Eco-martyr Neville shows PR has gone mad
Last week, Pope and Swift stumbled across a sentence that they never thought they would bear witness to. ‘Footballer Gary Neville has applied to build a flower-shaped eco-friendly house in Greater Manchester’ it read. Cue bemusement. Surely it was some sort of a joke, some sort of premature April Fool’s gag, Rio Ferdinand murking the Manchester United club captain with the latest of his intricate plots.
Apparently not. The more hated Neville brother has genuinely applied to build a four storey family home on the outskirts of Bolton, complete with wind turbine, solar panels and geothermal heating. If it gains planning permission, the home will be the first zero carbon house in North West England.
Stuart Fraser, partner at Make Architects with whom Neville has designed the house, said in a statement that cries ‘Yipee, we being paid enough by Gaz to pay Pompey’s wages on time for a year!’: “The client has been heavily involved in the design process and is passionate about preserving the natural beauty of this area.’
But does he really? Does Neville give two flying tackles about the environment, global warming and the continued rise in the levels of CO2 that threaten to blight our generation and ruin the world of our children? Can you imagine him switching off the light every time when he walks out of the room or chatting to Paul Scholes about his recycling bin overflowing? No, us neither.
The whole eco-martyr persona just doesn’t fit with the Gary Neville that we all know and hate. He’s the man who grows annoying facial hair and spends half of the few games he plays hollering at the refereee, not some hippy caring soul who composts his veg peelings. It may be a prejudiced view of the man but footballers don’t do green issues. They do gas guzzling 4×4’s and unnecessary swearing at former team mates in heated cup games. To expect any more is foolish.
Such is why we must beware. Beware the fact that even the most intolerable of human beings like Neville can be made to seem human when equipped with a Toyota Prius, beware the fact that PR has the power to turn public persona on its head with the drop of a hat. What next, John Terry setting up a orphanage in his own home?
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