To add a touch of humour and flavour to the World Cup, we decided to enlist the help of Nico, an African Grey parrot, to predict the outcome of some of the games.

The inspiration came from Paul the Octopus, who became a celebrity during the last World Cup in South Africa in ‘predicting’ the winners and losers of games. Nico is a parrot – a very intelligent species of bird. But we highly doubt that he is a football expert. And hence the headline of this leading article – it’s just a game, a bit of fun.

Nico predicted the winners of the first four games in the World Cup and had a spotless record, but when we put the features on our website, some readers decided that we had either trained him, or set things up to make sure he picked one flag and not another. We most certainly did not do anything of the sort. Some said that we had played music to entice him to one side and not another and some of the other comments that came in were just in the realm of the ludicrous.

Nico eventually lost his ‘clairvoyant’ abilities as he stumbled... he got two wrong and one match ended in a draw, and that seemed to finally jog people into believing that the whole thing was not a setup. At the time of writing, he had predicted that England would beat Uruguay in a make or break match, and the result remains to be seen.

And so, here we go on record and tell it straight, it was just a bit of fun, and that brings us to the point in question. In the year 2014, some people just cannot take things with a pinch of salt, for a bit of fun.

It is incredible to think that some people would actually think that we would have set the whole thing up as a stunt. But then again, we got the result we desired, a bit of controversy and debate to offset the political dramas and frayed tempers that sometimes come with a World Cup tournament.

We are too caught up in this world of cloak and daggers and some people see conspiracy theories at every corner. It is good to be aware and vigilant, but if you can’t just relax and take things at face value once in a while, then we are truly heading towards being a society that cannot do anything but take itself far too seriously. And so we close on this note, it’s just a bit of fun. Rather than find conspiracy theories where they don’t exist, take it for what it is.