MPs Praise Shrimps

Regular readers will know that I get a lot of my football news from the BBC Football website: they will also know that I am fairly critical of its love of the bleeding obvious. Among today's gems is the news that Mr Davies thinks that Derby will win their Championship play-off final against West Brom. Mr Davies is Billy Davies, not the 'sixties pop icon who sang "I Know Something about Love" of course, as I said last year when Mr Davies was in the "race" (as the BBC site put it) to become the manager of Charlton. (And a great pity, as it turned out, that he didn't win this race, too). But in the end he opted to be manager of Derby County, and as I say, he thinks they will win tomorrow. Of course he may not, in his heart of hearts, but being the manager, he can hardly say so, can he? And even if he does truly believe this, in what way can this be properly regarded as information for the football news-loving public? Anyone with a couple of brain cells to rub together can work out that managers will be pleased when their sides win, disappointed or "gutted", when they don't, and in many cases will blame the referee as well, and that they have to have some degree of belief in what they do. But I contend that it is only newsworthy when a manager says he doesn't think his team stands a snowball in hell's chance of winning. They never do, though. Another earth-shattering bit of news is that Gordon Strachan is "relishing" the fact that Celtic have won the double in Scotland. Guess who Mr Strachan is the manager of.

But aside from these non-stories, the BBC site has another rather irritating habit, and that is the use of team nicknames in headlines. Now throughout many years of following football, one learns a few basic club nicknames: Derby County are called the Rams, and this is to do with an old folk song that I learned as a child and can barely remember now. Newcastle are known as the Magpies on account of their black and white shirts, though Wyn Grant, figuring that in these modern times people will have seen more of them than they have magpies, calls them the Barcodes; Manchester United were the Red Devils, and might still be for all I know; Arsenal are the Gunners, but most sites (though not the Beeb of course) refer to them as 'the Arse'. Complete your own supporters' phrase. And there are other ones based on the basic name; Spurs for the final part of their second bit of name; Hammers based on part of the name; Wolves ditto. Another theme for names is to do with geography: Blackpool are the Seasiders; Middlesbrough play at somewhere called Riverside, yet I have not, admittedly, heard them referred to as the Riversiders, just 'Boro, a term not normally applied to Peterborough United, nor to Fraserburgh in the Highland League either. Other coastal teams take their names from coastal pursuits or references like Grimsby Town (Mariners); Southend United (Shrimpers), Torquay (Gulls), and then there are names based on local traditions and / or industries, like Norwich (Canaries); Northampton (Cobblers); Stoke City (Potters); that sort of thing.

In many cases, lack of imagination, or reluctance to embrace the obvious, has meant that a team's nickname is based on the colour of the shirts, so there are numerous Reds, Blues, Clarets, Whites, and even Lilywhites, which I think used to be applied to Preston North End, and which my friend Harry once used to describe Real Madrid (but he is the only one so to have done).

And when all else fails, then supporters just emulate Blackburn and Bolton, and call their sides Rovers or Wanderers, and leave it at that.

And there were always a few teams which did not have a nickname at all. Birmingham City; Huddersfield Town (now apparently called the Terriers, but they most certainly did not use to be); Bradford Park Avenue (ask your dad). And a few which didn't really: calling Colchester United the U's is not much of a shot, nor is calling Leyton Orient the O's. (Do Colchester fans shout "come on you U's"? Do Orient fans react to a missed open goal by groaning "Oh, O's?")

And then the BBC Football website came along, and suddenly new nicknames are sprouting everywhere. I admit that some may have always existed and that I wasn't aware of them, but even so, I submit that the BBC has promoted or repeated notional names so that they have become mainstream. And I know for a fact that the ludicrous Black Cats nickname for Sunderland, almost as ridiculous as the name of their stadium, was a corporate invention, along the lines of deciding that the Post Office was unexciting and prosaic, not the kind of thing we want cluttering up the 21st Century, so let's waste a lot of time and money calling it Consignia, which is very like the Spanish word for a Left Luggage Office, by the way. As the Post Office is once more called the Post Office, maybe Sunderland's management team might like to think about renaming the club Consignia, as the name is going spare, and then they can have three silly names in their organisation, and much good may it do them.

So these days I always have to look twice when trying to interpret a headline on the BBC Football page. This morning I saw : "Weymouth eye Cherries Browning", which instantly conjured up a picture of the Weymouth management team carefully toasting some summer fruits, rather than them being interested in a Bournemouth player called Browning. And then there was the heading that gives me my title and picture for the day: "Shrimps win praise from MPs".

Naturally, and despite this being on the football page, I began (for anything they do in Parliament these days is quite believable - they were moaning about Serbia winning the Eurovision Song Contest the other week) to picture MP after MP getting to their feet, and asking Mr Speaker if he did not agree with them that shrimps, potted or otherwise, were almost as wonderful as Mr Tony Blair, Mrs Margaret Beckett, Mrs Tessa Jowell, and all the rest of the crew. And Polly Toynbee of course.

But of course the newest members of the Fourth Division League 2, Morecambe, are known as the Shrimps, on account of the popular Morecambe Bay ones which are known throughout the gastronomic world. I don't know when this nickname was attached but I am sure they did not have it when they were in the old Lancashire Combination, years ago, but then no one else rejoiced in a nickname either. And the MPs? Well it seems that a lady called Geraldine, who is Morecambe's MP, aided and abetted by 12 other local MPs, organised "parliamentary recognition" for the club. The report did not say what this amounted to, or how much in terms of wasted parliamentary time, it had cost. But then, as all decisions are taken at presidential level nowadays, I suppose the MPs have a lot of free time on their hands.

Maybe they could really start praising potted shrimps, and shepherd's pie; and marmalade pudding... Not garlic though.

More, plus the small amount of stuff happening down SE7 way, and the quiz, and Shrewsbury, soon.