Dear Sainsburys,

I was perturbed to see that my local Sainsburys, in Newport City, Gwent, is dubbed according to instore advertising" The Official Supermarket Of the England Football team".

As you are probably aware, whenever England are playing anyone, the Welsh are apt to support the opposing side. This is precisely because of the presumption made by your shop: that we would support England.

I myself am supporting the Cameroon, and whilst I do not expect Sainsburys to become "The Official Supermarket Of The Indomitable Lions Of Cameroon" just to please me, I hope you will think again about placing pro-England notices in Sainsburys stores situated in Celtic nations.

Yours

Colin B Morton

Hello there and long time no write. I have been gone from this site for lo, these many months, and I feel I should tell you what I’ve been up to:

1. I have been rejigging and tampering with my fantastic new arts movement, POSTMAINSTREAMISM. There will be more on Postmainstreamism in future. It is a very important new art movement for the C21st and I have to get it right. Fundamentally, it states that there is no "Mainstream" and therefore there is no "Alternative" or "Avant-Garde", and hasn’t been since Trout Mask Replica got into the top 30 UK albums in 1969. Anyone who wants to e-mail me with questions on Postmainstreamism, feel free.
   
   
2. I have been writing my sitcom Dub Pub which is like Cheers but set in a cannabis café. The theme tune goes "you wanna place where you can go, to get mashed out of your brain, you wanna go where no one recalls your name".
   
   
3. I have been laying plans for giving Her Majesty The Queen Of England the welcome she deserves when she comes to make Newport into a city. Unlike other towns in the UK which are being made into a city, Newport was originally a city and they took it off us for having the Chartist Riots (look it up!). Now we are supposed to be grateful? Plans so far include the Manic Street Preachers going up and down the river Usk in a motor launch doing bad covers of Sex Pistols songs, and Rude Russell streaking.
   
   
4. I have been promoting my Novella Pan. Co-written with hotshot American novelist Camden Joy, it’s about a bunch of people from various universes who go and see the Fall. Check it out here.
   
   
5. I have been vainly attempting to get my song for the England World Cup, "Party Like It’s 1966" accepted by various record companies…who will not do so because they are all capitalists who care not one jot for art.

Aha! I hear you ask, "What is Colin B Morton, the self-styled Welsh Psycho, doing creating a song promoting England’s World Cup efforts in the year 2002? Is it not a tradition that the Welsh, contrary beings that they are, tend to support any football team other than England?

Well yes, this is true.

Likewise Scotland: only last night my television screen featured some English woman going to Scotland and handing out English flags, attempting to get Scotsmen to root for English Victory in the World Cup.

Some of them said "yes OK we’d rather root for a British team…." Yet others were saying "no way I’d rather be nailed to a tree / made to listen to Phil Collins records / etc".

Like many English people, the folks at Channel 4 News seemed befuddled as to why Welsh / Scots lend support to whoever is playing England.

Simple! We are Welsh and Scots, we can support who the hell we like, but we are expected by English people to support England.

The answer is in the question, as the saying goes.

My good butty Tom (not the) Fowler has a list of Rugby teams he supports; Wales first, of course, then Western Samoa, and so on down to South Africa and below them England.

This latter he only supports when England are playing USA, as proof of his non-racism, and besides the USA aren’t going to beat anyone at Rugby ever.

But I have digressed on to the subject of Rugby, and unfortunately I feel I must return to the matter of its less-evolved sibling, football:

I am supporting the Indomitable Lions Of Cameroon in the World Cup, partly because they are cool and play in rasta colours, and not least because theirs is the best football song ever written, the mighty "Pam Pam Cameroon" by Macka B.

The next team they play was Argentina
5 thousand to 1 in the bookmaker
And oh what a match what a spectacular
The Ten Cameroon beat Argentina
Them all stop talk about Maradonna
Talk about the Cameroon with the two rasta
Pam Pam lick a shot if you love the Cameroon

A few months ago, however, a sudden flash of inspiration came upon me and the idea for the fantastic "UNNOFFICIAL ENGLAND 1966 WORLD CUP SONG" came springing from my head fully-formed, like wing-ed Pegasus from the head of the Gorgon.

The continued English obsession with their World Cup Victory in 1966 has long been a hot topic of conversation hereabouts. Me and my buddies collect mentions of this historic event, and the more trivial and spurious the better. Nary a week goes by without someone English mentioning it. You’ll all start spotting it now I’ve pointed it out.

There was the trailer on the History Channel that went…. "1933 Hitler becomes Chancellor Of Germany…" and so on through bombing of Hiroshima, Kennedy Assassination, etc, up until "1966, England wins the World Cup….1969, man lands on moon…..". I don’t know what happened in history after that, I was laughing so hard.

Then there was the England’s Glory (!) matchbox that had a "sporting fact" on the back, to wit: "(name of player eludes me) who was capped for England in 1987, was the first player to have this distinction to be born after England won the World Cup in 1966".

Now I don’t care where you go, that is the DULLEST FACT you will ever hear, anywhere.

Those are the top two sporting mentions of England Winning The World Cup in 1966, and I hereby propose a television programme, "I Remember People Remembering 1966" on which dozens of people all called Stuart (except for John Robb and some woman they’ve found who likes football) go on about 1966. Which reminds me: when "I Remember 1990" was on, they even managed to drag 1966 in that! Because…are you with me on this people?…..1990 was the year that England got nearest to winning the World Cup since 1966, so people were remembering 1966 in 1990 even more than they had remembered it in other years such as 1974 and 1989.

Another great 1966 incident took place last year, when England beat Germany 5-1. This caused a vast outbreak of 1966ism, including Peter Hook out of New Order saying live onstage in Germany that it was "1966 all over again". How baffled the German audience must have been, what with Germany having won the World Cup at football twice (a fact that English people seem to conveniently forget).

Those of you dwelling in the United Kingdom will have noted that there are several pro-England football songs bidding for chart honours at the moment, by Ant Man Dec and various other people, and none of them are any good. There is absolutely no reason why football songs have to be crap, as anyone who has heard the abovementioned "Pam Pam Cameroon" or "Shoot" (a paean to Newport County by Give Me Memphis), will testify. A few years ago there were attempts by Keith Allen and New Order to do a "with-it" England football song, "Let’s Have An E For England" or something. He’s Welsh and no one says "Oi! Keith Allen! Why are you doing an English football song when you are from Ponty?". So I thought I’d have a go. Having studied English obsession with 1966ism for so long, I decided to turn it to my advantage and create a song cashing in on 2002 World Cup Football Fever, by carefully combining this with 1966-ism. I decided I must use an already-familiar tune with a year in it, and having rejected "1966 A Merman I Would Turn To Be" by Hendrix and "No Elvis, Beatles or Rolling Stones in 1966" by the Clash, I plumped for the tune of 1999 by Prince (which he will not be needing any more as 1999 has been and gone).

Picture it! Top Of The Pops, circa the climax to the World Cup. Newport’s own Josie D’Arby will be compering in honour of local heroes and top tunesmiths Beware Of The Dog, who are so-called because we burn Anne Robinson onstage in effigy (but only because we can’t get the real thing). Just imagine, if it weren’t for the lack of vision of several of our major record companies who I won’t name here because I don’t want to embarrass them, THIS WOULD ACTUALLY BE TAKING PLACE!

Yes they turned down the Beatles, they sacked the Sex Pistols and they refused to even contemplate "Party Like It’s 1966" by Beware Of The Dog…. but hey, enough of my yakkin’.

The lovely Josie turns to the camera and says "I used to know these guys when I was barmaid of the Riverside Tavern and now I’m introducing them on Top Of The Pops! It’s number one, it’s the unofficial song of the world cup, and it’s time to PARTY LIKE IT’S 1966! Yaaaaaay!".

Several burly fellows in Wales Rugby T-shirts are onstage, a sort of techno / Chas’n’Dave song only a bit like Art of Noise starts up.

To think this is actually happening in a parallel universe where some Anthony H Wilson style visionary had the good sense to sign us up. Professor Stephen Hawking has proved that using difficult sums. Gareth Potter, the "Welsh Keith Allen" and former "Harry" on Eastenders, begins to sing.

"On the day I wrote this we beat Germany 5-1
and I’ve a feeling this year we’ll have our day in the sun"

The studio erupts with rock’n’roll football mania that has not been seen since the days of "Back Home" or "World cup Willie"...

"tonight we’re gonna party like it’s nine-teen-sixty-six
CLAP CLAP
CLAP CLAP CLAP
CLAPITTY CLAPITY CLAP ENGLAND!…"

(Lyrics to "Party Like It’s 1966" © Colin B Morton 2002. The tune belongs to Prince but if you’re only thinking it in your head you probably wont have to pay him).

Knowing my luck, I expect someone from a record company has uploaded THE UNOFFICIAL 1966 WORLD CUP SONG it to one of those MP3 things on the Interweb, and people will be able to download it on a whim. I will be deprived of my rightful place, in this space-time-continuum at least, on Top Of The Pops being introduced by the lovely Josie D’Arby. It’s a good job intellectual property does not exist, or I would be right pissed off.

> Dear Colin
>
> Thank you for your e-mail. You do make a good point, and I'm sure that if
> Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland were in the World Cup finals, then we
> would be 'supporting' them in our stores in the UK.
>
> All I can say is that we believe the majority of football supporters in the
> UK will be supporting the only UK representative there.
>
> I'm afraid this could be a classic example of 'not being able to please all
> the people all the time'.
>
> Thank you again for contacting us - I am sending a copy of your e-mail to our
> marketing people, for information.
>
> Kind regards
>
> Brian Shapley
> Customer Manager
> Sainsbury's Holborn business centre

And remember the words of Macka B:

THE CAMEROON TOUGH! THE CAMEROON READY! THE CAMEROON READY! THE CAMEROON SKILFUL! THE CAMEROON STEADY"