Cod Almighty | Diary

Diary - Wednesday 4 June 2003

4 June 2003

Despite the disappearance and resignation of Stephen Venney, the Jarvis employee and convicted fraudster who set up Town's new sponsorship, the club has been keen to reassure supporters that all is well with the deal. Nevertheless, there remain some who suspect shadiness, and they will be intrigued by a tale from Diary reader Mike Dunderdale. "My ex-housemate runs a wine bar in London," he writes. "One of his customers, when taking part in a business card draw, asked if he could put some of his clients' cards in. Housemate said yes, then exclaimed as he saw that it was a Jarvis logo on the client's card: 'They sponsor Grimsby! I saw the strip unveiled against Brighton...'

Mike continues: "The customer says: 'You what?' and goes outside to phone the Jarvis bloke, who is very high up in the company, and has been a Brighton supporter for 75 years." How old is this guy? "Heated phone call ensues. Turns out that the guy who organised the sponsorship deal sent a cheque to Town up to his purchasing limit, and then disappeared with a load of housing bonds bought with company money. Jarvis are keeping quiet on this, due to not wanting further adverse publicity, but the guy informs my mate that the deal is definitely only for one year.

"If it's true it's just typical of the things that happen to the club. If not, then it was a laugh for a few minutes, in a gallows humour style of things." I'm laughing uneasily, Mike. Many thanks for sharing that with us. Stephen Venney is sounding more like That Joe Carter out of Corrie every day.

Another email reaches the Diary, this time from James Booth in Toronto, Canada, a city cursed with the Sars virus but blessed with the Diary's current favourite band in the world, who were absolutely stunning at the Charlotte in Leicester the other week. Anyway...James has chanced upon what he describes as a "typical media mention about Grimsby" on the Soccernet site. It reads as follows. "They may have been pioneers of European football, but half a century on, Wolves versus Honved sounds a particularly irrelevant pre-season friendly. After all, where are Honved now? And where were Wolves? Getting pipped to promotion by Aldershot, to be precise. Visiting the Nationwide League's symbolic outpost, Grimsby." We always know where sentences like that are leading, don't we.

While there's not a lot of news, I would like to draw your attention for a final time to Cod Almighty's Messageboard Nesbit of the Season competition, in which voting closes tonight; so if you haven't already selected your top three contributors to online idiocy then hurry, do. I have also been asked to urge you all to suggest questions for this site's forthcoming Tony Butcher interview, in which the doyen of amateur match reporting will be strapped into a dentist's chair and made to drink orange juice while listening to Beethoven's ninth...erm, I mean sent an email with lots of questions in it. So let us have 'em please, using the feedback form. Ooh, and do you like the redesign of the site, by the way?

Beep beep! And...yes, as we type these very words the Diary has received its first ever text message. In its capacity as the Diary, I mean. A reader is down the pub, watching Big Brother on TV, and informs us: "Steph is wearing a cub scout outfit. For some reason." I love this job.