Tigers on Vaseline

Ziggy

Ziggy and the Spiders. No one was really sure where Ziggy hailed from - Bromley in Kent, probably - but everyone knows where the Spiders came from. And no, it's not the red planet. The Spiders: Mick Ronson, Woody Woodmansey and Trevor Bolder were all residents of Kingston upon Hull. That would have been a bit of a mouthful back in 1972 when Ziggy Stardust was looking for a name for his backing band. So, Mars it was then.

Waggy

It's not documented whether or not Ken Wagstaff (the greatest striker ever to have pulled a Hull City shirt on) was a Bowie fan or not. But in '72, Waggy and the Tigers were plying their trade in the old Second Division. In that same year The Spiders from Mars tour was in full flow.

Meanwhile, back in Hull, City (unlike now) were consistently under achieving: it would be another thirty years or more before they reached the top flight. Bowie, on the other hand, was on fire. Ziggy Stardust catapulted both him and his East Yorkshire band members front and centre - their mammoth UK and North America1972 campaign pulled in some prestigious dates in the US including New York's Carnegie Hall and the Winterland Auditorium in San Fransisco, before rounding off the year at London's Rainbow Theatre. Hull's itinerary, meanwhile, included exotic locations such as Preston North End. And Middlesborough. Although Waggy missed part of the season due to injury, he was still finding the back of the net. However, they would still finish the season nearer the bottom of the league than the top. Tigers on vaseline, indeed.

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Today's offering comes on the back of finishing my new song, 'Won't Fade Away'. It's a eulogy to Hull - the place where I was born. York Songwriters are putting on a gig in the summer in a little bar in the Fruit Market later in the summer - each of us playing a Hull themed ditty. Unfortunately I'll have moved by then, so will miss it. Here's the first verse:

I was born on the Beverley High Road

When Waggy and the Tigers played at Boothferry Park

And we'd go to the Land of Green Ginger

Have a few few beers...stumble home in the dark

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He's not the Messiah

Not the best place to sign your autograph Alan

The Holy Trinity

I was a fairly typical young boy when it came to outdoor pursuits: my three favourite sports were football, football, football. Living in Hull I was taken to Boothferry Park by my dad, but between the ages of ten and thirteen I flirted with Manchester United (don't worry, it soon passed). We're talking early 1970s: the Best, Law and Charlton years; not their most successful period by any stretch of the imagination, but a time when they would strut onto the pitch at 3 o'clock on a Saturday afternoon with their swanky new v-neck collared shirts - thus making Football Focus and Match of the Day unmissable on our recently acquired colour television from Radio Rentals.

Yesterday I was speaking to someone who lived in Manchester from 1969 to 1973 - directly overlapping my brief dalliance with United. His surname is Busby; he said that in that time there were only three Busbys in the Manchester phone book. And (Sir) Matt wasn't one of them; so on a Saturday evening if the team had lost his phone would often be ringing with some heckler on the other end venting his spleen. If at the time I'd had a direct line to the top I'd have been asking Sir Matt why he put Alan Gowling in his starting eleven. Alan Gowling, for me, stood for everything Manchester Utd weren't: he was gangly, ungainly, and if he had a Top Trump card his swagger rating would be 0 %. I hated him. He'd got a Degree and his middle name was Edwin. Looking back I was probably a little harsh on Gowling. He couldn't help being the way he was. Also, the stats would indicate that he did at least know where the back of the net was - something I conveniently airbrushed out of my memory at the time. So, anyway, if on the off chance you're reading this Alan, no hard feelings?