Wives’ Tale Wags the Dog

We, the many tabloid readers of Britain, devour the antics of the WAGs in Germany.

You don’t know the WAGs? Well, “WAG” is high-brow proper English for Wives And Girlfriends of famous English soccer players, a word probably worthy of newfound qualification in the dictionary.

If we’re to believe the tabloids, and some of us even do, the WAGs have savored Germany, lounging and cavorting while not even once being ripped for lack of any coherent offensive structure.

They’ve enlivened their $1,830-per-night hotel. They’ve purchased some Dolce & Gabbana. They’ve supposedly had a big time at Garibaldi’s in Baden Baden, amassing a $783 bar bill. OK, they’ve had a big-big night at Maxi’s Baden Baden, consuming (details courtesy of the Mirror) some $3,660 of Veuve Cliquot, Sambuca shots and Amaretto cocktails.

Also, we learned from the Daily Mail and the Daily Record of Coleen McLoughlin’s one-day private-jet trip home to Liverpool, which enthralled us, because even resident Americans know Coleen as the 20-year-old fiancee of English star Wayne Rooney. Apparently Coleen had a business meeting and the removal of her new copper and blond hair extensions in favor of her natural dark blond, but the tabloids seemed oddly skeptical of the business meeting and shockingly played up the hair extensions.

As Coleen wrote in her column in the magazine Closer: “Before I left for Germany, I had copper and blond extensions put in. I liked them at first, but after a while I decided I preferred my usual look.”

Then, the capper: “I feel much better now.”

As did we all.

Here, however, goes a big bravo to the Daily Mail, which contacted an environmentalist. As I learned from the inarguably educational tabloids, a 900-mile private flight such as Coleen’s expends “roughly the same amount of global-warming gas as three months driving a 1.4-liter car.”

That extra 0.22 of a ton of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?

Coleen.

Worse, there’s no way to measure the extra fuel required to haul Coleen’s luggage to Germany, seeing as how she reportedly packed staggeringly more than the other WAGs because, she wrote, “I had to take tons of luggage to Germany as I wasn’t sure what I’d need.”

Seems she wound up sending a friend back for more clothes, but apparently on a -- whew -- commercial flight.

Yesterday we awakened in a stir to learn that Victoria Posh Spice Beckham complained to private-jet-company authorities Tuesday night in Cologne, as the jet some WAGs rented at $732 each for the 35-minute flights to and from the England match suffered a refueling malfunction that wrought a delay in takeoff, which the WAGs, two pregnant, spent in a hot, humid airport.

They got to the hotel later than some people who took buses!

The German tabloid Bild bemoaned their gluttony and reasoned, “In 10 minutes they spend more cash on clothing than our women do in a lifetime.”

Never believe previous generations’ claims of superior toughness. Today’s gladiators can win Group B and bring their WAGs, fully aware of how badly the public needs them.