I have, though, been incredibly busy with co-launching the new mag - Forty-20, on sale at all good newsagents and a few supermarkets – and publishing a late rush of books, which is a reasonable excuse for tardy blogging, I feel. No signs that business is going to slow down anytime soon either. The mag seems to be doing well- or wiping its own face at least, as the marketeers would have it – plus I’m straining at the leash to write my own next tome. Don’t exactly know what that will be yet and if I did I wouldn’t say because there’s no surer way of killing a project stone dead than talking about it too early. But watch this space, as they don’t say on Battlestar Galactica.

Anyway, I noticed that the great David Oxley CBE won a ‘Spirit of Rugby League’ award at the RLIF International Awards held at the Tower of London last week. That was richly deserved and it reminded me I hadn’t put the piece I did with David for June’s Rugby League World magazine online yet. So here it is, for your edification and delight, and to salve my conscience at not having blogged lately.

For all that this sport of ours has chopped and changed its rules down the years, the leadership of the Rugby Football League has on the whole sat steadier than the rock of Gibraltar.

Since the days of John Wilson, who served as secretary of the Rugby League from 1920-1946, there have only been six men on the throne. With the possible exception of chief executive Neil Tunnicliffe, whose tenure between 1998 and 2000 was brief, the lowest-profile incumbent might well be David Oxley.

That this should be so is unfair. For throughout his 18 years of service between 1974-1992, it was Oxley who helped to revive a moribund game, laying foundations for the modern sport as we know it. His contribution has been immense.

On top of that, despite his supposed ‘retirement’, Oxley has continued to exert a huge influence on the development of such areas as the RL Foundation, community trusts and his beloved Student game, with whom he recently completed a 30-year spell as president.

A millions miles away from showboaters like predecessor Bill Fallowfield and successor Maurice Lindsay, he is nevertheless very much a character in his own right.

Ooh, Betty’s

We are due to meet in David Oxley’s current home town of Harrogate, North Yorkshire – and more specifically Betty’s famous tea shop – on a beautiful late spring/early summer morning.

The man himself doesn’t drive, never has done, so I pick him up by the roadside on the main A61 Leeds road coming in. “What a beautiful place,” he says, admiring the cherry blossom as we drive past the famous Stray, together with the hosts of golden daffodils further brightening up the day. “People go on about Rome and Paris, but you would do well to beat this, wouldn’t you?”

Although Hull born and bred, Oxley is clearly happy in Harrogate. Then again, he seems happy anywhere. During my own teenage years, his smiley appearances on Look North regularly brought mirth in our house; even through the telly you could detect that he was, well, a thoroughly pleasant chap.

Another attribute one might attach to the former grammar school boy and public school headmaster is posh. Perhaps that is partly what won him the job of Rugby League secretary in the first place. “The poshest man to come out of Hull,” as someone had said to me earlier.

He chuckles good-naturedly at the suggestion – “What about William Wilberforce?” – before going on to paint a working class background that couldn’t be further removed from the genteel chink of teaspoons on fine bone china that accompany our conversation.

“I was born in 1938 and my dad was away for much of the war,” he begins, that trademark beam animating his face as we are served our coffee – with cream rather than milk, naturally. “I didn’t meet him properly until he got demobbed when I was eight years old. He had volunteered for the Royal Air Force and got posted to the Orkneys and then the Middle East.

“Hull in wartime was pretty tough; we were the most bombed English city outside London. Hull took the first bomb of the war and the last bomb of the war. The city had 92,000 residential houses at the beginning but by the end only 5,000 were left intact. My mother, my brother Gerald and I were bombed out twice and so had to move around the country as evacuees.”

After the war, the family moved back to Hull where Mr Oxley got a job as a carriage cleaner and then foreman carriage cleaner at Paragon station. “When I was on school holidays I used to go and help out. What the great British public could do to a 1953 steam train from London was truly unbelievable.

“My dad was very down-to-earth and he did shift work all his life. He cycled five miles to work every day in all weathers to work from midnight to eight o’clock in the morning. I was lucky enough to win an eleven-plus place at Hymers College, a well known independent school in Hull. Although we got some help – free bus tickets and so on – my mum had to go out and literally scrub steps to supplement the income.”

League hotbed

Although soccer daft at first – this was the great Hull City era of Raich Carter and Don Revie after all – Hull being Hull, it wasn’t long before the young David Oxley fell prey to the charms of the oval ball game.

“We were East Hull,” he explains. “A friend’s dad took us to Craven Park and that was it, I was hooked, as happens with so many people. The first game I saw was against Salford; they had George Curran at hooker and Alan Wharton, the great Lancashire cricketer and opening bat, was also playing. I can’t remember the score but Salford must have won because dear old Rovers didn’t win many in those days.”

That said, back in the days of a single division when teams played each club in their county home and away, Hull KR did occasionally bloody the noses of the big boys. “We often got the top Yorkshire sides at Craven Park and occasionally gave them a good game. I can also remember beating the 1948 Aussies, who were a great side.”

As a youngster, Oxley marvelled at the skills of such visiting stars as Brian Bevan and Alex Murphy, along with home favourites like Rocky Turner – Rovers were his first club – and Bryn Knowelden. And it is while on this subject that another reliable Oxley characteristic first surfaces: his instinct for not letting fondness for the past cloud his view of the present and, indeed, future.

“These were also the days of 50 scrums a match and unlimited tackles and that often made for some pretty boring games,” he admits. “Those who knock the modern game, saying ‘oh, it’s just five drives and a kick’ – which it is when it needs to be, in clearing your line and so on, but hardly it’s main characteristic – they forget about that.

“It’s the same thing with grounds. I was brought up at Craven Park and loved it. Like anyone else, I became attached to the place where I first watched Rugby League and it becomes part of you. Those stadiums remain in your heart but, in retrospect, they had to go. Looking back, you use the language of the dodgy estate agent – they were quaint and full of character. But really they were dangerous, uncomfortable and unprepossessing. None of them would have got a license to operate today.

“Nor do I think the modern grounds are lacking in soul. Soul comes from events and players, not bricks and mortar. The new Wembley stadium, for example, is magnificent.”

Theatre of Dreams

Oxley also confesses to being a big fan of Super League’s Old Trafford Grand Final – and why wouldn’t he? He was at the helm, after all, when the Rugby Football League first began to take showcase events to the Theatre of Dreams in the late 1980s, initially with internationals and, from 1987, the Premiership final.

“We started with the Aussie Test of 1986,” he says. “People said: ‘What are you doing? You won’t get 5,000.’ Well, in the end we got over 50,000. That didn’t stop the letter writers, though. You feel that there is a certain type of Rugby League character who would have been happier if we had got 5,000 and then they could have said: ‘I told you so…’.”

“Any organization – not only in sport – must always move forward. If you don’t, you go back. Some people think Rugby League has been over-restless but I tend to think that while you shouldn’t just make changes for change’s sake, you should never be satisfied or else you get complacent.

“Once Super League came into being and the Grand Final was put on at Old Trafford in the evening, it added enormously to the magic. I have taken many people to the Grand Final and they are always gob-smacked by the atmosphere.” The grin gets wider.

After grammar school, Oxley won a place at Oxford and embarked upon a spell of national service that, he says, taught him about “deportment, comportment, how to live and work alongside fellow officers in the officers’ mess.” He claims not to have suffered from class prejudice. “It might have been there beneath the surface, but I didn’t notice it and I hope I didn’t take any snobbishness on.”

While studying English, he also came under the tutorship of the eminent literary critic and scholar Sir Christopher Ricks and captained his college at rugby union. “My Oxford experience was gilded, wonderful,” he says. Afterwards, he began a nine-year career as a schoolmaster, first as an assistant English teacher at Merchant Taylor’s school in London and finally, in his late thirties, as headmaster of the army’s Duke of York Royal military boarding school for sons of soldiers.

This also allowed him – very much against the run of play – to introduce Rugby League into the public school system. “I was so enthusiastic about the game it influenced the boys. Along with watching it on Grandstand on Saturday afternoons we used to play inter-house games by popular demand. The RFU didn’t know anything about it. I also helped to coach the rugby union first XVs and introduced League techniques into training. My old friend in Hull, David Doyle-Davidson, kept me up to date with all the latest coaching methods and, then as now, we were way ahead of what union coaches were doing.”

Off to Chapeltown

The eventual leap from public school master to Rugby League secretary owed much to fate.

“I was reading the Daily Telegraph one Saturday morning in the common room and at the bottom of the page was a tiny advert announcing that Bill Fallowfield was retiring and that they were looking for a new secretary. So I thought, I’ll have a go.

“It was really out of nosiness and I didn’t think I would get anywhere. But anyway I went through the preliminary interviews and suddenly found myself on a shortlist with Bev Risman, the distinguished current president of the RFL, and Ron Bailey of Featherstone. Bev was quite rightly the favourite.

“Looking back, thinking that I didn’t have a chance probably helped me. I was totally open and spoke freely. The people making the decision… Tom Mitchell, Brian Snape, Ossie Davies, luminaries like that…they seemed to be quite impressed.

“BARLA had just come into being and the game wasn’t in great shape. On the field, it was struggling with the transition to limited tackles, first four then six. This was the 1970s, so everything was scruffy, and the game certainly so. When I got the job I was as surprised as I was delighted.”

Morale, though, was low. “I remember dear old Eddie Bottomley, the assistant secretary, saying: ‘I don’t know what you’ve taken the job on for, David. None of us will have a job in a year’s time.’ I don’t think it was quite as bad as that but the game wasn’t in the greatest of shape, it’s true.”

Oxley’s brief, in a nutshell, was to lift that morale and modernise the operation, tasks which he took to with relish. First up, he embarked on a tour of Rugby League country with his equally newly-appointed marketing sidekick, David Howes. “We needed to get a grip of the sport, look at how the game was played and re-fire people’s enthusiasm for it, as well as sort out the grounds and our marketing and promotion.”

“Appointing David Howes was the best thing we ever did. We are both from Hull, worked really well together and remain friends for life. He is a man of great ideas. My job was to occasionally refine those ideas and then back him all the way, which I believe I did. We needed his dynamism.”

As already hinted, Oxley also had to calm the troubled waters bubbling away then, as now, between the RFL and the amateur governing body BARLA, formed in 1973. This is he largely did, an experience that has left him well placed to comment on that organisation’s state of play.

“BARLA has done great work historically, particularly in the early years when they really took up the opportunities we opened for them. But there is no doubt they have fallen on difficult times. There is a great distinction to be made between the great people who run the clubs and the current dysfunctional governing body. Stalwarts like Spen Allison and Maurice Oldroyd would be the first to admit that things haven’t been easy in the last few years.

“I think BARLA has to accept the reality – and I don’t say this in any disparaging way – that they are a regional governing body, albeit of a very important region. That is what they have always been. International tours apart, they have never really functioned as a British amateur Rugby League in the true sense of those words or indeed a national one.

“The rest of the game is just getting on with what it does. With 200 clubs entering the Rugby League Conference this year, there is now more amateur rugby being played outside the BARLA area than within it. We shouldn’t worry about that – it’s wonderful. Meanwhile, BARLA has a very important job to do in stopping the hemorrhaging of their member clubs and continuing their good work with tours and so on.”

Exciting times

For Oxley, who declares himself “excited with the direction the game is taking,” the sport he sees today is a hundred times different to the one he took over in 1974, and indeed nominally stood down from in 1992.

And although he is content to reflect on how his own administration in many ways lit the way, he is not slow to heap praise on the current RFL, nowadays situated in the semi-rural surroundings of Red Hall rather than run-down Chapeltown Road.

“When I first caught the bus out of Leeds City Station, I remember the suburbs getting tattier and tattier and thinking ‘what am I coming to?’ he admits, before adding that he probably wouldn’t have got the job if he had admitted he couldn’t drive: “Nobody thought to ask, so I never bothered to tell them.

“Anyway, I did develop a lot of affection for Chapeltown Road but there was a deal, set up during my time, that when the local authority came up with a suitable alternative we would do a swap.

“I never had more than 12 employees at any one time there; at Red Hall nowadays they have around 112. It’s bulging at the seams. But they do need them. It’s not empire building or employing people for the sake of it. We weren’t bothered with things like the salary cap and if we needed legal advice we brought in firms from outside. Such emphasis wasn’t placed on things like child protection, equality and diversity – although those things did cross our minds and I hope we were always open and cared about people.

“Richard Lewis, Nigel Wood and their staff have done very well. They inherited a company that was virtually bankrupt – the RFL barely had enough money to pay a month’s salaries. There are criticisms, there always will be and that’s healthy. But it’s easy to underestimate the enormous job they took on.”

The end is near

It was always written into David Oxley’s contract that he would retire as secretary general aged 55. And, looking back, there are three achievements of which he remains most proud.

One, while still in charge, was to persuade the RL Council to devolve control of the game from a 30-odd man council, from whom it was always tough to get a decision, to a six-man board. “Like getting turkeys to vote for Christmas,” is how he puts it. “At the first meeting we suffered a 29-2 vote against and then, after doing a bit of work, at the next we swung it 29-2 our way!”

The first two men invited onto that new board were Oxley’s eventual successor Maurice Lindsay, a go-ahead figure behind Wigan at the time, and a young man from Wakefield who had done a lot of good work with his theatre and the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, one Rodney Walker.

“Then, just as I was leaving and Maurice was taking over, the national lottery came on stream and out of the blue the government invited me to chair the sports lottery fund, which I did for nine years in all. We had three billion pound to distribute and Rugby League quickly learned how to make a persuasive case, resulting in millions of pounds coming into the game, particularly at the amateur level.

“That, of course, has continued with the current £29million award, which is a tremendous achievement by people like Julia Lee, Andy Harland, Niel Wood and colleagues. I had a good sight of that application and it was brilliant. I know they are using that money very wisely. Whatever the future holds for Sport England, the funding of our resources will continue at a high level.”

Thirdly, along with his chairmanship of the Student Rugby League and helping to set up the Rugby League Foundation in 1988 – “…at first just a small grant-making body; much more strategic now under the excellent chairmanship of Terry Flanagan…” – there is his role as chairman of the Leeds and Wakefield community trusts.

“Seeing the players and clubs working with deprived and difficult young people in the community, well, it’s just fantastic,” he grins. “Of all the things I have been lucky enough to do, that is the most satisfying and rewarding involvement I have ever had.

“The cementing of Rugby League clubs to their communities is a great strength of the game and we must never lose that. Seeing this formalised into a Community Trust, which is now a necessary requirement for Super League, is wonderful.”

For all that David Oxley’s last assignment as Rugby League secretary general took place in Wigan in 1992 – the official presentation of that year’s World Club Challenge trophy to the then Brisbane skipper and current Castleford coach Terry Matterson – his groundwork in helping to clear a path for the modern era, whether at clubs professional or semi-professional, amateur or university, ought not to be overlooked.

Not that this still lively septuagenarian will be spending too much of his own valuable time looking backwards, mind.

“Whatever committee I am on, I always tell them the first time I use the phrase ‘in my day’, sack me. I may have thought it a couple of times, but I never say it. That’s not the way to support the game. You should go all out to support the people who now run it.”

The last dregs of our coffee cups are drained and as we begin to make our way back out into the Harrogate sunshine, I can’t help myself. Where did he get that ever-present smile?

“So many people have pointed it out down the years but, I promise you, it has never been conscious. I had the best job in the world representing the best game in the world. What’s not to smile about?”

To paraphrase Charles Edwin Hatcher ‘Starr’: “Thumbs! Huh! What are they good for? Absolutely nuthin…’

Not true, actually. Thumbs are very useful indeed, especially if they are opposable. According to some, opposable thumbs are the only things that separate us from the animals, although whoever said that must enjoy sniffing other human beings’ bottoms.

You don’t realise just how useful thumbs are until one of them is out of action. I’ve had a cracked thumbnail for a while now (don’t worry, this isn’t going to turn into an appeal to send me to Disneyland) and even though I try to trim it carefully, every time it grows back, the offending crack reappears. This wouldn’t be so much of a problem if it didn’t then keep catching on everything, quite painfully on occasion. People say paper cuts are painful, and so they are. Agonising. Worse than scrotal cramp. But that’s as nothing to the torture that is a torn thumbnail, especially when it starts cutting into that fleshy bit underneath, which mine is now doing after I tore it right back while fishing for the money to pay for a charity raffle ticket in a beer garden on Sunday. It’s too late to put a plaster on.

Suddenly, all the things you do with your thumbs that you take for granted are no go zones until, of course, you forget and then end up yelling like a 12-year-old girl at Wimbledon (is that still on? Come on, Andy!). I’ll name a few. Putting your hands in your pocket (admittedly not something a Yorkshireman does very often, as that’s where we keep our wallets – see original injury). Opening a packet of anything; boiled ham, crisps, heroin. Washing up. Opening an envelope. Typ-ouch-ing on keyboards. Scratching one’s head (or worse). Filling a kettle with water. I could go on.. and probably will, until the pain subsides. And then comes back.

On the plus side, we did win a prize in the raffle. And I am not likely to go hitch-hiking any time soon, so should avoid being bundled into the back of a car and driven, very much against my wishes, to Bridlington.

I’m letting the blogging side down a bit at the mo, I know, but there are mitigating circumstances. Work, mainly. Not only are we in the throes of developing Forty-20 magazine (see ‘Snakes and Ladders’, right, or scratchingshedpublishing.co.uk – first issue on sale Weds July 13), we’ve also got a couple more books coming out. The first of these, A Lawyer for All Seasons, is the memoirs – sporting and otherwise – of Ronnie Teeman, Leeds legal eagle, former rugby league president, friend of the sporting superstars. It’s out on July 1 and well worth a look, your honour. The second – for which we don’t yet have a confirmed publishing date – is From Hull to Hell and Back, the autobiography of rugby league legend Lee Crooks. Having just edited said tome, I can confirm that it’s an absolute cracker. Packed with great anecdotes, it’s by turns funny, shocking, insightful and moving. You’ll find it in all good bookshops – and one or two public houses, I shouldn’t wonder – later this summer.

So much for the adverts, what else have I been up to? Oh family stuff mainly, during which it occurred that there ought to be a term for the wasted food you consistently put on your offsprings’ plates with the intention of coaxing them into eating more healthily, in the full realisation that the process is futile; it is always destined for the bin. Collateral damage maybe? ‘Vegetables,’ suggests middle child.

For fun and entertainment, by the last episode – or ‘season finale’ as I believe we must now say – of series one,  I’m finally getting into Six Feet Under. It’s been a bit of a slog and rarely have there been so many unattractive personalities in one televisual setting, but it’s turning out to be a bit of a grower and the writing is quirky and wise. I particularly like the opening few minutes every week, when some poor sap pops their clogs in a most imaginative way. For some reason this puts me in mind of the opening of Camberwick Green – or was it Trumpton? – when you had to guess which of the characters would be rising up out of the musical biscuit tin. Would it be Dusty Miller or PC McGarry number 452? Now that was fun.

Also been enjoying the second series of Justified; looking at ladies’ bottoms on Game of Thrones; catching up again with old friends The Sopranos and Arrested Development (still can’t believe some maniac actually cancelled that); and chuckling at Stewart Lee and the second series of Psychoville on BBC HD. Musically, after being smitten by Allison Moorer’s version of ‘Carrickfergus’ on BBC4′s Transatlantic Sessions, I’m now obsessed; and in terms of reading for pleasure alone I greatly admired James Frey’s LA novel Bright Shiny Morning and am currently lapping up Michael Holroyd’s A Strange Eventful History – a dual biography of Victorian thesps Ellen Terry and Henry Irving.

It’s turning into the Culture Show this, innit? The blogs will once again be more regular once Forty-20 magazine is up and running. In the meantime here’s Allison Moorer for company. If you have whiskey prepare to drink it; if you have tears prepare to shed them now.

Just finished Peter Hennessy’s updated The Secret State, an inside view of the British government’s plans for ‘protecting’ Britain in the event of Nazi, nuclear or terrorist attack. A damn good read it is too. The book paints a chilling picture of how things might well have turned out had, say, the Cuban missile crisis of the 1960s turned into World War III, along with much else besides.

What comes across most vividly is the British establishment’s – and I dare say every western political establishment’s – absolute rock solid belief in the sanctity of procedure. Given the reality of the absolute devastation that would  have unfolded in the event of Soviet nuclear attack, for example, all the contingency planning, systems for authorising retaliatory strikes, ensuring the continuation of law and order and so on begins to look like delusional blind faith. Still, when faced with armageddon (as, when you come to think of it, we all are at an individual level every day), I don’t suppose you have much choice but to kid yourself that the bogeyman can be kept at bay through hard work, forward planning and a semi-religious devotion to ‘common sense’.

It’s a good book this, in a ‘what if’ sort of a way. Or even ‘what would I have done?’. If you had been Prime Minister (or in the event of that person’s ‘incapacity’, their deputy), would you have pushed the nuclear button during the three and a half minutes in which you had to decide whether to retaliate or not? Even if, given the global devastation about to be wrought, such a gesture would have been little more than a revenge killing of millions? Or would you have taken a long-term view with regard to the eventual rebuilding of human civilization seeing as how the very idea of recognisable nation states was about to be blown back to the Dark Ages? In fact, would you have gone into the governmental bunkers at all, knowing what was to come and that your family was not invited?

Where The Secret State works best is when it focusses on such human dilemmas rather than dry statistical analysis, although the latter clearly has its place. It’s an eerie thought that as you read this there is a British nuclear submarine patrolling a few hundred feet beneath the north Atlantic containing more explosive capability than every weapon expended in the Second World War, from first day to last, combined. Also aboard, a sealed letter from the Prime Minister giving the captain his orders in the event of an onshore nuclear catastrophe. Apparently each PM has one of four choices: 1) retaliate, 2) don’t retaliate, 3) bugger off quick smart to another port, say Australia or 4) do as you see fit, skip, I’m out of here. Every Prime Minister has to write one of these letters – personally and in secret – upon his or her arrival in 10 Downing Street and that letter is destroyed and replaced with a new one upon their departure.

There are lots of fascinating little nuggets like that and even – somewhat perversely given the otherwise weighty subject matter – a stinging critique of  the BBC sitcom Gavin and Stacey. I won’t lie to you, like much else in The Secret State, that came as a bit of a surprise.

So ends the extended Bank Holiday period – and a sunny one at that for a change. We’ve had everything: a royal wedding, the downfall of Osama bin Liner, some great televised sport, the occasional cheeky Vimto. Mrs H and I even enjoyed a couple of days out including, on Sunday, a trip up to Malham, North Yorkshire, not far from where we live.

The Cove itself was busy – too busy. But however many folk are there, the sight of Malham Cove always leaves me feeling vaguely gloomy. It’s the idea of an easy to picture once-vibrant waterfall – long since dried up – that does it. The relentless, monumental passing of time; human insignificance and all that. At least there’s a bit of water still running over at Gordale Scar where, after admiring the less busy but similarly impressive surroundings, we headed back to the main road intending to make our way back to Malham via Janet’s Foss and the riverside walk.

It was upon reaching the swing gate there, pictured above, that a little incident occurred. A man and woman walking in the opposite direction to us, presumably on their way to the Scar, had just bought themselves a couple of ice creams from a van up the road. The woman, in particular, wore the expression of someone who couldn’t wait to get stuck in. Having reached the gate first they went through it, shortly before we arrived there ourselves. Instead of continuing on, however, the man politely stopped in his tracks to hold the gate open for us. This act of benevolence caused the woman to jerk to a halt herself whereupon – you guessed it – ice cream and cornet parted, the former hitting the dusty earth with a plop. There may be a life lesson here regarding life’s essential unfairness and the wisdom of random acts of kindness, but I’m not sure that I want to learn it.

Anyway, the story has a happy ending. The sight of the ice cream and the heat of the day made us quite fancy an ice cream ourselves. Yet for some ridiculous reason that didn’t feel right. So instead we walked off towards Malham village as planned and sat outside the pub, where Mrs H had half a lager, I sank a pint of Thwaites’ Nutty Black and a bird shat on my leg.

Via evolution or revolution, from the birth of the Northern Union to our present day, rugby league could seldom be accused of standing still. And that has certainly been true over the past two decades.

Yet as the sport sets sail into a watershed third century with a game-changing 2013 World Cup on the horizon, the 13-a-side football code is too often defined by the tired and divisive debates of yesteryear.

Here at Scratching Shed Publishing Ltd, we are happy to announce that game’s latest monthly magazine, Forty-20, will dare to be different.

Those readers already familiar with our books will know of our slogan:treasure the old, embrace the new. It’s a philosophy and mission statement we will pursue in the magazine world too.

When Forty-20 lands with a thump onWednesday 13 July 2011, the sport’s past, present and future will combine in a next generation rugby league monthly that reflects the game as the majority of modern-day fans, players and coaches see it: a rapidly evolving global sport played largely in summer that is proud of its history while being excited by the thrilling spectacle of today and the opportunities that lay ahead.

In its pages you will discover well-crafted face-to-face interviews with rugby league’s most engaging personalities, be they in the European Super League, Australiasian NRL or anywhere else.

You will find contemporary issues explored in a balanced and rigorously journalistic manner; first-hand reports from wherever in the world rugby league is played; thought-provoking articles by the game’s most highly respected individuals and best-known writers, including former Bradford, Wigan, Crusaders and Great Britain coach Brian Noble, right.

At Forty-20 we value every rugby league club or nation, whatever their geography, playing standard or version of the code, from Barrow to Brighton, from Bradford to Belgrade, from Perpignan to Parramatta to Papua New Guinea.

In short, we aim to bring you a magazine every month that is bright and witty, punchy and informative. We will take the sport seriously, but not too seriously. We will keep a healthy sense of perspective.

And given Forty-20′s claims to being a rugby league magazine for the 21st century, we will also be on the look out for young and aspiring writers, photographers and illustrators. If that’s you, then fire an email to our editor at tonyhannan@forty-20.com

If you share our ambition and would like to help to raise our game, then please support us by taking out a 12-month postal subscription at a special early subscriber’s rate of £19.99. That’s a saving of over£15 on the retail cover price of £2.95 a month. Simply drop a line to philcaplan@forty-20.com and we’ll tell you how by reply. In future weeks, you will be able to subscribe to the magazine via this website.

Alternatively, if you have moved beyond old fashioned ink and paper and would prefer to take out a subscription to our online edition, watch for more details about this option over the weeks ahead.

Get on board with Forty-20. Together we can be the future of rugby league.

Stay in touch with all the latest news about Forty-20 on Twitter at @forty20magazine

LAUNCHING WEDNESDAY 13 JULY 2011

SPECIAL EARLY SUBSCRIBER’S RATE: £19.99 FOR 12 ISSUES -

THAT’S A SAVING OF OVER £15!

Visit www.scratchingshedpublishing.co.uk for more information

First published in April 2011 edition of Rugby League World magazine

Here’s a conundrum. Having been unemployed for months, your wife/husband/ boyfriend/girlfriend/ significant other has landed a very important job interview. Money is tight and the family really needs this. Your better half is determined to get the job. But when the big day arrives, he or she comes downstairs in the most outageous and unflattering outfit imaginable. Impossibly high stilletos, Gary Glitter wig, Compo’s tank top and a black leather thong. Possibly a bow-tie. One that spins round and lights up. They look like a pot-bellied refugee from the Scissor Sisters. What on earth are they thinking?

What do you do? You love this person dearly and the bank manager is about to repossess the house. You can’t let them go to the interview like that, can you? Wouldn’t it be better simply to take them to one side and say that, in your opinion, they are about to make a huge mistake. And then go through their wardrobe and come up with something that is, perhaps, a little more appropriate instead? No doubt they will howl and stamp their feet for a bit, saying that they don’t want to go now, but they will definitely thank you for it later. Particularly when they see the photo you took on your whizzbang new 3D digital camera.

That’s pretty much how I felt as I watched this year’s Millennium Magic Super League season opener. And giving vent to such doubts, initially on Twitter and then my own blog got me into hot water with some very hot-headed people of the happy-clappy religious zealot persuasion. Words like ‘traitor’ and ‘miserable sausage’ were bandied about. I don’t intend to go over those objections again; suffice to say that vast banks of empty seats are not a good look if you are attempting to show a sport off to its very best advantage, particularly in round one.

But so much for what’s very obviously wrong with Millennium Magic (although not so obvious, apparently, that the daft beggars don’t look likely to drag the game through it all again next season. This sport is its own worst enemy sometimes). If Super League’s opening-weekend outfit – while undeniably eye-catching – is too much of a dog’s breakfast to impress anyone at this time of the year, then what sort of event or events might do the job better? And in so doing allow at least as many if not more than the 30-odd thousand who actually went to Cardiff (60,000 my bottom) to join in the fun?

Sweet Charity

It’s a question to which there are a number of potentially workable answers. Jamie Peacock’s suggestion of taking the derbies to venues east and west is intriguing, although probably fraught with difficulties if staged during the football season. Still, where there’s a will there’s a way and all that. Similarly, the notion of turning Millennium Magic into a nines tourney later in the spring or summer, or something to do with international Rugby League or the Challenge Cup semi-finals, might also have merit since there’s no doubt that the people who go along do seem to enjoy themselves. My own preference, for what it’s worth, would be to kick Super League off with a stand-alone revitalised Charity Shield match, featuring either the previous year’s champions and Cup winners or a repeat of last season’s Old Trafford Grand Final.

Hang on. The Charity Shield? Wasn’t that the low-profile pre-season jolly played in the late 1980s and early ‘90s before crowds of a few thousand, in a seemingly random scattering of out of the way places? How is that going to deliver anything like the glamour required? Well, to some extent, yes, that is exactly what it was. But when you look into the history, there’s a little bit more to it than that. And there are several very good ways in which it could be reinvented as the all-singing all-dancing spectacle that the Super League launch weekend both needs and deserves. We’ll come to those later. But first, what exactly was the Charity Shield and how did it come about?

The Charity Shield was launched in 1985 (the same year, incidentally, as the Rodstock War of the Roses match – another in a seemingly endless list of Rugby League ideas that seemed good at the time but didn’t last). Until 1989, the game was staged annually at the Douglas Bowl on the Isle of Man and sponsored by the island’s brewery, Okells. Its first winners were the previous season’s Challenge Cup victors Wigan who, organised by man of the match stand-off Shaun Edwards, beat 1984-85 champions Hull Kingston Rovers, 34-6. The two men nominally in charge of the Rugby Football League back then were secretary general David Oxley and public relations officer David Howes. Both remember the birth of the new competition well.

“We had just had a Lions tour in 1984,” Howes recalls, “which had been an unmitigated disaster. So it was decided to raise the game’s profile and go event-led. Otherwise there was a very real danger that Rugby League would go into another negative spiral. On the back of that we put a string of ideas to the RL Council; including rebranding Great Britain, the British Coal Nines, having a double-headed Premiership final at Old Trafford, and the Roses match. The Charity Shield was part and parcel of all that. The previous year’s champions would play the previous year’s Cup winners and a large percentage of the proceeds would go to a different charity each year.

“The idea of taking a game to the Isle of Man came from a man named Paul Gaskell, a native of the Wigan-Leigh area who was resident on the island and worked at the resort’s well-known Palace Hotel. Geoff Keith and myself went across for a planning meeting, but when I first saw the proposed venue I must admit, I thought ‘no chance’. Far from being a stadium it was little more than a park pitch. To his credit, though, Paul said that by the time he was finished with it, the place would be a mass of colour. And sure enough, although the potential for growth was always going to be restricted, that is exactly how it turned out.

“All the businesses on the island got behind the Charity Shield in the four years we staged it there. We got some money off the tourist board and, along with the local brewery, the ferry companies and airlines got involved too. The hotels were also very happy to see us. We were determined to make the game a proper Butlin’s-style event; the players and coaches really bought into it. We took over the Lido, for example, and had 3,000 people at an after-match party, held on the bank holiday. It got to the point where we struggled to get everyone who wanted to go, over.”

David Oxley, too, looks back on the Charity Shield with fondness. “We established a very good relationship with the sponsors, Okells,” he says. “They were interested in bringing major events to the Isle of Man. They had a longstanding relationship with a soccer tournament that was staged there, for example. We got on well. As a venue, the island seemed like a good idea. It was not too far from traditional Rugby League territory for a start. The facility was fairly basic but otherwise it was all very pleasant, just on the outskirts of Douglas. It was never a massive event and not really intended to be. More of a pre-season match with a bit of a point to it, really. We saw it as something of a reward for loyal spectators.”

The Manx Effect

In the Charity Shield’s inaugural year, a crowd of 4,066 was attracted to the Douglas Bowl, although that number fell to 3,276 when Championship winners Halifax pipped Cup winners Castleford by a single point, 9-8, with Fax stand-off Chris Anderson outstanding, 12 months on. Over the following two years, however, attendances once again began to climb, albeit modestly, indicating that an Isle of Man Charity Shield might just have a longer-term future. Ahead of the 1987-88 season, 4,804 people watched Cup holders Halifax fall to Wigan this time, 44-12, during which Edwards picked up a second man of the match award, recently named the Jack Bentley Trophy in memory of the former Daily Express RL journalist. And then 5,044 looked on as champions Widnes put Wembley winners Wigan to the sword, 20-14, with Widnes hooker Phil McKenzie in top form. By which time, the Rugby Football League had a new board of directors, upon which a certain Maurice Lindsay sat as marketing director. It was he who decided that, though modestly successful already in its own way, the Charity Shield should now be shifted onto bigger stages and utilised more as a promotional vehicle. After which, the event once again grew in stature.

“The Charity Shield could hardly be described as a revolutionary event,” says David Howes, “because the soccer Charity Shield had been around for years. But it was certainly felt to be an ideal fit with the Rugby League’s expansion programme.” In that regard, the RFL had already begun to utilise the likes of Old Trafford and Elland Road for big games, reaping an upsurge in the sporting profile stakes. With a new sponsor in CIS Insurance now keen to spend money and become involved, a decision was taken to move the Charity Shield to Liverpool.

“We just wanted to try Anfield,” says David Oxley. “Then, as now, St Helens were keen to explore the Liverpudlian market for one thing, and we had come around to the idea of using the Charity Shield as a promotional tool, developing contacts in areas that we were interested in expanding into. That was also seen the following year when we took the game to Swansea.” Indeed, so successful was the Liverpool foray that the game soon returned for the 1991 World Club Challenge clash between Wigan and Penrith, which the Riversiders romped away with 21-4. Back in the days of total transparency with regard to big-match receipts, a grand total of £179,797 was declared, along with a 20,152 crowd. Several months earlier, for the less glamorous Charity Shield clash, a hefty 17,263 had turned up to watch a rematch of the final Isle of Man encounter that Widnes this time edged 27-22, despite a man-of-the-match display from Denis Betts in the second row. Yet despite such a healthy turn-out, when Widnes and double-winners Wigan then met for the third consecutive season in 1990-91 – with the Chemics taking part as a result of winning the Premiership – they did so, as David Oxley points out, in South Wales. Swansea City FC was the venue, a half-decent crowd rolled up and Jonathan Davies-inspired Widnes kicked Wigan’s backside, 24-8.

As with Millennium Magic, that trip to Vetch Field was at least partly inspired by League’s long-held dream of expansion into the Valleys. And superficially at least, the decision to take the Charity Shield there appeared to have helped in that aim no end, most obviously because of Davies’s contribution. In the Welsh centre’s first game in his home country since a switch of codes 18 months before, Davies bagged a hat-trick of tries in a 16-point personal haul. But the future BBC Rugby League commentator was not alone in preaching the 13-a-side message to the 15-a-side still-to-be-converted. In fact, every single point was scored by a former rugby union player. For Widnes, John Devereux scored a try of his own on the stoke of half-time. Martin Offiah, formerly of Rosslyn Park, scored the opening four-pointer and all the Wigan points, one try and two goals, came via the summer arrival of former New Zealand ‘All Black’ Frano Botica.

Writing in the British Coal Rugby League Yearbook 1991-1992, the author and journalist Paul Wilson wrote that: “As a showpiece, the Charity Shield was ill-served by the Swansea weather, though both sides won plaudits for their handling skills and their willingness to move the ball wide in spite of a day-long downpour. In the circumstances, a crowd of 11,178 was encouraging enough – with about as many curious locals present as dedicated followers on the 460-mile round trip from the north – though the value of the event, as public relations or as meaningful missionary work, can only be judged in the context of what comes next.”

Tyne Brand

And what would come next was a day trip to the north east and, specifically, the Gateshead International Stadium, long before Captain Thunder was so much as a twinkle in Lord and Lady Thunder’s eye. “The concept of the Charity Shield as a moveable feast is an improvement on the Isle of Man years,” Wilson continued, “when it was a very stationary picnic. But in essence the event is still a jaunt, a construction altogether too lightweight to bear weighty responsibilities like expansion and conversion. As long as this is realised, there is no reason why it should not continue to be enjoyed by players, spectators and new audiences alike. Friends made one day may be lost the next, but no matter, no actual harm is done unless anyone confuses the Rugby League’s annual outing for its expansion policy. As everyone knows, nothing of substance can be built in a day. The recipe for real progress is still the same as it ever was – requiring massive amounts of time, work and, above all, money.”

Nevertheless, once the Charity Shield did make its way up the A1 to Gateshead, an influence on the geographical expansion of Rugby League is most assuredly what it did provide. I vividly recall attending that game myself, thrilled that the land of my in-laws would finally be able to witness this rugby code that I had been wittering on about at first hand. Although far from a classic, it wasn’t a bad match either. Certainly, it had the big name pulling power. Having again done the double, Wigan made the trip to Tyneside in the company of Premiership winners Hull FC, who were duly seen off 22-8, with man of the match Dean Bell a wow in the centres. Of far more significance, however, is the impact the game had on one wide-eyed nine-year-old in an encouraging 10,284 crowd. His name? Paul Thorman, currently of London Skolars, and now, along with brothers Chris and Neil, part of a Geordie Rugby League dynasty.

“Wigan versus Hull was the first experience me and my brothers had of seeing live Rugby League,” Thorman says, after revealing that the brothers first took up the game in 1989, thanks to the local Newcastle Eagles club, and so were already developing an enthusiasm for the sport. “We watched things like the Challenge Cup final on Saturday afternoon Grandstand and I can remember seeing the First Ashes Test with Australia live from Wembley in 1990. But this was the first time I had seen it in the flesh.”

The Thormans began playing at the Eagles – now Wallsend Eagles – after reading a notice that was sent around their school. “We’d tried every other sport so we thought ‘why not have a go at this?’. But there’s nothing like being at a live sporting event for getting up close and personal. Apart from it being quite a beautiful day, I don’t remember much of the game itself, only the stuff surrounding it. There was a big photograph of Denis Betts and Paul Eastwood holding the respective trophies that had got them there on the back of the Evening Chronicle, for example. In the same paper, there was also a competition to win a signed Wigan jersey which I entered and actually won. My dad and me got to meet a few of the players and were given VIP seats. I was just sat there taking it all in, the atmosphere, size of the players and so on.”

Even so, like many other curious onlookers that day, Thorman didn’t return when the RFL brought the Charity Shield back to Gateshead the following year; a match that saw a comprehensive and unexpected 17-0 victory for Championship runners-up St Helens over treble-winning local rivals Wigan, in which fullback Alan Hunte was prominent. “I didn’t go to the game the following year, I can’t remember why,” he says. “Fortunately, though, by then we had well and truly got the Rugby League bug. We had a pretty good PE teacher who let us play League at school with our mates, who then also came down with us to play for the Eagles. There weren’t many other clubs in the area back then though, so we ended up entering the Yorkshire Junior league and played there for four or five years until the Gateshead Academy was formed and then Gateshead Thunder.”

The Irish question

In any case, by now the Charity Shield had established a steady little track record, without ever becoming seriously high-profile. For that second Gateshead game ahead of the 1992-93 season, for example, and in what turned out to be the final rattle – for now – of the Charity Shield charabanc, the attendance dipped to 7,364, but that was still higher than the inaugural match some eight years before And then suddenly, from being a popular pre-season warm-up with a difference and promising promotional tool, the all-too-brief life of the Charity Shield was over. How so?

“The idea was abandoned because with the added presence of the World Club Challenge in the calendar, the sheer weight of events meant that something had to give,” reveals David Oxley, whose leadership of the Rugby Football League coincidentally ended with the Charity Shield’s demise in 1992. “We were sorry to see it pass. There had been some really enjoyable games over the years, some good times, but we didn’t want to overload the players. There was also the difficult problem of trying to find a sponsor. The Charity Shield had been useful but it had probably run its course.”

Nevertheless, after a three-year hiatus and with Maurice Lindsay now in the hot seat and David Howes also departed, the concept was temporarily reborn. An expansion-hungry RFL, ahead of its Centenary and final winter season, sent Wigan and 1994-95 Championship runners-up Leeds to the Royal Dublin Showground, pictured above, on Sunday 13 August. It was a match that Wigan won 45-20, Andy Farrell contributing a try and eight goals. The most telling statistic, however, was a somewhat disappointing 5,716 crowd. Needless to say, the concept was shortly after dead and buried.

One of the fans who attended that day, Donna Daniels (aka @meme79 on Twitter) remembers her trip to Ireland well. “I’m sure a weekend in Dublin sounded like a good idea on paper,” she says, “but it had to be one of the least thought-out ventures to date. It was staged at the Royal Dublin Showground, which was the most unsuitable arena for a Rugby League match they could have found. It was made for parading horses and should have been kept that way. [In fact, the Irish Horse of the Year Show had been staged at the same venue a couple of days before]. The crowd was sparse and the facilities poor. The players’ changing rooms were so unsuitable that I saw more of Marcus Vassilakopoulos than I ever wanted to from where I was standing on the ‘terrace’. The players warmed up in one of the paddocks behind the main stand and, when kick-off came, it was obvious that the hedge around the pitch was so high anyone of my then-limited height couldn’t actually see anything. I ended up sitting in the dugout/pressbox behind Kelvin Skerrett and so did get to see Nigel Wright carried off with an ankle injury caused by the uneven surface, something he never really recovered from. At least the lack of crowd security meant I could wander on at full-time and get my programme signed.”

Rugby League World’s own Phil Caplan was there too. Apart from conducting Hugh McGahan’s first interview having taken on Leeds upon the sudden departure of Doug Laughton – and hoping that someone had been around with a big shovel – Phil recalls sitting close to the great Irish international rugby union fly-half Tony Ward who, he reports, absolutely loved it.

So, to cut to the chase. How might the Charity Shield be reinvented in an age when, for all its failings, the Rugby Football League is clearly far more long-term in its thinking and adept at putting on and stage-managing such potentially showcase occasions? Well the most obvious difference between then and now must be that the Charity Shield would no longer be a mere pre-season warm-up, it would be the actual first Super League game of the season. Along with the Shield itself and possibly some decent prize money, the teams involved would be playing for two competition points.

One saving grace of this year’s Millennium Magic event was the generally high entertainment value of the matches on display (notwithstanding a regrettable – and at times ludicrous – glut of penalties, but that’s another story). Among the best of which was indeed Wigan versus St Helens, the 2010 Grand Final repeat. Any round-one game runs the risk of players being ring-rusty and a little out of sorts – selecting the two best teams in the competition to run up the flag is the most likely way to mitigate against this and paint the prettiest picture possible. As part of the season proper it would also do away with an unnecessary extra round – unless MM was repositioned later in the year, of course – thereby reducing our athletes’ workload. This would be particularly appreciated by the champions who, of course, would quite likely also be preparing for the World Club Challenge in a matter of weeks. And in terms of the lost home gate, Super League itself could simply purchase the fixture off the club in question.

Then there’s the not-so-small matter of geography. Unless we are using round one to further the expansionist cause – and the Cardiff experiment this year showed the utter futility of doing that during the rugby union Six Nations in Wales – then why not focus on the opening weekend as a game-wide celebration instead, at least until the concept was robust enough to move around should that prove desirable? We would most effectively do this by giving fans – the vast majority of whom still live and work in the north of England – the chance to fill a more affordable and easily reachable northern English venue. The City of Manchester Stadium, Everton’s Goodison Park or Sunderland’s Stadium of Light, say, all of which would fit the bill admirably. One of them must be available. It might even be possible – if we were talking about a Saturday night fixture – to stage a Championship Charity Shield match as a curtain-raiser. Either way, the rest of the round – derbies if you must – would be staged the following day, with the biggest televised.

This year’s Cardiff debacle meant that Super League lost a very real chance to post its first ever 100,000 average attendance. What a message that would have sent out. Keep it simple, promote with flair and imagination and reap the rewards. The travel bug could be satisfied later in the year, if required, either via a rearranged Magic Weekend (even the fans who went this time seem by and large to have preferred it in the spring) or the return of a full round of ‘On the Road’ games in more manageable and strategic venues. The bottom line is that an opening night Charity Shield clash would offer a far better spectacle, both at the ground and on TV. We could even book a proper headline act for the entertainment, rather than a load of cheap-as-chips mascots sliding down a rope.

But perhaps the best reason of all for reinvigorating the Charity Shield is there in the title. All profits raised, rather than going into the pockets of Welsh hoteliers, landlords and travel companies, would feed back into the Rugby League Benevolent Fund.

In short, we would not only be kicking off in style before a rabid full house, we would be supporting the very people who helped to make this game of ours great. One of the concept’s original architects, David Oxley, agrees. “A Charity Shield revival with serious sponsorship, television coverage and competition points – and with maybe a Championship Charity Shield on the undercard – could have real mileage in it,” he says. “I do appreciate the need for big events in modern-day Rugby League, but I too have my doubts about the Millennium Magic concept as it currently stands. To replace it on the opening weekend with the Charity Shield would have lots of appeal. If we had kicked off this year with Wigan against Warrington or Wigan versus Saints, how much would that have raised for the Rugby League Benevolent Fund?”

I know it’s hard to believe, but I didn’t go to public school. I went to a comprehensive/upper school in Bradford; in fact the same one as the late Andrea Dunbar, writer of Rita, Sue and Bob too. To us former Buttershaw kids, fags were things smoked behind the bike sheds at playtime and latin… well, behave. The British public school system has always fascinated me though. For one thing, so many interesting comedians came through it – the Pythons, Alan Bennett, Stephen Fry…you know the drill.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about public schools recently for three reasons. Reason one is a book I’ve just finished reading – or rather three-books-in-one – the Penguin single volume trilogy of George Melly’s Scouse Mouse; Rum, Bum and Concertina; and Owning Up. ‘Good time George’ really was one of a kind and I was lucky enough to meet him once, after a concert in Bingley around twenty years ago. Mrs H was pregnant with our first child at the time and if it was a boy we were going to name him George, as we told the great man. Not only did he happily sign our CD case ‘to Tony, Jacqui and baby George’ – I’ve still got it – he regaled us with the tale of how he had been a scrap of a thing upon his own birth in Liverpool and not expected to pull through. His book confirms that story, along with plenty of other entertaining incidents in a life as packed and scurrilous (in a good way) as could be wished for. The tale of little Jeff, the disabled dwarf, sitting on his own testicles is a particular hoot. As it happens, our first born turned out to be a girl and although we did consider George anyway, in the end we decided against it. That honour eventually went to our son, baby number three, although only as a middle name.

George Melly would go on to live for another sixteen years after that concert (he died in 2007), but he was nevertheless getting on a bit by then and had to punctuate his vocal contributions by flopping into a chair at the side of the stage while the rest of the band filled in the instrumental bits. He was still fantastic though; a true and vibrant original to the end of his days. But anyway, back to his book, and after revealing his middle class upbringing and education, there’s a section where George recollects watching cinema newsreel footage of the Belsen concentration camp, shortly after the Second World War: ‘…the stumbling living skeletons with their bald heads and huge empty eyes,’ as he puts it. ‘As far as I can remember,’ Melly writes, ‘they hardly affected me, seeming no more real than the briefly illuminated bug-a-boos in the Skegness ghost train. How could I weep over a poem and remain indifferent to this proof of what humanity is capable of? I am unable to answer.’

Which brings me to the book I’m reading now: Fathers and Sons by Alexander Waugh, ‘the autobiography of a family’. It’s rare that I don’t finish a book, however crap, once it’s started – blasphemy! – but for a while there I thought I wasn’t going to manage this little treasure. After just a few pages I almost hurled it in the bin. The mood of casual entitlement was initially overpowering and although Alexander W spends much of his time moaning about constant comparison with his more famous grandfather (the brilliant Evelyn) and father (the less brilliant Auberon), it’s clear that he’s more than happy to use their reputations to enhance his own career, as proven by this book’s very existence. I’m glad I stuck with it, though. So far, Alexander is yet to reach anything like the levels of Evelyn’s satirical insight, but then who could? And it does have to be admitted that when he eschews the stereotypical ‘upper middle class superiority’ schtick – a sort of AA Gill-lite – he can be very witty indeed. And that’s the thing really. The comedy here is very much ‘wit’ – and spiteful wicked wit at times – rather than amiable good humour. Scottish farmers, for example, ‘eat porridge with their fingers’.

As in much of Evelyn and Auberon’s work, there is a nervousness and distrust of emotion in these pages, especially when those feelings are honestly held and openly displayed. To care, and to admit you care, is an unspeakably vulgar thing to do. It reeks of that dread middle class crime, sentimentality. And yet, at various stages of their lives, a number of these generations of Waughs would have seen themselves, if not as left wing exactly, then certainly as champions of society’s downtrodden, just so long, of course, as the downtrodden stayed firmly in their place (as, to be fair, in censuring his younger self, George Melly openly admits).

What is it about the public school system, I wonder, that breeds such a lack of empathy, even among those who like to think they retain a social conscience? Do public schools stir the mind but deaden at least part of the soul? I don’t know. As I said, I didn’t go to one, but their pupils do appear to inherit a thinly veiled fear of humanity; and especially filthy and often suffering working class humanity.

Now, I have no idea if the BBC’s Australian correspondent Nick Bryant went to public school or not, or indeed whether he considers himself to be a public servant – ie theoretically on the side of ‘the people’. However, what I do know is that he contributed the following article to the Aussie Spectator magazine recently on the subject of the, as he sees it, clear superiority of the public school game, rugby union, over the more earthly charms of its far more popular – in Australia, anyway – ‘black sheep’ of a brother, rugby league. Read it and see what you think. Does it merit a jolly good public flogging?

The article can be found here: The blessed union bears fruit

Just back from filming my latest television appearance. An endoscopy counts as being on telly, right? Anyway, for the next twenty-four hours I’m not allowed to a) be home alone b) drive c) drink alcohol (sassenfassenrassensassenfassendickdastardly) or d) sign any legally binding contracts. It didn’t say anything about blogging though, so what the hell.

For those who are unaware, an endoscopy involves someone (a trained professional hopefully) sticking a camera up your Khyber Pass in the hunt for various life-threatening diseases, worrying abnormalities, harmless polyps and, for all I know, Osama Bin Laden. Since learning I was booked in for such a process, although beaming like Bet Lynch, chuck, on the outside, inside I felt like I was on death row. That feeling was only reinforced this bright and sunny morning when I arrived at the hospital with birds tweeting and a welcome change of seasons in the air. Suddenly, my life felt like a verse in that Terry Jacks song which, it occurs to me now, was called Seasons in the Sun (the name of a book I edited – shurely an omen?) Nor did it help when the BBC reported a massive rise in bowel cancer just as I was leaving the house. Still, on the plus side, I would be having the same procedure at the very same hospital as my long-time literary hero Alan Bennett, as related in his book Untold Stories. This, at least, was encouraging. If Alan Bennett could survive this, then so could I. I just hoped that the hospital had washed the camera in the meantime.

Unlike death row, however, with an endoscopy you are not allowed a last meal. Three days beforehand, you are told to go on a strict diet of white bread, dairy stuff, noodles, white meat and gallons upon gallons of water. This, apparently, helps to cleanse the system; the aforementioned grub being what is rather euphemistically described as “low residue”. But it is the day before your hospital appointment when the real fun kicks in. Apart from a slice or two of white toast before 8.00am and then two cups of Bovril seven hours apart, you are told to eat no solid food at all for the full day and to continue this fast until the procedure is completed. You must, however, drink a large glass of water on the hour, every hour. And on top of this, you must take a couple of sachets of magic powder, equally spread out, which, when mixed with water heats up like something in one of Victor Frankenstein’s jars. The powder in question, ahem, assists in the evacuation of one’s bowels. Much of your day, therefore, is spent gazing longingly into the fridge and admiring the humourous cartoons on the lavatory wall.

The one good thing about all this is that it takes your mind off the potential outcome of the operation itself. Especially if you are a man, I suspect. As my beloved wife kept reminding me, if I wasn’t overkeen at the prospect of people prodding and poking me in all manner of dark and forbidding places, I really ought to try childbirth some time. Last time I looked, though, such a thing is not scientifically possible and while I am sure – nay certain – that there are plenty of men in this world who would quite enjoy having ET’s telescopic finger slipped up their bottom (and I shall fight to the death for their right to do so), I most emphatically am not of their number.

Quite a surprise then to discover that, actually, the process wasn’t so bad at all. In fact, there was something fascinating about watching a journey through my own innards on a telly screen and any embarrassment soon dissipated – although this may have had something to do with the sedation. I wasn’t so keen on those gowns that open at the back, but the (female) nurses were nice, I managed to resist cracking a lame joke about wanting a picture of the baby and, after pumping up my bowel to the size and texture of a space hooper, they even brought me some tea and toast. I would, however, like to apologise to the patient in the next bed who, while being made ready to go down to the theatre himself, had to endure me farting like a herd of circus elephants. It was either that or suffer the stomach cramps. Seriously, though, if you ever find yourself booked in for one of these things, there’s really nothing to worry about.

Anyway, the good news is that – one or two minor tests notwithstanding – the El H’ Annan insides appear perfectly normal. Now we’ve just got to do something about the outsides*.

*Joke copyright, Mrs J Hannan

Now then, comedy fans – here’s an unabashed plug for The Formby Project, a day-long symposium celebrating the life and legacy of George Formby that I am taking part in, to be held at the Queen’s Hall, Market Street, in Wigan (where else?) on Friday 1st April (9.30am-4.45pm).

The day, co-chaired by venerable Mancunian renaissance man CP Lee and artist Ken Barrett, will feature talks, screenings and maybe even a bit of music (on banjolele, natch). After some scene setting by local historian JA Hilton, I’ll be talking about the construction of the northern ‘dumb comic’ stereotype before a showing of a (very) rare 1970s BBC television documentary about George, presented by one Eddie Waring, in many ways an archetypal ‘northern comedian’ himself. CP Lee will bring the morning to a close by refereeing ‘the fight of the century’ – Frank Randle v Formby, a clash of Wigan’s favourite sons. Which comic will come out on top? You decide.

In the afternoon, Ken will subject the saucy songs of George Formby to some ‘Orwellian’ analysis and try to get under the skin of George’s best known ditties. And then after George at War, in which academic Dr David James looks at George’s war effort as seen through his films, there will be a screening of the film Let George Do It (1940).

A feature on this and other 50th birthday events can be read below, taken from the Spring edition of Wigan’s Borough Life magazine.

I bet that’s stiffened your little stick of Blackpool rock. Tickets for the seminar cost £7 each, including lunch and refreshments. Registration is at 9.30 and kick-off is at 10am.