Football and Music

Football and Horses: With the Grand National happening tomorrow, I read this snippet via the last popbitch mailout:

>> National treasures <<
They don't make footballers like they used to

In the 1970s the Grand National, as an event, was dying. We all remember it as halcyon days, with Red Rum winning three times. But in 1977, when Rummie won his third race, fewer than 10,000 spectators were there. The race has been resurrected, in 2007, the crowd was 68,000. Back then Aintree was owned by an eccentric old lady, Mirabel Topham, with Ladbrokes having the thankless task of managing it for her. One poor chap was sent up to the course and given a scruffy office with a couple of desks and phones and told to sort out tickets, sponsors, hospitality - the lot. The only way he got through it was with help from a surprising source. Every day, after football training finished at Liverpool, Emlyn Hughes and Terry McDermott, big horse racing fans, came over with a crate of beer and got on the phones to make the sales calls. Somehow you can't quite imagine Torres and Kewell doing it.

Next item is via Reuters football news. It’s about Pele and Banksy and I like who Pele got to be his assistant for the match:

Pele and Banks XIs to meet in charity game, Tutu as coach

LONDON, April 3 (Reuters) - Gordon Banks and Pele, who between them provided one of the World Cup’s most memorable moments, will come together in Stoke later this year.

Brazil great Pele will unveil the first part of a triple statue in honour of former Stoke City and England goalkeeper Banks at the club’s Britannia Stadium.

The unveiling on July 12 will be accompanied by a charity match between a Pele XI and a Gordon Banks XI to help fight poverty in Africa, the club said on their Web site.

Pele’s assistant manager for the match will be Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

The match is also intended to celebrate the lives of two famous sons of Stoke-on-Trent, Josiah Wedgwood and Stanley Matthews. Wedgwood helped end slavery while Matthews, who began his long and illustrious career at Stoke, taught children to play football in Soweto, South Africa.

» Full article

I’ll be back to posting the footie/music in a couple of days, but before that another footie/musical video clip via the U.S. version of “Who’s Line Is It Anyway ?”

The host, Drew Carey, who is a big footie fan takes suggestions from the audience on what Wayne Brady has to sing about. Drew hears the word soccer and…

“Hey Hey !

Welcome to Keegan’s Klassic Klips…

What was that ?”

*Looks around*

“Oh this can’t be good…

Roll the clips.”

Edit: MickMills also reminded me of a bit of football/musical/televisual history which I forgot about but cursing myself as soon as I remembered. It was a Jess Conrad level of craptacular when KK got together to sing with Little and Large on their TV show. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it - this moment of Light Entertainment hell doesn’t exist anymore. Unless you know different…

Next up - A slideshow with some memories of the curly perm:

The last word(s) about last Wednesday come courtesy of Crispin Thomas, one of the Football Poets:

Since there isn’t anything of interest on today I looked at the stats for the site and at the searches to see what you were looking for.

It is obvious that the more interesting game taking place tomorrow is the Scotland do or die match and the search terms bear that out with everybody looking for Scotland songs but more specifically one song which in my opinion is a footie/music and comedy classic. Sorry there Rod it’s not about you. Or about the Krankies, which is more horror than comedy and puts a bit of a sour note on the history. I am talking about…

B.A Robertson, John Gordon Sinclair (and extra information I just found) Jim Watt (world champion boxer), Alan Wells (Olympics 100 meter champion and Georgina Kearney (Miss Scotland), as well as the 1982 Scotland World Cup Squad all sing together on:
» We Have A Dream

- The next item most searched and listened to has a touch of the Krankies to it as well and I can only assume you are listening because you like to inflict pain onto yourselves:

Jess Conrad why do you hate us so ? What did the P.E teacher do to you at school ? Why do you want to take your revenge out on every football supporter because of some dark memory in your past ? Why do we have to live your nightmare ?

And finally in other footie news - an item about Derby County who at the moment are going for Mick McCarthy/Sunderland’s EPL record as the worst. team. ever.

An American company is looking into Derby with a view to investment and takeover. (Why pick a club who are probably guaranteed relegation is beyond me but anyway…) The name of this company is Shamrock Holdings, who are owned and run by billionaire Roy Disney, nephew of Walt.

Yes, Derby County really will be a Mickey Mouse team.