Andy Todd’s Jukebox Durie whistles to the Latics

5 Jun

Don’t forget the Scottish Comedy FC Podcast. Subscribe/download/listen HERE

By Andy Todd (@toddandy)

If Beanz Mean Heinz, then Heinz means Wigan. Home to the largest food processing factory in Europe, the Kitt Green factory in Wigan produces over one billion cans of beanz, hoopz, spaghettiz and soupz every year. When you fart, think of Wigan.

And that’s pretty much all Wigan is famous for, at least until this year. This year Wigan shocked the football establishment by beating oil-rich Man City in the 2013 FA Cup Final. An underdog’s triumph, a heartwarming tale capped when Ben Watson’s last-minute goal won the match at Wembley.

With that goal Wigan clinched their first trophy, their first taste of European football by qualifying for the UEFA cup, and, arguably, sealed their relegation from the Premiership when they couldn’t raise their game three days later for a must win match against Arsenal. A match they lost 4-1, confirming their relegation to the Championship.

It seems apt that Wigan’s most famous player is another underdog, who survived against the odds, and whose own tale centres on an unlikely FA Cup triumph.

On 17 November 1965, during a first round replay against Doncaster Rovers, Harry Lyon, the club’s top scorer, who had scored 67 goals the previous season, was stretchered off after 19 minutes with a suspected broken leg. But that didn’t stop him. With just a few shots of whiskey, a painkiller and heavily strapped leg, he returned to the game and went on to score a second half hat trick to win the match 3-1 for Wigan.

During his career for the Latics (short for Athletic) Harry played in almost every position, including on two occasions in goal when he conceded only one goal, a penalty. He was released at the end of the 1968/69 season and moved on to bitter rivals Chorley. But with 273 goals in just eight year, he left a legend.

Shortly after, Wigan tried to create history by applying to join the Scottish league in a publicity stunt, after repeated attempts to join the English league had failed. They applied 34 times to the English league before they were successful in 1978. Yet, just 35 years later they were crowned FA Cup winners.

With such a short history in the top flight, we can forgive them for not having an extensive songbook. With their entrance music borrowed from Hollywood (‘The Battle’ from the Gladiator soundtrack); their goal celebration music borrowed from nearly every other club as they play ‘Tom Hark’ by the Piranhas, which is used by Wolverhampton Wanderers, Burnley, Liverpool FC, Sheffield United and Ipswich town, to name a few, we were surprised they didn’t even attempt to record an FA Cup song. Perhaps they thought they had all the music they needed as Wigan already make the world toot. Instead we find the fans beat them to it by also borrowing a song from another source. This time the Fratelli’s ‘Whistle For The Choir’ which has been rewritten with new words for the cup final. This is ‘Whistle To The Lactics’.

You can download/listen/subscribe to the Scottish Comedy FC podcast HERE

 

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About the Author
After too many years as season ticket holder at Parkhead, Andy Todd renounced the SPL three years ago to support Queens Park. One team is a rank bunch of amateurs who play in a state of the art stadium and the other is…(I think we can all see where this is going).

Andy has been performing comedy for 18 months but is currently ‘between gigs’ while he writes a book on Scottish property law to be published in Summer 2012. Its potential audience will be less than 300 but his mum will be very proud.

Follow Andy on Twitter: @toddandy

Check out Andy’s website: www.toddandy.com

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Andy Todd’s Jukebox Durie gans alang Collingwood Street

31 May

Don’t forget the Scottish Comedy FC Podcast. Subscribe/download/listen HERE

By Andy Todd (@toddandy)

Gazza may be more famous now for popping up in punchlines with a can of lager and a bucket of KFC chicken but in 1990 Paul ‘Gazza’ Gascoigne was one of the most famous men in the UK. Not just a famous footballer. In 1990 that meant nothing – football was not yet on the front pages for anything but hooliganism. Gazza was properly famous. Gordon The Gopher famous. Kids talked about him. Adults knew of him. His tears in the 1990 World Cup semi-final against Germany, when a yellow card meant he would miss the final if England went through, were the tears of a nation. England lost, but Gazza won the nation’s heart.

To watch him, to be English, was to witness the People’s Crown Prince’s tears of St George. He was Albion. Jerusalem. And then he had to ruin by saying something silly like “Why aye, man, I love ya to hear ma music”.

No round-up of football and music would be complete without the musical career of Gazza. Not for him, the novelty of a one-off single. A cup final ‘classic’ or opportunistic cover version. He was serious. He was going to be a star. During an interview with Smash Hits, he said:

“I’m taking it seriously. I want it to do well. I don’t want to put no crap in the charts and I want it to do well because of the song, because it’s a good song, not because it’s a Paul Gascoigne song.”

This new seriousness did not bode well for his debut song ‘Fog On The Tyne (Revisited)’. When the director of the video suggested he spoof his famous tears, Gazza told Smash Hits:

“That would be taking the p*ss out of something I’d done very seriously. What happened at that moment was something I was really upset about – England got beaten in the World Cup. A lot of other people were upset too and it would be taking the piss out of them if I made a joke of it now.”

The song itself was number 1 in 1972 for the band Lindisfarne. They agreed to rework the lyrics and the song for Gazza’s voice, and expectations were high – it was even installed as the third favourite for the Christmas Number 1 spot, behind Cliff Richard’s ‘Saviour’s Day’ and Partners in Kryme’s ‘Undercover’.

But it flopped. It entered the charts at number 11 and although it rose to number 2 the following week it quickly dropped and disappeared.

A follow-up ‘Geordie Boys’ only managed to enter at number 43, while a subsequent album ‘Let’s Have A Party’ didn’t even reach the Top 100.

What is remarkable about the pop career of Gazza is this – that it was planned as a career. For most footballers, the single is a one-off. If a second follows it usually disappears without trace. And, as for an album, forget it.

Gazza changed that. He would be a star, not just a footballer, but as a man. With one song, Gazza, changed football, they just didn’t know it yet. It would take another man. David Beckham, to show the secret to worldwide success is to combine a football with a lack of musical talent, or as he called her, Victoria.

Some still don’t see how the world changed. How glitz and glamour replaced Geordie grit. Some are still living in the past. Take Newcastle United. Stick a microphone in front of any randomly selected fan and many will tell you, with no trace of irony, that Newcastle are a ‘massive club’. Geordies believe that Newcastle’s rightful place is at the top of the Premiership.

Yet despite decades of underachievement – their last domestic trophy was in 1955 – the delusion that Newcastle belong amongst the elite still persists. Even when they face relegation, as they did in the 2012/2013 season.

And what do their fans sing in defiance? The ‘unofficial’ Geordie anthem ‘Blaydon Races’. First written in the 19th century by George Ridley the song records his journey to watch a local horse race. Written in the Geordie dialect, its evocative description of people and places makes it a fitting, if dated, celebration of Geordie life. Yet, when it came to re-write the song for its 150th anniversary in 2012 by writing about contemporary life, they missed the one person who could truly bring it to life: Paul ‘Gazza’ Gascoigne. If one man knows what it’s like be a Geordie, to be a winner, to be a legend and a lush, to have gambled and lost everything, then it’s Gazza. Instead, they got this:

“We took a trip to Blaydon
‘Twas on the ninth o’June
Twenty hundred and twelve
It was a Sat’day afternoon
So many changes in the toon
Too many for to list ‘em
We couldn’t gan alang Collingwood Street
Cos it’s a one-way system.”

Which is accurate, I’ll give them that – but who wants a sat-nav set to music? Gazza would have given it so much more. For a start, he’d have brought a can of lager and a bucket of KFC…

You can download/listen/subscribe to the Scottish Comedy FC podcast HERE

 

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About the Author
After too many years as season ticket holder at Parkhead, Andy Todd renounced the SPL three years ago to support Queens Park. One team is a rank bunch of amateurs who play in a state of the art stadium and the other is…(I think we can all see where this is going).

Andy has been performing comedy for 18 months but is currently ‘between gigs’ while he writes a book on Scottish property law to be published in Summer 2012. Its potential audience will be less than 300 but his mum will be very proud.

Follow Andy on Twitter: @toddandy

Check out Andy’s website: www.toddandy.com

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Andy Todd’s Jukebox Durie presents…The Dictators

16 May

Don’t forget the Scottish Comedy FC Podcast. Subscribe/download/listen HERE

By Andy Todd (@toddandy)

Former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu called himself the ‘Genius of The Carpathians’ and built a palace so huge that today’s Romanian Parliament can only use 30% of it. Also he demanded every scientist in Romania include his wife’s name on their research papers, which was strange, as she was illiterate and couldn’t read it. You might as well claim Stevie Wonder is the father of photography.

This wasn’t the most unusual move by a dictator. Idi Amin gave himself the titles “Conqueror of the British Empire” and “President for Life”, which were close to the mark. Britain was only third in the medal table at the London olympics while Mr President For Life died in 2003 after he was overthrown and exiled. Whoops! I bet he now knows why crowds weren’t just chanting ‘Idi Out’ but ‘Idiot’.

Idi is not the dumbest dictator. Not by a long mile. Francisco Macias Nguema was President of Equatorial Guinea. He killed the head of the national bank and then hid all the money of the National Treasury in
his house when clearly it would have been easier to move his bed and settee to the Treasury. He didn’t last long though. Francisco died in 1979 when he was shot like a dog, a dalmatian to be exact, as he was
shot one hundred and one times. Which just goes to show, when trying to free a country from tyranny, sometimes you must be Cruella to be kind.

One of my favourite dictators is Saparmurat Niyazov, the former ruler of Turkmenistan. Niyazov is famous for declaring 10th July a public holiday in honour of melons – one of the country’s main exports – and
27 April, Horse Day. He renamed January after himself, and April after his mother, while he banned beards because of his suspicion of Islamic fundamentalists and ballet because he deemed it unnecessary.

That’s not all – he changed the word for bread to the name of his mother. He named several schools, two airports, a city, some theatres, a brand of vodka, two kinds of cologne, a kind of tea, and a meteorite
after himself. He even created a new Turkmen alphabet, basing it on the Latin one instead of the Cyrillic so not only was everything given a new name it given a new way to spell it too.

Oh, and he built a 50-foot statue of his book in the middle of the capital of Turkmenistan just because he could. And every night at 8pm it opened and a video recording played a passage of the book. [Editor's Note: The statue was also gold-plated and rotated to always be facing the sun... Live the dream.]

History does not record the size of Niyazov’s penis, but one assumes it was not 50-foot high.

No round-up of dictators would be complete without mentioning Kim Jong Il, the former leader of North Korea. There’s a lot you can say about Kim but my favourite fact is this – whenever Kim’s name was published in North Korea it had to be published in bold. Also Kim’s name had to be followed by at least one of his over 50 titles.Dear Leader. Great Leader. Guiding Star of the 21st Century. Supreme Leader of the Nation. Sun of Socialism. And the ever so creepy ‘Father of the Neighbour’s Children’.

History does record the size of Kim Jong Il’s penis.

Kim himself revealed that not only had he shot five holes in one in one game of golf, in the same interview he confirmed that his dick was two foot long and one foot wide, and all the ladies in North Korea called him King Dong Il. Playa!

If Jukebox Durie was a dictator however, I would just have one title, just to keep things simple. Everyone would need to me as a ‘Primary School Teacher’ because everyone loves a primary school teacher. And if they don’t I’ll round them up and shoot them.

But why, you may ask, are you talking about dictators? That’s a good question. I don’t know what brought to mind some of the world’s biggest authoritarian figures, men who don’t accept “no” for an answer. No
reason at all, I suppose. Now here’s a song about Alex Ferguson.

All These Things That’s He Won:

You can download/listen/subscribe to the Scottish Comedy FC podcast HERE

 

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About the Author
After too many years as season ticket holder at Parkhead, Andy Todd renounced the SPL three years ago to support Queens Park. One team is a rank bunch of amateurs who play in a state of the art stadium and the other is…(I think we can all see where this is going).

Andy has been performing comedy for 18 months but is currently ‘between gigs’ while he writes a book on Scottish property law to be published in Summer 2012. Its potential audience will be less than 300 but his mum will be very proud.

Follow Andy on Twitter: @toddandy

Check out Andy’s website: www.toddandy.com

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Cathkin Park – Rifles & Rejects

10 May

From Old Glasgow…

Third Lanark are often named by wistful journalists as one of the great indicators of football’s decline. Since their inception in 1872 until their dissolution in 1967, Third Lanark were almost as synonymous with football in Glasgow as their Old Firm neighbours.

Dave Hilley training outside Cathkin Park in 1961. (Source: thirdlanarkac.co.uk

Dave Hilley training outside Cathkin Park in 1961. (Source: thirdlanarkac.co.uk

The club was founded by the Third Lanarkshire Rifle Volunteers, an army regiment which was part of the Volunteer Force. Its original (and ever-imaginative) name 3rd Lanarkshire Rifle Volunteers Football Club was changed to Third Lanark A.C. in 1903 when the club severed its military links and was incorporated as a company in the same year, funded mostly by middle-class fans.

Their home was the site of the second Hampden Stadium and had previously been leased by Queens Park from 1884 until 1903. Third Lanark moved in in 1903, deciding to rename the stadium New Cathkin Park.

Third Lanark take on Hearts at Cathkin Park in 1960. (Source: James H - Urban Glasgow)

Third Lanark take on Hearts at Cathkin Park in 1960. (Source: James H – Urban Glasgow)

Although the stadium would later revert simply to Cathkin Park, it is actually the second home of the Thirds with them previously having played at a site closer to Cathcart Road.

Cathkin Park is now a municipal park but many question the reason for the name and it all harks back to the roots of the club as the 3rd Lanarkshire Rifles. It is thought that the regiment had its firing range up on the Cathkin Braes and the name derives from this.

The Warriors, The Redcoats or The Hi-Hi (a nickname which derives from a defender kicking a ball so high that people began chanting it) remained at Cathkin Park until they were put of business in 1967.

The story of Third Lanark’s liquidation through board corruption and in-fighting which often resulted in players getting paid late and in coins instead of notes is one for another time but Cathkin Park’s fate was all-but sealed.

The football landscape of 1967 was different to the early days of association football in Scotland. There were no newly formed clubs which would swoop in and take Cathkin Park off the hands of its board and most football fans in the city had already sworn their allegiances.

During the 1967 close season, in a move that will be familiar to many modern football fans, Cathkin Park was sold off for development and houses were planned to be built over the site. However, Glasgow City Council refused planning permission and the site was left to rot.

What remains of Cathkin Park today. (Source: James H - Urban Glasgow)

What remains of Cathkin Park today. (Source: James H – Urban Glasgow)

Over time the assets of the stadium were removed and it was left as what you see today, a football pitch surrounded by the ethereal remains of a football heritage which is still lamented today. You can still visit the tomb of Third Lanark AC today but if you can’t then this atmospheric video from Abandoned Scotland might give you an idea of what you’re missing.

The collapse of three-time champions Third Lanark won’t be forgotten by the chroniclers of Scottish football and their home which once held 50,000, nestled in a residential area just a stone’s throw away from Hampden will remain a monument to what can go wrong.

This post can also be found at Old Glasgow, a blog all about mind blowing things that don’t exist any more. 

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Andy Todd’s Jukebox Durie presents a Villa thriller…

9 May

Don’t forget the Scottish Comedy FC Podcast. Subscribe/download/listen HERE

By Andy Todd (@toddandy)

No one knows why Prince William supports Aston Villa. Some say Prince William once said he supported Aston Villa because “it was in the middle of the country”. Which may be true as the Prince has a degree in geography, but it has never been confirmed as the Prince has never discussed why he supports the club in public. We can only speculate why he picked Aston Villa and not Arsenal like the Queen or Prince Harry.

Me? I think he supports Aston Villa for one very simple reason. Aston Villa won the European Cup in May 1982. Prince William was born in June 1982. Coincidence? Quite possibly. But, maybe, just maybe, our future King is a Villan because when he was born he thought he should support the best team in all of Europe – and, at that time, that was Aston Villa. Success however is fleeting.

For the last few seasons Aston Villa have flattered to deceive. Despite promising managers like Martin O’Neill and Paul Lambert; a youth set up that has produced players like Gabby Agbonlahor, Gareth Barry and Gary Cahill; and a chairman, Randy Lerner, who was born to teach ‘The Joy of Sex’, the team hasn’t delivered on its potential.

Yet it all seemed so different in 1982. Despite two goals disallowed, Aston Villa beat Bayern Munich 1-0 in Amsterdam. It should have been the start of a glorious run but only a couple of days later the team lost the cup while out drinking in The Fox Inn in Hopwas, near Tamworth, after an opportunistic thief nabbed it. A couple of hours later the trophy was anonymously handed into West Midlands police who did the right thing and… picked two teams and held an impromptu cup final in the middle of the night with the winning team claiming bragging rights and a photo with the trophy. And only then did they phone the club to tell them they had found it.

With success so fleeting, only a few days for the European Cup, or just one day (that 6-1 defeat of Sunderland) as the 2012/2013 season has shown, Aston Villa have adopted a unique approach to their walk on music. Before every home game every fan can vote for the song the team will come out to. An actual jukebox jury for Jukebox Durie.

Black Sabbath’s ‘Paranoid’ and ‘Welcome To The Jungle’ by Guns N Roses have frequently tied for top spot. But other songs featuring prominently in the poll are ‘We Will Rock You’ by Queen, Fatboy Slim’s ‘Right Here Right Now’, ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’ by Jeff Beck, ‘Thunderstruck’ by AC/DC, U2′s ‘Beautiful Day’ and ‘Song 2′ by Blur. All great songs, but not what you would call club classics. For that we need to go back to 2011 when the song “Bells Are Ringing” was tipped to be brought back by the club as a fan anthem. There was only one problem. Read the lyrics.

“The bells are ringing for the claret and blue,

The fans are singing for the claret and blue,

Everybody is knowing,

To the Villa we are going,

Cause the Villa are showing,

We’re the best in the land.

BEST IN THE LAND!!”

Which even a die-hard fan like Prince William knows is no longer true. But just as success is fleeting, so is failure. And the glory days may yet return to Villa Park. Or, if not Villa Park, then one day West Midland Police Station may yet again be Champions of Europe provided an enterprising fan brings back more than a bratwurst from their next German holiday in Munich or Dortmund.

The Bells Are Ringing:

History of the song:

You can download/listen/subscribe to the Scottish Comedy FC podcast HERE

 

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About the Author
After too many years as season ticket holder at Parkhead, Andy Todd renounced the SPL three years ago to support Queens Park. One team is a rank bunch of amateurs who play in a state of the art stadium and the other is…(I think we can all see where this is going).

Andy has been performing comedy for 18 months but is currently ‘between gigs’ while he writes a book on Scottish property law to be published in Summer 2012. Its potential audience will be less than 300 but his mum will be very proud.

Follow Andy on Twitter: @toddandy

Check out Andy’s website: www.toddandy.com

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