A guide to Blackburn's new manager, with Brian Sewell

AND so Samuel AllardicÃ© is cast into the stygian abyss of failed Blackburn Rovers allenatori. But which new Theseus will come forth to slay the Minotaur that is the fair red rose of Lancashire’s unfulfilled desires?

Chris Hughton
One can only imagine the horrors Mr Hughton has endured, leaving the bosom of London to earn his stipend in the wastelands of the north east. He is Siegfried Sassoon, idealistically volunteering for the managerial trenches only to be emotionally shattered by years of mud, rain and Shearer. Still, the boy’s a grafter. 12-1

Sven Goran Eriksson
Fellow Swede, August Strindberg, wrote his plays entirely in the nude while his secretary played the lyre and danced around his studio wearing nothing but a lavender-scented handkerchief. I feel Eriksson would approve of such methods and would therefore be unlikely to move to Blackburn, where the ladies wear enormous Y-fronts and rough, hessian camisoles. 22-1

Steve Kean
I understand this fellow was the previous understudy for the role and as such should be chased out of the building with a broom forthwith. Nothing good can come from giving the hired help ideas above their station as I learnt to my cost after allowing my gardener to warm his toes on my hotplate. 17-1

Martin Jol
Had Kenneth Grahame set Wind In The Willows amongst a group of mafiosi, this is what Toad would have looked like. If truth is beauty then this man is sixteen stone of outright deceit. Too, too ghastly. 36-1

Grayson Perry
Better known for his work in ceramics, I feel Grayson could offer a new aesthetic to a team perennially bogged down in the prosaic cul-de-sac of their own balls. One feels the lives of the annual ticket holders at Ewood Park may be enriched if their voucher granted them regular exposure to sado-masochistic pottery rather than a ‘David Dunn’. 3-1

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Brian Thompson named Butcher And Meat Wholesaler's 'man of the year'

BRIAN Thompson, the Grantham butcher who set up a website, has been chosen as ‘Man of the Year’ by Butcher and Meat Wholesaler magazine.

The presitigous trade journal cited Thompson’s uncompromising use of information technology to bring a new level of synchronised interconnecitivity to almost one in eight of the population of the Lincolnshire market town.

Thompson was the surprise choice ahead of Doncaster’s Ian Blackmore, Peterborough’s David Kenwright and Wikileak’s Julian Assange.

Editor, Martin Bishop, said: “Brian Thompson has wired together a twelfth of Grantham into a single meat network, creating a beef and pork-based social entity almost twice the size of Caythorpe.

“We have entered the thompsonandsons.co.uk age and Brian Thompson is the man who brought us here.”

But Thompson’s accolade provoked online fury after the readers’ vote was won comfortably by Ian Blackmore.

Meanwhile others insisted it didn’t matter because it was just some fucking magazine read by a load of ponces who think they’re better than you.

Tom Logan, a Blackmore voter, said: “This is about money versus freedom. Ian was giving away beef cheeks for next to nothing, just so people could see what they tasted like. He’s the butcher who upset the apple cart.”

But Martin Bishop insisted: “More people eat meat than, say, use one of the non-meat based social networks like Facebook, ergo Brian Thompson must be more important than Mark Zuckerberg.

“Did I just say ‘ergo’?”

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