon in North London and the statue was modelled by a 30 year-old PR consultant booking a restaurant table.

Arsenal chairman Peter Hill-Wood said: “The piece, entitled Midtable Ennui, is incredibly lifelike – we stood it next to a season ticket holder for a few matches and he thought it was a steward.

“It’s going to be the first in several new works by Hayes, including the tableaux Leaving Ten Minutes Early and a painting called Empty Red featuring banks of unfilled seats during a league cup match.”

Hayes initially worked in the stadium to soak up the mood of the game but players complained that the noise of his hammer and chisel was distractingly loud.

He finished the statue in his studio on an intravenous saline and Red Bull drip to counteract the drowsiness and admitted the most challenging task was trying capture an expression that combined hope with utter indifference.

He said: “I’m used to recreating all the big human emotions such as despair and joy so it was a real stretch to sculpt the look a man gets when he’s paid £1300 a year to watch Mertesacker try and run fast.

“I hope the fans like my work but even if they don’t, the worst that will happen is them chanting half-heartedly about it on their way home.”

Everyone still pretending they know what they're talking about

THREE days after the exploding Euro-summit, everyone is still pretending that they know what is going to happen.

As people who are sceptical about Europe and people who want to have sex with it continued to shout, experts said there was no sign of either side conceding their ‘facts’ are just opinions and not particularly good ones at that.

Professor Henry Brubaker, of the Institute for Studies, said: “At some point someone with a fancy title is going to say ‘I haven’t the faintest fucking idea’ and that will hopefully start a chain reaction of people admitting they’re full of shit.

“Meanwhile, as we saw from the poll in the Himmler on Sunday, more than 60% of Britons think David Cameron was right to be stitched up by a little Frenchman who’s so stupid that he’s been having sex with Carla Bruni for the last five years.”

And yesterday, as Labour’s Ed Miliband said he would fight to ensure that British road signs would be in English as well as German, deputy prime minister Nick Clegg raised the obviously-not-knowing-what-he’s-talking-about stakes.

He told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Reads the Papers: “Because of the thing I originally said was my idea too, I am now absolutely convinced that we will all end up in a little boat in the middle of the Atlantic doing unspeakable things to each other.”

But the Tory right hailed Mr Cameron’s abject humiliation by a tiny French person insisting that, weather permitting, Britain could now open a trade route to the spice rich islands of the Andaman Sea.

Something called a ‘Douglas Carswell MP’ added: “Thank goodness it’s December 1722 otherwise this country would be up the Bay of Bengal without a mariner’s astrolabe.”

The latest bout of clueless certainty began on Friday when Britain and the EU both refused to compromise over a currency that doesn’t work and a financial sector that wants to kill everything.

EU leaders claimed their pathetic monetary system was slightly less idiotic and crapulent than the City of London, while Britain insisted the Euro was at least three per cent more psychotic than the insanely dangerous sex offender that is the UK financial industry.

But as critics accused Britain of wanting to have its cake and eat it, experts stressed the cake would eventually eat Britain, shit it out and then move to Hong Kong anyway.

Meanwhile there was a growing consensus that even if the Eurosceptics do turn out to be vaguely right about anything it would be best for everyone if they left Britain and set up an incestuous, dungaree-wearing society on a disused oil rig.