MARK SIMPSON.com

When it comes to mainstream or traditional sports the US is, compared to Europe, South America and Australia, somewhat resistant to Sporno - rather coy about strutting its stuff. Nonetheless, the US is home to specialist, completely non-coy S&M Sporno.

Say hello to Ultimate Fighting/Mixed Martial Arts, a new - and ferociously violent - sport from the USA in which two hyper-fit pleasingly muscled young men in Speedos grapple in a cage in positions that Chi Chi La Rue might blush at. Though in Ultimate Fighting, everyone fights for top.

Or maybe they’re just very feisty bottoms.

Unlike rugby or football, MMA doesn’t use Sporno to make itself more marketable or mediagenic - MMA simply is Sporno. Hardcore Sporno. Yes, I know, my filthy mind is working overtime again. But that doesn’t mean that UF isn’t filthy too.

MMA is also rapidly becoming very popular with spunky lads in the UK - earlier this year I attended a local ‘cage fight’ as a mate of mine was competing. The atmosphere was, as they say, heavy with testosterone - so I breathed deeply. And the short-haired thick-necked lads in the audience shouting ‘GWORRN!! STICK IT TO ‘IM, STEVIE!!’ certainly added the sense of excitement.

But since most of the ‘action’ in MMA is on the mat (the combatants are usually only on their feet for the first few seconds because the main objective seems to be getting your opponent’s heels behind his ears) I found myself slightly frustrated by the ‘live’ experience watching from beside the ring: most of the time I could see bugger all.

This sport isn’t really meant to be watched in the flesh. It’s designed to be consumed in the privacy of your own bedroom via voracious multiple-angle telephoto video camera lenses with a pause and rewind function. Enjoy.

(I don’t know about you, but I think the ref in this clip is getting in the way deliberately.)

Tip: Richard

By Mark Simpson, The London Times, 10 October 2007 [uncircumcised version

Ah, rugby. A man’s game. Played by real men. Big hairy men. With big chins. Nothing metrosexual about rugger buggers at all. A welcome respite from all that David Beckham, Frank Lampard love-me, love-my-shaved-pectorals stuff!

Wrong. So wrong.

For starters, rugby players have also become clothes-horses and walking endorsements for male vanity products. Fake-tanned, highlighted Jonny Wilkinson models designer clobber. Josh Lewsey is the face, or rather, hot, ripped, torso, of Nike Pro kinky lycra vests. New Zealand’s Dan Carter models Jockey underwear. Ronan O’Gara is the decorative face of an Irish jewellery company. While glam French fly-half Frederic Michalak, who seems to be his own mobile jewellery shop-window, has sashayed for Christian Lacroix, endorses a French condom brand, is the wrinkle-free face of Biotherme Homme cosmetics (a branch of L’Oreal), and is the eye-catching package for a skimpy underwear line.

And then there’s Welsh rugby star Gavin Henson, the prettier half of the Henson-Church celebrity couple, who likes to shave his legs and cover himself in fake tan and moisturiser before a match ‘because I like to look good for my team-mates’. David Beckham complained recently that Gavin Henson had stolen his gay fans.

To give you an idea how much has changed take a look the life story of the England Rugby strip. Not so long ago a rugby shirt was a baggy, shapeless beer towel that flapped around a hairy beer monster in a sweatband. But in the last few years it has morphed into a tight, tarty, stretchy muscle-top that seems to have been designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier.

It wouldn’t look out of place dancing under a spotlight on a podium at a gay nightclub. The 2007 World Cup strip features a saucy red arrow that runs from the right shoulder down to the left hip, which is supposed to confuse the opposing team. Perhaps that’s because it seems to shout: ‘If you want to score, flip me over!’

I’m sure there are all sorts of reassuringly practical reasons that can be cited as to why the England strip has changed so much of late, but clearly aesthetics is also calling the shots in rugby these days, which, like football, is now increasingly a form of show-biz. English rugby has gone ‘pro’ - and English rugby players now have ‘pro’ pumped, cut, muscular bodies they’ve worked hard on and that need to be shown off to their best advantage.

And oh, boy, do they show off. In the last few years rugby has become nakedly spornographic. Take a look, if you dare, at the Dieux du Stade French rugby Calendar, and accompanying, shrink-wrapped ‘Making Of’ DVD, featuring oiled, naked, shaved, designer tattooed rugger buggers naked in the locker room in poses that are frequently deliberately, provocatively homoerotic in a way that football wouldn’t countenance (unless it was after a match with a groupie present and filmed with a mobile phone).

Whilst showcasing the, er, talents of their own players, Stade Francais, the Paris team behind the Dieux Du Stade calendar, also invite especially blessed foreign players into their changing room. The eye-popping star of the 2007 calendar is humpy Scottish rugby player Sean Lamont, photographed on his back and on his front - showing the world his versatile endowments.

Dieux du Stade even has it’s own male cosmetics line’ Retour Au Vestiare’ - ‘Back to the lockeroom.’ (just make sure you knock before you enter.)

Phenomenally popular, the Dieux Du Stade sporno calendars have dramatically increased the popularity and coolness of rugby in France with women (who seem to like the homoerotic teasing) but also with men - gay and straight. Rugby sporno has helped make rugby seem that most modern, most covetted of things - shaggable.

Little wonder then that France is also the country that is tipped to win the Rugby World Cup. (Six of the French squad play for Stade Francais.)

After all, last year’s football World Cup was won by not so much by Italy’s superior football skills but their superior sporno. In the run-up to the tournament, Dolce & Gabbana recruited several of their national team’s players to be photographed oiled up and hanging around in the showers in their D&G underwear apparently waiting to gang-bang us - in a clear, if slightly toned-down, echo of Dieux du Stade (the same stunningly provocative photographer, Mariano Vivanco, worked on the 2007 Dieux Du Stade).

The current ‘Ce’st So Paris’ advertising campaign promoting travel to Paris ‘Capital of Love’ which features rugger buggers scrumming and snogging (‘Make love not war’) is clearly meant to be funny, which it is. But given the rise of sporno in the world of rugby it isn’t so absurd.

The only unbelievable thing about the ad is the fact that none of the fake snogging rugger buggers are nearly as buffed or beautiful as some of the real-life ones.
© Mark Simpson 2007

Get ready for the Men on a Mission calendar: 12 topless, buffed, young, male Mormons keen to show you the beauty of God’s creation. 

By Mark Simpson (Guardian, 20 Sept 2007)

‘As a sodomite, being knocked up by Mormon missionaries isn’t always an experience I look forward to. I don’t know about you, but that air-conditioning salesman look doesn’t really do it for me….’

Read the article here.

I won’t even ask the question. Nothing is sacred. Save being sexy.

A while back I wrote about Catholijism, the rather queer phenomenon of hunky priests of the Church of Rome posing for a spunky Calendar along the lines of those naughty French rugby Sporno calendars.

Not one to be outdone, the Church of the Latter Day Saints is going one better than the Church of the Earlier, Mustier Saints and muscling in on this profanity with bigger pectorals.

Hallelujah! Here comes ‘Men on a Mission’ a saucy (if unofficial) new calendar featuring some impressively worked-out clean-cut young Mormons in various ’spiritual’ poses. I for one am converted. Just send a couple of those lads round, topless, and I’ll sign anything. I’ll even give up tea.

Who needs caffeine when you can have this kind of divine stimulation?

Damien Mulley’s fun blog suggests dubbing this phenomona ‘Mormno’, after ‘Sporno’. Which is nice, but I suspect that’s a bit of a mouthful for most people - and not the kind they’re looking for. So perhaps drop the ‘n’ and just call it ‘Mormo’.

It’s Mormographically obvious.

Meanwhile, I’m still waiting to be knocked up. I’ve not received a single visit from those Mormon angels - even the ones who look more earthly than heavenly. My soul cries out. Is there a number you can call?

Or do you think they’ve already got me down on their ‘Beyond Salvation - Avoid! Avoid!’ list?

Some entirely gratuitous spornographic snaps of ‘the Portugese Winker’ as The Sun dubbed him after last year’s World Cup confrontation with scallyboy Wayne Rooney. 

Or should that be ‘Eurotwinker’?

Tip: Andre

It’s rumoured that some members of the ‘rugby community’ complained about the white-hot 2007 Dieux du Stade calendar (photographed by the stunningly talented Mariano Vivanco) going ‘too far’ and being ‘too gay’. Which would suggest that some rugby fans are very, very stupid. What on earth do they think the long-established DDS is for if not to go ‘too far’ and be ‘too gay’?

Stade Francais, the French Rugby club who owns the lucrative franchise, supposedly tookfright at these complaints and decided to tone down the 2008 Dieux du Stade Calendar.

Judging by this just-released kinky cover image for the 2008 edition which brings a whole new meaning to the term ‘ball weight’, I’m not convinced they succeeded.

Whoever the spoilsports were who complained about the spornography of the 2007 calendar, it clearly wasn’t the lads of Sheffield Hallam University Rugby team- who as you can see are only too happy to emulate the excessive homoerotics in their latest calendar. (Obviously these are very smart members of the rugby community.)

Nor the fit young chaps of Sandbach RUFC, who were happy to go even further on national television.

I’ll bet it was the same jealous ugly old bastards that got this cancelled.

Beck’s Stateside tarting continues.

American mobile communications company Motorola have launched a poster campaign for their new Razr with an image of their ‘Global Brand Ambassador’ with his tits out.

In recognition of where most men and women are going to be looking, the product is dangling between Beck’s pecs from a chain around his neck.

The mobile is supposed to become an object of desire because of its proximity to the most famous nipples in the world. I wonder if Beck’s tits taste slightly bitter when you chew on them, like many men’s? Or whether they taste instead of pink champagne?

The chain (no pockets?) and the cropping of the pic more than hints that Becks is completely starkers.

And is it just me, or is he gazing at us greedily like punter at a gay sex club who wants us to take him home for some individual attention and capture him with his mobile camera in all sorts slutty positions?

Oh, OK, just me then.

Mind you, he’s already posed for those slutty pictures.

In the Middle Ages, sodomy was thought to be caused not by hair whorls, but by drunkeness.

As this spornographic clip shows, they were absolutely right.

The post-match beery bonding of the lovely lads of Sandbach RUFC - which, be warned, includes very male nudity, heavy petting and male-on-male snogging - made me feel faint with jealousy.

And also faintly redundant.

These straight lads’ eagerness to perform their manly love for one another in front of UK TV cameras (for an instalment of an ITV2 series last month called ‘Generation Xcess’) does away with the need for my:

• essay on hazing, in which I argued that male bonding is deeply homoerotic, but that despite this it is not a ‘gay’ thing - it’s a ‘guy’ thing

• pointing out the size queenery of straight men.

• explaining how little purchase the Phalliban has in the UK - compared to the US where it has a tighter grip than Captain Tim’s team-mates have on his ‘massive cock’

• arguing that homoerotic fantasy that Sporno advertising sells us is not entirely baseless

• responding to those who adamantly refuse to believe that straight men could get naked with one another on camera and play with each other’s dangly bits when offered lots of cash. (These ones did it for a few beers.)

Instead of all my scribbling, I just needed to take a video camera to a pub in Sandbach on Saturday night and buy a few rounds. It would have been a lot more fun too.

Funny that this should have surfaced around the same time as this spornographic ad campaign for Paris - which after the salty mantics of Sandbach RUFC now looks like a slightly coy promotion for a copycat programme featuring a less attractive, less ballsy team.

But perhaps the most ‘touching’ part of all this groping is the way this (highly successful) team of rugger buggers refuse to be embarrassed by the naughty clips the programme makers make them watch in the cold-sober light of day. Instead they seem quite proud. But then, they have much to be proud of. Especially their Captain.

Alas, I suspect that some - gay and straight - spiteful members of the Great British Public who saw the doc did their best to make these young men feel ashamed for being ‘gay’ with one another - to make them feel ashamed, in fact, for being fit, virile lads full of life, laughs, spunk and puppyish enthusiasm for masculinity. (Actually, the more I think about it, and what I’m missing, I’m beginning to feel spiteful too….)

Worse than this though is the way the clip ends before the programme does.

Anyone have the final segment? Or a better quality version?

As the completely unabashed grinning donkey-hung, bubble-butted Captain Tim says, ‘We should watch that again.’

Update: I’ve just been informed that a better quality clip is available, along with rather a lot of other athletes showing off their, er, sporting prowess, at the premium adult site: www.ruggerbugger.com

This scrum-my ad is part of a ‘C’est so Paris’ poster campaign due to be unleashed on London shortly to attract Londoners to Paris.

Booking my Eurostar tickets now….

Apparently, this ad is supposed to show that Paris is ‘the capital of humour’.

It’s a funny ad - but it’s really another example of how sporno is going seriously mainstream. It will definitely get noticed. It may even cause traffic accidents. I’m sure there will be underwear mishaps.

I only have one objection: the fake (and rather blurred) rugby players aren’t nearly as sexy or tarty as the real ‘pros’ begging to be tackled in that very nicely, verly clearly photographed French rugby calendar.

Tip: AC

Glad to see Mens Health’s We’re Hetero, You’re Hetero OK? campaign is working so well.

I don’t know about you, but the latest US issue featuring stunning spornographic shots of NFL stud Brady Quinn exploding naked out of the sea, or taking sensual, suggestive showers, the water droplets splashing and gushing ecstatically over his muscular shoulders and proud pecs while he apparently cruises the locker room makes me feel really straight.

So straight that I think you’re going to have to excuse me for a few minutes while I attend to my big straight erection….