My Hippie Crack Shame - the legal height of scandal in these strange days

Lineker’s Bar, Tenerife, 2011.

To the left of me, a Welshman in a mankini, his arse freshly shorn. To the right, 18 girls from Sidcup, Kent, all dressed as the character from Where’s Wally. And in front of me, a young lady, towers of shot glasses strewn over each shoulder, holding a gas canister, demanding five euros, and in my right hand: a balloon.

There it is. My Hippy Crack Shame. I should have known better. But I was on a stag do and, having done the cruciates in a sports centre in Rainham years before, my international career was already over.

I went a bit light-headed for all of around 10 seconds, begrudgingly handed over the cash for a mind-bending experience significantly less potent and certainly less harmful than a large espresso, and hadn’t really given the incident much consideration until recently.

Only belatedly do I realise it is a parable of the ages. Gary Lineker, as far as we know, never laid a lip on the dreaded balloon, and look what he achieved. His brother Wayne’s bar peddles the filth, and he ended up in prison.

Jack Grealish, a mouth-wateringly exciting teenage prospect whom the Football Association should be convincing to pledge his international future to England, and not Ireland, has become the latest footballer to join me in The Sun’s Hippy Crack Hall of Shame, alongside Raheem Sterling and Saido Berahino. It is a journalistic endeavour that almost becomes ingenious on the basis of the sheer number of levels on which it is absurd.

His manager Tim Sherwood has, like Brendan Rodgers re Sterling, “had a word with him”, we have been assured.

“This is an eye-opener for him,” Sherwood said. “He has to realise he has to be very careful who he can trust out there.” Words that confirm what everyone already knows, that his misdemeanour is merely in having allowed the picture to become public, the deed itself being entirely legal, harmless, undergone as standard practice by women about to give birth, and without any consequence whatsoever. (Yes, it is true – apparently – that hippy crack, aka laughing gas, aka nitrous oxide, has caused death before now. This has been a consequence of people hooking themselves up directly to the canister and accidentally inhaling no oxygen for 15 minutes or more. There was also a pile-up on the M27 last week, and yet footballers continue to drive themselves in and out of their training grounds in front of the TV cameras with impunity.)

Unlikely though it may seem, one wonders if Sherwood has outsmarted us all. In forcing these bacchanalian balloon parties underground, it’s possible he may have imbued it with enough thrilling danger to prevent his players ever graduating on to harder stuff, like half a shandy.

Arguably the most comic element, when the other “role model” argument is wheeled out, is that, as with shisha smokers Raheem Sterling and Jordon Ibe, these very young men are actively seeking out activities significantly less harmful than alcohol, eschewing the wayward behaviour of their peers, making real sacrifices so as not to risk their wondrous opportunities and lives.

It begs the question over whether this is the best we can do. In the very old days, journos would go on wild nights out with the players after the Saturday match. Now they are publicly shamed for not drinking.

The Premier League’s £5bn rights deal made it the second most lucrative sports league in the world, but the NFL is still miles ahead in every respect.

Jameis Winston of the Florida State Seminoles is expected to be picked first in next week’s superhyped college draft, yet stands accused of sexual assault.

Aaron Hernandez, former star tight end for the New York Patriots, has just been jailed for murder, a gangland execution at the back of a car park, and awaits prosecution for the murder of two nightclub doormen apparently over having had his drink spilt in a nightclub. They’re laughing at us.

Grealish, we hope, will one day play for England, a team most of the country wishes might start doing well. The national demonisation of its brightest prospects, over less than nothing, is a curious strategy.

Ronnie O’Sullivan, eh? He’s even good at snooker with no shoes on. Who’d have thought it?

This part of “shoegate” was only marginally less predictable than O’Sullivan’s excuse, that he took his shoes off because they were “hurting” in his World Championship first-round match against Craig Steadman, and not to ground his opponent’s self-worth yet further into the floor.

Lesser snooker-playing mortals might be dependent on their footwear, and the extra two inches of lean over the table the luxury of shoes affords. But when you’re O’Sullivan, and you can just play left-handed rather than reach for the rest, they really are redundant. We look forward to seeing him playing on one knee come the quarter-final, wearing a blindfold, and running the cue between the toes of his standing foot.

Sport as a whole really needs to think about the consistency of its message when it comes to respect for the opposition. Luis Suarez genuinely felt the need to apologise for twice nutmegging David Luiz. Premier League managers like nothing more than to talk of the threat posed by part-time bricklaying strikers when the FA Cup draw brings them together.

Such niceties are not exchanged by boxers. Messrs Mayweather and Pacquiao are not speaking of the threat the other poses, but of their own superiority, which is, of course, what everyone prefers.