Kelly Slate has been around for a while. He knows more about the ASP World Tour than Kieren Perrow, he probably knows more about fitness balls than Mick Fanning, more about harpooning whales in the face than Rasta and surely more about hairlines than Graham Gooch, Elton John and Jim Robinson from Neighbours circa ’89 all put together. 

Recently at the Rip Curl Pro Search Peniche, Andy Higgins was putting a video clip together on behalf of Surfrider Foundation Europe showing the world’s top surfers all appealing for awareness of climate change ahead of the Copenhagen Climate Change conference in December. You can see Mick, Joel, Taj, Goods, etc, all lending the weight of their surf celebrity to make people more aware of the problem. Higgo approached Kelly’s Quik team manager Belly to ask if he could get the man for a quote. As Belly once famously put it in his own words, third-personing himself like a UK garage MC, “If you wanna get to Kelly, you gotta go through Belly…”

‘Everybody wants a piece of the Champ…’

 

Sometime later word came back from Camp Slater: Nein danke. Not feelin’ it.

What’s this? Kelly can’t be arsed to save the planet? Owns several coal-fired powers station in Central China? Got an Amazonian logging business?

It’s much more shocking than that. Slater, has his own ideas on the topic (gasp). Slater doesnt not believe in global warming, apparently. (Not having actually spoken to him directly about it myself, I should point out that is all merely hearsay, soz.) He reportedly thinks its all part of a conspiracy. Reportedly.

Before you shudder in abhorrence, have a peep at this link from the beeb. It states that the earth has been cooling down since 1999. 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8299079.stm

While the news of Kelly’s uncommon stance was being passed on to an understandably dismayed Higgo, some at the table were shocked, but did understand a good ol’ conspiracy theory. “I saw this docco about 9-11 that said Bush and Cheney own the Empire State Building…” blurted out one slightly confused middle aged Australian doing his best to stay in the conversation. But history will show us that the man performed better in his conspiracy practical than in his theory. A few days later, in his practical, he crept into Owen Wright’s hotel room at 3am,past his sleeping father. He tiptoed over to beside Owen’s pillow and pricked three more small holes in Owen’s right eardrum with a needle he’d earlier dipped in dogshit to make sure, and now Mick is odds on for the Kelly’s title. The advantage Mick gained over Joel in at Supertubos was equal to the bye awarded by Wright’s no-show.

‘My ear hurts.’

 

Could the wave that caused Owen’s initial injury have come from a ‘global warming’ storm?

Sheeyeeeet, there may be more to this than we first thought….

 

Yesterday, just before leaving Portugal, Andre Agassi and Steffi Graf asked me to pick them up some crack. I went to see Rita, the local connection. Even the dealers there are really honest. I forgot to take the change, but Rita ran after me and handed it back, bless her.