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Mystery surrounds the origin of one of English football’s best known songs: ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’.
The song itself was written for the American musical ‘The Passing Show Of 1918’ before quickly becoming a music hall favourite. In England, West Ham employed the Beckton Gas Works Band to entertain the crowd before games. One of the songs they played was ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’. But the band played hundreds of songs – why did the Upton Park crowd adopt this one as its anthem?
One theory is based on the popular story of West Ham player, Billy J Murray, who was known as ‘Bubbles’ Murray. As a fan favourite, supporters would sing ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’ whenever he played.
There are two problems to this theory. The first is that Bubbles Murray was rumoured to have got his nickname because of his uncanny resemblance to a young blonde boy in a famous ‘Bubbles’ painting by John Everett Millais, which was used in well-known, at that time, advert for soap. The problem with this theory is that Bubbles Murray doesn’t look anything like the boy in the painting. Photographs of Murray show a dark-haired man, not a curly-haired blonde boy. Even accounting for age, they look nothing like each other. The second problem to this theory is that supposed fan favourite Murray never actually played for West Ham’s first team.
Murray was a youth player only. He never made the grade at Upton Park and it seems unlikely that an anthem was born to celebrate a man who neither looked like the advert he was meant to resemble nor made the grade as a footballer on the park.
The second theory about the origin of the song is that the West Ham fans like many fans, picked up the song after hearing others sing it first. Newspaper reports in the 1920s confirm that Swansea Town fans would sing ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’ before games. And The Sporting News (8th January, 1921) confirms that the Swansea supporters sang the song before a FA Cup tie against Bury:
“Then came the ever popular Bubbles, and the crowd simply yelled. The spectators on the main bank took their cue from the Mumbles end, and there was one tremendous sway, together with the singing, on the part of about 25,000.”
This second theory believes the West Ham fans heard the song when they played Swansea in the FA Cup in 1921. The only problem with this theory is that newspaper reports of the game confirmed that there was no singing.
So, why do West Ham fans sing ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’?
There is a third theory by football historian Brian Belton. He argues that the song came to represent not just the club but the people of the east end of London. Belton argues that during the Blitz, in order to raise morale, East Enders would shelter and sing songs like ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’ to keep up morale. And that a song sung on the terrace became a song of the community and tied the two together forever in defiance.
The answer to the mystery may therefore be as simple as a popular song being played before the game, the fans joining in, and the tune sticking when greater events gave it a meaning beyond Upton Park. Like Liverpool’s ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ an anthem was born because it was popular and remained because it came to define the club and its fans.
http://youtu.be/fQ1SdHnjAEU
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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
