Cod Almighty | Diary

Whatever happened to Leon Trotsky?

7 December 2016

People say never to meet your heroes. As both an indiepop musician and an indiepop fan, your original/regular Diary finds this a bit impractical. Indiepop is less a genre than a mindset, and less a mindset than a community, and less a community than an underachievement support group. None of us are very famous – even our heroes – so it's not remotely unusual to find yourself booked as a support act to someone you've worshipped and adored for many years. Before you know it you have not only met your heroes but you're lending your heroes a plectrum or a jack lead, or damning the government with your heroes over a couple of pints while you wait for the sound engineer to show up.

The football doesn't quite work like that. You have that dream about being plucked from the crowd to take a penalty in the 120th minute of the cup final after all the remaining substitutes were struck by lightning. But it's just a dream. When you meet your football heroes, it feels like they're on a different plane – even if your life and theirs are both in the fourth division.

As touched upon yesterday by Rise and Shine Diary, next week's Marcus Monday event offers a chance to socialise not only – as the name suggests – with Town's endearing new team manager but also with Omar Bogle. You worry, in fact, that Biggie might stand there kicking his heels while the supporters who make it along will be queueing up to beg our talismanic striker not to leave during the January transfer window. Or, given the invariable direction of every single messageboard thread about Bogle, how much they look forward to him leaving so Town can have one and a quarter million pounds.

I'll not be able to make it along next week, but I've managed to meet one or two GTFC heroes in the past. This time last year, at the We Are Town book launch, it was great. Alan Buckley was kind and humble, Sir John McDermott entirely engaging, and Gary Croft an absolute sweetie. I didn't quite manage to meet Paul Groves at Asda's in the 1990s, because I was too shy, and Mrs Diary had to get his autograph for me while I hid behind the fresh produce.

Before that it was Tony Ford, in an autograph booth at the Old Clee school summer fayre in about 1979. Bashfulness had yet to kick in, and so I did manage to meet the great man, who possibly wasn't much older than me. Tony was without a doubt the coolest and most awesome person I had shaken hands with during the few short years of my life, but I didn't get to chat for very long because it was my turn to go for a ride around the playground on a milk float.

I wouldn't quite describe Mike Newell as a hero, but I did meet him once. It was when we launched Cod Almighty's now infamous 'Newell Revolution' T-shirt. We did a quick promotional photo for it on the pitch before a game. Mike looked at us like we were street drinkers. Then he sent a team out which included Tommy Forecast and Town lost 4-0 to Crewe. We had a box of T-shirts we would never sell, Town were set firmly towards relegation from the Football League, and after his sacking a few weeks later Newell would never work in football management again. Other than that, it all went pretty well.

As for your original/regular Diary, I am no kind of hero at all, but I will be at Friday night's Can You Hear The Grimsby Sing? event at Blundell Park, and I really hope to meet some of you there. If you have a plectrum in your back pocket, just in case I lose all of mine, so much the better.