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reidsnose · 4 years ago

Text

Black Eye

overview: reader and spencer go to reader's highschool reunion as a fake couple

genre: fluff i think

warnings: mild violence and swearing, a guy being kind of a total creep, and mentions of bullying

a/n: idk if its any good again just love the idea but it was inspired by a dream i had last night (thank you temporal lobe) so yeah let me know what yall think !! :) also im posting this at like ass oclock in the morning so whoops

masterlist

you and spencer had gotten yourselves in quite the situation.

your dreaded highschool reunion was just around the corner and you made the mistake of complaining about it to penelope. she was always trying to make everyones life easier (and more interesting) so when she heard you had no date she took it upon herself to find you one.

it didn't take a lot of looking, none at all actually; because Penelope had already been trying to figure out ways to get you and Reid together.

you two were undeniably perfect for each other. you were an amazing team at work, you hung out alone all the time (though both of you denied these hang out as being dates, Garcia had her own ideas on this), and you were both very obliviously head over heels for each other.

and somehow, through the magical ways of Penelope Garcia, you and Spencer were now sitting in the parking lot, fake married for your high school reunion.

"do we need to go over our back story again?" you worried, looking up at him.

"our backstory is basically all true anyway we just fall in love after a little bit. and i have an eidetic memory so i remember; you're my wife you should know this!" he joked, trying to relax you. "we got this! we're gonna be so married!"

Spencer had actually never been this nervous in his life but he was trying to be brave for you. it would be more embarrassing for you both to show up like nervous wrecks than if you had just come alone. he was just happy to get to be fake married to you.

"the marriedest!" smiled, fist bumping him.

"now lets go make some people jealous!" he chuckled getting out of the car and jogging over to your side, opening your door before you got the chance to; like a true gentleman.

you stuck out your hand which he happily took into his, neither of you commenting on the redness you both had sprinkled across your cheeks. as you walked in, you saw all the people you dreaded seeing.

the boys who tormented you were balding and the girls who made sure you felt awful everyday had wrinkles riddling there skin. you were surrounded by botched botox and bleached blonde to cover graying hair. you felt terrible to admit it, but you were a little happy to see that their beauty had faded like this; they made their looks their whole personality in high school, you couldn't help but wonder what was left for them to be. not that it mattered, but you and Spencer were undeniably the most attractive couple there.

you actually had an ok time, you had spotted a few of your friends that you hadn't seen in quite a few years and it was nice to catch up.

Spencer had wondered a bit, but not too far, he was talking to some guys who used to be in science club when you were younger. you smiled at the thought of what they might be talking about.

"y/n! hey youve really filled out!" you heard a gruff voice from behind you.

you turned around and were met with the very unappealing face of the ex quarterback. Spencers attention had been caught at the sound of your name.

"um..hello," you muttered, trying to covertly back away from him.

"i see youve got a ring, interesting i dont remember us getting married!" he said in an incredibly creepy tone.

"do you know im a federal agent now?" you said through a gritted smile.

spencer had already begun walking towards you, he could tell something was off.

"ill tell you what sweetheart," he put his hand on your shoulder, pulling you slightly closer to him, "you can put me in handcuffs any day."

you threw his hand off of you and drew back your fist, but were cut off before you could deliver the punch but his hand engulfing your own, and squeezing.

"THATS MY WIFE!" spencer yelled in a voice you had never heard from him before.in the blink of an eye he was standing between in front of him. "do not ever talk to her like that, let alone lay a finger on her or so help me God i will-"

"what beanpole? what are you gonna do? what if i did this?" the man asked.

and then he sent a swift punch to Spencer's face.

thats gonna leave a mark.

in a matter of seconds, Spencer had him overpowered, laying face first on the floor with his hands uncomfortably angled behind him, completely helpless.

"now i'm going to let you go and you're going to walk out of here unharmed. if you try anything like that again, ill let my wife handle you. and i promise if she gets a hold of you, you'll be a dead son of a bitch." Spencer muttered in the mans ear, gruffly pulling him up by his collar and shoving him towards the door.

"were leaving." you said, grabbing Spencer's hand, trying to ignore how incredibly attractive he looked right now.

"babe if you want to stay we can stay," he offered as if he didn't just have his shit kicked in by a coward with misogynistic tendencies.

"honey, i want to take you home," you smiled, liking the way it felt to call him a pet name. you walked into the parking lot, "what were you thinking?"

"i was thinking this guy is trying to hurt you and i was not going to ever let that happen." he answered confidently as you two reached the car. "plus this totally made the marriage thing more believable. i wouldn't get a black eye for just anyone."

"thank you. i'm sorry you got punched trying to protect me." you sighed, feeling incredibly awful about the whole thing.

he chuckled, "id do it again."

you fought hard against the blush creeping up your face.

"i gotta say, the black eye really suits you. you look pretty badass." you chuckled, trying to change the subject before it got too sappy and you said something you shouldn't.

"maybe it should just be my new look," he joked, looking down at a ping from his phone. "uh oh."

"we have a case?" you asked.

"yep. and hotch wants us in the office asap which means we cont stop by either of our houses." he sighed before starting the car.

the drive was mostly silent. but a comfortable silence. Spencer thought about how in the moment, he didn't care how many punches the guy threw at him, as long as it meant you were ok, he was willing to take it. he knew he loved you far before that moment but that truly solidified it.

at the same time you were thinking of how quickly your time as a 'married couple' was over. it felt so right to call Spencer yours. so unexplainably perfect for the two of you to be together. if only your time wasn't cut short by a sucker punch.

you neared the building's parking lot. you looked over at Spencer who you could very easily tell was lost in his own world.

"whats going on in that beautiful head of yours?" you asked, causing him to stifle a smile.

"just thinking." he answered.

"what about?"

"us." he stated, pulling into his parking spot.

oh. oh.

"do tell."

he hesitated, "if i tell you, and you disagree, do you promise it wont change anything about us?"

"i promise."

"did it feel right to you? us being together?" he asked, his eyes innocent and filled to the brim with a mixture of anxiety and adoration as he looked at you.

"yes. it absolutely did. and i was so mad at the assclown for cutting our time short," you admitted, "and punching you in the eye, obviously."

"i- i'm not sure how to ask this but- do you...would you..sorry i-" he stammered.

"yes."

you cut him off, pressing your lips to his. his hand gently cupped your face, deepening the kiss and you both felt like you were on cloud nine.

"thats exactly what i was trying to say," he cracked a dopey smile, causing you to chuckle.

"i've been trying to say it for so long." you confessed, causing him to smile impossibly wider, "we gotta go hotch is waiting."

"just one more kiss?" he asked, which you gave in to, obviously. and then another. and another.

maybe it was good thing that he got a black eye that day, because when you got to the office the whole team was so focused on it they didn't even notice the hint of your lipstick left on spencers lips.

ultra mega super cool taglist:

@mac99martin @imhreid @spencersmagic @hollydaisy23 @raelady1184 @a-broken-pact @padfootswife @hey-there-angels @star-stuff-in-the-cosmos

#criminal minds #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid #reid #garcia #penelope garcia #morgan #derek morgan #spencer reid x reader fluff #spencer reid fluff #fluff #hotch #prentiss #jj #rossi #cm #bau #bau x reader

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watermelonsugawara · 4 years ago

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oh ya baby write me some nsfw jealous atsumu 🥵🥵 mwuah mwauh

AE RA kamusta ka na mahal!!! this shit took me forever sorry,, i got carried away LMFAOJSKGJDFG

is it obv im whore knee!!!!!!!!! i hope u like it,,, bitch im nervous

...

❥ warnings: nsfw lets get spicy under the cut babyyyyyy; choking, fingering,,, das it srry maybe next time

❥ character: jealous!atsumu x fem!reader

❥ summary: Atsumu knows you’re the most beautiful woman at the gala, but that doesn’t mean he’s willing to share.

❥ a/n: first actual smut smut so ya dont bully me!!!! WTF THIS GOT LONG SORRY???

Also!! lets just play along w my stupid brain and assume atsumu got hella bands and this is a big gala so they had to have a limo,,, i may or may not have been listening to partition while writing this….mind ur fuckin business

Also is this really jealous!atsumu or more like protective!atsumu??? A bitch got the prompt kinda wrong whatever SUE ME

❥ wc: 1.5k omfg

...

You stood in front of a mirror, slipping your evening gown onto your shoulders. For your boyfriend’s charity gala, you decided to wear a simple burgundy dress, the pleated tulle fabric hugging your figure before cascading at your feet.

“Can you help me zip the back of my dress, baby?” You called out to Atsumu, who was finishing up tying his silky black tie. You felt soft kisses feathered along your spine that made you shiver as your boyfriend slowly zipped your dress.

“Don’t start, Atsumu,” you said as you turned to face him, a small smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth. You ran your hands down the lapels of his suit jacket, admiring the smooth black material. He looked damn good in an all black suit, the jacket accentuating his broad shoulders and his black button-down hugging his muscular chest. The only thought going through your mind at the moment was to rip it all off, subconsciously taking your bottom lip between your teeth at the idea.

“We haven’t even left the house yet princess, keep looking at me like that and we won’t even make it to the damn limo.” Atsumu said to you in a low voice, noticing the way your gaze lingered just a little too long. You tried your best to shrug it off, rolling your eyes at the comment. You wanted to take him up on that challenge, but instead you walked past him to slip into your heels and head out to the gala.

When you arrived, you two were greeted by Atsumu’s teammates and their dates. You were too engrossed in conversations to see the other men staring at you, but Atsumu did not miss a beat. He quickly noticed how everyone in the venue seemed to hold their breath as you walked into the room, the elegant fabric flowing down your legs and the bustier hugging your chest in an almost sinful manner. With your arms linked, the two of you made your way to the bar to grab glasses of wine. Atsumu became quite annoyed by the glances constantly being thrown your way, unconsciously pulling you closer to him. You were a sight to see, but Atsumu’s patience was wearing incredibly thin.

As the night went on, Atsumu got sidetracked in conversations with donors, thanking them for supporting his team. You were left alone at times, and although Atsumu never trailed too far away from you, the other men at the gala used this opportunity to try and talk to you.

You feel a warm but unfamiliar hand on your arm and you turn around to face a man you have a hard time recognizing. It’s a little more confusing now that these volleyball players are up close and in formalwear, rather than farther away on a volleyball court in uniform. You think he’s a setter, but your thoughts are cut off by his next words.

“Are you here alone?” He asked, the heavy scent of whiskey lingering from his breath. You plaster a forced smile across your face and shake your head, but you barely got to open your mouth before the man placed his hand on your waist and tugged you closer to him. You instinctively put out a hand on his chest to create space between you two that otherwise wouldn’t have existed. The man began to speak but the fear washing over you muddled your senses. You tried to push back but the man showed no signs of letting up his grip on your waist.

“Atsumu!” you nervously called out to the sea of people, trying your best not to make a scene. Your boyfriend heard your faint cry and swiftly pushed past people back to the bar where you stood, with a man holding you unnervingly close. The two of you made eye contact, his anger-filled gaze meeting your frantic one. Atsumu quickly ripped the man’s hands off of your waist and ushered you behind him. You could practically feel his anger radiating off of his body as he stared at the man.

“Don’t you ever lay a fucking hand on her again. I never want to see you near either of us, you’re a fucking goner if I ever see you again,” Atsumu spat, his fists wound so tightly his knuckles began turning white. Rage washed over Atsumu as he held back every urge to throw a punch. The stranger was taken aback by your boyfriend’s venomous words, backing away sheepishly before quickly walking out. Atsumu turned to you and his demeanor instantly shifted from angry to concerned, seeing the distressed look on your face. You were startled to say the least, but more so by the way Atsumu snapped at the man, it’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen from him before.

“Let’s go home,” you quietly said, raising the end of the sentence as if it were a question. Atsumu didn’t even answer, he was already pulling you away from the bar and towards the exit. Atsumu quickly called for the limo. He held you close to his chest as the vehicle came to a stop in front of the two of you, and you both got in.

Your bodies slouched together in the backseat, one of Atsumu’s large hands finding purchase around your waist and the other on your thigh. The warmth of his hand was strong even through the fabric of your dress, causing your cheeks to flush.

“Are you okay, (Y/N)? Did he hurt you?” Atsumu questioned and you shook your head, still a bit stunned by the interaction with the stranger. Your boyfriend cupped your cheek softly before pulling you into a soft kiss. The sweet taste of wine lingered on his tongue as the kiss became more heated, your lips parting as Atsumu’s tongue explored your mouth. You moaned into his mouth as he wrapped his hand around your neck and gently squeezed. Atsumu was first to break the kiss, desire flickering in his eyes.

“I got you, princess. You’re safe with me, always.” You grabbed Atsumu’s tie to press your lips back onto his, his hands roaming all over your body. He moved down to your neck, sucking dark marks into your skin. His hand made its way back to resting on your thigh, his thumb ghosting towards your center on top of the fabric. You felt a heat begin to build up in your stomach from Atsumu’s plush lips dancing across your skin and his thumb teasing you.

You felt Atsumu’s hand on your back, swiftly unzipping your dress and pushing down the bustier to expose your chest. His large hands palmed your breasts, taking one in his mouth, swirling his tongue around your sensitive nipple. You moaned loudly when Atsumu pulled the bud between his teeth, looking up at you with a smirk.

Atsumu pushed your thighs apart so your legs were spread, pulling the fabric of your dress up into your lap. He runs his hands slowly up your thighs towards your core, causing your cheeks to blush almost as dark as your dress. He quickly pushes the damp lacy fabric to the side, feeling your essence with one finger. You clench around nothing at the feeling of his finger brushing ever so lightly across your folds.

“Fuck, you’re so needy already, baby,” Atsumu breathed into your ear, sucking your earlobe. Atsumu brought his hand out from under your dress to in front of your face, motioning for you to open your mouth. You took his finger into your mouth and watched as Atsumu’s eyes widened, watching you taste your own juices. His jaw clenched at the feeling of your wet mouth and lips on his finger, biting back a groan. His hand quickly found purchase under your dress once again, the wet finger teasing your entrance before pushing in. Your eyes fluttered shut at the sensation, his thick finger already causing endless moans to fall from your lips.

“I’m the only one who really knows how to make you feel good, isn’t that right, kitten?” Atsumu groaned, feeling your walls clench around his curled finger. Your moans and gasps were a good enough answer for him as he pushed a second finger into you, sprinkling kisses along your neck once more.

Atsumu’s cock strained against his pants, and he couldn’t help but palm himself at the sight of you. He loved seeing you like this, his long fingers putting you in a trance, unraveling from his merciless touches. Your back arched off the seat as he pumped his fingers into you feverishly. Atsumu could tell you were close to your high as you clenched around him even more, your moans becoming more erratic and desperate.

“It’s like your pussy was made for me, fuck,” Atsumu groaned, “go ahead pretty girl, let go for me.” His thumb circling over your clit, combined with a third finger making its way to your pussy sent you over the edge. You gripped your dress in your fists as you clenched around Atsumu’s fingers, his thumb still rubbing the overstimulated nub, making you shut your legs around his hand. You just barely came down from your high just as the limo pulled up to your house. As you shakily stepped out of the car, the urgency in Atsumu’s steps told you he was far from finished showing you just how well he knew your body.

#alli writes some spice #haikyuu smut #haikyuu x reader #atsumu x reader #atsumu miya #haikyuu

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danyababy · 8 years ago

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All the even numbers you haven't answered yet :)

2. is your room messy or clean?

i like to keep it clean, so every so often i go through and organize like a madwoman, but i’d say typically theres clutter.

4. do you like your name? why?

there are other names i like more, but my actual name (abigail) is really pretty, i think. however, i hate abby. hate it. the problem is, i’m far too lazy to correct people so i kinda just put up with people calling me abby.

6. describe your personality in 3 words or less

hopeless romantic

8. what kind of car do you drive? color?

sometimes i drive my dads black honda

10. how would you describe your style?

when i dress nice? kinda edgy/girly, i.e. all black but like with a dress or skirt. normally? sweatshirt

16. favorite makeup brand(s)

urban decay!!!!

18. favorite tv show?

designated survivor with ma boi kiefer

20. how tall are you?

six feet 182cm kill me

22. do you go to the gym?

tragically i’m gonna go in a few minutes

24. how much money do you have in your wallet at the moment?

like 12 cents?

28. how many friends do you have?

in real life like genuinely four

30. whats your favorite candle scent?

i have a candle called istanbul and it smells like amber, whatever that is

32. 3 favorite girl names

kaia rose, valencia, siobhan

34. favorite actress?

christ i dont even know, maybe shaliene woodley?

36. favorite movie?

just watched anthropoid it was great

38. money or brains?

brains on brains on brains

40. how many times have you been to the hospital?

ah… for other people a few times but for myself only once, i believe?

44. what is your biggest fear?

i mean its heights, i think? maybe needles, i cry when i get a shot

46. whats your go to hair style?

brushed, down, floofed up a bit

48. who is your role model?

justin trudeau

50. what was the last text you sent?

cried to you, sarah, about the difficulty of uk and ireland college apps!!!

52. what is your dream car?

mclaren f1. sorry its better than the p1 and i like the middle seat

54. do you go to college?

not yet but i will be for sure, i’ve been accepted to one already

56. would you rather live in rural areas or the suburbs?

my whole life has been suburbia why not have a bit more

58. do you have freckles?

nope but i have a very noticeable beauty mark

60. how many pictures do you have on your phone?

5886 to my great shame

62. do you still watch cartoons?

you can catch me watching a vintage kim possible on occasion

64. Favorite dipping sauce?

i both love and have a phobia of ketchup

66. have you ever won a spelling bee?

nope and i also can’t spell for shit!!!

68. can you draw?

a tad? i used to be great at drawing anime characters but i’m really not that good anymore

72. Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts?

dunkin donuts. @missemmedi see timmies isn’t even an option!!!

74. what is your crush’s first and last initial?

lmao dk is the only one i can say on here without being caught

76. what color looks best on you?

black, i think? a lot of people tell me i look good in dark green too

80. what is your biggest pet peeve?

those kids in model un that don’t listen!!!!!

84. chocolate or rainbow sprinkles?

my favorite color is the rainbow

86. what is your phone background?

lock is a picture of munich at night from a ferris wheel, home is a picture of hamburg at night from a ferris wheel

88. do you like it when people play with your hair?

i literally start fucking purring

90. do you wash your face? at night? in the morning?

i use some hardcore makeup wipes at night, in the shower i do a whole voodoo skincare cream exfoliation routine though

92. have you ever been drunk?

wasted. locked. trashed. gone. i have been all of those things

96. day or night?

night

98. favorite month?

november

100. who was the last person you cried in front of?

my mom because we were taking off on an airplane. oh yeah thats another one that scares me

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adambstingus · 7 years ago

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The age of banter

The long read: It used to be just a word now it is a way of life. But is it time to get off the banter bus?

Its the most fucking ridiculous story, isnt it? We went to watch fucking dolphins, and we ended up in fucking Syria. Last summer in the Mediterranean party resort of Ayia Napa, Lewis Ellis was working as a club rep. I mean, it was fucking 8am, he told an Australian website soon afterwards, and the last fucking club had closed, and we thought, We can still go dolphin watching. Well blag our way on to a fucking boat and go dolphin watching.

But when the boat sailed so far that Cyprus disappeared from view, Ellis explained, they started to worry. Why are we so far from land? they asked the crew. Were fucking miles away and weve got no fucking wifi. Something, Ellis said, had been lost in translation; his exuberant season as a shepherd for the resorts party pilgrims had gone terribly awry. The crew wasnt taking them to watch dolphins: they were going to a Russian naval base in the city of Tartus, on Syrias Mediterranean coast. Yeah, it is a little ridiculous.

It was, nonetheless, a story that had legs. Hungover lads boat trip boob lands them in Syria, wahey-ed the Mirror; British holidaymakers board party boat in Ayia Napa and end up in war-torn SYRIA, guffawed the Express. If you saw these headlines at the time, you may dimly remember the rest. A stubborn trawler captain, chugging doggedly onwards to Tartus, where he turfed the friends out upon landing; interrogation at the hands of Russian intelligence officers; mutual hilarity as the Russians realised what had happened; and, after a hot meal, a quick tour of the area, and a good nights sleep, spots on the next fishing vessel headed back to Cyprus. It was never made clear why the captain had let them on the boat in the first place, but whatever. Everyone lapped it up.

Reflecting on the whole thing five months later, Ellis, a 26-year-old with a business degree and a marketing masters, couldnt totally wrap his head around it. I think I found 35 stories about us, he told me. I read about myself in the Hawaiian Express, do you know what I mean? (Notwithstanding that there doesnt appear to be any such newspaper, yes, I definitely do.)

What made it really weird to see the media pile in with such unstinting enthusiasm was that the story was total cobblers. I could not believe how gullible they were, Ellis said, a top note of glee still in his voice. We were just having a laugh! It was banter!

Lads: this is the age of banter. Its long been somewhat about the banter, but over the last few years, it has come to seem that its all about the banter an unabashedly bumptious attitude that took up a position on the outskirts of the culture in the early 90s and has been larging its way towards the centre ever since. There are hundreds of banter groups on Facebook, from Banter Britain (no memes insinuating child abuse/dead babies!!!) to Wanker Banter 18+ (Have a laugh and keep it sick) to the Premier League Banter Page (The only rule: keep it banter). You can buy an I banter mug on Amazon for 9, or an Archbishop of Banterbury T-shirt for 9.99.

There are now four branches of a restaurant called Scoff & Banter. When things were going badly at Chelsea FC under Jos Mourinho, it was reported the team had banned all banter in an attempt to focus their minds, and that terminology appeared in the newspapers, as if you would know exactly what it meant. Someone has created a banter map of London using a keyword search on the flatshare website SpareRoom, showing exactly where people are looking for a roommate with good banter (Clapham tends to feature prominently). When a 26-year-old man from Leeds posed for a selfie with a bemused aeroplane hijacker, Vice declared it the high-water mark of banter.

Lewis Ellis (left) and friends in Ayia Napa, pretending to be in Syria. Photograph: Lewis Ellis

If you are younger than about 35, you are likely to hear the term all the time. Either you have banter (if you are funny and can take a joke) or you dont (if you arent and cannot). The mainstream, in summary, is now drunk and asleep on the sofa, and banter is delightedly drawing a penis on its forehead.

As banter has risen, it has expanded. Long a word used to describe submerged expressions of fraternal love, it is now also a word used to excuse uninhibited displays of masculine bravado. Today, it is segregated by class, seized on by brands, picked over by psychologists, and deplored by cultural critics; it is dominant, hotly contested and only hazily understood.

And so, whether he intends it to or not, Ellis use of the term raises some questions. Is he throwing his lot in with the most pervasive branch of the blokeish mainstream, a sanitised and benevolent hilarity that stretches from lad-dad panel shows to your mates zinger about your terrible haircut? Or is he lining up with the misogynist imitators of the Bullingdon club, a sprinkling of racists, and, as we shall see, an actual murderer purveyors of a malicious and insidious masculinity that insists on its indivisible authority and calls you a slut if you object?

Ellis isnt preoccupied by these questions, but for what its worth, he does say that he and his friends never had the slightest intention of going to Syria. We werent really trying to fool anyone, he told me, although Im not sure thats entirely consistent with the facts. We were out for a stroll, and we came across this area that looked really run down, we thought it looked like Syria. So we put it on the club reps [Facebook] page that thats where we were. And everyone started liking it. And then one of the people who contacted us was from LADBible which is like the Bible, but for LADS so we said, well have a mess around here. Well tell a completely ridiculous story, see if the media believes it. See if we can become LADBible famous.

It did, they could. Eventually, the truth came out, not thanks to any especially determined investigative journalism, but because Ellis cheerily admitted on Facebook that his tale of magnificent idiocy was a fiction. Hahaha what a prank, he wrote, with some justification.

The confession only brought another cycle of attention. Publications that had picked up the story in the first place resurfaced it with new headlines to reflect the audacity of the invention; social media users adduced it as evidence for their views of young men, or the media, or both. The Russian embassys Twitter account called it a telling example of how many Syria (and Russia) stories are made up by UK papers, which was great geopolitical banter. The attention entertained Ellis, but he says it wasnt the point. We just thought it was funny, he said. People are too serious. I keep being told to grow up, but I still want to have a good time. Ive had the jobs, Ive got the education. But when Im off work, I want to escape.

Ellis is an enthusiast and an optimist. He is, he told me late last year, desperate to take every opportunity, just to say yes to everything I can. We were on a night out in Manchester with his friends Tyson, John and Chris. In the course of the evening, the following things found their way into my beer: fingers; salt; vinegar; mayonnaise; a chip; saliva; a 10 note; and, I hazily remember being told after the fact, at least two shots of vodka.

Everyones got a thing in the group, Ellis said, as we walked from one bar to the next. One guy, hes not even that ugly, we say he looks like a Peperami. Tysons got this mole on his face, its like a Coco Pop, so youve got a Coco Pop on your face. I looked like Harry Potter when I was a kid, so they call me Potter, thats my nickname. Every single one of us has something. So you youve got Chinese eyes. Youre Chinese.

For the record, I didnt think this was OK, but coming after such a harmless litany, it didnt seem malicious enough to confront. Of course, tacit endorsement is what makes such offensive epithets a commonplace, and so it troubles me that it made me feel mysteriously welcome, just as it had when John punched me lightly in the balls when I arrived. There was no doubting Elliss sincerity: as he spoke, the sheer daft beauty of male friendship seemed to amaze him, almost to the point of physical pain. We just take the piss out of each other, and thats how we show our love, he said. So many group chats on the phone, and you just take the piss until they cry. And its like, when youre really killing them, you go, Ill stop if you want, because you know they cant say yes, so you just keep going. Then we arrived at the next bar, where I was made to drink something called a Zombie.

Early in the evening, before any of this had undermined my ability to take useful notes, Ellis broke off from talking as we walked down the street and sidled into a window display at Next Home, where he Tracey Emined a carefully made bed by climbing into it and rolling around. Everyone cracked up. Give the world a laugh, Ellis tends to think, and the world will smile back at you. Jump on a boat, and youll end up somewhere great; make the boat up, and youll get there faster. Its all about having fun, its all about the banter, he said, after hed rejoined us outside. Banter is about making the world a more exciting place.

If nobody can agree on what banter is, thats hardly a new problem. The first usage of the word recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary comes from noted Restoration lad Thomas dUrfey, also known for his hit song The Fart, in a satirical 1677 play called Madam Fickle. Banter him, banter him, Toby, a character called Zechiel urges, which may be the first time that someone called Toby was so instructed, but certainly wasnt the last.

The OED also notes early attempts at a definition by Jonathan Swift and Samuel Johnson. (Swift mentions a banter upon transubstantiation, in which a cork is turned into a horse, and fair enough, turning a cork into a horse would be classic banter.) Both are a little disgusted by the word, and neither unearths much of an origin story: by their accounts, banter is so coarse that it emerged, fully formed and without antecedent, out of the mouths of oafs.

As it turns out, though, the OED is not at present fully able to handle the banter. According to Eleanor Maier, an associate editor on the dictionary, a search of earlier English texts reveals that a number of previous examples are missing from the dictionarys definition, which was first drafted in 1885 including a quote from a 1657 translation of Don Quixote. (After examining the history, Maier told me that she would be adding banter to the list of entries that are up for review.)

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In recent years, banter has barged into our lives at a remarkable clip. Googles Ngram Viewer, a tool that assesses (with some limitations) the frequency with which a term appears in a large database of written sources, finds that banter popped up about twice as often in 2008, the most recent year covered, as it did in 1980.

But banter plugged away for a long time before it became an overnight success. In the 19th century, it often denoted a kind of formal sparring. Even as the term evolved over the 20th, it continued to seem a little prim. In the House of Commons in 1936, Ramsay MacDonald, the former Labour prime minister who had returned in a new seat after losing his old one, was subjected to a good deal of banter Dear old Granny MacDonald!, among other witticisms.In 1981, a Guardian report that chess champion Anatoly Karpov and his handlers had successfully protested at his challenger Viktor Korchnois constant cross-board talk ran under the unlikely headline: Chess banter banned.

Such stories do little to prepare us for what banter has become. Consider the viral video that became known as #bagelgate earlier this year. In the recording, a minor scuffle broke out on the 00.54 train from Kings Cross to Huntingdon, and then for no obviously related reason a woman who had a large bag of bagels decided to put one on the head of the guy sitting in front of her, and then another after he took it off and threw it out of the window, and another and another, and then everyone in the carriage started chanting hes got a bagel on his head, and eventually the slightly spoddy victim who is me when I was 13 and someone filled my pencil case with Mr Kipling apple pies (squashed, oozing) because I was fat lost it and screamed Get the fuck out of my face!, and then another fight broke out on the platform, and then the police got on to the train, and every single person fell into not-me-guv silence: this is not Granny MacDonalds banter any more.

If it is hard to understand how these activities can fall under the same umbrella, it should be noted that a phenomenon may predate our choice of term to describe it its just that the act of definition makes it more visible, and perhaps more likely to be imitated. At some point, though, banter became the name for what British men already regarded as their natural tone of voice. There is a very deeply embedded folk culture in the UK of public ribaldry, extreme sarcasm, facetiousness in other words, of laddishness, says Tony Thorne, a linguist and cultural historian. What you might think of as banter now is rooted in that tradition.

That tradition first lashed itself to banters mast in the early 1990s, and controversy soon followed. In June 1992, a Guardian story headlined Police fire sex banter officer, about the dismissal of a sergeant for sexual harassment, recorded an early skirmish in the modern banter wars, and an important new layer to its meaning in the wild: The move is seen as part of the Metropolitan polices desire to reassure women officers that what has previously been tolerated as banter is no longer acceptable. Two years later, the lads mags arrived.

The first edition of Loaded magazine appeared in May 1994, with a picture of Gary Oldman on the front smoking a dog-end, under a banner that declared him a super lad. What fresh lunacy is this? the editors note read. Loaded is a new magazine dedicated to life, liberty and the pursuit of sex, drink, football and less serious matters Loaded is for the man who believes he can do anything, if only he wasnt hungover.

If banter dismays you, James Brown, the magazines first editor, is quite an easy bogeyman. As he acknowledges himself, he created a title that defined a genre. Loaded was swiftly recognised as a foundational text for a resurgent and ebullient masculinity that had been searching for public expression. While it was always overtly horny, the magazine was initially more interested in a forlorn, slackjawed and self-ironising appreciation of A-listers (one reversible poster had Cindy Crawford on one side and a steam train on the other) than the grot-plus-football formula that successors and imitators like Maxim, Zoo and Nuts milked to destruction. But it also flirted with something murkier.

To its critics, Loaded and its imitators aimed to sanitise a certain hooliganistic worldview with a strategic disclaimer. Banter emerges as this relentless gloss of irony over everything, said Bethan Benwell, senior lecturer in language and linguistics at the University of Stirling and the author of several papers on mens magazines. The constant excusing of sexist or homophobic sentiments with this wink that says you dont really mean it. Benwell pointed to Loadeds emblematic strapline: For men who should know better.

Brown denies that his magazine invented banter. Instead, he says, it captured a zeitgeist that the media had previously failed to acknowledge; the folk culture that Tony Thorne refers to, brought out into the open. Before Browns intervention, GQ had run John Major and Michael Heseltine as cover stars, for Gods sake. I took the interests and the outlook of the young men that I knew, and I put them in a magazine, Brown said. Im not responsible for the tone of the later entrants to the market. We were criticised because we fancied women, not because we belittled them.

The thing about Loaded was that the way we wrote reflected the way we were with our mates, he went on. Theres definitely a thing that exists in the male outlook: you take the piss out of the people you like, and you ignore the people you dont.

Accept this as your starting point, and objections become exhausting to sustain: what youre objecting to is an act of affection. Of course, this is what makes it insidious. Because Browns account rests on the intention behind the magazine, and Benwells on the effect it had, they are impossible to reconcile. Its a very difficult thing to resist or challenge without looking like the stereotypical humourless feminist, said Benwell. But by laughing, you become complicit.

Loaded gave this new kind of banter escape velocity, and it began to colonise other worlds. On BBC2, for example, David Baddiel and Frank Skinner were staking out their own territory with Fantasy Football League, a mixture of sketches and celebrity chat that managed to be enthusiastic and satirical at the same time, and reached its peak when the pair became national icons, thanks to their Euro 96 anthem, Three Lions. While a long-running joke about the Nottingham Forest striker Jason Lees pineapple haircut seems flatly racist in retrospect Baddiel did an impression of him in blackface by and large, the tone was milder and more conventional than the magazines were: this was the sensibility of the university graduate slumming it before embarking on grown-up life.

Baddiel implied that laddism could easily occupy a spectrum from ogling to literature, drawing a line to Nick Hornbys memoir of life as an Arsenal fan, Fever Pitch. Hornby once said to me that all this stuff you know, fantasy football and his book is men talking about things that they like and for a while in the mid-80s they werent allowed to, he said in 1995. Ive always liked football and Ive always liked naked women, and its easier to talk about that now than it was eight years ago. Those comments reflect a kind of sneer at its critics that you could often detect in Fantasy Football League, even as its hosts protested that they were just having a laugh though Baddiel himself denies that view. Twenty years on, he, like Brown, is at pains to draw a line between the approach that he and Skinner popularised, and the forms that came later. I guess me and Frank did specialise in banter, he said in an email. In a time before it was known as bantz.

Over the next 10 years, two things happened that ushered in the age of banter. (You might call it mature banter, except that its also the opposite.) First, instead of just being a thing that happened, it became a thing that people talked about. Then, as it became a more tangible cultural product, everyone started trying to make money out of it. The watershed moment, the forms equivalent to Dylan going electric, was the invention of Dave.

Like most good ideas, it looks simple enough in retrospect. Before Dave was Dave, it was UKTV Gold 2. The predecessor channels audience share was 0.761%, and no one could tell who on earth it was supposed to be for. But we had the content, says Steve North, the channels brand manager in 2007 and content of a particular kind that the existing name did very little to communicate: Have I Got News for You, They Think Its All Over, Top Gear. Viewers said they loved the repartee, the humour. It reminded them of spending time with their funniest friends.

The first issue of Loaded magazine, from May 1994

The target audience was highly specific. It was men married or in relationships, maybe with young children, not going to the pub as much as they used to, says Andy Bryant, managing director of Red Bee, the agency brought in to work on the rebrand. And they missed that camaraderie.

Their purpose thus fixed, North started to run brainstorming sessions at which people would shout out suggestions for the name. One of the ones we collected was Dave, he says. We thought, great, but we cant call it that. But then we thought, Its a surrogate friend. If the audience really sees it as that, if they see it as genuinely providing the banter, maybe we can really give it a name.

They put their hunch through its paces. The market research company YouGov was commissioned to test Dave alongside a bunch of other names (Matthew and Kevin were also on the shortlist), but nothing else had the same everyman resonance. For us, Dave is a sensibility, a place, an emotion, a feeling, said North, his tone thoughtful, almost gnomic. Everyone has their own sense of who Dave is, thats the important thing. Its hard to find anyone who doesnt know someone called Dave.

Now the channel had a brand, it needed a slogan. Lots of people claim they played a part in the naming, says Bryant. But it was just as important to encapsulate what the channel was all about. And at some point someone, I dont know who, wrote it on a board: The home of witty banter. The rebrand added 8m new viewers in six months; Dave saw a 71% increase in its target audience of affluent young men.

Conceived by the first generation of senior professionals to have grown up with banter as an unremarkable part of their demographics cultural mix, the channel crystallised a change, and accelerated it. In 2006, The Ricky Gervais Show, in which Gervais and Stephen Merchant relentlessly poked fun at their in-house idiot savant Karl Pilkington, became the most popular podcast of all time. In 2007, the year of Daves rebrand, Top Gears ratings shot from below 5m to a record high of 8m. The following year, QI moved from BBC4 to BBC2. (A tie-in book published the same year, QI: Advanced Banter, sold more than 125,000 copies.)

North saw the kind of fraternal teasing that was being monetised by his channel, and the panel shows that were its lifeblood, as fundamentally benign. The key thing is that its two-way, he said. Its about two people riffing off each other.

But like his 20th-century forebears, he can see that something ugly has evolved, and he wants to keep his brand well away from it. Bants, he said with distaste. That thing of cover for dubious behaviour we hate and despise it massively. When we launched, it was about fun, being light-hearted, maybe pushing each other without being disrespectful. When people talk about Ive had a go at that person, great banter no, thats just nasty.

By the turn of the decade,as other branding agencies mimicked the success of Dave, banter was everywhere, a folk tradition that had acquired a peculiar sort of respectability. The men who celebrated it werent just lads in the pub any more: they had spending power and establishment allies on their side. But they were, by the same token, more visible to critics. Aggression from an underdog can be overlooked; aggression from the establishment is serious enough to become a matter of public concern.

Take Richard Keys and Andy Gray, Sky Sports brand-defining football presenters, who got themselves up to their necks in some extremely bad banter in 2011. Keys blamed dark forces, but everyone else blamed him and Gray for being misogynists. We knew this because there was footage.

The firestorm, as Keys called it, centred on claims that the two men had said and done heinously sexist things off-air. Most memorable, at least for its phrase-making, was the clip in which Keys eagerly asked his fellow pundit Jamie Redknapp if hed smashed it it being a woman and asserted that he could often be found hanging out the back of it.

Gray went quickly. In the days before he followed, Keys burned hot with injustice in a series of mea-sorta-culpas, particularly focused on the tape in which he expressed his derision at the idea that a woman, Sian Massey-Ellis, could be an assistant referee in the Premier League.

It was just banter, he said. Or, more exactly, just a bit of banter, as he said Massey-Ellis had assured him she understood in a later telephone conversation in which, he added, much banter passed between us. She and I enjoyed some banter, he protested. It was lads-mag banter, he insisted. It was stone-age banter, he admitted. We liked to have banter, he explained. Richard Keys was sorry if you were offended, but also, it wasnt his fault if you didnt get it. It was just banter, for goodness sake!

Up to their necks in some extremely bad banter Andy Gray and Richard Keys in 2011. Photograph: Richard Saker/Rex

Keys insistence that his mistake was simply a failure to move with the times was nothing new: banter has always seemed to carry a longing for the past, for an imagined era before male friendship was so cramped by the tiresome obligations of feminist scrutiny. But while his underlying views were painfully dated, his conception of banter was entirely modern: a sly expansion of the words meaning, and a self-conscious contention that it provided an impregnable defence.

The Keys variation understood banter, first, as a catch-all means of denying responsibility if anyone was hurt; and, second, as a means of reinforcing a bond between two people by being cruel about a third. The comparison wouldnt please a couple of alphas like Keys and Gray, but both strategies brought it closer to a style of communication with classically feminine associations: gossip. Deborah Cameron, the Rupert Murdoch (lol) Professor in Language and Communication at Oxford University, argues that the two modes of interaction follow basically the same structure. People gossip as a trust game, she said. You tell someone your unsayable private secret, and it bonds you closer together. Theyre supposed to reciprocate with a confidence of their own. Well, banter works in the same way now. You say something outrageous, and you see if the other person dares to top your remark.

The trust game in banter was traditionally supposed to be: do you trust me when I say were friends in spite of the mean things Im saying about you? But now theres a second version of the game: do I trust you not to tell anyone the mean things Im saying about other people? I think originally it was a harmless thing, said Cameron, whose analysis is rooted in an archive of male group conversation, mostly recorded by her students, that goes back to the 1980s. But then it started to be used as an excuse when men were caught out engaging in forms of it that werent so harmless.

It comes down to context and intent, says the comedian Bridget Christie. The gentler form of banter is still knocking around, she suggested, but now it exists alongside something darker: I found The Inbetweeners adolescent banter hilarious, because it was equal and unthreatening. But there is obviously a world of difference between a group of teenage boys benignly taking the piss out of each other, and a bigot being racist or misogynist and trying to pass it off as a joke.

Trace the rise of banter, and you will find that it corresponds to the rise of political correctness or, anyway, to the backlash against political correctness gone mad. That phrase and just banter mirror each other perfectly: one denoting a priggish culture that is deemed to have overreached, the other a laid-back culture that is deemed to have been unfairly reined in. Ironically enough, just banter does exactly what it accuses political correctness of, seeking to close down discussion by telling you that meaning is settled by category rather than content. Political correctness asserts that a racist joke is primarily racist, whereas banter asserts that a racist joke is primarily a joke. In the past, the men who used it rarely had to define it, or to explain themselves to anybody else. Today, in contrast, it is named all the time. The biggest change isnt the banter itself, says Bethan Benwell. Its the explicit use of the word as a disclaimer.

By sheer repetition and by its use as an unanswerable defence, banter has turned from an abstraction into a vast and calcified description of actions as well as words: gone from a way of talking to a way of life, a style that accidentally became a worldview. He bantered you, people sometimes say: you always used to banter with your mates, but now it often sounds like something you do to them. Once it was directionless, inconclusive chatter with wit as the engine that drove it, said the comedian Russell Kane. Now, if I trip you up, thats banter.

You might think the humiliation suffered by Keys and Gray would have made banter less appealing as a get-out, but not a bit of it. Banter, increasingly, seems like the first refuge of the inexcusable. In 2014, Malky Mackay, who had been fired as manager of Cardiff City Football Club a year earlier, was caught having sent texts that referred to Chinese people eating dogs, black people being criminals, Jewish people being avaricious, and gay people being snakes all of which were initially optimistically defended by the League Managers Association as letting off steam to a friend during some friendly text message banter. The comedian Dapper Laughs, whose real name is Daniel OReilly, established himself as banters rat king, with his very own ITV2 show, and then lost it after he suggested that an audience member at one of his gigs was gagging for a rape. A man was convicted of murder after he crushed his friend against a wall with a Jeep Cherokee after an argument over badger-baiting, a course of action that he said had been intended as banter. Another slashed the throat of someone he had met in a pub and described the incident as a moment of banter after 14 or 15 pints. Both are now in prison.

By any sane measure,banter was falling into disrepute, as often a disguise for malice as a word for the ribaldry of lads on the lash. Still it did not go away: instead, the worst of it has mutated again, asserting its authority in public and saving its creepiest tendencies for the shadows or, at least, for the company of five, or 10, or 20 of your closest mates.

At the London School of Economics, it started with a leaflet. Each year at the universitys freshers fair, LSE Rugby Football Club distributed a banterous primer on rugby culture. In October 2014, says the then-president of the student union, Nona Buckley-Irvine, a student came to her in tears with a copy in her hand. The leaflet talked about trollops, slags, crumpet, mingers, and the desirability of misogyny; there were passing references to the horrors of homosexual humiliation and outright homosexual debauchery. Anyone charmed by all this was invited to sign up for the club and join the banter list, entitling them to participate in the exchange of chappish email conversation.

To anyone with a passing knowledge of university laddism, it was hard to imagine a more ordinary iteration. Still, after the unreconstructed chappishness of the leaflet came to light, the club knew it had a problem. It issued a collective apology acknowledging that we have a lot to learn about the pernicious effects of banter, and promised to organise a workshop. But there was reason to be sceptical about the depth of that commitment.

When Buckley-Irvine and her colleagues published a report on the incident, they noted a string of others, including an antisemitic assault on a university ski trip to Val dIsere in 2011. And there were other indiscretions it didnt mention. According to two people who were present, one club dinner at an Indian restaurant on Brick Lane ended with a stripper having bottles thrown at her when, already intimidated, she refused to take her clothes off. She hid in the toilet, and had to be escorted out by a member of staff as the team vandalised the restaurant.

Photograph: Alamy

According to five people who were either members of the rugby club or closely associated with it, one notorious senior member was widely thought to be responsible for the leaflet. (He did not respond to requests for comment.) But when they came to defend themselves to the student union, members of the club fell back on one of the most revered pillars of laddism: all for one, one for all. Theyd clearly worked out a line, says Nona Buckley-Irvine. No one individual was responsible. They were sorry. It was just banter. Thats what they all said.

The accountancy firm KPMG, which sponsored the universitys wider Athletics Union, decided that banter was not an especially helpful brand association, and withdrew funding worth 22,000. The students union decided to disband the club for the academic year. The decision moved some observers to disgust. It was a gross overreaction, a former team member told me. We were the best-behaved team when it came to actually playing rugby but they banned that bit and they couldnt ban any of the rest.

Others took a less measured tone. I had old members emailing me and calling me a fascist, says Buckley-Irvine. Asking me if I didnt understand that it was just banter. Rugby players chanted abuse at her on nights out, she told me. They shoulder-barged her, and called her a cunt.

These kinds of interactions would tend to take place on Wednesdays, also known as sports night, at a bar in Leicester Square. Sports night was the apotheosis of the rugby clubs bleak solidarity. In deference to what you might call the wingers-before-mingers code, for instance, members of the club who were expected to dress in suits werent allowed to speak to women before 9pm. So they would just shout abuse instead, one female former student, who Ill call Anna, remembered. One chant, she said, went, Nine nos and a yes is a yes. At the time, Anna thought that it was all a joke. People would say, Its just banter all the time. After everything. Absolutely everything, she said, sitting in a cafe in south London. If you were meeting someone new, saying they had good banter, that was a pretty high compliment. Whereas if you dont go along with that stuff, its seen as, you cant take the chat, you cant take the banter. And its not seen as having a stance against it. Its seen as not being able to keep up.

After the rugby club was disbanded, nothing much changed in sports night social life. Many members of the club still went on the same nights out; they just colonised other teams. They still addressed girls as Sarah 2 or Sarah 8 depending on how attractive they considered them out of 10; they still had shouted conversations about their sex lives in front of the women they had slept with but refused to acknowledge.

That culture was not confined to Wednesday nights. Anna remembers a guy who took her picture as she slept, naked, in the bed they were sharing, and circulated it to another non-university sports team via WhatsApp. She wasnt meant to see it on his phone.

Ask anyone well-informed where banter resides now, and theyll give the same answer: WhatsApp groups and email threads, the safe spaces of the lad class. What youd get out of those WhatsApp threads, its another world of drama, one former member of the football club said. The details of girls bodies that youd read, a few funny jibes, that was the limit for me. But when it moved on to, like, really, really bad stuff, always about sex it was too much. Those threads are the source of everything.

If the threads were an outlet, they were by no means the limit. Banter, by common consent, wasnt confined to mocking each other: it was about action. If you dressed up for a night out, one female student remembered, it was just kind of status quo that you could have your arse grabbed. It was just like, Oh, that was kind of weird, but OK, thatll happen. Like everyone else willing to speak about it, her view of that culture was perplexingly nuanced, sometimes contradictory. It sounds scary, she said, but that being said, some of my best nights were there, and like it was fun. But then she said: What was defined as serious just got so pushed. I think for someone to lodge a complaint they would have to be actually hurt.

Anna remembers lots of sketchy incidents. She recalls nights when her choices faded into a blur, and she wondered if she had really been in control. But at the time, I would never call it out, she said. And then, youre all living in halls together, and the next day, its like: What did you do last night? Thats hilarious. Thats banter.

When Anna thinks about the behaviour of some of the men she knew at university, she finds it hard to pin down exactly what she thinks of them. Theres one in particular who sticks in her mind. On a Wednesday night, he was a banter guy, she said. He was a Wednesday animal. But the rest of the time, he was my friend.

Controversial though all this was at the time, no one seems to think that it will have cost the perpetrators much. Ive tried so hard to leave all that behind, said the former member of the football team. But those guys theyre all going on to run banks, or the country, or whatever. The senior rugby man who many held responsible, by the way, has landed on his feet. Today, he has a job at KPMG.

In 2017, every new instance of banter is immediately spotted and put through the journalistic wringer. (Vices Joel Golby, who wrote the definitive text on the bagel thing, has made a career from his exquisite close readings of the form.) But when each new absolute legend emerges, we dont usually have the context to make the essential judgment: do the proponents tend towards the harmless warmth of Ellis and his mates, or the frank hostility of the LSE rugby boys? Is their love of irony straightforward, or a mask for something else?

As Richard Keys and Dapper Laughs and their cohorts have polluted the idea of banter, the commercial entities that endorsed its rise have become uneasy with the label. They wanted it to go viral; they hadnt expected it to go postal. Dave, for example, has dropped the home of witty banter slogan. Its not about classic male humour any more, its a little bit smarter, says UKTVs Steve North. We definitely say it less than we used to.

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samanthasroberts · 7 years ago

Text

The age of banter

The long read: It used to be just a word now it is a way of life. But is it time to get off the banter bus?

Lewis Ellis (left) and friends in Ayia Napa, pretending to be in Syria. Photograph: Lewis Ellis

dougie stew (@DougieStew)

Welcome to London #BagelGate pic.twitter.com/KcJoz0ycZU

February 26, 2017

The first issue of Loaded magazine, from May 1994

Up to their necks in some extremely bad banter Andy Gray and Richard Keys in 2011. Photograph: Richard Saker/Rex

Photograph: Alamy

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Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/08/02/the-age-of-banter/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/08/02/the-age-of-banter/

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allofbeercom · 7 years ago

Text

The age of banter

The long read: It used to be just a word now it is a way of life. But is it time to get off the banter bus?

Lewis Ellis (left) and friends in Ayia Napa, pretending to be in Syria. Photograph: Lewis Ellis

dougie stew (@DougieStew)

Welcome to London #BagelGate pic.twitter.com/KcJoz0ycZU

February 26, 2017

The first issue of Loaded magazine, from May 1994

Up to their necks in some extremely bad banter Andy Gray and Richard Keys in 2011. Photograph: Richard Saker/Rex

Photograph: Alamy

<source media="(min-wid

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/08/02/the-age-of-banter/

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