Dead meat

So I’m just quietly watching television when an ad comes on for a cooker – a griller, if you will – that sizzles meat while a series of ridges in the pan below allow the fat to run off.

It's a generic brand product.

This makes me so very, very angry.

HOW DARE YOU! YOU CHEAP-SKATE COPYCATS! YOU CHEATING, LYING, RIP-OFF MERCHANTS! YOU MENDACIOUS CONNIVING TRADEMARK-DODGING TAIWANESE PLAGIARIST WANKERS!

GEORGE FOREMAN INVENTED THAT.

After a while the rage subsides, and I get thinking: What a fabulous career George is having. For thirty years he spent his days punching blokes in the head. Then he decided to take up inventing cookware. And I start to wonder. Surely footage of every World Heavyweight Championship boxing match survives: both those sanctioned by the Nevada Gaming Commission and the Don King dodgy ones.

So could one go back and watch these tapes very closely, until one catches the exact moment when the light comes on in George’s eyes, when he is busy teaching some hapless young pup how to box, when he is throwing yet another bone-crunching blow into the face of a callow, incapable, bloodied semi-combatant, causing great joy to baying crowds and local capillary surgeons. There: we can actually see the moment. One second George is thinking about how to tease out his easy win: “Boy, you’re too dumb and too weak to fight an old pro like me. And dammit boy, you’re too fat. Way too fat.”

And then: “OHMYGOD!!!”

And as the crowd is left hooting and hollering and demanding more blood, as ring-side confusion reigns, at the end of the seventh round, when later analysis would reveal George held a 42-0 lead, he turns to his seconds and says, “take my gloves off, boys. And get me a sketch pad.”