Letters- 3/3/26: "Why is Freed From Desire Played at Every Major Sporting Event?"

News, News, News, News receives over 250,000,000 letters every week, employing an army of unpaid interns to sort through them and meticulously label and rank them based on how unhinged they reckon the sender is. As a favour to these interns, we allow them to keep the ones they deem most unhinged, and encourage them to spark friendships with the letter-writers, as a way of combating Britain's ever-growing loneliness epidemic. 

This week's chosen letter comes from Anthony, from Hackney, London. He asks:

Dear NNNN, 

Why is Freed From Desire by Italian singer Gala played at every major sporting event? The song is usually played at the climax of the tournament when the team lift the trophy. I find it peculiar, and a little bit jarring.  I don't object to music, and I certainly don't object to sport in a philosophical sense. What I object to is a song with such a clearly-defined conceptual meaning, i.e being "freed from desire", being used for something where the desire to compete and succeed is very much a prerequisite. 

A friend suggested to me the other day that all my anxieties were unfounded and the reason Freed From Desire is played so much is because fans love to say "Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na", I utterly refute this. Yes "Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na-Na" is very enjoyable to sing, but the brief adrenalistic whirlwind people experience when singing this only serves to hide how damaging the underlying message of the song is to athletes striving for sporting excellence. 

The first chorus goes: 

"My love has got no money, he's got his strong beliefs"

"My love has got no power, he's got his strong beliefs"

"My love has got no fame, he's got his strong beliefs"

"My love has got no money, he's got his strong beliefs"

What I struggle to comprehend is how lyrics like this could be appealing for fans of football, in particular. The average Premier League footballer does have money, power and fame, and a lot of them have repeatedly shown they don't hold strong beliefs when it comes to political matters. If anything, their beliefs seem to be guided by the materialistic worship of money, power and fame, it's only in a scenario when they feel one of these things are threatened that they might develop so-called strong beliefs.

This chorus I find equally-concerning:

"Freed from desire, mind and senses purified"

"Freed from desire, mind and senses purified"

"Freed from desire, mind and senses purified"

I worry that if players' senses were literally purified, they'd lose the razor-sharp instincts they need to succeed on the field of play, being able to make split-second decisions and reacting to the positioning of opposition players. Purification would lead to stultification. Our minds need imperfect and challenging situations to grow and become more durable and respond to problems more efficiently. Playing this at the height of a tournament when a team has won a trophy is irresponsible and downright insulting to the athletes, showing a clear lack of foresight on behalf of the stadiums who continue to play this song. 

I find the lyrics of this song eerily-hypnotic in their ability to lull the listener into a tranquil state of mindlessness, free from the senses and bereft of ambition. Athletes rely on ambition and intensity, there's nothing "pure" about these things, and if anything, athletes admit to feeling confined by their own ambition, with the sense of freedom only coming when they've already achieved the goal they used this ambition and intensity to achieve. 

They're basically telling a group of high-level athletes that their work and toil means nothing, that what they should've been striving for all along was sensual purity and a life free from desire and want. This, as you can imagine, would be a hugely-distressing message to hear when you've just put your body through 90 minutes of physical exertion. 

I hope the relevant authorities, whether that's Lisa Nandy, FIFA, or the FA look into this issue and find a more suitable song to play at such moments of collective bliss. I'm not prepared to see the next generation of British athletes lose that inner drive that pushes them to achieve incredible, virtuosic feats of athletic brilliance. 

Yours sincerely,

Anthony

Lexicographers Discover the Long-Lost Meaning Behind the Phrase "Good Bloke"

The term "good bloke", used by middle-aged men to describe other men they've met who were agreeable but unremarkable, has long been shrouded in mystery with regards to it's linguistic origins. 

But lexicographers and linguists have announced they've discovered the term, contrary to popular belief, has ancient, mythological origins, which could be grounded in scientific fact as well. 

NNNN's own lexicographer Volumnia Clifford-Bayonet claims the theory that the slang originated from Irish or Romani slang in 19th century London is a bunch of "codswallop", and she hopes there will be lengthy prison sentences for people who continue to propagate a "poorly-researched, flight of fancy". 

"Yes, I have an authoritarian personality, especially for a lexicographer, I'm a Protestant woman who supports Labour, but only when they have a sensible, right-wing leader, lock me up, thought police! But no, we did some research and we found that the phrase goes way further back than we originally thought. Can you cut all that political stuff out the article when you print it? I don't want the left-wing women I lunch with to know I vote Labour".

Clifford-Bayonet suggests the phrase has pre-Roman origins. "We managed to uncover and translate a whole volume of previously hidden mythological texts belonging to some sort of cult which sprang up in the Celtic societies of pre-Roman Britain. I would divulge how we found them, but it involved a lot of potentially illegal digging, and a lengthy Ebay skirmish with rival buyers when the volumes were stolen by an opportunistic member of our team and put up for sale".

What Clifford-Bayonet and her colleagues found "astonished and unsettled" them.

"Well the illustrations and the text in the volumes seem to refer to "bloke" as this great, writhing mass of pulsating, sentient, hairy flesh attached to a cliff face, made up of sacrificed leaders. The volumes follow a very peculiar narrative of men travelling to this bloke led by a so-called "blokescutter", sacrificing one of their own to it, then cutting a portion of the bloke with a large scythe and taking it back to their farmstead communities to dine on the bloke meat with their families."

"If the meat from the bloke was deemed worthy by the community, people would say "good bloke", much to the relief of the travelling men, but if the meat was bad, they'd say "bad bloke", and the blokescutter who led the men to the bloke would be the next man to be sacrificed."

"It seems that this community was at great pains to please the bloke, worshipping it as a deity, but in a pre-Christian sort of way, so theologically we find this perverse and barbaric, and we hope it doesn't spurn any more Pagan revivals, as these things are really awkward for the police to suppress."

The deification of the flesh known as bloke is rooted in the belief that the Earth is a giver and nourisher of life and produces bountifully for those who worship her. In the case of this obscure Celtic cult, the bloke is the meat of life, and has the potential to feed a large community plentifully for many months, so long as it's pleased with the leadership of the blokescutter.

"The blokescutter was not only responsible for the cutting of the bloke, he was the moral leadership of the community, the flesh that the bloke spoke through, and would've been a considerably fierce soldier and military strategist as well."

"If the bloke didn't approve of the blokescutter's leadership and military decisions, the flesh that he cut and brought back to the community would end up rotting away very quickly, and would be dry, tough flesh, hard to get your teeth into, hard to digest, and just very fatty and cumbersome to swallow". 

It would often be several weeks before the bloke meat could be deemed good or bad by the communities.

"Sometimes it was instant, one passage of the volumes tells of a particularly bad blokescutter called Gruffudd, a serial gambler who lost 12 good horses to a rival community, had a noticeable lisp that affected his ability to rouse the men of his tribe in battle, and was too "Good-natured and gentle" to the women and children in his community."

"The bloke judged this blokescutter to be unworthy of the flesh, and when the bloke meat he brought back instantly rotted and stank up the entire holding with it's meaty fumes, he was imprisoned until the next blokescutter was elected, and eventually brought to the bloke to be sacrificed".

Clifford-Bayonet is unsure of how the condemned former blokescutters were sacrificed, but the illustrations seem to show the unfortunate soul crawling toward the bloke, begging for forgiveness as he gets closer, before being slowly and painfully consumed by long tentacles with teeth protruding from the flesh. 

"It seems to be a very grizzly culture, and the texts we've translated so far point toward the condemned blokescutter feeling a great deal of shame that he's not been able to provide for the community, and this shame manifests itself in this long, arduous crawl to the bloke, almost like a suicide ritual, except he would've been forced. I suppose no one in the community ever thought to ask the bloke whether it required a sacrifice, but perhaps it didn't speak their language, or speak at all, or perhaps they genuinely believed this was the only way to organise society."

She also pointed toward several instances of revered, almost god-like blokescutters, who ruled their communities for many years and only cut good flesh from the bloke. 

"There's a lengthy portion in one volume devoted to a gentleman named Madog, who was revered as a strong and fiery leader. He conquered many tribes and was feared and respected by his own community, enforcing a strong moral discipline amongst his people, with any bad behaviour in his tribe being punished by branding, or being slapped with a massive fish by the augurs of the tribe."

"The bloke seemed to approve of Madog to such an extent that every time he led a new expedition to cut the bloke meat, the meat would improve in quality every time, becoming ever more succulent and mouth-watering. This was declared a "golden age" by the anonymous chroniclers who wrote these volumes, with Madog dying in his 70s, a rarity for the time, surrounded by luscious meats, beautiful women and his brethren trembling at his feet."

The researchers are unsure of how this cannibalistic flesh cult died out, though portions of the book refer to anxieties of a "great flame" that will destroy the bloke, leaving the tribe to rely on other sources of food, and develop a more sophisticated and sustainable agricultural society, based on mutual cooperation, free from greed and exploitation, and rooted in respect for the Earth mother. 

"Whether this great fire actually happened, we don't know. But we know that they did eventually stop relying on the bloke to feed their tribes. This could've been because the bloke got annihilated somehow, or just slowly sagged into a lifeless clump of inedible meat, or became absorbed into the cliff face, or they discovered a better way of living, we just don't know, but we think this is where the phrase "good bloke" came from. We spent a lot of time and resources researching this, so if there's anyone in the lexicography community, or the linguistics community, or the folklore community who wish to discredit our findings and call us "pseudo-lexicographers with an unhealthy penchant for obscure mythology and abnormal religious beliefs", do me a favour and cry to Susie Dent". 

How the term "good bloke" survived and changed it's meaning is also a mystery.

"For the phrase to go through this prolonged metamorphosis from it's original meaning, as in "good meat, we like this meat, it's good bloke" to "he's a nice bloke, I trust him, but I'm pretty indifferent to him", is fascinating to us, but we theorised that perhaps throughout the next millennium of Britain, through the Anglo-Saxons, the Roman occupation and after, old tales of the bloke had somehow survived and were being passed on by oral storytellers generation to generation."

"We think eventually the folk process changed the meaning of the term "good bloke" from meaning "good meat" to "good leader" instead. And then eventually the idea of what a leader should be became so mutated, that we now refer to anyone who seems agreeable enough as a "good bloke", without ever being aware of the ancient, bloody truth behind the phrase."

The news of these findings has already emboldened sections of the far-right to adopt the phrase for leaders they deem "worthy of the flesh" with Donald Trump being referred to as "a top bloke". AI-generated memes show the President next to a writhing mass of veiny flesh with a large blade, with some Christian organisations adding Jesus to the photos, lest the memes have any pre-Christian influence on America's right. Trump himself appears to be aware of the meme, posting on Truth Social "I think NNNN's research is very beautiful, very beautiful, I think i'm a good bloke, huh? I think i'm the top bloke, I'm the best bloke, and i'm going to cut the meat for you and it's going to be beautiful."

Clifford-Bayonet says she won't be drawn in to a debate over how the phrase should be used. 

"It's not for me to tell people what to believe, but I hope the public do become more widely aware that this phrase has a darker meaning. People should be responsible with language. If you're talking about your friend Tony down the pub who does removals, don't call him a "good bloke", it might lead people to think he possesses the intrinsic qualities of a blood-thirsty cult leader, and this could lead to civil unrest and paranoia."

132 Charity Shop Volunteers Released from Prison After "Cult" Claims

Over 100 British charity shop volunteers across the country have been released from prison today after being arrested on suspicion of belonging to a cult that worships items with Jimmy Savile's face on. 

Police were tipped off that a growing amount of volunteers stored these items in their house, with officers believing the suspects wanted to sell them as part of some deranged paedophile cult. After a lengthy, tax payer-funded investigation, it was revealed that there was a simple explanation as to why the volunteers owned these items. 

Cath Jones, a volunteer at the British Heart Foundation Shop in Gloucester, was described as "utterly shocked" by her arrest, but insists to the public that she did no wrong. 

"Well, i've been volunteering here for 20 years, ever since I retired, and i've seen all sorts of items pass through here, let me think, oh gosh, off the top of my head, air fryers, breast pumps, University of Gloucestershire Rowing Champions 2009 T-Shirts, filthy Moomins with one eye missing, a cracked Toby jug of Admiral Nelson and Gran Turismo 4 on Playsation 2."

Cath also admitted some of the items that were donated were rather unsavoury.

"Yeah, well before Operation Yew Tree and all that, we had all kinds of items with Jimmy Savile's face slapped on the front. He was a beloved figure, I was born in the 40s, so I'm not young enough to have been a fan of his, but my daughter loved Jim'll Fix It as a child, she once asked him to bring back hanging for people who graffitied in children's playgrounds, this was a different time, you see? We all wanted to bring the rope back in those days. Some of the harder bastards still do around here, but i've softened a bit, I think there's too much risk involved with it, I prefer lethal injection, or firing squad. But it doesn't matter, cause' he didn't grant my daughter's wish, and she wasn't invited on the show, she was fucking fuming for weeks".

"For years before the allegations came to light in 2012, we had all sorts of Jim memorabilia, mugs, slippers, key rings, lamps with his glowing face forming into a wax-like blob dissolving in and out of shape in a translucent liquid. So much tat, but that's mainly what we sell here. We had Will Young's auto-biography donated the other day, alongside a framed picture of David Essex in a cardigan with a golden retriever from the 1970s."

When the police investigation into Savile came to light, charity shops across the country rushed to remove all icons of Savile in their shops, causing widespread disruption to the sector. Eric Mahon, from Crowthorne, who suffers from OCD, describes an "epidemic of moral panic" amongst charity shop volunteers. 

"Well, the Savile stuff was always kept by the window, beneath the scarfs, but by the window, always there, never anywhere else, If someone bought one of the items, like a Savile snuff box, or a Jim'll Fix It space hopper, i'd go into our store room and replace said item with another Savile item, and thus it continued, year on year, it worked like clockwork, really. We had a glut of Savile merchandise, though the biggest surge came in 2012 when the crimes came to light. It was utterly appalling, but my first thoughts were "where am I going to relocate the items to?" People were coming in their droves bringing these Savile items in, I would stand by the door of the shop imploring people to just dispose of the items instead of donating them. I felt like I was guarding the door of the Manger in Bethlehem, telling the wise men not to bring any more gifts, it felt very un-Christian of me, but I found solace in the fact that the Mind charity shop in Crowthorne is not, and never will be the birthplace of the Son of God."

Linda Summers, of the Rhyl Cancer Research charity shop, set up a Facebook group for volunteers across the country, to discuss what to do with the items.

"It was ridiculous, all these horrible crimes were coming to light and we had no idea what to do with all this tat, people would be furious if they saw Jimmy Savile Fun Run t-shirts on display in our shop! It was a bit of a crisis, so I thought I needed to consult my brethren across the country to figure out what to do."

Summers, alongside other vocal members of the Facebook group, made the decision to take all the items home with them, but not to destroy them. 

"Well, we don't like waste, you see? And you never know what things like this will be worth in 30 years, either we've been storing boxes full of morbid memorabilia of a convicted sex offender in our attics for years, or these boxes were our grand-children's future. Because these things might appreciate in value, and be very desirable for future buyers, and who knows? Nowadays we have Antiques Roadshow, in 30 years we might have a more anarchic, pirate version of that, where only darker, objectionable, politically-incorrect items will be sold, and I suppose Russell Brand will be the host, and it'll be on the Internet, but that's just my guess, I don't know how television works".

After the agreement took place, Summers and all the volunteers across the country hurriedly took the items home and stored them away in their attics, away from prying eyes.

"I don't know about everyone else, but I drew massive red crosses on the boxes, to signal to anyone who happens to be in my attic that the boxes were condemned or perhaps ridden with a pre-enlightment disease. It was my deeply-held belief that this would be enough to deter anyone from opening them, but I was wrong, and in hindsight, the red cross may have been more of an inviting symbol, and less so a deterrent".

In late 2021, a number of people had reported these volunteers to the police, claiming they belonged to some kind of cult that worshipped these items. Summers was amongst those who were arrested.

"I think it was probably those workmen who were insulating my loft. I remember they came into my house all happy and cheerful, I made them a cup of tea, they got to work in the loft, then they came down all ashen-faced and white, like they'd seen a ghost, or been frightened by something on a primal level. They finished the work, I paid them, then they left my house as quick as they could. I looked out the window and I saw one of them throw up on the pavement before getting in their van and speeding off."

Summers believes these workmen then started spreading rumours of a charity shop volunteer cult on forums like 4chan. 

"I started getting weird men in their 20s with neck beards congregating outside my house. They'd spam my Facebook feed with pizza emojis and Illuminati gifs. My daughter came back from school one day with a Pepe the frog balloon a stranger had handed to her. I suppose I just thought this is what young men do nowadays, and i'll just have to suck it up. I went out to talk to one of them and ask what the fuck it is they wanted". 

When Summers discovered the extent of the conspiracy against her and the other volunteers, she quickly notified the others and instructed them to destroy the memorabilia. 

"We all gathered in this field in Wiltshire at night, everyone, from across the country, and lit a bonfire to burn all the items. It felt very ritualistic, but we thought it was the most sensible option. We all wore masks or balaclavas in case anyone saw us, I wore a Trump mask that had been donated in 2024 after he was re-elected, because the humour in receiving Trump-themed joke gifts had, for some reason, in the space of eight years, slowly dissipated compared to his first election win in 2016. But I kept mine, because i've always found him rather funny-looking, with his big orange face."

The burning was going swimmingly, heaps of Savile-themed merchandise melting into a gooey puddle whilst the volunteers looked on in relief.

"It wasn't just Savile, but most of it was him. We also had heaps of Gary Glitter records, hand-stitched crocheted leg-warmers of Dave Lee Travis' face, and a wax effigy of Cliff Richard that was particularly fun to throw into the blaze, although I did feel a tad guilty when I later discovered he was innocent. But, in fairness to Cliff, I think even he'd admit his day is done, and the flames consume us all eventually."

"We even organised a barbecue and brought flasks of coffee with us, it was, I regret to say, a rather enjoyable evening until we were interrupted."

Later in the evening, just as the Jimmy Savile-themed pinball machines were burning to a crisp, several of the conspiracy theorists from the 4chan forum arrived and started streaming the proceedings on Twitch, claiming to have caught the cult red-handed. 

"We suddenly smelt this foul stench of BO and Lynx Africa, it was quite overpowering. Hordes of young men gathered and just filmed us, and shone torches in our eyes. One of the boys saw me in my Trump mask and screamed into his phone "IT GOES TO THE TOP, BRO. IT GOES TO THE TOP. DAMN, BRO, IT GOES TO THE TOP." Then he started asking me where Hunter's laptop is, and asking if "Bubba sent me"."

"We told them to fuck off and mind their own business, but they must've seen the remaining pile of Savile-themed items and surmised that we were observing some kind of perverse cult-like ritual. They called the police and we were all detained, because the police are generally inclined towards believing the most acutely-paranoid people in our society, and choose to act on their whims, so long as they organise in an efficient and social media-savvy way."

After being detained for over 3 weeks, the prisoners have now finally been released without charge. 

Summers believes the charity sector is ill-prepared for another incident like the Jimmy Savile-scandal. "I've decided to quit volunteering at the shop now, it's just too much stress for me, every woolly jumper we get donated I feel a wave of anxiety that it might have a famous nonce on the front, and the whole psychodrama will start again. People donate the weirdest crap imaginable, fragments from bygone eras, icons of icons faded and drowned into obscurity, we're swimming in a sea of liquid turds, desperately trying to thrash about and stay above the turds. That's how it feels being a charity shop volunteer in this day and age. If you have a video cassette of Rolf Harris playing the wobble board in a children's hospice aboard a cruise, do me a favour and fucking burn it, don't donate it."

For Eric Mahon, the ordeal was distressing, but has ultimately led to him seeking therapy for his OCD. "I couldn't admit to myself that I had a problem, but this has completely re-framed my outlook on life. The grief I suffered when I had to move these items by the window that were always there, because that's where they were, they were always there, it was, quite simply, a humbling, transformative experience. It forced me to question things on an ontological level, and i'm now a lot more tolerant of items being moved around a bit, or wholly culled from the shelves if they aren't selling well, or if they have child molesters on them".