Players hit a real winner
QUESTION What’s the story behind Cinnamon Stick, the B-side of 1970’s Back Home by the England World Cup squad?
With lyrics such as ‘ Sweet as sugar, twice as nice, cinnamon stick, cinnamon stick’, this song clearly had nothing to do with football.
there was a good reason why it was the B-side to Back home: it was by the same song-writing team, Bill Martin and Phil Coulter, so they got paid double.
Martin and Coulter were among the most successful songwriters of the 1960s and early 1970s. they wrote Eurovision Song Contest winners Puppet On A String, sung by Sandie Shaw, and All Kinds Of Everything performed by Dana.
they came within a whisker of a third Eurovision victory in 1968 with Congratulations, sung by Cliff Richard.
the England World Cup squad recorded an entire album, the World Beaters Sing the World Beaters. it featured a few patriotic numbers, but was mainly pop songs, including versions of Martin and Coulter’s biggest hits.
it had a great album cover, shaped as a football with a picture of the Jules Rimet World Cup trophy on the front along with the signatures of the squad.
Glasgow-born Martin and Derry-born Coulter seemed an unlikely partnership to pen a World Cup song for England. Martin convinced the notoriously irascible England manager Alf Ramsey to allow them access to the players.
As a former professional football player, who had played in South Africa as well as having trials for Partick thistle, Martin was a big hit with the squad.
the album was recorded at London’s Pye Studios in just a few hours.
Recordings had already been made by session performers the Mike Sammes Singers and an orchestra playing the accompaniments, so all the footballers needed to do was sing along.
Sugar Sugar by the Archies was sung by Bobby Moore and Francis Lee; Lily the Pink was performed by Geoff hurst, Jeff Astle and Peter Bonetti; and there’ll Always Be An England was sung by Alan Ball, Bobby Moore and Jack Charlton.
the rousing Back home, performed by the entire squad, holds its own among the best football songs. it spent 46 weeks in the charts and was No. 1 for three weeks, knocking Norman Greenbaum’s Spirit in the Sky off the top.
According to Martin: ‘it sold more than a million records. We also wrote the B-side, Cinnamon Stick, which earned us the same money as the A-side. Nice work if you can get it.’
Coulter and Martin recycled the tune to Cinnamon Stick for the Bay City Rollers song Saturday Night, which was a No. 1 in the U.S. in 1976.
Richard Evans, Sheffield.
QUESTION What is the most famous secret revealed on a deathbed?
PERhAPS the most consequential was the deathbed conversion to Roman Catholicism of Charles ii, the head of the Protestant Church of England.
it emboldened his brother and heir, James ii, to openly practise Catholicism. this led to a constitutional crisis, resulting in James being deposed in the Glorious Revolution and his Protestant daughter, Mary, and her Dutch husband, William of Orange, becoming joint monarchs.
the Daily Mail had a hand in another deathbed confession. in 1934, the newspaper hired big game hunter Marmaduke Wetherell to find the Loch Ness monster.
Unable to do so, he joined with his son, ian, and model-maker Christian Spurling to create their own monster based on a 14 in toy submarine from Woolworths.
it took Spurling a week to build up layers of plastic on the conning tower into the head and neck, which he painted grey. the Wetherells took the contraption and a camera to the loch and photographed it before sinking the evidence in the mud at the edge of the lake. to add credibility to their story, they enlisted the help of a respected citizen, surgeon Robert Kenneth Wilson, to authenticate their story.
the picture caused a sensation and became known as the Surgeon’s Photograph. it was a key factor in creating the Loch Ness Monster tourism trade, which generates £30 million a year.
it was not until 1994 that 93-year-old Spurling confessed on his deathbed to having faked the photo.
Pauline Rhodes, Bude, Cornwall.
QUESTION How did the city of Newport News in Virginia, U.S., get its name?
NEWPORt News is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Virginia, though it began as a small fishing village during the American Civil War. Many reasons have been put forward for its unusual name. it has no known connection with British places named Newport.
One suggestion is that the word News reflects the redevelopment of the area after a disastrous fire, in much the same way as post- war New towns were designated in Britain.
Another theory is that it was once New Port Newce, a newly built port named in honour of Sir William Newce, an English soldier who sailed to Virginia in 1621 after founding Newcestown in ireland.
A third possibility is that it started life as Newport Ness because of its coastal headland. Ness is an old word for a promontory or cape.
the best explanation recounts how a number of Jamestown colonists set sail with Captain Christopher Newport during the Starving time, the winter of 1609-10, when food shortages and a siege by Powhatan warriors had wiped out two-thirds of settlers.
they intended to return in despair to England, only to meet, by chance, a fleet bringing men and supplies, saving the settlement. According to this theory, the village was named in recognition of Captain Newport’s good news.
the theory is given more credence by old maps and documents that show the name as Newport’s News.
Ian MacDonald, Billericay, Essex. n IS THERE a question to which you want to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question here? Write to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT; or email charles.legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection is published, but we’re unable to enter into individual correspondence.