It’s match of the old days
QUESTION Do all football league clubs still produce a match day programme?
Programmes were once an intrinsic part of a match day, but the english Football League voted at its agm on June 8, 2018, that its 72 member clubs would no longer have to print one for home fixtures.
That august, stevenage FC became the first professional club to offer a digitalonly version.
The programme had been in decline due to a rise in printing costs and falling sales. During the lockdowns when matches were played without spectators, only diehard supporters paid to receive programmes through the post.
Championship clubs Blackburn rovers, Bristol City, Derby County, reading and swansea City have gone digital-only. my club, Carlisle United in eFL League Two, and Hibernian in edinburgh have, too.
Mark Carmichael, Carlisle.
QUESTION Pre-decimal coins had nicknames. Can you suggest any for current coins?
sinCe decimalisation we seem to have lost the urge to give affectionate nicknames to loose change.
We still have ‘quids’ from the Latin quid pro quo, which translates as something for something. at school, we called them ‘squids’ from the old joke: ‘What did the cod say to the loan shark? Here’s that sick squid i owe you.’
sovereigns were ‘sovs’ or ‘nuggets’ because of their gold colour. Then there was ‘nicker’ for a pound and the irresistible pun for a £2 coin, ‘a pair of nickers’.
When the £2 coin was introduced in 1998, it corresponded to the price of a pint, so it was known as a ‘beer token’.
The 50p was known as ‘Wilson’s washer’, as it was introduced by Harold Wilson’s
Memento: Nottingham Forest v Aston Villa match programme from 1980
government in the run-up to decimalisation in 1971. Copper coins were ‘clods’ due to the rhyming slang clodhopper for copper; ‘brass’ was northern slang for any amount of money; and ‘shrapnel’ is loose change.
Gary Bartlett, Stafford. WHen the £1 coin was first minted, it was known as the ‘maggie’ after margaret Thatcher: bright, shiny and thinks it’s a sovereign!
QUESTION Has there been a quip in a live sports commentary to rival Kenneth Wolstenholme’s ‘They think it’s all over . . . it is now’?
FUrTHer to murrayisms and Colemanballs, peerless darts commentator sid Waddell produced clever one-liners.
‘When alexander of macedonia was 33, he cried salt tears because there were no more worlds to conquer . . . [eric] Bristow’s only 27.’ ‘if we’d had Phil Taylor at Hastings against the normans, they’d have gone home.’
Champion steve Beaton was nicknamed the Bronzed adonis, but this wasn’t good enough for Waddell, who said: ‘He’s not adonis, he’s the donis.’
Pete Herron, Fleet, Hants. 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. Paul Nightingale, Howden, E. Yorks.