by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

I’ve entertained for bikers. Just the odd violin pop-tune medley and the occasional spot of spoken word and Pong lessons. And I’ve delivered the odd ticking package. And talk about sweethearts, bikers are such polished, blushing, erudite scholars, they make Hugh Grant look like Mike Tyson.

Okay, well, not exactly.

My sole contact with the Hells involved phoning their clubhouse where a guy named André "Toots" Tousignant would tell me that the clubhouse is spotless and that they’re really nice guys who listen to classical music. Toots stopped answering after he had his fingers chopped off and was left dead on a riverbank, presumably thanks to his own buddies.

But if you perform for bikers and a journalist calls you afterwards, here’s what NOT to say: "These are excellent people and I endorse them wholeheartedly."

Vedettes from Ginette Reno to Charles Biddle Jr. reportedly offered similar and unnecessarily hyperbolic praise for the gang members after entertaining the thugs. I’m not sure what Martin "Love Is in the Air" Stevens said about his biker engagement but presumably he’d say, "The money sure came in handy."

Now this is what you SHOULD answer:

"People hire me to sing. So I sing. Why don’t you call the electrician and plumber that fix stuff for bikers too? They must be guilty of something too, then. Do I have a moral duty to scrutinize the ethical history of every nickel that passes through my hands? Should a landlord refuse payment from a tenant if the money wasn’t earned through honest-to-goodness hard work? Should a dépanneur refuse to sell a six-pack to a stockbroker that got people to invest in dotcoms? Do we need to get our creditors to fill out a morality checklist every time we get paid?"

So now our biggest hockey hero, goaltender José Theodore, is under the same criminal-association microscope after papa and brothers were nabbed allegedly running a loan sharking ring at the casino and photos surfaced of José posing with Hells Angels in 1998 and 2000.

The whispers, to those hard of hearing, are over whether it would have been possible for a player to purposely lose games in order to help others win bets.

But Theodore wasn’t letting floaters slip by him two years ago, when he won the award for best goaltender and most valuable player in the league, and surely a prize for having hockey’s cutest little button- nose. Last year it seemed he couldn’t have stopped an extra-large pizza on some nights, but he looked like he was trying hard. The fact is that in spite of our perpetually over-excited hockeymania, it makes no difference if a sports franchise wins. Losing might be better, as fans might lose interest and revert to hobbies like making stained-glass windows or listening more closely to their girlfriends talk about their problems.

Even if winning might bring some nominal gains, losing secretly pre-designated games could help mountains of gambling cash flow into homes throughout the city. Admittedly, it might be awkward if two teams conspired to lose the same game, although it would inject some comical ineptitude into the performance.

And in spite of taboos, players should be encouraged to gamble on their games on the condition that they are gambling for their own team to win. Just visualize the drama and intensity of a game if a player had to win just to keep his house.

Anyway, Theodore isn’t the only goaltender from this city with zero degrees of separation from local criminals. One star netminder who starred in the NHL in the 1970s has brothers near the top of Montreal’s West End Gang, but I’ve never heard a bad word said about him even after he became a longstanding general manager in the league. So goalie-guilt-by-association isn’t necessarily presumed.

Training camp starts in a few weeks and the real show here won’t be in the hockey, it’ll be in how long the city that scrutinizes its hockey players in a most obsessive way will approach its angel-faced prodigy with the fast-melting wings of wax.

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca