Black and white and red all over

HARD to know why such a loyal servant as Shay Given should be on the way out of his beloved Newcastle.

Dull, unimaginative, matter-of-fact types will point to a struggling team, a struggling manager, an owner nobody likes and a club nobody wants to buy. So what’s new, eh? There must have been a straw which finally broke the steadfast Donegal man’s back and my guess is that, out on the training ground one day, Joe Kinnear probably called him “Che”.

To the surprise of no-one, Tyneside has been the scene of the most comical war of words of the season so far, with Charles N’Zogbia insisting he will never play for Kinnear again after the gaffer apparently mispronounced his name in a post-match interview at Manchester City. To the player’s burning ears, Kinnear had referred to him as “insomnia” but the manager insisted it was all a misunderstanding. “I got a little tongue-tied,” said the former Irish international, adding to his stock of memorable quotes, “but if I had a pound for every time I’ve mispronounced a player’s name, I’d be a very wealthy man indeed.”

Of course, bar those famous shirts, nothing is ever black and white on Tyneside and, given that the French midfielder has a reputation for falling out with bosses and fellow players and has repeatedly made clear that he wants away from St James’ Park, Kinnear is probably right when he suggests the whole thing smacks of a desperate attempt to engineer a move. On the other hand, we also know that Joe himself has a rich vein of form when it comes to errant pronouncements in front of a live mic...

Either way, the spat ensures honorary membership for Kinnear in the football wing of what the late, great Ronnie Barker christened “The Society For People Who Pisspronounce Their Worms”. Holding the position of lifetime president in this fine body is, coincidentally, one of Northumberland’s most famous sons, Jack Charlton. Famously absent-minded, when Jack first became the Ireland manager he repeatedly called Paul McGrath “John” and almost always referred to Jim Beglin as “Jim Belgium”.

It must be something in the waters of the Tyne because Bobby Robson is another prone to dotting his t’s and crossing his i’s. The story goes that, once upon a time, a fan politely asked him for his autograph. While Bobby got down to signing, the fan apologised for intruding, observing that the great man must be asked to sign an awful lot of autographs. “Oh, millions and millions,” said Bobby affably. Only afterwards, did the man notice that inscribed on his precious piece of paper was the friendly salutation, “Best wishes, Bobby Millions.”

The current occupant of the Irish hot seat, Giovanni Trapattoni, can be forgiven his verbal trespasses on account of speaking a language marginally more foreign than Geordie, with the result that Andy Keogh invariably comes out of the gafferissimo’s press conferences as Andy Cough. But then who are we to cast asparagus?

As a nipper soaking up footie lore like a sponge, I used to labour under the misapprehension that one of the most famous of all Geordie footballers was a bellicose striker appropriately nicknamed, I liked to think, “War” Jackie Milburn. (In case you don’t know, the correct prefix is “Wor” and is actually nothing more than an eccentric north English/Scottish pronunciation of “our”). Even more embarrassing, it was a number of years later still before I had my little world turned upside down one terrible school day by the stunning discovery that there was actually no club in Scotland called Patrick Thistle (nor even, as Billy Connolly liked to imagine, a team called Partick Thistle Nil).

Even as so-called pros, we have our moments of getting hopelessly lost in translation. Way back, when I worked as a rookie rock writer at Hotpress, I was party to one of more extravagant print cock-ups of my career, when a rising little four piece beat combo from Dublin, by the name of U2, signed their first record and agency deal in London. This was a big story for the Irish music scene and we pulled out all the productions stops to do it justice. Unfortunately, somewhere between the writing, typesetting, proofing and printing, the whole thing went spectacularly pear-shaped, with the result that, while U2 had actually signed for the well-known agency Wasted Talent run by the venerable Ian Flooks, our readers were duly informed that they had inked a deal with something we insisted was the world-famous “Jan Floors’ Wasted Trousers” agency.

Somehow we all, fab four included, lived to fight another day.

As did, for that matter, the Welsh football writer who, having included a line in his phoned copy to the effect that Rush and Hughes were among the most feared strikers in Europe, was horrified to open the paper next morning and read, under his byline, the startling assertion that: “Russian Jews were now among the most feared strikers in Europe.”

Meanwhile, without both N’Zogbia and Given — euphemistically said to be out with ankle and knee problems respectively — but with Kevin Nolan newly on board, Newcastle face Sunderland in a Tyne and Wear derby tomorrow which the long-suffering supporters of the former will hope might replace, however temporarily, gagging rights with bragging rights.

Inevitably, I’m reminded of my first visit to Tyneside, to cover another derby between the two great rivals back in 1992. Newcastle were within a whisker of slipping into the Third Division at the time but, with Kevin Keegan newly installed at the helm and a significant contribution from Irish international David Kelly, whose goal settled the game, the Magpies stayed up and, the following season, returned to the top flight.

Long ago, happy days, even if I was lucky to make the match at all, having confused my Newcastle Brown with Dublin Black, by confidently asking the hotel to get me a cab for “St James’ Gate”. I think I can hear them laughing still. Albeit, these days, a touch hysterically.