A Christmas Eve chat with your favourite County correspondents
“The best present for me would be a new headset that doesn’t scratch my bald head”
Saturday 24 December 2022
It’s Christmas Eve! Although I am feeling a bit of a Scrooge today. I sent a strongly-worded message to Keighren, Lee, Brown and Baker informing them that under no circumstances were they allowed any turkey or mince pies until they’d answered my festive questions. Fortunately, they’ve all responded, so as you’re tucking into your Christmas dinner tomorrow, you can be safe in the knowledge your favourite County correspondents won’t be going hungry.
If you need a last-minute stocking filler today, why not treat the County fan in your life to ‘A Curry with Colin Woodthorpe’ - our first live event of 2023. It’s taking place at Last Monsoon in Stockport on Monday 30 January at 7.30pm. The restaurant is pretty much next to the bus station, train station and motorway, so it’s really easy to get to. We’ve sold 50% of the tickets already; hopefully we can shift the rest and have a cracking night with one of Gary Megson’s first County signings ahead of our first season in Division One in 1997-98. Colin stayed at Edgeley Park for all of our five seasons in the First Division, and he’s got some excellent tales to share with us.
You’ll also get poppadoms, mixed starters, curry, rice and naan bread. As well as a full colour souvenir programme. All for just £20. Fancy it? Send me a text or give me a call on 07816 111150, or you can email desmondhinks@hotmail.co.uk
Finally, today’s edition is sponsored by The Site Supply Company. A big thank you to Steve Cree. Check out hivis.net if you need any workwear or high visibility clothing, and get 10% off all orders with the code TSMFW.
Des Junior
Jon Keighren, Stockport County
What was your favourite commentary moment of 2022?
Definitely Will Collar doubling County’s lead at home to Halifax, followed instantly by the news that Wrexham were losing at Dagenham. The noise, the relief, the ecstatic celebrations were incredible.
What’s the best Christmas present to buy for a commentator?
The best present for me would be a new headset that doesn’t scratch my bald head.
How do you think County will do in 2023?
Automatic promotion to League One.
What’s the worst press box or ground you’ve been to in 2022?
I don’t miss King’s Lynn.
What’s your favourite thing about Christmas Day?
My little boy Sammy is eight now, so spending Christmas Day with him and my wife Sarah is still very special. Although I also enjoy the peaceful hour I spend prepping my notes for Boxing Day!
Nick Lee, The Scarf Bergara Wore
Who’s been your favourite podcast guest in 2022?
So many to choose from but it's got to be Dave Challinor at The King's Tap just four days after the Halifax game. It's still mad to us that he decided to come and chat when all he'd have wanted to do was relax with his family. To be honest we were well on the verge of a breakdown in the weeks beforehand, so it was nice to finally relax.
Do you have any New Year’s resolutions?
I'm not one for resolutions or promises but I'd love it if we could get Mark Stott on the pod - proper bucket list stuff.
Halifax at home in May. That was some day wasn’t it?
Don't remind me. The weeks and months leading up to it must have taken years off my life. Weirdly I didn't feel that nervous ahead of the game, it was similar to Nuneaton in that respect. Never doubted that we'd win that final game in spite of our wobble. Having said that, the feeling of relief when Paddy opened the scoring early on was immense. We've had some amazing moments in the last five or six years of non-league so it was nice to cap it all off in convincing fashion.
If all the current County players were doing a Secret Santa, who do you think would buy the best present, and who would buy the worst?
I can imagine Ryan Croasdale buying the best presents as well as doing all the cooking and washing-up. Just properly unselfish. As for the worst, that's a tough one. Maybe Ben Hinchliffe would just buy whatever tat was left at various service stations and garage forecourts. If that's the case I hope the lads enjoy their anti-freeze.
What’s the three best things about being back in the Football League, but also, what’s the one thing you miss the most about non-league?
1 - Playing proper teams again.
2 - Getting slightly more media coverage than before.
3 - Not having to qualify for the FA Cup.
In terms of the best thing about non-league, part of me misses those first couple of years in the National League North. It was the first time in my life where circumstances and finances lined up to the extent that I could go home and away every single week. Having said that, I'm glad we're not still there because I can only imagine how much of a nightmare it'd be trying to get tickets for Buxton away. Plus it was bad enough having to play Oxford City without bringing Peterborough bloody Sports into it as well.
Ian Brown, hedgegrower
What’s been your favourite game of 2022?
Probably Hartlepool away this month as County’s 5-0 win convinced me that they were back on the right track after months of matchday mishaps.
What’s been your favourite blog article you’ve written in 2022?
I’ll go for the FA Cup match at The Valley against Charlton - another top County performance.
https://hedgegrower.blogspot.com/2022/11/charlton-athletic-2-stockport-county-2.html
What’s your top three items on a Christmas dinner?
Turkey, roast potatoes, broccoli.
We’ve had three prime ministers in 2022: Johnson, Truss, Sunak. Put them in order of best to worst… if you had to!
‘Best’ does not come into this – it’s degrees of awfulness I’m listing here.
First off, and most obnoxious of the lot, is Johnson - an unprincipled scoundrel alternately masquerading as an amiable clown or PM. Unfortunately his amiable clown bit aided him in railroading the gullible British public into the greatest piece of national self-harm ever seen (Brexit). You all know how that’s going.
Sunak lines up next worst. In many ways an invisible man, but one complicit in all of Johnson’s misdeeds. Another rich boy short on principles and knowhow on how to run a country in the interests of its people.
Truss. The most political of the three, but completely incompetent, although didn’t she make for excellent copy while she lasted!
What’s your favourite thing about watching County over the festive period?
Not having to travel several hundred miles to an away fixture. A Cheshire derby at home to Crewe on Boxing Day is just perfect.
Jonathan Baker aka Geordie Hatter, The County Away Day Show
You’re a bit of a music connoisseur so I’m not expecting any LadBaby or Mr Blobby here, but I know you like your playlists, so give me your top five Christmas songs.
After an extensive (some might say excessive) amount of due consideration, I have whittled down an initial shortlist of troubling lengthiness to the following Festive Five (all but one of which have featured on the show at one point or another, and not necessarily at Christmas):
1) ‘2000 Miles’ - Pretenders
I love the way this one creeps in steadily before closing you into its cosily wintry grip, like an advancing snowstorm bringing yule-like tidings. And I also love Chrissie Hynde - I mean, of course I do; I’ve got a pulse. I can still remember the elation of hearing this one for the first time on Radio 1 while getting ready for school, in the build-up to Christmas of… I’m going to say, 1983. It has to go straight in.
2) ‘Fairytale of New York’ - The Pogues
Because… look, it’s a free country, and if you’re making your own Christmas playlist, you have every right to put in, and leave out, what you want. Notwithstanding this legal nicety, however, in my own personal opinion, if Shane and Kirsty’s timeless duet doesn’t feature in your own Festive Top Five, then you’re an officially certifiable wrong’un, and deserve to be arrested on the spot by the NYPD choir (they’re still on duty, even when they’re singing) and placed in their drunk tank until January the second. Just in my personal and private opinion, of course.
3) ‘Stop the Cavalry’ - Jona Lewie
I’m listening to this one right now. I seem to remember somewhere that our Jona penned this as an anti-war protest number and didn’t particularly expect it to get any mainstream radio play, never mind burst into the Top 10 and become an instant and enduring festive classic that would cement his place in pop history (and presumably, sort out his mortgage payments for the next fifty years, bless his cotton socks). Such are the vagaries of public taste, in this instance at least, I salute the public. Well done, The Public. Have yourself another mince pie!
4) ‘No Xmas for John Quays’ - The Fall
Now I know you have very kindly awarded me the title of “a bit of a musical connoisseur” in your question, but you would be frankly amazed at the black-hole-like gaps in my pop knowledge. This actually quite famous Fall track, for instance, I am going to admit I hadn’t heard of until last night, when (in quite a timely manner, given this present assignment) it started to blast its merry way across my kitchen, thanks to Gideon Coe’s show on BBC Radio 6. In my defence, I’ve been playing it on near-repeat on my Spotify ever since, and now consider myself a significant authority on its irresistible charms. I think I might even be able to sing along to some of the words.
5) ‘It’s Clichéd to be Cynical at Christmas’ - Half Man Half Biscuit
Now I may be doing Mark E Smith of Salford’s The Fall a disservice here, but I would imagine that he may have been prone to being ever-so-slightly cynical at Christmas (given that he wasn’t exactly known for his open-hearted happy-go-luckiness during the other eleven-and-a-half months of the year). The Wirral’s Nigel Blackwell holds no such Scrooge-like hangups, however, and makes a most persuasive case here for all of us in the County Nation to wholeheartedly embrace all aspects of Christmas 2022, unlike those people who once a dusting of ice decorates their fenders are wont to moan in the snow, cause their “car wouldn’t go”. Oh yes, we know those people, County fans. They are not our people.
What’s the main differences between a Christmas in Stockport and a Christmas in the north-east?
First of all, I can confirm that everything you’ve heard about people in the north-east refusing on principle to wear coats - even when the temperature reaches minus 10 degrees at high noon on Northumberland Street - is entirely true. That’s actually one of the main reasons I was compelled to leave my home city and live darn sarf at the tender age of 18 (as due to some unfortunate and rare genetic trait, I feel the cold in the same way as any normal human being does, and need to put on extra layers when the sun stops shining - a habit viewed as provocatively effeminate by my late 80s contemporaries, to the extent of constituting an open invitation to an all-in brawl). So that would be one difference you might notice about Christmas in my home region: nobody wearing coats.
Secondly, in Stockport we don’t have Fenwick’s windows. This is a tradition in Newcastle, where the street-long main display window in our flagship department store is decorated with moving puppets following a popular/fairytale theme, freshly selected each year. You can’t say that your Christmas has started until you’ve made a special trip into town on the number 12 bus to join the throngs gazing in and admiring the artistry of this year’s creation (without your coat on, of course, unless you want your head kicked in, and possibly by an old lady coming out of the delicatessen). I imagine that Fenwick’s windows are all done with digital imagery and mirrors and what-have-you these days, in which case it will have lost something of the homespun charm that I remember from its heyday. It was what you would all say to each other from approximately 10 December: “So have you seen Fenwick’s windows yet?” “No, I’m going Saturday, what’s it about this year?” “Pinocchio. At least I think that’s what it was supposed to be. There was this wooden puppet with a big nose, but the mechanism failed, and it fell off. And then this old woman slapped us across the face with a rolled-up copy of the Evening Chronicle, ‘cos I had my parka on’.” “Quite the evening, bonny lad.” You get the idea.
What’s been your favourite County Away Day Show in 2022?
Ah now that’s hard Des, harder even than choosing my top five Christmas songs. The truth is I love every single one of them - they’re such a labour of love to put together, and I really hope the enjoyment I get out of putting on the show for and with the County Nation comes out in the broadcasts. But if you’re going to ask me to pick just one, I’m going to plump for the show before Bradford away in October. The playlist that day just seemed to come together (featuring The Levellers in the ‘host town hero’ slot, supported by fellow Bradford native David Hockney, in an interview I found with him, talking about the onset of Springtime) and the show looked forward to a hoped-for upturn in our season, which we all now know actually came to pass. Mostly though I’m picking this one because I headed straight to Bradford after the show with a ticket for the away end in my back pocket, and stuck the playback of the broadcast on the car stereo, singing along at the top of my voice like a crazy person while bombing along the M62 at 80mph (which is not something I do every week, honest. Although maybe I should start).
Who’s been your favourite County player in 2022?
This is one where I feel like I could give several obvious and non-eyebrow-raising responses, and I certainly wouldn’t be about to argue with myself were I to choose Will Collar, Ash Palmer, Ben Hinchliffe or Paddy Madden, all of whom I feel a deep connection with, and for whose part in our history-making exploits during this calendar year I will feel eternally grateful. I also said “hello” to Sam Minihan during Phil Brennan’s book launch at Bask in the summer, and he said “hello” back; this exchange qualifying as my equal-fourth-longest conversation with an actual professional footballer during my half-century on Earth, so our now-departed right-back should feature in the shortlist also. You know what though? I’m going to surprise you all and go for on-loan sometimes-left-back Calum MacDonald. Such a lovely, balanced footballer, I love his mastery of that specialist flankman position, his range of passing, and his tenacity. I can see a great future in the game for the lad. I also like how Dave Challinor refers to him in interviews as “Cal-Mac”. Which, especially in that accent, makes him sound like he could be a roadie for Half Man Half Biscuit.
If money was no object whatsoever, what Christmas present would you buy for Mark Stott, the man who pretty much has everything?
I was going to suggest the gift of limitless forbearance in the face of the inevitable frustration that must surely accompany any long-term commitment to the affairs of Stockport County, but then I heard that someone (probably Steve Bellis) had already bought him that, at TK Maxx in the Peel Centre. So I’m going to refer us back to question two (things you only find in Newcastle), and buy for him a lifetime’s supply of stottie cakes, from Greggs of Gosforth. They’re not really a cake, more of a loaf, something akin to an oven-bottom muffin (although clearly superior) - but then you knew that. I would recommend our owner cover them liberally in ham and pease pudding, from the delicatessen in Fenwick’s. I’d wager Mr Stott would die happy then - whether we got to the Championship in seven years or not. It really is a very fine bakery product indeed.
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The only Christmas gift guide you need this year
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Matt Walker ‘eats’ the World Cup
🇰🇷 No 25 - South Korea (Han) 🇰🇷
“The sleepy south-west London suburb of New Malden is the hub for London's Korean populace. Han needed considerable phone pressure to show football, but this was an exciting game against Ghana on and off the pitch. Five goals, crashing headers, kimchi, comebacks, beef bibimbap, Cass beer and eventual despair.”
One of my favourite football books is Matt Walker’s Europe United, in which the author and Fulham fan spends a whole season taking in a game in all 55 UEFA countries. Well he’s back with another fun challenge, to experience Qatar 2022 in restaurants and bars across London which represent all 32 competing nations. Matt has kindly allowed me to use his photos and I’ll bring you one each day, giving you a tasty flavour of the World Cup, in more ways than one.