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12 October 2016

Aston Villa’s train bantaaaaaaaa and your recently divorced uncle

by Dan Mobbs

As your recently divorced uncle has discovered, it can sometimes be difficult to ingratiate yourself with an audience after being confined to sleeping in the car. Attempting to win friendship through mild banter overheard fourth-hand from someone at a bar doesn’t always go down well with an audience tired of the same lethargic joke.

Don’t believe me. Just ask the team responsible for Aston Villa’s Twitter output. And your recently divorced uncle of course.

In the name of bantaaaaaaaa, Virgin Trains attempted to distract attention away from its hot air ballooning, cycling-dunce owner with a joke about the lack of potential candidates for the vacant managerial position at Villa Park.

Naturally, the Villa Twitter team of interns were keen to deliver a passive aggressive happy slap to Virgin to demonstrate their voracious hunger for top bantz and distract attention from their owner’s swift decision to condemn Villa to a further period of integration.

Much like when you’re joshing with your mates in the pub and one of them delivers a bantaaaaaaaa that amusingly cuts to quite a pertinent and personal issue, it is obviously understandable to wait nearly 24 hours to reply.

Perhaps a fax, sms or laddy email will suffice, as you wittily reply in order to assert your standing as the sort of person that would kick a dress as a clown and scare people in the street for YouTube lolz.


These exchanges with people of note and a fleet of trains is new ground for previously quiet and impersonal club twitter accounts, which are often best used as an information tool that also shares enthusiasm for the club with its fans.

The usual bantaaaaaaaa of expressing surprise at an international call up, vandalism, or experimenting with indoor fireworks are omnipresent, and have made the transfer from old media to the digital age.

Just last week, Ander Herrera laughed out lol when he was called up to the Spain squad while on holiday with his family, following injuries to Saul Niguez and Thiago Alcantara. It took confirmation from his bff Dave De Gea to reassure a kit-less Herrera, who had to buy a pair of boots en-route to the training ground.

At the other end of the scale, don’t leave your UGG boots lying around as Joey Barton will cut them in half, because it’s pure bantz and vandalism.

With that in mind, Villa’s team of Twitter interns have a fair way to go before they gravitate to the heights of pure bantz and instead find themselves alone at the bar with your recently divorced uncle reciting dad jokes and telling a train how many trophies it’s won.

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