The Chelsea left-back, lovable, insisted he was “perplexed” by the insinuation that he was anything other than “entirely veracious and unwaveringly scrupulous” in his account of what John Terry said to QPR defender Anton Ferdinand on that fateful day at Loftus Road.
Swirling a glass of brandy pensively in one hand, Cole sighed deeply before explaining to Football Burp that his word is his bond, and that anyone who contests this would “feel the full force of my charm offensive, starting with tea and scones in the atrium”.
He said: “It grieves me so that the English Football Association should see fit to slur my character by – if you’ll pardon the unintentional pun – association.
“Anyone within footballing circles with any knack of judgement will have seen through Anton’s act of deceit, duplicitous rapscallion that I for one know him to be.
“Why, just the other year I lent him my volumes of Proust, and he returned them with peri peri sauce stains all over the leather binding. I highly doubt he even read them, rather used them to eat takeaway off.
“But oh no, the Football Association – not content with stigmatising a dear, sweet man like John Terry – see fit to very publicly call into question the integrity with which I have always gone about my business, in every walk of life.
“Mark my words – the FA are a pack of shysters, machiavellian scoundrels whose moral compass shall forever be in accordance with the ghastly ne’er-do-wells they habitually employ.”