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A Northerner in London, An Essay in a Magazine
A while back I wrote a piece for the alumni magazine of my old Durham college, Josephine Butler. The piece isn’t online yet, but here is a picture of the physical copy if you did want a read. It’s about the North, the South, and the Mad.
They Also Served: Kevin Campbell
“fukin love u kev”– bennycefc “When it feels right, why would you want to go anywhere else?”– Kevin Campbell I’ve always believed that the number of international caps a player has tells you more about the context of that nation’s football scene at the time than it does about the player themselves. Wayne Bridge, for … Read more
Remember the Future? What ‘Jetsons: The Movie’ means for scientific progress
Would you believe it George? Our home food dispenser broke. And I had to wait twenty seconds at the checkout counter! — Jane Jetson, ‘The Swiss Family Jetson’, 1985 On Wednesday 28th March I’ll be delivering a talk at London’s Science Museum as part of their Lates events series for adults. More details can … Read more
Towards a Primal Scene of Football Economy
While attempting to write my way to towards some predictions about whether the movement for supporter ownership of football clubs will make any progress in the coming years– especially in light of the impending collapses of Rangers and Portsmouth football clubs– I came up against the problem of articulating somthing like aprimal scene of football … Read more
Millwall FC: Club Without Content
The other day, I went to see one of my adoptive teams, Middlebrough, play at my most recent adoptive team, Millwall. The game was decent, a 3-1 win to the visitors. What really struck me, however, was not the game itself, but rather the uncanny nature of Millwall FC as an entity. For a club … Read more
Deceptive Equivalences: Why Six of One Does Not Equal Half a Dozen of the Other
I saw this billboard campaign at Bond Street the other day (at 0608 in the morning, as you can see from the Central Line’s helpful info board). It really struck me as being politically insidious, and not just because it was promoting The Economist. The basic premise is, as you can see, one billboard with … Read more
They Also Served: Danny Mills
“Mills is just a fucking idiot”– Paul Ince Danny Mills, during the middle years of the noughties, became something of a stock joke among football writers: the optimal illustration of those weird and mysterious days between Sven’s appointment as England manager and the firm establishment of the Golden Generation’s first eleven. This interstice became the … Read more
Travels in Metro-land; or, No Sleep Til Chesham
In an attempt to fill in the four-or-so hour gaps that seem to proliferate my life at the moment, I’ve taken to hopping on tube lines and heading as far west as they’ll take me. My afternoons are being increasingly spent in such exotic places as West Ruislip, Ruislip Gardens, Chesham, Rickmansworth, Wembley, Harrow, and … Read more
