Culture Show lifts Little House to heady heights

"I love this ground for all its stark, bare beauty," enthused poet and Barnsley fan Ian McMillan, having only just discovered those hardy, heady delights.

That unique pavilion, where for the moment the home fires burn no longer, was included in a ten- minute slot on non-league football grounds - "the forgotten treasures of the beautiful game," McMillan insisted.

Also on the programme, something of a culture shock for good Stanley lads, was French author and enfant terrible Michel Houellebecq - "a creature of the European enlightenment" - the chap who spent £7.5m on bringing the Three Graces sculpture to Scotland, and a deer house which had been converted into a centre for contemplation and meditation.

Tow Law's ground got two minutes, Consett's two seconds. "Grounds like these are just as important as local museums or art galleries," said McMillan.

On Stanley hill top, as in the Backtrack column, they've been echoing that for years. It could become the most famous Little House since Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men.

Television cameras were also at Prudhoe Town's Arngrove Northern League match with Peterlee on Saturday - to film the referee.

Tony Young, a Sunderland fan who lives in Blyth - "There's an awful lot of Sunderland fans in Blyth" - is a guinea pig on an ITV programme called "Take my Mother-in-Law", a novel form of wife swapping due to be screened before Christmas.

The idea is that while the mother-in-law moves in for a week, the wife moves out. Tony, father of sons aged five and three, was chosen because he's football daft.

Mum-in-law Colleen Nixon will be there from November 14-19, all contact forbidden between Tony and his wife Sarah - even on his birthday, a week on Thursday.

"It might be a bit tense at times but Colleen and I get on fine," he says. "I don't hate anyone in the world, except for the Magpies' number nine."

So can she cure him of his addiction? "The wife's tried and failed for ten years," he says. "The mother-in-law's never going to do it in a week."

Monday morning was much enlivened by the unexpected arrival of Paul Dobson's book on the ups and downs - rather more of the latter - of a lifetime's following Sunderland.

Though he's a frequent contributor to these columns - and, usually under the byline "Sobs", to the award-winning Sunderland fanzine A Love Supreme - we'd no idea he was writing it.

(The pen name's puzzling, the explanation long forgotten but nothing to do with the Mackem mantra of "What is there to be cheerful about?" ALS just calls him the Resident Madman.)

Born in Houghton-le-Spring, long in Bishop Auckland, Paul's youthful flirtation became eternal devotion after being given a trip to Roker Park for his 14th birthday.

It was September 5, 1970, and they beat Charlton 3-0. "Bobby or Jackie?" asked the unimpressed chap in the Sunday paper shop.

Every other Saturday thereafter he and his mate Derek Poskett, to whose memory the book is dedicated, would buy a pork dip at Gregg's the butchers, pay three bob at the OK for tickets on the Roker Flyer, have a glass of pop and unloosen the salt cellar tops at Doggart's caf and congregate outside the Sun Inn, now rebuilt in Beamish Museum, to await the bus.

It was a ritual, what larks, which continued until he passed his driving test. On Saturday he travelled, first-class, to Highbury. "We were outclassed," he sighs.

The 350-page book, many a mile more measured than the average football follower's kick and rush reminiscences - and, first impressions, many a mile better - also chronicles news and musical events over those 35 years.

It ends with a note from Paul's son, named after Gary Rowell and similarly, indelibly, red and white hued. "I can't call myself the biggest Sunderland fan," he says, "just the son of him."

* Keep the Faith by Paul Dobson is A Love Supreme's first venture into book publishing. It costs £10 from "selected" bookshops around Wearside or via ALS, www.a-love-supreme.com

As if Sunderland's southern based supporters hadn't had enough to suffer at the Arsenal match, Wear Down South - the excellent magazine of the Supporters' Association's London branch - reports a colour problem. Usually the address labels which accompany the magazines are proudly printed in red and white. This time, however, the printer's gone all-monochrome on them. Even Sunderland are black and white now.

Celebrating its centenary issue, the Arngrove Northern League magazine Northern Ventures Northern Gains reports that a rabbit invasion is threatening to undermine the continued success at Newcastle Benfield Bay Plastics.

They'd the job sorted until committee man John Colley's lurcher was killed by a car. Unable to smell dog, the varmints returned.

The club secretary - "a proper little warlord when it comes to rabbits" - has now taken to visiting the ground at 5am in an attempt to catch them napping. So far the rabbits still run.

Tamworth's remarkable FA Cup victory at Bournemouth on Saturday was achieved without our old friend Bob Taylor, the former Horden binman still immortalised as Superbob at West Bromwich Albion.

Bob, now 38, joined the Lambs last season and hit 20 goals. "I'm back to enjoying football for the sake of it, like I did when I was 17 or 18," he told an FA website in March.

"This is a tidy little club and I love it here, but if we get beat I accept it and have a pint in the clubhouse afterwards."

Now, however, Bob has been convicted of drink driving and been given two weeks off by the club. "He has let down his family, the club and the supporters," says a club statement, clearly not believing in the silence of the Lambs.

Tamworth are at Hartlepool in the next round. Whether Superbob revisits old haunts remains to be seen.

And finally...

Back to the high ground. The loftiest of England's 92 "League" grounds (Backtrack, November 4) is the Hawthorns at West Brom, despite counter claims from Oldham Athletic.

Liverpool fan John Milburn from Chester-le-Street, one of several who knew the answer, recalls that after 89 minutes of his only visit there a goalless draw showed no signs of changing. They'd left for New Street station, ever thus, when Ian Rush scored the winner.

Speaking of Liverpool, Friday's column also sought the identity of the 14 men who'd both scored in a Champions League final and played in the Premiership and seven of them - Gerard, Smicer, Alonso, McManaman, Morientes, Riedle and Litmanen - were with the Reds.

The others are Mendieta and Ravanelli (Boro), Kluivert (Newcastle), Crespo and Desailly (Chelsea), Sheringham (Spurs) and Solskjaer (Man United.)

John Briggs in Darlington today invites readers to name three England internationals with three O's in their surname.

The column returns on Friday.

Published: 08/11/2005