Bellamy: Guardian blog

Bellamy the beautiful gargoyle

Craig Bellamy: on second thoughts. Previously this column may have given the impression it considered Bellamy a gobby, arrogant, occasionally violent product of the grisly Premier League age. It now appears he is in fact a fiercely honest, searingly incisive, tell-it-like-it-is victim of a culture that... Hang on. Perhaps that's going a bit far. But there is something about Bellamy, a hideously unappealing but still strangely attractive and compelling figure. He is the loudmouth whose opinion you actually want to hear, because it's compellingly honest. "Everybody in football knows what the guy is like," Bellamy said on Saturday and you wanted to hear more. Give me more Bellamy. Let me hear the truth. Bellamy has in the past fallen out with Graeme Souness and Alan Shearer: could he be the voice of the anti-macho and the anti-bland, antithesis to the antiseptic? Then, you remember the other stuff. The golf club, the assorted public order arrests. Bellamy will have to remain an alluring gargoyle, a guilty pleasure, and a stopped clock that tells the right time once a day. But he is definitely fun.

Posted By: The Judge, Mar 1, 20:00:05