“I used to sit in school and look at the other kids and think, ‘These aren’t the same as me’. And I even look at people today and think, ‘They’re not the same’. And I don't know what it is. I almost felt like I had a higher calling, you know, there was some reason. And I thought it was football but the more and more I play football, the more and more I think it’s not football. I don’t know what it is, and until this day I still haven’t got my finger on it.” - Joey Barton

Ooher, nurse, bring the screens. I wonder what higher calling Mr Joey Barton can have been referring to in his interview with the BBC’s Gabby Logan, quoted above? Archbishop of Canterbury? Secretary-General of the United Nations? Quite possibly both.

Or perhaps he really was being brutally honest with himself, accepting that he wasn’t put on this earth to play football - which, in truth, is something he hasn’t done much of lately - but that there was a much higher calling which involved twatting people, wheresoever they might appear. On the training ground. In the nightclub. In the street outside the nightclub. In his car. With a lit cigar into the eye of a young kid. Maybe that’s what he means, that he has been put on the earth to bully, smack, punch and maim anyone who might transgress him. That’s the higher purpose. In which case we ought to agree right now that it is a higher calling he is, for lo, answering with great devotion and commitment.

Listening to that interview with Logan, recorded last year, you do wonder about his sanity - even if his behaviour hadn’t made you question it pretty rigorously beforehand. People who ramble on about a higher calling are very often, I think it’s fair to say, a tad delusional and on a one-way ticket to the booby hatch.

Fittingly, then, Joey has pitched up at that fraught and anxious asylum for the insane that is St James’ Park - and so, if this is a morality tale, this is where it gets interesting. Kevin Keegan, the manager and a man whose status as a messiah has been imposed upon him rather than - as with Barton - being self-ordained, believes he can “work with” Barton, and therefore wishes the player to remain at the club. The club’s owner, Mike Ashley, claiming the moral high ground, believes that Barton should be kicked out. Now I may be wrong about this, but my guess is that neither man really cares one way or the other about Barton’s rap sheet; there is no morality at all in their respective conflicting decisions. Keegan wants to keep a bit of bite for his otherwise singularly toothless midfield, while Ashley is desperate to recoup a bit of dosh for an exorbitantly priced player who may well end up spending the vast majority of his contract either doing nothing whatsoever or sewing mailbags (or whatever the hell else they do to pass the time in prison these days).

The issue of whether it is morally right to pay a vast salary to an unrepentant thug, to have Barton’s name on the back of those barcode shirts to be bought by local kids, does not seem to impinge at all. It is simply two cases of self-interest, so far as I can see.

To support this contention I would direct you, m’lud, to the whining complaints from Newcastle United about the decision from the Football Association to charge Barton for his disgraceful assault upon his Manchester City teammate, Ousmane Dabo - a charge that is expected to result in a record 15-match ban. If the Newcastle board were genuinely outraged by Barton’s appalling track record of almost continuous acts of psychopathic violence, they would concur with the FA that the player fully deserves his punishment.

Instead they are insisting that because the whole business took place 18 months ago and he has already been charged for it by a criminal court, Barton should escape without any further punishment. This is a bizarre argument; in the first place, the FA could do nothing about Barton until now because he was the subject of a higher jurisdiction, i.e. the law courts. Further, the FA has a code of conduct for players and clubs - it may not always seem as if it does, but it does - and Barton has quite clearly transgressed it. Newcastle United are merely miffed that Barton is not likely to kick a ball in anger (so to speak) until around about Christmas time: the board’s moral stance suddenly dissolved when faced with this unremunerative likelihood. You might hope, incidentally, that Barton’s market value might similarly dissolve and that if Newcastle United eventually do offload him it is to someone like Huyton FC for the price of a tube of cheese and chive Pringles.

Those who stick up for Barton argue that convicted offenders who have been punished by the courts should, of course, be allowed to work again. Call it, uh, rehabilitation. Well, up to a point this is fair enough – as in the case of Oldham’s Lee Hughes, despite him having killed a man through dangerous driving, absconding from the scene and being sentenced to six years in jail. Hughes may well be obnoxious, but at least he appeared genuinely repentant of his criminally dangerous driving and cowardice in fleeing the scene of his crime. There is not, however, even the whiff of repentance from Barton; he is a serial offender who has apologised to nobody in person, least of all Dabo – and you suspect this is because Barton believes he is somehow justified in his behaviour. It’s that “higher calling” again, a magnificently overweening ego (even by Premier League footballer standards), allied to intense and consuming stupidity (even by Premier League footballer standards). And calling him “troubled” rather than repulsive, offering to “work with him” while paying him sack loads of moolah will not, in the end, help Barton very much, either.

Scorn brings results

More evidence that spite, vituperation and scorn are the most useful commodities to instil within England sportsmen that most unusual quality, a will to win. The more they are praised and the greater the expectations, the more disastrously they perform. But stick the knife in and suddenly all manner of heroics are forthcoming. England’s fightback against South Africa on Friday was the most remarkable recovery since Lazarus said he thought he was feeling a little better. It came the morning after a fusillade of press vilification directed at the team. By the time you read this England may well have succumbed, mind – but that will only be because they had pages of praise to read in Saturday morning’s newspapers.

Shinawatra all-clear is a fit and proper joke

IT IS A little over a year since the Premier League conducted a “thorough” investigation of Thaksin Shinawatra’s business dealings and pronounced him a “fit and proper” person to own Manchester City. It’s only a month or so ago that I - and I would guess, you - stopped laughing at the announcement.

If Shinawatra passes the financial probity test, then who wouldn’t? The bar, you have to say, must have been set rather low. Last week, Thaksin’s missus, Pojaman, was banged up by a Thai court for three years for tax fraud and prosecutors now have their eyes on the millions of pounds allegedly salted away by the former prime minister. We have heard all about the “soft loans” to the despicable military dictatorship in neighbouring Myanmar and the dodgy land deals and read the Amnesty International reports about the human rights abuses that took place when Shinawatra ran Thailand.

Actually, we knew about most of this when the Premier League considered his suitability to run Manchester City, but the persecution of antigovernment dissidents, the allegations of corruption and fraud on a commendably massive scale did not unduly discomfort Richard Scudamore et al – and I don’t suppose the verdict of a court 6,000 miles away from the strange universe that is inhabited by the Premier League will cut much ice, either.

Perhaps only if he leaves and Manchester City goes bust will they find their levels of concentration improved and maybe not even then.

I suppose that the time will come when all Premier League football clubs are owned by shady foreigners - or, if Mr Shinawatra’s libel lawyers are reading this, upstanding and entirely decent foreign businessmen who have, for the most laudable of reasons, decided that they wish to own a British football club.

So long as the money rolls in, the Premier League will not give a monkey’s. Meanwhile a tearful Thaksin left the court to embark upon a lecture tour in southeast Asia, where he will be passing on business tips to the next generation of potential British football club owners.

Hugh McIlvanney is away