Being a Goon in London

Dedicated to the Goons I love and miss.

Goonhood isn’t a brand. It’s a lifestyle.

Some say it’s something you’re born with. To them I say, ‘INCORRECT’.

It takes a special kind of man to fully embrace the way of the Goon.

Before you can even think about aspiring to become one, you need to be accepted into the clan. Given the size of Mud Island, the number of chavs and the delicate socio-economic balance between native Englishmen and Saffa imports to London, there are limited positions in the Goon camps. New joiners are sought out and hand picked.

Being male, having a background in University Drinking (preferably Rhodes, although a rogue Stellenboschian has slipped through the cracks), rugby appreciation and uncouth behaviour (an ASBO is always a plus) are fundamental. Anyone too eager or ambitious will be dropped like the extraneous salad accompanying a 3am kebab. Once selected, the process of attrition begins. Slowly, the fiery furnace of collective experience moulds, hones, sculpts average, upstanding men into real Goons.

Goon Law

1.0 Rule number one of being a Goon: behave as if you are civilization’s worst nightmare. Don’t grow up. Grow down.
1.1 Demonstrate brotherliness towards fellow Goons by forcing them to get plastered within a quarter of an inch of their lives (twice a week as a bare minimum). Goon-plastered: 110% motherless / legless / speechless; wrecked to the furtherest extreme, the outermost limits. i.e. the road less travelled. At times it will be tough. People will ostracize you. But you can do it.

2.0 Crucial to the survival of the camp is the Head Boy. Our Goons call theirs The Uncle. It operates on a system not unlike that of The Godfather. After the Head Boy, there are intermediate Goons who are frightened of him. And then there are the lowest in the pecking order – these are typically your Bad Drunks. Whatever shame you may have brought upon yourself, you can guarantee that one of the Bad Drunks did worse. Their Sunday Night Bongezi’s will be twenty times worse than yours. They will have blown more cash than you. In fact, their credit cards will be in the red and their savings accounts will be in overdraught curtailing any trips to Europe in the near future. They will have gone home with someone who was not only hit with the ugly stick, but spanked with it. In the face.
2.1 Burn (mock, ridicule, humiliate) the Bad Drunks regularly by replying-to-all on group emails until burnees want to hurl themselves in front of an approaching South West train.

3.0 Hold bi-monthly meetings at restaurants serving red meat or chimmichangas, where items on the agenda range from topics as diverse and profound as sex and general smut to infinitely amusing booze consumption stories.
3.1 As a Goon, the frequency with which you are frog-marched / thrown / kicked out of pubs should increase with age. Should your track record begin to disappoint, you will be excommunicated.
3.2 Beat the shit out of fellow Goons while dressed in gorilla suits at least twice a year. Other Goons should cheer.

4.0 It is OK to still have traffic cones in your bedroom at age 27.
4.1 Like the folks over at Nike, constantly strive for innovation. Come up with new ways of being destructive. See potential in kitchen trays, pots, pans as vehicles on which to descend flights of stairs.
Don’t be afraid to abuse a vuvuzela on a quiet afternoon at a chilled out braai. Break, bend, destruct …