Stars and (red and white) stripes

Photographs: Lucas* .

Let me introduce a feature of Salut! Sunderland that should come under the heading of recent history.

A few years ago, Joan Dawson – also known as the Angel of the North, but that’s another story – asked if I would write for the newsletter of the London branch of the SAFC Supporters’ Association.

The publication is, or was then, called 5573 – as in May 5, 1973, if that isn’t rubbing it in for Jules (see comment number four to my welcome post). I vaguely offered to dig out some celebrity supporters, hoping that Joan would regard this as such a cliched idea that she’d go away.

Not so. And for the next two years or so, I scoured the world in search of people who supported Sunderland and were famous or rich or notorious.

Joan was an inspired and encouraging commissioning editor and it turned out to be good fun, taking 5573 readers to Coronation Street, international athletics, pop and folk music, children’s literature, the BBC News, the House of Lords and many places besides.

There was one criminal and one agony aunt, and there were stars who for one reason or another eluded us.

My plan is to reproduce some or all of the resulting articles here.

They will become better organised, but the next posting will be a taster.

For now, I have made no attempt to update, though obviously ages and other details have changed, beyond – for the first of the series at least – adding a recent photograph.

But that may develop, too, each article eventually including a catch-up on the individual concerned.

Oh, and 5573 cleverly became Wear Down South.

*The photographs are among several SAFC-related pictures posted to Flickr by Lucas from Portland, Oregon who, unkindly on himself, chooses the nom de plume (nom d’image?) of totalnerd.