The Henley Regatta

The Duchess went pallid; the Duke stood and stared
The Colonel was livid – he spluttered and glared
And the Tory Peers said, “It’s a serious matter”
When the Russians invaded the Henley Regatta…
They charged in on DMs with football scarves high
Red soccer hooligans – “Surrender or die!”
The Dynamo Kiev Boys, pissed out of their heads – 
They kicked in the gates singing “We are the Reds!”
They danced in the fountains and pissed in the water
(which grossly offended the Archbishop’s daughter)
They nicked all the strawberries and drank the champagne – 
then they took off their clothes and streaked round in the rain!
They started a ruck in the private enclosure
And Alexei got nicked for indecent exposure – 
took over the Tannoy and put on the Clash
then they danced on the seats ‘til they broke with a crash….
Then the Redskins turned up and they started to play
And it started a party which lasted all day
And it didn’t take long for the fat cats to scatter
When the Russians invaded the Henley Regatta!
Then they jumped in the water and nicked a few yachts
And they charged off to London at thirty five knots
And for weeks all the hip clubs were filled with the chatter
Of the day that the REDS Took The Henley Regatta!


(Attilla The Stockbroker)


Well, yes there’s plenty of good old Class War going on if you’re up for it, but to be honest a stroppy pissed chav is the same as a bugled-up, braying toff. Both are a pain in the arse but get over any inverted snobbery you might have and the Henley Regatta will be a total whoopee-cushion.


Word of warning: For the low-rent types such as me, it's best to avoid anything further up the course (i.e. towards the finish in Henley itself) than the Barn Bar which is about half-a-mile from the start. It gets hellishly packed with assorted Rupert’s and Henrietta’s, with all the self-awareness of John McCrirrick, who spread out their vast hampers and champers over an already-narrow towpath. The result being a traffic jam of M25 proportions and your tolerance for your fellow man plummets as you fight to move down the course.


Get yourself sorted out nice and early, right down at the start opposite Temple Island. For a start (ho-ho) it’s far less crowded, secondly there are a fair amount of non-rowing entertainments (bar, bouncy castle etc) to keep everyone amused for the day and finally of course, it’s where you get to see the crews really put the hammer down, going through the gears and cranking out some serious torque, to get their boats off and away and put early pressure on their opponents.


Because make no mistake folks, if you don’t get rocked mightilly on two crews going hell for leather, side by side, mano-a-mano down the Thames, giving it everything, then your sporting compass needs serious adjustment. You won’t have heard of the majority of crews or crew members but that doesn’t matter. Pick one and cheer them on, in the understanding they’ve trained for this since last September and dreamt dreams of competing and winning here for even longer. 


They’re not going to kiss their club badge on a Saturday and demand a loyalty bonus on a Monday. 


They’re not going to fall out of Faces nightclub, Essex on the arm of a pneumatic starlet / thick-as-mince hunk. 


They’re not on £80k a week. 99.9% of them will not see that in a career. In some ways it’s very insular and victory here seems purely for the acknowledgement of those few in the know about rowing, but what the hell. These four days are about them, the athletes and they put on a show like Sinatra at Madison Square Gardens.


Just pick a crew and cheer them because, well, that’s what you do at sporting events. It’s the basic childish enjoyment of play, untainted by cynical commercialism and, come on, a jug of Pimms, a scorching sun, an ice-cream van and a bouncy castle for the little ‘un, just a stone’s throw away and top class sport in a beautiful natural environment, what is there NOT to love about Henley?


Strip away the class preconceptions and that’s all you are left with and surely we can all get behind the idea of something as basically 'fun' as that.