Two items in todays Mail.
Oh Dear:- http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/sport/football/article-1219527/EXCLUSIVE-Portsmouth-facing-financial-ruin-unpaid-tax-bill.html
Billy Bunter!
There's nothing comic about the Billy Bunter of Pompey
The money's in the post: Sulaiman Al Fahim
BILLY BUNTER was a glorious comic creation. He was the Owl of the Remove, the most celebrated pupil of Greyfriars School; fat, braying and given to cheerily ingratiating introductions: ‘I say, you fellows!’
His head was buzzing with ambitious schemes, but he lacked the money to bring them off. Yet he never lost his sense of optimism, his conviction that something would turn up. In Bunter’s case it was a postal order, imminently expected, which would bring him the cash to deliver his dreams.
It was the straw to which he clung.
‘You’re laughing now,’ he would shriek at his schoolmates, ‘but you won’t be laughing when my postal order arrives.’ And they would carry on laughing.
I doubt that Sulaiman Al Fahim has ever heard of Bunter, but the similarities are irresistible. During his 43-day reign as the owner of Portsmouth FC, he was constantly
promising the arrival of a postal order worth £50million. Players and staff went unpaid during the anxious wait, but it never materialised.
So now his brief ownership is over as other, apparently richer, men take charge of the mess. Yet, like Bunter, Al Fahim is unsinkable. Indeed, he promises to make the £50m available, just as soon at it turns up.
Sadly, unlike Bunter, nobody is laughing.