On the occasion of Arsenal bidding au revoir to Thierry Henry, having already lost Patrick Vieira and the artful old diver Robert Pires, and having to start contemplating life after Arsène Wenger, Salut! Sunderland extends a warm welcome to a new source of potential support: France. And, in the process, we succumb to an irresistible urge to get bilingual*.

Easy switch
Picture: Yolise

Merde alors! Non, même pire que ça! Putain de merde! Pour tous les supporteurs français des Gunners, c’est une vraie catastrophe. Comment peut-on rester fidèle lorsque notre héros, Thierry Henry, vient partir en Espagne?

Drat. Worse than that, bloody hell! It’s nee laffin’ matta for French fans of Arsenal. If it were not for Les Bleus, they’d be our national team! How can we stay loyal with Henry galavanting off to Spain?

On a déjà vu la sortie du super-mec Patrick Vieira, et puis de Robert Pires, mon plongeur préferé. Quant à M Wenger, l’autre bonne raison pour qu’un français soutient – puisse supporter? – Arsenal, faut-il accepter qu’il va biêntot quitter le club, lui aussi?

How can we support you ever more, now that you’ve all gone or are going?

Soyons optimiste! Arsenal, ce n’est pas la seule équipe britannique. Il y en a une autre.

But hang on. Let’s not give up. Isn’t there another English club we can transfer our allegiance to?

Qui ça?

Who?

C’est facile. Mais imaginez vous êtes sur le plateau de Qui Veut Gagner Des Millions? Il y a quatres réponses, dont une seule correcte: a)Chelsea b) Man Utd c) Newcastle Utd d) Sunderland. Vous avez quatres jokers: cinquante-cinquante, demander au public, appeler un ami, switcher la question.

Treat it like a question on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? You have four lifelines.

D’accord. Pas Chelsea, ça c’est sur, c’est une aberration! Man Utd non plus, parce que j’ai visité Manchester plusieurs fois (pas comme la plupart de leurs supportuers). Mais écoutez, avant que je décide entre les deux équipes qui restent, donnez-moi quelques raisons pour supporter Sunderland.

OK. Not Chelsea, for sure. The whole thing’s just too obscene. And I’ve been to Manchester so probably don’t qualify as a Man Utd fan. Help me choose between the the other two. Why should it be Sunderland? Give me a few reasons…..

An open letter by Thierry Henry: Start supporting Sunderland
Picture: rayxhead

Oui , c’est un ancien Gunner. Mais il était nul pour Arsenal, n’est-ce pas?

(Hadaway, me bonny lad. He was useless for Arsenal!)

Lionel Perez?

Non, il a fait une telle bêtise à Wembley, face à Charlton. Même certains français le savent.

(Didn’t his mad charge out the box cost us – mon dieu, I’m already saying “us” – the playoff final, even if his saves against Sheff Utd got us there in the first place?)

Lilian Laslandes, David Bellion, Christian Bassila?

Vous plaisantez, monsieur!

(Hadaway with knobs on. I mean, a few goals for Nice (LL and DB) don’t make up for how crap they were for us!)

Patrick Carteron?

Peut-être, si seulement pour avoir marqué un but contre Newc****e

(Aye, if only for his goal against the Mags)

Eric Roy?

Ah. Maintenant on peut commencer la discussion!

(Now you’re talking. Wasn’t he fabulous against Chelsea that time it was 4-0 at half time?)

Encore une raison, ou deux, pour m’assurer, s’il vous plaît.

1)Newcastle 1 Sunderland 9. La victoire la plus belle à l’exterieur dans l’histoire de la première division de l’Angleterre**.

2) Roy Keane

Bon, vous m’avez bien convaincu. C’est la réponse “d) Sunderland” et c’est mon dernier mot Chris/Jean-Pierre. Eh maintenant, nous sommes commes tous ces irlandais qui se sont trouver tout à coup des supporteurs au coeur de cette équipe en rayures rouges et blanches. Je sais crier Ha’way the Lads, mais apprenez-moi la parole de My Garden Shed Is Bigger Than This.

(Sunderland, and that’s my final word, Mr Tarrant/M Foucault. Now teach me the words of My Garden Shed).

* Bilingual, subject to the usual qualifications. Mme Salut! wasn’t able to apply her correcting pencil in time!

** Ok, it was in December 1908, but what’s 99 years between new best friends?

Who said the Celebrity Supporters series was a one-hit wonder? No sooner had we finished the task of painstakingly typing out the last of the old interviews, which had somehow fallen off everyone’s computers, than new subjects came into view.

Tasmin Archer, who had a number one hit with Sleeping Satellite in 1992 and collected a Brit award the following year, was one of them. Great minds thinking alike, my approach to her came just as one Salut! Sunderland reader, Pete – another Pete, not the Sixer’s Sevens Pete – suggested her among a list of stars who had expressed some attachment to SAFC.

She agreed like a shot, and proved to be a terrific interviewee, plainly as passionate about the Lads as she is about her music.

The one question that had her not so much struggling to answer as struggling to be unequivocal was the obvious one: what feels better, getting to No 1 in the charts or seeing Sunderland clinch promotion/championship?

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So, then. A point at home to Arsenal on Sunday May 11 2008 and the championship should be ours.

Ok, we may also need to pick up a few points before then, starting with the opening game, against Arsenal’s north London rivals Tottenham and also at home, on August 11.

I am indebted to Mark Walton over at the Blackcats forum for the 2007-2008 list, which I discuss on the continuation page and can also be seen in full here.

But if you live a long way from Sunderland, or from the venue of that away game you’ve set your heart on attending, do not overlook the Murdoch factor. Think hard, therefore, before committing yourself to that EasyJet flight, cheap advance rail ticket or cast-in-stone day off from work/wife/whatever.

Several of these dates will change to suit the needs of television, and the changes will take absolutely no account of the interests (or pockets) of ordinary supporters.

That’s why our supporters found themselves having to get to Southampton for a 5.15pm kickoff on a Monday evening in April.

It’s manipulation of the fixtures list at its most cyncical, and leaves decent fans with feelings of contempt for the big business stranglehold on our game. But since it’s not going to stop happening any time soon, be prepared……

* Picture: Infactah

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That’s our man on the right
Picture:Jibba Jabba

Tasmin Archer fans will just have to wait a little. Salut! Sunderland feels duty bound to extend a warm welcome to Greg Halford, Roy Keane’s first summer signing and one that fills the heart with hope.

He’s 22, stands 6ft 5in and cost our moneyed Irish friends £3m from Reading. But he will be remembered by many at the Stadium of Light for his excellent performance in Colchester’s colours against us last season.

As a right back, he fits a slot vacated by the return to Man Utd of Danny Simpson and represents a great start to the team strengthening we all knew was necessary if we are to re-establish ourselves in the Premiership.

There is room for improvement in most areas, but Keano is sensible to start at the back – though a glace at Halford’s record shows he is a useful goalcorer, too.

The rumour mill is working overtime – frankly I’d be disappointed otherwise – and we have been linked with any number of other players.

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Just when you thought it safe to drop into Salut! Sunderland and find a celebrity-free zone, the editor springs another one on you.

But no apologies, I am delighted to say that I have just had a terrific, hour-long chat with Tasmin Archer, a classy soul singer you may just bump into as you make your way to a seat in the West stand, where she’s a season ticket holder.

Watch this space for more on why she follows the Lads* – present for Carlos’s Burnley winner and also partying at Luton -and how she deals with such absurd questions as: “What was better, reaching No 1 in the charts with Sleeping Satellite or seeing Sunderland become champions?”

Pete’s suggestion of a new series of Celebrity Supporter interviews came a day or so after Tasmin and I had agreed a telephonic date. Who knows? More may follow………….

* The man in the photo, John Hughes, Tasmin’s musical and romantic partner, is the short answer to that particular “why”

Maybe Keano could get Bono and The Edge to lean on Dave Stewart
Picture: atu2

Whatever happened to the Peter O’Toole interview? Why wasn’t I invited into Gina McKee‘s parlour, bought drinks by Dave Stewart or treated to a slap-up meal by Glenn Hugill?

This is my 2007 introduction to the very last piece to appear in the Celebrity Supporters series.

It was about the ones we didn’t nail. People who wouldn’t help, or didn’t feel qualified to. One who promised so much only to disappear from our radar. Others who turned out to be non-supporters or, worse, Mags.

Those failures, coupled with the misery of being a Sunderland fan in the dark days of 2003, could have given me something German scientists had just then identified as post-traumatic embitterment disorder. But the series was great fun to produce and when it came to an end, there were plenty of people to thank……………

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The Celebrity Supporters series has come to an end for the second time.

Unless I have overlooked anything, all the original articles have now been posted to this site, mostly as originally published, and the wrap-up piece is about to appear.

Updates will continue to be added, and where significant changes result I will re-post the item so that it appears handily to be read again (or for the first time if you are new to the site).

And who knows? Other names are bandied about from time to time and one or two of these may yet produce follow up interviews for Salut! Sunderland.

One of those wags from the London and Southern England supporters’ association branch came up with the suggestion that the Celebrity Supporters series should be followed by another, devoted to Scoundrel Supporters.

It is too long ago to recall whether the comment – read on to see who made it – was uttered before or after my interview with George Reynolds.

At the time, I could just about have got away with protesting that such a description of George would be a little harsh.

George*, it has to be said, had known his scoundrel days, nay his scoundrel years.

But he seemed, at the time, a reasonable choice of interviewee.

Was he not, after all, firmly on the straight and narrow, leading a blameless life of his own and also accepting invitations to go into prison not as a guest of Her Majesty but to lecture young inmates on the perils of opting for crime as their careers? And was he not also – again at the time of the interview – the go-ahead chairman of Darlington FC?

Sadly, the assessment was not harsh at all. A few years on, George was back before the courts, accused and convicted of tax evasion. He collected <a href=”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4364220.stm”>three years in jail in 2005 for cheating the taxman out of more than half a million pounds.

Salut!‘s man at the prison gates reports that George was released a few months ago, and is living in a flat at Nevilles Cross that he insists is a penthouse.

There was a spot of bother over a failure to observe the conditions of his parole curfew but he may now be defying the advancing years – he is, after all, 71 or so now – and seeking an honest living by getting pubs to install machines that sell you what is described to me as “a squirt of alluring perfume”.

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Look around and you’ll find loads of Bob Foxes, from complete unknowns to the moderately famous.

In the latter camp, there’s that journalist who pops up on BBC radio and Sky News, reviewing the papers or pontificating on matters of defence (great radio voice; great radio face too as it happens). But what about the unknowns?

The fence erector, the financial adviser, the lorry driver, the children’s entertainer, the double-glazing salesman?

Our Bob Fox (the article is essentially as originally published but will be updated) has been all of those things. He also happens to be a Sunderland-supporting Seaham lad widely regarded as one of the country’s very best male folk singers.

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