Hairy Botter

Even though there's more important shit going on in Notts, it would be criminally remiss of me not to mention this story in The Sun. It's that old classic - Man Gets Bad Tattoo, With Unfortunate Consequences - with a local slant;

PROUD Paul Croft got a tattoo of Harry Potter wizard Albus Dumbledore on his back – but is now being teased by pals after he was outed as GAY.

(Notice that? He's not 'Gay' - he's 'GAY'. In MASSIVE CAPITAL LETTERS)

Proud Paul, 36, spent a YEAR having the Hogwarts headmaster etched into his skin as a surprise for his five kids.

(Notice the repetition of the word 'Proud', Media Studies students; that's shorthand for 'if you met him in the street and pointed out that he had a mystical homosexual tattooed on his back, he would pull your entire digestive system out of your mouth and strangle you with it' And yes, if my Dad had come home with a tattoo of, say, Larry Grayson when I was a nipper, it would have definitely been a 'surprise')

But the factory worker has been the butt of jokes ever since Harry Potter author JK Rowling revealed last week that Dumbledore was in love with a fellow male sorcerer. Paul, of Nottingham, moaned yesterday: “It’s been terrible. I’ve always liked Dumbledore – just not in that way.

(Jesus in a jumpsuit, it's come to something when a man can use a national newspaper to point out that he doesn't want to have bum-sex with a wizard in a kid's book. I'm going to ask the Daily Mirror to tell the world that I don't really want to have it off with the fox who played Maid Marion in the Disney film, even though I cut out a photo of her and slept with it when I was four)

“I went into work and everyone was sniggering. “When I walked in, one of the lads said, ‘Oi, Paul – heard about Dumbledore?’ “There were wisecracks about ‘Watch your backs, lads.’ Someone asked me if I was planning to get a tattoo of Graham Norton. I thought, ‘Why me?’ ”

(Here's where I have total sympathy for the poor sod. I worked in a factory in Hucknall once, and the bitchiness would have put the entire cast of Queer As Folk to shame. There was one lad there who had a divorce, and every time he cocked up over the slightest thing, the entire factory would shout "NO WONDER 'IS FOO-KIN' MISSUS PISSED OFF!" Another youth was due in court one dinnertime after a fight outside a chippy, and when he came in for the morning shift, the first thing he saw was an enormous blackboard with the odds of his sentence chalked up - from 'Community Service' at 3-1 to 'The Electric Chair' at 1000-1. These people are the kings of bitching. The moment that JK Rowling outed Dumbledore, some of the blokes in that factory would have been clubbing themselves into unconsciousness on Saturday afternoon to get the weekend over as quickly as possible)

The huge £500 tattoo shows Dumbledore holding a scroll bearing the names of his Harry Potter mad children – Charlotte, Deanna, Brandon, Tamzin and Paris. Paul said: “It seemed like a good idea at the time."

(No, mate; spending £500 - FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS - to deface your back with the 21st Century Ali Bongo wouldn't be a good idea even if you sealed every window in your house, filled your fireplace with crack, and stoked it up all weekend. Especially when you decide to embellish it with a permanent reminder of your progressively worsening taste in kids' names. In GangstaFont.)

And shame on whatever Picture Editor chose an image of him with his hands in such an unfortunate position. Tsk.

The End Of An Era

The Variety in Radford has shut down, quite possibly for good.

Although it wasn't to everyone's taste - it was like walking into the 70s, and the entertainment was decidedly un-right-on - The Variety was proper Notts, and fucking hilarious. I was absolutely gagging for my mates from London to come and visit, so I could take them for a concentrated dollop of purest Nottingham - and whether you liked it or not, it was far more representative of Nottingham culture than a thousand bought-in art galleries. And if you didn't go, you'll never know.

As far as I know, LeftLion was the only publication to do a proper interview with the people who ran the place. And here it is.

Don't ask for a Party Bag

Sorry this is a bit late in the day, but I've just got round to watching HIV & Me, Steven Fry's documentary about attitudes to AIDS. Here's a transcript of a scene where he's been talking to Gay lads in Manchester about how complacent people are getting about it...

STEVEN FRY (VO): I find that all rather depressing, but little do I know that Gordon has saved the most worrying for last. He’s known Mark for years, and assures me that what I’m about to hear is true…

MARK: I’ve got a friend. Er, he’s been to a party in Nottingham, er, where there was a 19 year-old lad, he was Negative, and he wanted to be given ‘the Gift’.

STEVEN FRY: ‘the Gift’?

MARK: They’re called ‘Gift Givers’. People with HIV.

STEVEN FRY: Good God…

MARK: …and there were five Positive guys who had sex with the Negative lad, to Poz him up, and, um…

STEVEN FRY: ‘Poz him up'?

MARK: Yeah. They all had sex with him unprotected to give him ‘the Gift’. He wasn’t held down, he wasn’t forced, he willingly…

STEVEN FRY: So your friend was one of these five who, who shagged him…

MARK: Yeah.

STEVEN FRY: Can you have any insight into…why he wanted to…he thought it was a badge of honour, or…?

MARK: I have no idea, to be honest. I mean, a lot of lads these days…a lot of lads like unprotected sex…

GORDON: Yeah but of course, you know what happened at the end…

STEVEN FRY: What?

MARK: Yeah. When they finished having sex with him, they inserted a butt plug into him to make sure that none of the semen came out of him. To make sure that he definitely…

STEVEN FRY: My God…that…I’m sorry, that is very odd…

MARK: It is. It’s horrible.

ME: (hands over eyes, trying to slide down the side of the sofa)

10 Reasons Why Nobbing Off The Night Bus Service Is Another Stupid Idea By Whatever Greedy Mingebag Lead Paint-Licking Gibbons Run This Town

(Story here)

1) If you didn't happen to live within walking distance from town and happened to be around after hours - you know, enjoying the benefits of this 24-hour city we're supposed to be living in - the Night Bus was a life-saver. I used to live in Top Valleh, and would be in the Social at 2.50am, knowing that if I left in 5 minutes, I would be at the top of my street in 20 minutes whilst saving £8 by not having my wallet anally raped by a cabbie.

2) It allowed the hundreds of people who work late in town - either in bars, clubs or call centres - the opportunity to get home reasonably quickly without having to deal with a taxi queue full of pissheads ramming kebabs into their maws and on the verge of fighting with their own reflections.

3) It was an illicit thrill to get on a bus with its own bouncer. Like being on the subway in Times Square and seeing a Guardian Angel, albeit one in an NCT jumper that was getting stuck into his snap tin and talking to the driver about going piking at the weekend.

4) For many people, it was the last opportunity to get your end away before the night was over (because, c'mon - if you've pulled in town, you're never going to take them home on the fucking Night Bus. You might as well tell them that they've got to be quiet when they get there, so as not to wake your Mam up).

5) The fact that the only person who ever pulled on the night bus was the driver, who always seemed to have some bird hanging over the counter, waiting for him to get to the Bulwell turnaround so he could give her, well, a Bulwell turnaround.

6) The one driver on our route that looked a bit like Cockney Wanker, who once stopped midway through a speech to a full bus about how they could use a City Rider to say to some twat who was chelping him; "Look youth, I'm trying to tell yoh summat fookin' useful. So shut yoh fooking pan and stop looking at that gel's tits, yoh cunt" to rapturous applause.

7) The way the staff and passengers refused point-blank to tolerate mouth-breathers playing shit Grime tunes on mobiles and weed-smoking in a way that is sadly lacking on normal bus services.

8) Standing in town at 4am in January, freezing your bollocks off, and almost dropping to your knees in relief at the sight of a warm bus, signifying that in a very short time you will be ripping through the contents of your fridge in your pants and thinking "Fuck working tomorrow".

9) No-one cared if you were partaking in a tray of fishcake, chips and peas. Even when you tipped the tray into your mouth and used your fork to shovel in the batter bits.

10) It was absolute comedy listening to people recount their night out, like an Alan Sillitoe novel come to life. How this bloke got noshed off by someone's Nana in a leather mini-skirt in Jumpin' Jaks. How that slag is gonna get panned next time she looks at Darren. How Tez had to piss the sick off his shoes so he could get into Flares. NCT should have cut a deal with Sky and had the Night Bus Channel.

Yeah, so there's going to be a bigger service - but only at the weekend. Big deal. OK, so only 8.5 people were riding the Night Bus on average (presumably the other half of the last one had lost his torso in a fight outside Bar Ha Ha) - get some of them limos that bell-ends hire out, then. And am I being hopelessly naive, but aren't public services supposed to lose money when they provide a valuable service? Isn't that what we pay taxes for?

This Bloke In A Burned-Out Car In Wollaton Business...

...gets dodgier and dodgier. Bad enough that people in Wollaton have to deal with a car catching fire while they're trying to have their tea. Even worse when it turns out to have a Dad of eight from Leicester inside. Far worse when it turns out he was stabbed beforehand. And outright bonkers when you read this;

It has now emerged Mr Chenia was jailed for 20 years following a fraud trial at Nottingham Crown Court in November 1998 and a drugs trial at Leicester Crown Court in April 1999.

The trial at Leicester heard he used Kingstand Golf Club in Leicester Forest East, as a cover for a £230,000 Class A drug dealing operation.

The court heard a police surveillance operation led to a 90-kilo seizure of drugs including heroin, cocaine, cannabis, amphetamine and ecstasy concealed in ditches and hedges across the nine-hole course.

Players at the course were unaware of further drug stashes buried under the course fairways and greens.

Christ on a crisp packet. As everyone knows, nothing beats a decent walk around a golf course and swinging a club about while you've got a spliff on. Imagine being on that course, taking a massive divot out on a bad swing - and finding a big fuck-off bag of weed. I propose right bastard well now that if they want to make golf more interesting for a televisual audience, they hide loads of drugs on golf courses and make players take whatever they find if they accidentally uncover them.

[Postscript: funny how Lee Westwood and Tiger Woods chipped in with this almost immediately after]

Gooseh

The best time of the week to go to Goose Fair is definitely Friday afto. You can actually walk about with your nephew without being whacked in the head by some sucky woman holding up a pushchair, there's very little in the way of teet'-sucking mouth-breathers, and you feel that, being in a fair on a school day, you're pissing in the face of the world. Here's some pics I took...

One of the few things about the new Gooseh that I approve of is the lack of chronic spelling mistakes. Back in the day, you couldn't move without being exhorted to try some 'PIPPING HOT PEES' or a 'TOFFE APPUL'. This was the only typo I spotted. Well done, everybody.

Goose Fair hasn't been the same since that hostile Disney takeover a few years ago.

"Mam! MAM! They're LYNCHING THE MUPPETS!"

This bloke is definitely worth a visit if you're going tonight. He fries up dead thinly sliced potatoes for a quid, and they are skill. He used to call them 'Crips', as they're a cross between chips and crisps, but I'm guessing it was pointed out that he was glorifying American gang culture. Or maybe the Bloods got the arse. Or summat.

OK, I've teased you enough. Time to get my peas on. If you're Proper Notts, you know there's only one place to get the peas in - that place in the top corner who do nothing but peas. My Mam used to work there in the sixties, and said it was the best fiddle in the fair for both the owner and the staff. ONE POUND AND TWENTY FUCKING PENCE, people. But sod it - I defy anyone who calls themselves a Nottinghamian not to look at that photo and not have a multiple orgasm of the taste buds...

If you've already read this, you'll know of my distain for Goose Fair's eschewing of gnomes with lucky bingo beans, Scottish giants who could step over Minis, local folk punching each other in the face for entertainment and MaaseTaan in its quest to be a poor man's Alton Towers. In fact, there's only one concession to old-school freakshowery - that big trailer van near the public bogs. I'd been in before, so I wasn't arsed. But me nephew saw this;

...and demanded we went in, so we could be systematically lied to by an ET doll in a jar...

Some bits picked up off a building site...

and - oh, for fuck's sake...

After picking up the usual paraphenalia (toffee apples, cinder tuffeh, overpriced balloon, etc), May Contain Notts's nephew said "Thank you very much for the greatest day of my life". Awr. Which makes it sound like he's been imprisoned in a cupboard for the past six years. My thoughts;

1) It's definitely not as big as it used to be.
2) If they tried not to rip people off so much, there's be about three times more people there.
3) Seeing as we've got a massive Square again, they should hold a more old-school fair there at the same time for the kids
4) I need to go back tonight for some more peas.

Factory Fodder

Sorry, but I just can't work up any excitement whatsoever about Control, the Joy Division film that was mainly shot in Nottingham. OK, so local actors getting work is brilliant, but it strikes me as horribly ironic that Broadway has put on a gala night to celebrate the fact that someone in a production company drove to Lenton, formed a square with their thumbs and index fingers, and said "Yeah, this place looks like the kind of depressing shithole where Ian Curtis would hang himself".

Are You Going To Gooo-ooo-ooose Fair? Elvis Mirrors, Nuggit And Peas...

(Apologies to Simon and Garfunkel)

Obviously, the big event of the week in Nottingham is the return of Goose Fair. I've not been yet, so I'll refrain from making comments about how rubbish it is/not as mint as it used to be/the extortionate price of the peas until I do.

Until then, may I direct your attention to a series of pieces I wrote for LeftLion a few years ago about the things which made Gooseh such a brilliant thing;

Intro

Mousetown
A relic from the days when looking at rodents in a glass tank was the height of culture and sophistication in Notts

Elvis Mirrors
The King lives. On student bedsit walls, in charity shops and in your Auntie's attic

Scream If You Want To Go Faster Man
A tale of dreams denied and hopes a-crushed, set to a soundtrack of Racey and Gary Glitter

Saddam Assassin
KILL THE BASTARD!

The Snake Woman of Bombay
The erotic splendour of a bored secretary from Bulwell earning a bit of Xmas money by pissing about with a snake

The Giant From Scotland
He could step over a Mini, you know

Gordon the Gnome
He could walk under a Mini. Alright, maybe he couldn't

The Boxing Booth
Old-school fist-on-face action, watched by deranged old dear with a brolly

Goldfish
The ultimate prize. Until they died the next morning.

Dads with faces like smacked arses
Goosey-hating Enemies of the People

Outdoor Bingo
The Sport of Mams

Being warned by your Nana not to go on a Saturday night
Mouth-pursing warnings of Apocalypse by the Cakewalk

LeftLion Is Not For Sale

A note from LeftLion Towers;

It has come to our attention that a certain (alleged) Big Issue seller is going around town with a bag of LeftLions and offering them for sale, claiming that LeftLion has been bought out by the Big Issue. We’d like to draw your attention to the following;

• LeftLion has always been a free newspaper. That’s why it has a big ‘FREE’ logo near the top.

• LeftLion has not been bought out by the Big Issue, or anyone else. It remains a fiercely independent magazine produced for and by Nottingham people.

• If you see anyone attempting to sell LeftLion, please take their Big Issue vendor number and send it to info@leftlion.co.uk

• LeftLion is available for free in over 300 locations in the Nottingham area. Get a copy from there.

• (Oh, and ask the bloke if he’s got any Big Issues for sale, as it’s good karma)

Thank you,
LeftLion
www.leftlion.co.uk

Cheeky fucking bastards.

Spandau Bell-end

I dunno about you, but this story caused me much in the way of mither over the weekend, as it probably did most Notts lads of a certain age. Not the fact that Richard Nixon managed to find time to stop worrying about being exposed as a cheating bastard to feel a bit sorry for Rudolf Hess - this bit at the end;

"The files include good wishes from civilians, one from a Nottingham man with a photo of his young sons carrying a model Zeppelin."

Fuck. Now, I know I haven't got a brother or owt, but it set me thinking; had me Dad ever took a picture of me and my cousin Kevin holding up a Zeppelin in 1973? I know I had a Colditz glider one Xmas, but he was always too busy getting kaylide at the Old General to help me put it together. There was a photo of me and my sister standing next to a Sooty machine in Chapel St Leonards round about the same time (Sooty, Sweep, and Soo had formed a Power Trio, and if you put 2p in they'd play summat). Had my Dad been sending photos of me to Hitler's deputy? He's mad enough.

Thankfully, the Post got on the case and eased my fears. It was actually a retired Council bod who just wanted his autograph. "It's like getting the autograph of an Australian cricketer," said Brian Howell, just before sending a photo of his granddaughter holding up an Airfix model to Osama bin Laden. "You may not like things to do with his personal life but they are a great cricketer and you have to strike a balance in getting their signature."

I don't know how anyone can equate Shane Warne to Supreme Nazi No.2, but this I do know; thank fuck it wasn't me ode man.

LeftLion #19: Scream If You Want To Go Faster, Girls

Students in Nottingham - Blessing or Curse?
The Coral
Nottingham RFC
DJ Looch Mentalism
Justin Moorhouse
Vinyl Abort
Nuclear Family
Athlete
Miles Hunt
Team Hughes
Matt Haig
Moot Gallery
Control

Plus Canadian In New Basford, May Contain Notts, Nottingham's meatiest listings section and all the other regular stuff - with FREE 'Proper Notts' tea-towel for every reader!

If you don't find this lying about tonight, you're obviously drinking at a shit pub. Or you've stopped in.

Oh, For Fuck's Sake

Remember the Robin Hood Marathon? It's now this;

Seriously, are there no traditions left in this fucking town that haven't been rebranded by a stifling monolithic souless corporation? I suppose Goose Fair is going to become the Capital One Festival of Getting Ripped Off And Eating Peas, next.

Soz for the lack of updates - been badly again and backed up with mither. Will try to address what a gwan at some point over the weekend. But now, I'm off to participate in the Boots Festival of Getting Cunted and Going Out For The Fanneh.

Look at this. No, just look at it.

You may have noticed that May Contain Notts has been willfully Forestcentric of late, and for that I can only apologise. But then I rummage through a box of old shit, turn up a souvenir programme of Forest's 1978 League Cup win, find the following advert, and vow to have it scanned in, blown up and framed in my living room as soon as humanly possible. Seriously, look at the quality of this;


OK, my thoughts;

1) Note how only Kenny Burns and Frank Clark seem to be paying any attention to that massively-out-of -proportion hunk of Co-Op steak in any kind of approving manner, which probably explains why the former now looks like this. John McGovern seems a bit scared by it, while everyone else seems to be attracted to something else - possibly a Black Forest Gateau the size of a shed in the corner.

2) We already know that Cloughie regularly prepared his teams for big matches by locking them in a room and getting them larruped - but did Forest really train on gargantuan slabs of red meat as well, and if so, how come the 1978 Forest squad are all still alive? Hadn't pasta reached Nottingham yet or summat? Thank Christ Channel 4 hadn't been invented yet - I couldn't have taken the sight of my beloved Forest queuing up to be harangued by Gillian McKeith, holding their own shit in Tupperware boxes.

3) I know 1978 was a long time ago, but was a hunk of Co-Op dead cow really 'the best' that was 'good enough' for the Super Reds? I know my Dad used to bring it home from work when he was a lorry driver there, but then again he brought home some mushrooms from his mate in the pub the other week that were absolutely lifting with maggots, so I wouldn't exactly rely on his culinary opinion (when me Mam had stopped screaming at him for being so fucking chatty, he pointed out that he still intended to eat them, because 'there'd be a bit o' meat in 'em'. Then she started screaming again).

4) Since when has anyone described people who shop at Co-Op as 'discerning'? Yeah, I go there every now and then, but only because Lidl don't sell hummus or pitta bread. That's not me being 'discerning' - that's me not being arsed to go up the road to Tesco Express. When I worked as a lift boy at the Co-Op taking fat Mams to the top floor, there were many descriptions that flickered across my mind. 'Disgusting' was one. 'Discerning' certainly wasn't.

5) I know Photoshop wasn't around them, but Christ on a crisp packet - look at the shoddy cutout job on Frank Clark...

6) All in all, it shows just how much things have changed. Once upon a time, 'training on beefsteak' was the sign of a successful, well-off athlete at the peak of condition. Nowadays, it sounds like an insult directed at someone's Mam on the top deck of the bus when the schools turn out.

According to a bloke in the pub who was talking to a mate...

Bulwell has more chip shops per square mile than any other estate in the whole of Britain.

(Special thanks to Joe Leivers)

They Were Bleddy Well Winning An'all

Get Well Soon, Clive Clarke.

Strelley Telly Time #4: The Hitman And Her In Ritzeh's

If you’ve ever cocked a sneer at Oceana, or are labouring under the delusion that the 80s were a golden era where everyone looked like robots in pirate costumes, you need to invest half an hour of your time in the following. This is YouTube gold.

A quick history lesson for the yout’ dem; before acting the twat on the X-Factor, and whilst in the middle of his reign as purveyor of synthetic pop-shite in the late ‘80s, Pete Waterman presented The Hitman and Her, a magnificent hunk of tat broadcast live-ish from Zanadu’s in Chesterfield or somesuch that went out on ITV early on Saturday morning, usually when you came back from a proper club and you needed cheering up when you hadn’t pulled or couldn’t get into Rock City.

The great thing about Hitman was that if afforded you the opportunity to rip the piss out of Gary and Sharon as they went about their mating ritual without running the risk of getting your head stoved in, whilst conveniently forgetting that they were happily swinging their chinos in a club while you were at your mate’s house picking at a kebab with the sound down so not to wake his Dad, who was on the post in the morning. The following clips are from the night they came to Ritzy’s – sorry, Ritzeh’s ­– in 1989.

While you're checking these clips - and if you're the same age as me, you'll be scouring them with a magnifying glass to see if you recognise anyone - look out for the following;

1) Pete Waterman relentlessly hyping his latest slab of pop- mank

2) The dance troupe led by Wiggy, a lad who usually wore a blonde wig and some kind of skimpy nappy (fact: my mate was actually approached by Wiggy and offered a slot as YTS Wiggy. He turned it down)

3) Lads wearing ties. Yes, even as late as 1989, looking like you worked in IT on Dress-Down Friday was still a mandatory look at meat markets. If you went past Zhivago’s on a Friday night (it’s now Vision Express in Viccy Centre, kids), you would see blokes going through the bins trying to find a scrap of cloth that they would fashion into a tie

4) Ritzy, although looking like the set of a Albanian version of Dr Who, winning the Discotheque Of The Year (North And Midlands) award. Which must have really fucked The Hacienda off.

5) Oh, and bear in mind that just down the road, The Garage is probably playing Voodoo Ray and Me, Myself And I, Rock City is playing Orange Crush, Love Shack (when it was a new release, and not a club night), and Keep On Moving upstairs and She Bangs The Drums downstairs, and loads of Nottinghamians are in a field somewhere, what with Acid Culture already starting a year ago.

Fact: Pete Waterman believes that the best single Motown ever produced was this.

Forest's Mega-Bog

(I wrote the following for the latest edition of When Saturday Comes. I'm sure they won't mind if I reproduce it here...)

The village of Gotham in Nottinghamshire is famed not only for inspiring an early name for New York (and Batman’s stomping ground), but for being mad. Legend has it that when the locals heard that King John was making a detour through the village (thereby forcing the creation of a Royal Highway that the villagers would have to pay for), they went on an orgy of mentalism – drowning eels in a tub, riding around on horses with sacks of corn on their shoulders to take the burden off their horses, painting green apples red, etc – in order to scare the King away.

900 years later, and the ancestors of the Wise Men of Gotham are in danger of being comprehensively out-madded by Nottingham Forest, who plunged new depths of delusion - and managed to give Notts County fans even more to laugh about this summer – when out of nowhere, they announced that they were to move out of the 30,602-capacity City Ground (their home for 109 years) to a 50,000-seater mega-stadium four and half miles away in Clifton, smack on the doorstep of Gotham.

Bearing in mind that a) Forest are still in League One, b) they’ve only just managed to scrabble their way out of debt, c) although they have the highest average attendance in the division, it’s still 10,000 or so short of capacity, and d) they never managed to pack the ground out even when they were European champions, you may be wondering what the name of God they’re gibbering on about. So am I.

“It would be fantastic for Nottingham. It would say that Nottingham is a forward-looking, dynamic city that has confidence and self-belief,” announced Forest chief executive Mark Arthur, as he waved about artist impressions of something that looked like a massive toilet bowl with a red seat at a press conference in June, pausing every now and then to submerge another eel’s head under the water. “There are many (Arsenal supporters) who didn’t want to leave Highbury, but anyone who has visited the Emirates Stadium will say ‘wow’. What a place to watch football. I would say to any fan that they should visit somewhere like that, see what it looks like, see what it feels like. And perhaps we will go for a slightly scaled-down version of that.” Well, Mark, it’d be nice to visit stadiums like that a couple of times a year, but we can’t. Because we’re in Division Three. Which is a massively scaled-down version of the Premiership.

So what’s wrong with the City Ground? You’d understand reasons for a move if the stadium was a dump, but it’s not. There were plans to expand the stadium to 46,000 in lieu of a return to the Premiership (which have now been swept under the carpet). It’s a short walk from the train station, and a stone’s throw away from the home of the oldest professional club in the world and a world-famous cricket ground, making it one of the most concentrated areas for sport in the country (and it’s conveniently located near to the only Hooters that still exists in the UK, but let’s not talk about that). According to Arthur, that’s not good enough for go-ahead, vibrant, eclectic Nottingham; “If the World Cup were to come to England in 2018 or 2022, then this would be a stadium worthy of staging the tournament’s matches.”

Ah, yes. I totally forgot that the FA – who, as you’ll recall, would be incapable of organising a piss-up in any of the 350 or so pubs in our fair city – were on the verge of claiming the World Cup. And when that absolute 100% cast-iron certainty happens, Nottingham will have a 3-1 chance (with Leicester and, Derby - who announced stadium-expansion plans on the same day) of hosting the East Midlands games. Never mind the fact that Nottingham’s participation in Euro 96 was conducted under a swathe of empty seats. The opportunity of hosting Potatovia v The Peoples Republic of Macaroon and two other less prestigious games is far too glittering a prize for Nottingham to cock its nose up at.

And if the World Cup actually does come to England, and Forest’s new MegaToilet beats out Pride Park and the Crisp Bowl, what then? How are Forest going to double their gate in a decade, when it’s obvious that the football boom is not going to get any bigger and the ladder has been pulled up on all but four clubs in England? More importantly, how can anyone predict with any certainly that Forest are going to be a Premiership club by 2018, when recent form shows that they’re just as capable of local derbies against Hucknall Town in the Conference North next decade?

It’s only when you look past the bluster and the glossy brochures that you realise what’s going on. As mentioned in a previous WSC article, Forest and Nottingham City Council have butted heads over a previous loan (for Euro 96), which the former tried to weasel out of. They appear to be on amazingly good terms now, and the Council are welcoming the move with open arms (the local councillors in Clifton, on the other hand, didn’t even know about the proposed move until it was announced to the press).

The council own the strip of land that backs onto the Trent, and they would love to make use of the City Ground for more of the same. Listen to the words of Ray Valenti of Natrass Giles chartered surveyors without wanting to put this magazine down in order to wipe the drool off your fingers; “750,000 sq ft of floor space with a value exceeding £250m….could attract a medium-sized food store operated by a premium brand such as Waitrose…this could be the location for the five-star hotel Nottingham has so far failed to attract…The demise of soccer (yes, that’s what he said) at the City Ground will be celebrated with a new Trentside landmark that even Ol’ Big ‘Ead would be proud of!” No, mate, he would have smacked you in the teeth.

Nottingham, like every other moderately-sized factory cities in England that doesn’t have factories anymore, is going through an identity crisis and reacting to it by chucking money up the wall on building projects and hoping one or two of them stick. The Forest move displays the depressingly familiar deluded logic that states that, if you build another Top Shop five minutes walk from the old one, you’ve suddenly created a Retail Mecca. And if you’ve spent the last few years building ‘executive apartments’ in the hope that there’ll eventually be industries here that actually have executives, or erecting loads of hotels in the hope that people will come here for more than stag dos, why not build a 50,000-capacity stadium out of the way in the expectation that Forest will eventually become a Big Club and sell it out every other week?

The people of Gotham had a method to their madness. The people who run Nottingham Forest seem to be just mad.

Sexy, Sexy NottsNews

Jesse Jackson is coming to the Meadows. Unless Isaac Hayes has had a pint in the Poets Corner or The Bar-Kays have mooched around the Bridgeway shopping precinct to get summat for their tea, this will be the first time anyone from WattStax has ever appeared there.

A local businessman vows to raise £1.96 million for Nottingham Rugby Club. God knows how - sponsored shitting-in-pint-glasses, or summat.

The usual Mansfieldness.

Controversial Poster Campaign Hits Nottingham

Skegness - It's So Burning

Weep, people of Nottingham - our spiritual homeland is been dealt a heavy blow. I wrote this for LeftLion #5 a couple of years ago. I throw it up here as my little tribute to the jewel of the Lincolnshire coast.

Twelve Things That Were Skill About Skeggy

1. Your Mam buying you clothes months in advance

…that you can’t wear until you go on holiday, in order to convince other people that you’re not fleabags. How twisted was that? I remember when I was six, and I had to spend three whole months staring at an absolutely mint Kung Fu vest and pants set in the drawer that I was not allowed to wear. It was agonising. Naturally, as soon as you get to Skeg, every youth from Notts is wearing the same clothes, making it look like there’s only one shop in the whole of town.

Honestly, you tell people in the South about things like this and they’re convinced you’re taking the piss.

2. The journey there

…which was a yearly novelty in itself. Remember, in those days Dads never drove you to school, and Mams weren’t allowed to drive. Ever. Sadly, there were no Playstations and tellies attached to the seats, your Dad won’t let you open the window, he hasn’t got one of them things that hang off the back bumper to stop car sickness, you’re wedged up between a suitcase and your sister on the back seat, Dad’s put on his Elvis tape and you’re sitting there knowing he’s going to start roaring when Old Shep comes on (because he always does), and you’re starting to get that familiar catch down the back of your throat that means in about three minutes, you’re going to be puking your ring into a Co-Op bag while your Dad mutters “Fucking kids…you can stay at your bastard Nana’s next year”.

On the upside, there is nothing more cosmopolitan than hearing Radio Trent fade out and Radio Lincolnshire fade in. That’s when you know you’re on your holiday.

3. The caravan

This is how fucked up Nottingham Mams and Dads are; they spend the whole year moaning about ‘gyppos’ diddling them at Goose Fair and parking up on nearby wasteground, and how do they spend their time off work? Exactly – by living like them. I bet proper Romanies don’t decorate their caravans with mank won off the prize bingo, though. And I’m pretty convinced they have better sanitary facilities than a piss-bucket shared by three generations in the middle of the night, an’all.

Still, when you’re a kid, caravans are ace, and miles better than B&Bs, which only posh people from West Bridgford ever stayed in. You wonder why houses don’t have fold-up beds too. And it’s always so dignified, how the people who have just moved out have left enough tea bags in the pot for a proper mash.

4. Childrens rooms in pubs

This must be the best thing about Skeggy by far. Normally, going to the pub with your family meant sitting in the car for two hours with the occasional bag of crisps and a Coke with a straw in it, playing Mastermind with your sister, and seeing if there were any wank mags in your Dad’s toolbox. Not in Skeg, though – you had a whole room to yourself, which usually contained a bust Air Hockey table, some kind of animal ride with an ‘Out Of Order’ sign on it, and a Space Invader cabinet with some other game in it. That was broke.

Still, it was an invaluable introduction to pub etiquette, as you sat on your Dad’s knee while he said “Quick, while landlord’s not looking’ and tipped half a pint of Shippos down the front of your best shirt. Obviously, the spirit of the Children’s Room lives on in all inner-city Nottingham pubs, especially the ones in Bulwell.

5. Meeting people from Sheffield

This was a rather special thrill on its own. Skegness wasn’t only occupied by Nottinghamians during the summer (even though you were bound to see at least two kids from your school while you were there); Mansfield, Derby and Leicester also represented, but it seemed like every steel mill in Sheffield had decamped to the coast. You couldn’t understand a word they were saying, they all had basin cuts, they were built like brick shithouses, and they always wanted to give you bone-crushing handshakes. Even the women. Especially the women.

6. The beach

The innocent time when you were proud to say you got crabs while you were on holiday. Finding the spot where you buried 10p last year, only to find there’s a JCB digger there. Sitting on a manky donkey for a bit. Going in the sea. Once. Never doing it again. Your dog going mental and drinking gallons of seawater, only for him to piss it out his arse while you’re trying to chat some girl up.

7. Eating fish and chips twice a day for a week

I’m sorry, but I’ve been to Blackpool and the chips there were rubbish. Skegness has the best chippies in the world, and I’ll fight anyone who dares say otherwise*. That street in Skeg known as Chip Shop Alley – I could just stand there all day and inhale its delightfully pungent aromas. If you don’t put on at least two stone while you’re there, you’ve had a shit holiday.

*unless they come from Whitby

8. Amusement arcades

Once upon a time, before even the Atari 2600 came out and Nottingham didn’t have dens of iniquity where hard lads from The Meadows nicked your 10p that was on the glass – the kind of place where Zammo first got into scag, you’ll remember – Skeggy was the only place to get your low-tech interactive jollies. The absolute highlight of the week for me was legging it into an arcade and seeing what I was going to spunk the contents of my piggy bank on that year. I bet I still have my name on a Sheriff Nintendo cabinet in the storeroom of a chip shop near the prom. Your Mam would always moan about how you should be getting some fresh air, but seeing as she lived in the Prize Bingo next door ramming in 10p after 10p, she was talking out her arse.

9. Going to Butlins for the day

We went to Skeggy Butlins one year. It was bob. The only thing about it I can remember is being able to stick my hand through the hole in the wall under my bad and shake hands with the lad next door. Much better to go in for the day, have a go on everything (which you could do in a day, in any case), and piss off out again.

10. The Cockle Man

The bloke in the white coat who used to go round the pubs and clubs at night with a big basket of things in Mr Kipling trays, who used to get your grandparents all excited while they were watching someone who came in 4th during an episode of New Faces murdering the oeuvre of Neil Diamond. You look at these things now and think, fucking hell – 20 Chinese lads died for something that looks like a tumour and you have to put loads of vinegar on so you can eat ‘em without retching. Obviously, big respect to the Fish Man of Mansfield Road, who keeps the flame alive in a piscine style and fashion.

11. Finding some suitable tat for your Nana

Now it’s getting near the end of the week, you’ve got to make sure your Nana gets some return on the investment she rammed into your cakey little hand, or she’ll have a face like a smacked arse until Christmas. And what bounty there was! Hunks of rock artfully moulded to look like a full English breakfast! Coasters with photos of people in ‘Frankie Say’ T-Shirts playing crazy golf! Something with the Big Gay Fisherman on it! A tea tray of the clock, which was a bit like the one in Blackpool, but not quite! Postcards that gave you an erection even though you didn’t quite know why!

Sadly, the numerous tack shops in Skeg have moved with the times and the grandparent market has been completely marginalised. Last time I went, one could purchase a set of Rasta garden gnomes sucking on enormous spliffs, an indoor skull fountain, a garden ornament of two fists adorned with sovereign rings, giving the finger, and a dildo on sale for a quid. If I had bought any of those items, I would have been cut out of her will.

12. Going home

A bit like getting there, only with more vomiting.