A FOOTBALLING FACT

This is my rather battered old copy of Marvel UK’s “STAR WARS WEEKLY” comic issue number 50 published in the days when “The Empire” hadn’t even got around to “Striking Back” yet. Inside there’s a short article about the fact that they were in the process of filming that, of course, alongside all of the usual comic strips that nowadays probably get ignored by the dyed-in-the-wool fans as simply not being “canon” or somesuch…

“Be nice to him Luke, he might be somebody’s father…!”

Anyway, I’m not here today to burble on about “Star Wars” - after all, there are plenty of places you can go on the jolly old internet if you want to look for that kind of thing.

No, my eye was drawn to the advertisement on the back cover of that particular edition which was one of a series being run by the late, lamented “Smiths Crisps” back in those days.

My sister worked for “Smiths Crisps” for a while, back in the day, which meant that, for one blissful year, we had boxes upon boxes of the things stacked all over the kitchen of the house I grew up in. Employees got given a box of 48 packets every week to take home with them, you see…?

Well, at least that’s what my sister said happened anyway, although I do notice that “Smiths Crisps” no longer seems to exist all that much as a brand name any more, so maybe there were shenanigans afoot…?

Who knows…?

Anyway, even we couldn’t pile our way through that amount of crisps every week and so there started to be a bit of a backlog and I got to take lots of crisps to school in my packed lunch, something that would no doubt be “frowned upon” by the modern day “lunch inspection” culture in modern schools.

Meanwhile, back to the back of my comic. This advert was “Number 6” of the run of the “Football Crazy Fascinating Facts File” sequence that they were running and I always remembered it because it mentioned my local team, Stockport County…

Well, I say “my” local team, but only in the sense that they happened to play in the town I grew up in, but nevertheless, the “Fascinating Fact” that they were involved in the game which had the lowest ever crowd for a league game must have sunk in because for many years afterwards it was the only “Football Fact” that I actually knew…

Thirteen people.

May the 7th, 1921.

They were playing Leicester City.

I always liked Paul Sample’s drawings, too.

For what it’s worth, he also used to draw the covers of the Tom Sharpe novels that I started reading at about that time, so there’s a distinct possibility that he was something of an “influence” upon my own inept daubings.