Is Sir a sport? The truth about Paul McCartney and Tom Jones

Can you imagine a young Paul McCartney beetling around the country following his favourite football team? I certainly can't.

That’s not to say that sport and music don’t mix – just that Mac the Knight seems about as steeped in the beautiful game as old codgers like myself are besotted with rap music.

Yet various websites would have it that Sir Paul is a keen Everton fan.

The reality, however, is not exactly engraved in blue-and-white stone. ‘‘Here's the deal,’’ the great man explains. ‘’My father was born in Everton, my family are officially Evertonians, so if it comes down to a derby match or an FA Cup final between the two, I would have to support Everton.

"But after a concert at Wembley Arena I got into a bit of a friendship with Kenny Dalglish, who had been to the gig, and I thought 'You know what? I am just going to support them both because it's all Liverpool and I don't have that Catholic-Protestant thing.'

"So I did have to get special dispensation from the Pope to do this but that's it, too bad. I support them both.
"They are both great teams. But if it comes to the crunch, I'm Evertonian."

Personally, I would have thought that master musicians of McCartney’s talent would be too driven by their first love to be sidetracked by such trivialities as football. And it’s clear from his comments that Paul is a bit of a sporting fence-sitter, anyway.

At least his explanation sounds marginally more sincere than fellow Beatle Ringo Starr’s assertion that he’s a Liverpool supporter because ''I like the colour red”, which  presumably he also bangs the drum for every red-shirted team from Arsenal to Aberdeen. Well, I love the colour purple but that doesn’t mean I support the team they call the Royals – be it the monarchy or Reading FC.

Great Scott! Tom Jones as I remember him in Pontypridd

The only celebrity I actually KNEW before he was famous is another shining knight, Tom Jones (yes, I am that old!). I gave him his first-ever write-ups in the Pontypridd Observer a couple of years before he hit the big-time – in the days where he sang around the South Wales clubs under his stage name of  Tommy Scott.

Whilst Tom may have been built like a sportsman, I can assure you he never showed the slightest interest in football, rugby or any other sport. And believe me he definitely was neither gay nor a wimp.

Cardiff City, the nearest professional football club to Pontypridd, were in the old First Division - the equivalent of the Premier League. But although I was a keen Bluebirds fan myself, the only birds Tom was interested in were certainly not blue. Nor had he any time for Spurs, Manchester United Spurs or any of the other big-name teams of that era.

The sporting fraternity sometimes wheels the great man out onto the green, green grass of home to sing at the occasional Wales rugby international and what have you. But while the old Jones heart may still beat for his homeland, I doubt that Sir Tom's head really cares about match results, whatever the shape of the ball.

Having said that, many celebrities are completely smitten by sport - and particularly football. Some to the point that their names are synonymous with their favourites - for example the oasis of Gallaghers at Manchester City and Mick Hucknell’s simply-red love affair with Manchester United.

Others, I am convinced, just attach themselves to the mast of the big-name clubs for effect. Teams like Manchester United and Arsenal, for example, have such large fan bases that showing token support for them might just persuade a few extra fans to buy their CDs and albums.

Conversely, when I was young (and there aren’t many people alive who remember that!), major pop stars  were rarely linked with sports teams. Presumably with professional footballers no better off financially than miners or postmen, there was no glamour spin-off for the marketing people.

Indeed, I can’t remember Elvis Presley, the biggest name in music during that era, having any particular sporting allegiance. And the only British top-tenner I recall with strong football ties was Gerry Marsden of Gerry and the Pacemakers fame.

Until he came on the scene, if you weren’t a fan of Hollywood musicals, the song You’ll Never Walk Alone would have meant nothing to you.to the vast majority of people.

Now Marsden’s name is likely to live as long in the Anfield memory as those of Bill Shankly and Dalglish.

And thereby hangs a tale – because some sources insist that until Liverpool fans adopted his 1963 smash hit as their club anthem, Gerry was in fact an Evertonian.

Perhaps it’s time he had a chat with Macca and Ringo.

Arsenal 1 Birmingham 2: Why football clubs are buying the wrong players

I used to hate Birmingham City when the club was owned by the seedy David Sullivan.  But their Carling Cup Final victory over Arsenal had me cheering.

That’s because Alex McLeish’s glory boys proved at Wembley that British footballers can compete with the best in the business. And also that Premier League clubs do NOT need to spend a fortune on continental imports rather than buy the finest young talent from England’s lower divisions.

Anyway, as a lifelong footy fan I thought  Birmingham fully deserved their win, even if I could have scored Obafemi Martins’ winning goal myself. I said could have, not would have!

To me it was a special occasion as the British bulldog spirit conquered supposedly one of the best club teams in the world. The experts predicted an easy win for Arsenal – and instead saw them sunk by a Churchillian effort from the boys from the Midlands.

The Wembley war was won by the true grit of a Birmingham team whose starting line-up included EIGHT players from the UK and Ireland. And that is rare indeed for a Premier League team, the majority of which are packed with megabucks signings from overseas.

Please don’t label me a racist, because that is the last thing I  am. But while I love the way Arsenal play - indeed I think they are the best side in the Premier League -  they are not an English team. They are a World XI that just happen to be based in London.

Sometimes Arsene Wenger’s team take the field without a single Brit but on Sunday the Frenchman’s World XI did at least have Jack Wilshere in the line-up. (OK, I accept that if Theo Walcott had not been injured, there may have been two Englishmen in the side).

I  believe England’s flop in last year’s World Cup was largely due to the fact so few homegrown players feature in the top club sides. And I am convinced things would improve if  Premier League bosses stopped buying abroad and started investing in the Championship – the second tier of the English game – which is packed with talented youngsters.  

Birmingham centre-back Roger Johnson, one of Sunday’s bruised and battered Carling Cup heroes, is an example of what I mean.

Not because he was my hero before my beloved Cardiff City sold him for £5million a couple of years ago - and not because of the 6ft 3in defender’s special courage in the face of giant odds at Wembley. Unable to train all week, he hobbled defiantly through the last half-hour after taking a knock that would have seen many lesser players carried off.

The fact is that Johnson turned in consistently brilliant performances for Cardiff week after week – yet until Birmingham came in for him, he might as well have been playing on the moon.

Not that we Bluebirds fans were complaining at the lack of interest, of course. While the big boys were looking abroad to strengthen their defences, Roger was lifting us towards the Premier League.

Now, after less than two seasons strutting his stuff at St Andrews, he is probably rated at £20m and being touted as a future England centre-back.

What I want to know is why was Johnson not poached by any of the Premier League giants much earlier when he was turning in consistently brilliant performances week after week for Cardiff?

Ironically, a few months before Roger’s move to Birmingham, Wenger had forked out £5m himself for Cardiff teenager Aaron Ramsey. Yet the names of the players that have since moved in at the Emirates continue to be as unspellable as ever.

At least Arsenal’s sorry losers still have something to celebrate after their Carling Cup misery. European Union law is apparently standing in the way of the desire by FIFA President Sepp Blatter and his UEFA counterpart Michel Platini to impose limits on the number of foreign players in a team.

Perhaps the solution would be a friendly agreement between the Football Association and Premier League clubs to field no more than five or maybe six overseas players in the team at any given time.

But I’m a woman. What do I know about football?