It Just Doesn't Add Up

I wasn’t bad at maths when I was a kid. In fact, I’d go so far as to say I was pretty damn good. Differentiation? Piece of cake. Simultaneous equations? Ate them for breakfast and shat out the answers. I had a fantastically eccentric teacher called Mrs Sheehan during secondary school, who would be leaning over my desk observing my work, then all of a sudden exclaim “Oh my goodness! I’m wearing odd shoes!” or something equally peculiar. She was quite brilliant and got me my only A grade at A-Level, so I have much to thank her for.

She probably would have liked me to go on and use my mathematical prowess somewhere in my career, but quite frankly it bored the tits off me so I went for something nice and fluffy like journalism instead. Nowadays I find it hard to do even simple mental arithmetic, so I’m dreading the day when my kids come up to me and say “Daddy, help me prove the Riemann hypothesis!” and I’ll have to say “look it up on cheating.com,” and go back to reading my copy of Razzle.

Despite this steady decline in my calculating ability, it didn’t take me long to work out that Man Utd could do with some lessons of their own. Turning down a £70 million sponsorship deal earlier in the week, all the journos and fans gave each other knowing looks and nudges, thinking “Blimey – they must have something really big on the horizon!”

Never ones to disappoint, Utd came out today with the announcement: “Aha! We have landed ourselves a sponsorship deal worth £56.5 million! Waddaya thinka that!” Well, quite frankly, I think you need to get down to Mothercare and buy yourselves a copy of My First Book Of Sums, because as far as I can make out, you’re shit at them.

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