Coming out

There are some things in life you just cannot bring yourself to say.

A child abuser, I suspect, would struggle with all the implications of announcing to the world: “I’m a paedophile.”

Tony Blair might not actually enjoy being ordered to exclaim: “Yep, I was a Tory all along.”

Simon Cowell would never shout it from the hilltops that none of his programmes will ever produce as many as three people you’d ever need to listen to (though that’s the old folkie in me talking).

Mick McCarthy is perhaps unlikely to tweak his cv to include the following win/draw/lose summary of his career as a Premiership manager: LLLLLLLLLLLLLLDWDLLLLLLLLLDLL

And that was just his record up to the unlucky 1-2 defeat at home to Chelsea on Jan 15 2006. He had more to go.

But most of all, you do NOT admit to an unclean family secret………

So if you want to know about my son-in-law-in-waiting, you will just have to look here, rather than here.

Naturally, I await with interest the response of my good pal and fellow Sunderland nut Pete Horan. He used to sit next to me in the East Stand and has two of the most beautiful and delightful daughters ever born to man (except for mine!).

And Pete, poor soul, has lived through a rather similar encounter with public disgrace; one of those lovely girls fell in love with, married and made a father of a Mag.

Pete lived to tell the tale, however quietly he tells it, and now owes it to the North East’s red and white segment to offer some Dear Denise kind of advice.

* Page one image from Bryan Talbot’s Alice in Sunderland