LockerRoom: I know that in the next life things will be good. I know that I shall be reincarnated as something good and useful. I'll be Alice Munro's pen. Venus Lunny's violin. Julianne Moore's loofah. Michael Kennedy will represent me in negotiations, Tom Humphries writes.

I know because, in this life, fate has decreed I be a Leeds United fan. I am an untouchable. I walk with the wretched of the earth, and the wretched of the earth laugh at me behind my back. Sure. Into each life some rain must fall, but enough is enough. In the next life, I'm owed. Big style.

The latest deluge comes in the form of the oleaginous but legitimate businessman Terry Venables, who has replaced Uncle Dave in the manager's swivel chair at Elland Road. Say what you like about Uncle Dave (and we did, we did), at least he wasn't a spiv, at least you didn't have to count your fingers after he shook your hand. Dave wanted to hump your leg. Dave wanted you to love him, and at least when he swaddled you in his gentle thoughts you just knew that Uncle Dave was too sweet to be wholesome but there were worse things he could be.

Me and Tel go back a long ways. Once, when we were young and fashionably freelance, myself and the esteemed Football Corr of this paper went along to White Hart Lane one Saturday afternoon to watch Spurs play Everton. We went as boys. We left as men.

Ironically, we had no legitimate business there at all. We were in London. We had finagled accreditations. We went along to see some footie for free and to eat all the pies in the press room (well, we were freelance and poor as church mice), and afterwards, well sated too, we waddled down to the press conference being conducted by the small but perfectly tanned El Tel. Free theatre.

At the time the poor misfortunate we now know as the Major League Soccerballer Paul Gascoigne was being lured and wooed by the politically incorrect Italian outfit Lazio. This seemed to be a sore point at Spurs, but for the longest while you couldn't tell.

Venables shared his thoughts on all other matters in a separate series of little sessions. He did the Sunday boys first, the daily boys next, any feature stuff then, and he kept the chaps laughing. Terry's bonhomie rendered them all invertebrates.

All was happy and Gazza was never mentioned, until one crazy poor soul from the London listings magazine Time Out blurted out the question which would haunt him forever. "Terry," he said, "what's the story with Paul Gascoigne?"

Now, myself and the Football Corr were as innocent as the Time Out man, but we sensed immediately that something was wrong. We were as blameless as any of the citizens pouring out of the Biograph Theatre in Chicago behind John Dillinger on the day he was mown down by the Feds. We were feckless, pie-thieving, freeloading bystanders, but we sensed what we were about to see would scar us.

Mr Time Out had a death wish.

"Who are you and where are you from," said El Tel coldly.

All chatter in the press room stopped. The hacks shrunk away. Outside the skies grew dark and a raven landed on the sill. We wondered if somebody would inform the Time Out man of his rights. Too late.

"I'm Johnny Hapless from Time Out magazine," he said brightly.

And for the next five minutes in view of us all El Tel told Mr Hapless what he thought of him, his magazine, his question, his presence in the north London area, his existence in general. El Tel wasn't impressed by any of it.

I wasn't present for Roy Keane's celebrated Saipan speech to Mick McCarthy, but when I imagine it I assume that Roy was using the Venables template. Cold, chilling words delivered with a quiet, serial killer intensity. A verbal kicking to death but with little picador stabs in between, the sort of thing that freezes and transfixes all onlookers and makes them wonder afterwards why they didn't intervene.

Since then I have never liked Terry Venables. To be honest I never liked him before that anyway, but since then it's been personal.

Now Tel is manager of Leeds United, a club decaying at the core, a club run by the impossibly slippery Peter Ridsdale, a club which seldom seems happy or wholesome.

A few years ago I was among the many who fell to their knees before Ridsdale's pearly smile and hailed him as the saviour. He marketed himself as a decent sort. He was interested in performing the unlikely alchemy which would turn Leeds into a club full of decent sorts.

He talked a good game. Having come on heavily to Martin O'Neill, he finally gave Uncle Dave the Leeds job and made it seem as if he'd had a lucky escape from that shallow, flirty jezebel O'Neill. Uncle Dave was the sort that any chairman should be looking to settle down with.

I never admired Ridsdale more than when he said prior to the Woodgate/ Bowyer trial that if either was found guilty the heaviest sanctions would be thrown at them. What an example, I thought, if Leeds were to place principle over profit and just get rid of them and the stain they might leave.

Bowyer got off, his reputation not escaping further blemish in the process. Woodgate got the millionaire's sentence of community service. Bowyer declined to pay a club fine weeks later. Leeds transfer listed him but backed down. A couple of weeks ago Bowyer travelled to Liverpool for talks. Gerard Houllier decided that Lee Bowyer wasn't his type. Leeds will have to employ him a while longer.

The Woodgate situation is sadder. In the wake of the disastrous sale of the Rio Ferdinand, Ridsdale displayed all the cowardice of his convictions by stating publicly that Woodgate could be the future of the club. I'm all for rehabilitation and am happy for Woodgate to have a career and make his millions, but Leeds should have more pride. Leeds and Woodgate both need a clean start.

But no starting again. No clean sheet. Leeds go forward as before, only spivier, smaller, even less likeable. Ridsdale has moved Uncle Dave out of his lovely job not because Uncle Dave wrote a distasteful book (along with Dave Walker, another director at the club) which Ridsdale claims took him by surprise, but because at the end of the season the money thing didn't add up.

I don't think Uncle Dave was ever going to lift the Champions League trophy, in fact, I would be surprised if somebody could tell me hand on heart that Uncle Dave had the respect of his dressing-room by the end of last season. But for every time Uncle Dave spoke with forked tongue, so too did Peter Ridsdale.

Now we move into the era of El Tel, the man whose pressing business in the Seychelles kept him away from his players for the last few weeks. Soon Leeds will lose a couple of points of light in Gary Kelly and Robbie Keane. It will be the club of Woodgate, Bowyer, Alan Smith, Danny Mills. How ugly is that?

Three hopes. That Steve McPhail's flashy passing might be El Tel's cup of darjeeling. That the El Tel era be brief . That all this is forgotten about come reincarnation time.