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The Archive

Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.

 

The Showbiz XI

For half a century, celebrities have risked making fools of themselves with no need for reality TV, by playing football. But, as John Harding explains, it’s all in a good cause

The lure of the football pitch for theatre folk has always been strong. Ever since professional football became a mass working-class attraction, variety artists have craved some of the allure attached to the game. Before the First World War, comedian George Robey, “The Prime Minister of Mirth”, organised charity fund-­raising matches involving top football stars and music-hall favourites, which drew large crowds. After the war, the tradition continued in intermittent form with teams representing actors, the cinema trade and pantomime artists, dance bands and the pioneering women’s team, Dick, Kerr’s Ladies.

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Regime change

The close of the transfer window has led to more than just exchanges of players as the Abu Dhabi United group arrive in Manchester

So, quite a lively month for Manchester City. Midway through August the club appeared to be in crisis, with owner Thaksin Shinawatra refusing to return home to Thailand to face a corruption trial. If he were convicted in his absence, the Premier League would have faced an unprecedented test of its notoriously obtuse “fit and proper persons” test. There were stories of the club operating on a hand-to-mouth basis with former chairman John Wardle having had to loan Thaksin £2 million on several occasions to pay wages. A shock home defeat to Danish UEFA Cup opponents was followed by a 4-2 mauling at Villa Park.

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All played out

Football and pop music used to be largely separate. David Stubbs has mixed feelings about their rapprochement

In manlier days of grit and ore, when footballers were hewn from the same quarry stone as the two up, two down terraced houses in which they lived their entire lives, football and rock’n’roll were considered entirely separate provinces. One was a world of dubbin, screw-in studs, short back and sides and thick-knit, hooped socks. The other was a world of floppy fringes, cappuccino froth, portable Dansette players and young men on motor scooters up to no good.

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Olympic spirit

London winning the right to stage the 2012 Olympic Games has dominated the agenda this month

Anyone who winced through the eye-wateringly bad “celebration” of London’s staging of the 2012 Olympics held in The Mall on Sunday, August 24, had better steel themselves for four long years of witless build-up, from which football, sadly, will not be immune. The sporting and political establishment are only too aware of the commercial opportunities such a team could provide and they aren’t going to let it go.

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Proportional representation

Thanks to the thousand or so responses to our survey two issues ago, Roger Titford can reveal, among other things, whether our average reader would prefer to be David Beckham or Paul Scholes

We asked: "Who did you enjoy watching at Euro 2008 and why?" Four countries stood out. Spain at 33 per cent were top – "loved their reliance on playing passing football with skill and control". Holland came second on 25 per cent – "because they are like us and play the game beautifully". Turkey proved it's possible to change minds and influence people through football: "Every game they were in was an event. Such a combination of character and reckless idiocy." And 15 per cent of readers were all in favour.

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