“What’s the matter with people? Don’t they know that we decide who plays for what club and who wins the league and other trophies?” slurs Jake Ickott, Sports Editor of tabloid the Daily Norks, banging his fist on the table in the lounge bar of the ‘Ruptured Boar’ on London’s Fleet Street for emphasis. “It’s got nothing to do with agents, managers or tactics, it’s all down to us in the press – we write the stories about what football transfers should be taking place and by writing them, we make it come true!” Ickott, frustrated that, despite the concerted efforts of himself and his colleagues across Britain’s back pages, Harry Kane still hasn’t moved from Tottenham Hotspur to Manchester City with less than a fortnight of the transfer window left, and fuelled by several pints, gave an ill-advised bar room interview to The Sleaze, revealing the secret power of Britain’s press. “It’s like that old TV series The Outer Limits – you know: ‘We control the vertical, we control the horizontal’! Well, we control the narrative,” he told us, swaying in his chair before belching loudly. “The narrative here is quite obvious: that a top player like Kane shouldn’t be at an underachieving club with pretensions of joining the elite like Spurs, he should be at one of the ‘chosen’ clubs worthy of his abilities. So that’s what we keep writing, even if the player doesn’t at first agree, after a few months or seasons of repeating this narrative, then they’ll believe it and make it happen!”

Yet, despite the Herculean efforts of Ickott and colleagues, over multiple transfer windows, the Kane transfer still hasn’t happened. “Look, we just need one last big push to bend reality on this one,” he claimed, between stuffing ready salted crisps in his mouth. “There’s still time to get it done this window. In fact, that was our plan all along, you see, to delay the transfer until the very end of the window, so that although Spurs will be awash with cash, they won’t have time to spend and will be weakened for the rest of the season, making it even easier for the ‘chosen’ clubs to take points from them!” According to the journalist, he is part of a cabal of top sports writers and media pundits, who meet before each football season to decide both on transfers and who will win the Premier League. Their aim, as previously indicated by Ickott, is to ensure that the main prizes, both in terms of top players and trophies, are reserved for an elite group of ‘chosen’ clubs, with the rest of the clubs relegated to the role of developing talent for the elite and competing for places in minor European competitions. “We have to throw them a few bones, so that they can hang on to enough fans to stay solvent,” he says, surveying the army of empty beer glasses in front of him. “Our motivation is to keep football entertaining – the average casual fan doesn’t want to watch piss-ant wannabe clubs winning stuff. Sure, they might enjoy seeing the ‘little guy’ having a good cup run, but they don’t want to see them actually win it. They’ll only be entertained if a small group of top, established clubs with a history of winning and who have all the talent win everything, all of the time.”

Doubt has been cast upon Ickott’s claims by other commentators, who, whilst agreeing that media reporting is clearly biased in favour of certain big football clubs and that much transfer speculation is actually made up, argue that this has less to do with making football ‘entertaining’ than it has money. “Not only do those clubs have enormous financial clout, but not only are their billionaire owners friends with the billionaire owners of the media that report on them, but those media owners are often also share holders in those clubs or their holding companies,” opines Leonard Jick, Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at the Egham Institute for Laundry Technology, who also points out several recent instances of ‘chosen’ clubs not winning all the prizes. “His claims are flawed – how does he explain Leicester City winning the League and FA Cup? After all, nobody would call them an ‘elite’ club and they certainly aren’t ‘chosen’ by anybody. Moreover, they haven’t always been pushing Kane to join Manchester City – a few years ago they seemed to be trying to engineer a move to Real Madrid, for God’s sake.” Ickott dismissed such criticisms, claiming that the Leicester League win was planned. “One of our top executive’s kiddies supported them, so we arranged it as a favour,” he gasped, clinging desperately to the edge of the table. “It took some doing, we had to rally the public behind them by making their nearest rivals, Spurs, into a hate figure, characterising them as a wealthy elite club, when we’d been disparaging them by saying the opposite for years. Besides, giving the title to Leicester left Spurs trophy-less yet again, putting more pressure on Kane to leave! Oh, as for that Kane to Real business, well back then we thought it might be best to get him away from the Premier League altogether. It was all part of the plan!”

It isn’t just the Premier League’s outcome that Ickott claims the media determines. “In truth, that’s just penny ante stuff, fixing sporting competitions – we also decide who wins elections,” he defiantly ranted, as he started to slip under the table. “That’s right – we control the political narrative as well! I mean, how else do you explain how absolute incompetents like Cameron, May and Johnson become Prime Minister, eh?” Mumbling from underneath the table, Ickott explained how a cabal of political editors and pundits mapped out Britain’s political destiny, deciding upon party leaders, policies and election outcomes in order to ensure that the paths most advantageous to the UK’s long term future were followed. Inevitably, as the electorate grow tired of one party or leader, so the cabal starts a new narrative backing alternatives. “That’s what Blair and New Labour were about – the illusion of radical change that was actually the status quo continued,” he managed to blurt out before letting rip a huge, beer fuelled fart that threatened to clear the bar. “To sell May and Johnson, we made sure Labour had an even more incompetent leader in Corbyn.” With that, he collapsed into the beer soaked carpet and fell silent.

“Such claims are just typical of the hubris that characterises the modern media,” observes Jick. “They, or more importantly the billionaires behind them, have spun themselves a narrative that they are the secret rulers of the world, rather than a bunch of hacks nobody trusts.” The lecturer does, however, concede that the media can exert considerable influence on the political process and is clearly biased toward certain leaders and parties. “But it has less to do with ensuring the ‘right path’ is followed than money,” he says. “Obviously, those billionaire media owners have a vested interest in making sure that the party right for them wins – the party less likely to enact privacy laws or tax their profits, for instance. Believe me, there’s no organised conspiracy or shady cabals at work, just the usual lust for money.” Nevertheless, since giving his interview to The Sleaze Ickott has been hospitalised after nearly choking to death on his own vomit – an incident colleagues believe was an attempt by the press cabals to silence him after his indiscretions.