Cole Palmer's great uncle was a member of Sweet Sensation

This just in from our Trivia Desk...

The black British soul group Sweet Sensation topped the singles chart in 1974 with Sad Sweet Dreamer. One of its member, St Clair Palmer, is the great uncle of Chelsea and England's Cole Palmer.

That's certainly our Trivial Fact of the Day. As far as I can make out, St Clair is second from the right in the front row in the video above.

Later. This story was widely reported this week, but the  Daily Mail had it last year and also revealed that St Clair Palmer later became an actor and appeared in one episode each of Coronation Street and Brookside.

"England are like a Mars bar in the chippy: getting battered"

We've already heard the legend that is Allaster McKallaster commentating on Seventies football at its finest, but it turns out he's just as much at home with rugby union.

Before their coverage of the Calcutta Cup on Saturday, ITV screened a highlights reel from McKallaster's commentaries on Scotland's four consecutive victories in the contest.

We may at last have found a worthy successor to Bill McLaren.

If you are Tango'd it will not be televised: Hugh Dennis, Ray Wilkins and Gil Scott-Heron

Here, from 1992, is one of the great lost television commercials. Lost because it had to be withdrawn after children started Tangoing each other in the school playground and ear drums got perforated as a result.

The excitable commentator is Hugh Dennis, who was already famous from The Mary Whitehouse Experience. The laconic analyst is the late great Ray Wilkins, who will always be Butch Wilkins to a Chelsea fan of my vintage. And the deep voice at the end belongs, unexpectedly, to Gil Scott-Heron.

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"As even some of his most sympathetic supporters in the media are now coming to realise, Starmer's Labour is neither red, nor blue, nor green, nor indeed any other easily recognisable colour on the political spectrum. Let there be no mistake about it: these are the days of Grey Labour." Alex Niven was disillusioned with this Labour government even before it came to power.

Jane Green and Raluca L. Pahontu present research that contradicts the idea that Brexit was voted through by the economically left-behind: "Our results show that individuals who lacked wealth are less likely to support leaving the EU, explaining why so many Brexit voters were wealthy, in terms of their property wealth."

M.F. Robbins tells the tale of two playgrounds: "One is closing soon while the other - brand new - has stood empty for nearly a year, ringed with steel fencing to stop people from using it. Their stories aren’t the most important thing you’ll read today, but they illustrate something much bigger - the collapse and retreat of local government, and the profound effect it will have on our public spaces."

Mother Jones talks to Daniel Immerwahr about what the history of American expansion can tell us About Trump’s threats.

"Unexpected visitors to the Director’s Box that day were ex-goalkeeper and US Secretary Of State Dr. Henry Kissinger, quite literally one of the most famous men in the world at that point and in the UK for talks on Rhodesia, and UK Foreign Secretary Anthony Crosland. A step down from Raquel Welch’s appearance a few years back, possibly, but enough to get pictures of Kissinger, Chelsea Chairman Brian Mears and his wife June in a number of national newspapers." Tim Rolls takes us back to Stamford Bridge in 1976, when the Chelsea team had only one player who had cost the club a transfer fee.

Ian Visits on Heathrow Junction, the London station that came and went in six months in 1998.

Allaster McKallaster at the 1974 Charity Shield

I'm devoted to the football commentaries of Allaster McKallaster. They offer a bracingly different, and very Scottish, perspective on the beautiful game.

Here he is at the 1974 Charity Shield, which was held during Brian Clough's brief tenure at Leeds and features a notorious clash between Billy Bremner and Kevin Keegan.

Snailbeach like it used to be

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This is Snailbeach as I first saw it. The white heaps of spoil from the lead mines made it a miniature version of the china clay country in Cornwall.

That was on 3 June 1989 - I can date it so accurately because I remember it as the day England best  Poland 3-0, the unexpectedly comfortable victory doing much to secure our qualification for Italia 90.

This photograph was taken in 1995, which I suspect was the year the bulldozers moved in to landscape the tips.

You can read more about Snailbeach in the old days in guest posts by:

• Christina Samson - Memories of Snailbeach in the 1950s
• Eric Loveland Heath - Snailbeach and the music of abandonment

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"Any pleasure I may take in the distinction of the honour of an FRS is diminished by the fact it is shared with someone who appears to be modeling himself on a Bond villain, a man who has immeasurable wealth and power which he will use to threaten scientists who disagree with him." Dorothy Bishop explains her decision to resign as a Fellow of the Royal Society - she's talking about Elon Musk, of course.

Jim Sleeper uncovers the Classical roots of the US Constitution: "The founders anticipated someone like Trump partly because they’d been reading Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which was hot off the presses in the 1770s. We should read Gibbon now, too, paying close attention to his account of how the Roman republic slipped into tyranny when powerful men had seduced or intimidated its citizens so that they became a stampeding mob, hungry for bread and circuses."

Amy-Jane Beer is excited by the rewilding project at Castle Howard: "While most authorised beaver reintroductions in the UK have been in small enclosures, here the plan is to give them 450 acres to work with, alongside pigs and large grazers that will churn and prune and trample and further invigorate ecological processes. I cannot wait to see it."

During the Cold War, philosophers worked together to aid dissidents behind the Iron Curtain. Cheryl Misak was part of a movement that included both Jacques Derrida and Roger Scruton.

 "Wicked makes its cinematic premiere at an awkward time, so soon after so many American voters acted against virtually every moral idea the production unsubtly espouses," says Luke Buckmaster.

Tim Rolls on the day in 1966 that Bobby Tambling scored five goals at Villa Park: "Looking at the TV footage a couple of things strike home. The quality of Chelsea’s accurate, incisive passing (particularly Osgood and Cooke) and speedy breaks, and the sheer inability of the home players to shut down their breaking opponents."

The Beautiful Game: Hollywood in Holloway

The Beautiful Game are a British rock band from London whose self-declared influences include The Jam, The Clash and Oasis. I came across them via a recent Chelsea Fancast podcast.

OK so we're talking dad rock here, but I like the song and Alexei Sayle once said something wise about not trying to please the imaginary cool people in your head.

Now Sandro of Brazil and Spurs has joined Harborough Town

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The former Tottenham and Brazil midfielder Sandro has come out of retirement to join the mighty Harborough Town.

Mitch Austin, manager of the Southern League Premier Central outfit, says the signing feels "totally unbelievable" and he is "gobsmacked" by Sandro's decision.

Sandro, 35, joined Tottenham from Brazilian side Internacional in 2010 and spent four seasons with the Premier League club. He also won 14 caps for Barzil.

Mitch Austin explains how the singing came about on the Harborough Town FC website:

"I had a chance conversation with Sandro a couple of weeks ago and we got talking about football, told him about Harborough Town FC and the journey we are on and he has been messaging me ever since to sign on. ... 

"These sort of signings don’t happen every day but when you get a chance to sign an ex-professional footballer who has played at the highest level in the Premier League and Internationally with Brazil, you just cannot turn it down. ...

"I think the players and staff around the club can learn great things from him and develop and watch his professionalism and understand what is needed if they want to progress and play at the highest possible level of the game. However long he stays we will all become better for it.”

Secret Shropshire: From Wild Edric and the seven whistlers to the RAF Cosford UFO

BBC Radio Shropshire is running a series of short programmes on strange stories from the county under the title Secret Shropshire.

So far there are 17. They range from Bloudie Jack to the ghost barge of Ironbridge; from Wild Edric and the seven whistlers to the RAF Cosford UFO; from Mad Jack Mytton to the Child's Ercall mermaid.

Because he was born in Dawley, there's a good programme on Bill "Fatty" Foulke, who played only 34 games for Chelsea but remains part of the club's folklore to this day.

I've not plucked up the courage to listen to The Phantom Arm of Much Wenlock though.

Harborough Town are through to the first round of the FA Cup

Harborough Town FC will be in Monday's draw for the first round of the FA Cup after a 1-0 home win over Bury in the fourth qualifying round this afternoon.

This is a new high in the club's history:

"Sir Robert Peel! Richmal Crompton! Guy Garvey! Peter Skellern! Gary Neville! Phil Neville! Tracey Neville! Neville Neville! Can you hear me, Neville Neville? Your boys took one hell of a beating! Your boys took one hell of a beating!"

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Where do all those young right-wing media commentators spring from? Olly Haynes exposes the talent agencies funded by American fossil fuel billionaires.

Joe Ware on the campaign by Chris Packham and other celebrities who have challenged the Church Commissioners to rewild 30 per cent of their estate to "give British wildlife the salvation that it desperately needs".

Rebecca Jennings says that whether you want to be a published author or professional artist, you have to market yourself of social media: "Self-promotion sucks. It is actually very boring and not that fun to produce TikTok videos or to learn email marketing for this purpose. Hardly anyone wants to 'build a platform'; we want to just have one. This is what people sign up for now when they go for the American dream - working for yourself and making money doing what you love."

"Although the judge has no sympathy for Black Power, he can’t help to some extent at least to be won over by Darcus. The courtroom just erupts in laughter when Darcus and the judge are trading quips." The Mangrove Nine were black Londoners tried for protesting against police harassment in 1970. They were acquitted, marking the first acknowledgment of racial bias in the police. Now, reports Richard Sudan, a recording of Darcus Howe's closing remarks in his own defence has been found.

Pat Nevin remembers his hero Pele: "Then there was the lay-off for the fourth goal in the final, scored by the captain Carlos Alberto. The build-up is phenomenal, and then it comes to Pele. He doesn’t just pass it, it’s the languid way in which he knows exactly where his team-mate is and he just strokes the ball so comfortably."

"Fiction discourse is a wreck, and we can't look away." Chris Winkle and Oren Ashkenazi offer a glossary of bullshit writing terms.

Former Arsenal goalkeeper fined £113k after bizarre chainsaw incident

Our Headline of the Day is taken from Football London. Whirl those rattles guys!

The judges were anxious I should point out that, despite my illustration, the custodian of the net in question is Jens Lehmann, not Bob Wilson.

But this does give me time to make another award. Our Trivial Fact of the Day is that Barry Hines, the author of Kes, played in the same Loughborough Colleges side as Dario Gradi and Bob Wilson.

Who else is in that photograph of John Lennon and Jimmy Tarbuck as boys?

This photo has been floating about social media for years, and I tweeted it myself the other day because Jimmy Tarbuck was trending. This led to some debate about who is in it.

I have always understood that the three boys from the left are the future journalist and newsreader Peter Sissons, John Lennon and Jimmy Tarbuck. I've also seen it suggested that the tall boy at the back is the future Everton and England centre back Brian Labone.

But it's not Labone. As he explains in the video below, it's Michael Hill. He was to remain a friend of Lennon's through their teenage years and grew up to become "a well-known figure in the international business of marine insurance," according to this page promoting a book he wrote about the teenage Lennon.

He also explains the photo's provenance. It was taken in 1951 on a Dovedale Primary School trip to the Isle of Man and not discovered until about the year 2000, when the teacher who took it died.

What made me nervous is that Hill doesn't mention Peter Sissons, who was a couple of years younger than Lennon and Tarbuck and to become a good friend of Paul McCartney's at secondary school.

But it is him. A reader kindly tweeted me the cutting above from the Mail, which names all six boys. (Apparently the Mirror had it first, but didn't get further than Lennon and Tarbuck.) And also in the photo are Ivan Vaughan, who was to introduce Lennon and McCartney, and the future professional footballer Jimmy Blain, who didn't make it at Everton but was to become an Exeter City legend.

There remains only for me to remind you that Frank Duckworth, co-deviser of the Duckworth Lewis method, lodged with John Lennon and his Aunt Mimi.

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"The default assumption about a photo is about to become that it’s faked, because creating realistic and believable fake photos is now trivial to do. We are not prepared for what happens after." Sarah Jeong says the world we grew up in, where photographs provided strong evidence for the truth, is about to disappear.

Kate Moore argues that allotments beat food poverty, boost mental health and bring back the insects and bees.

"The 1902 Metropolis Water Act set up the Metropolitan Water Board. Eight existing private companies – plus the water undertakings of Tottenham and Enfield Urban District Councils – were taken over, with £30m compensation paid to the shareholders. Henceforth, London’s water would be provided by a public utility with an indirectly-elected board comprising 67 members from all the affected local authorities." A Municipal Dreams article on the municipalisation of London's water supply has many contemporary resonances.

"Sven took over an England team that had long been the international equivalent of a domestic ‘yo yo’ club - a Norwich, Fulham or West Brom - who go up and down, down and up. And he quickly transformed them into an embedded upper top-tier club which might just one day win something again: like an Arsenal, Aston Villa or Tottenham of today." John Sturgis pays tribute to Sven-Göran Eriksson.

Adam Scovell goes on a pilgrimage to discover the locations used for the filming of Powell and Pressburgere's A Canterbury Tale: "Relying on some fictional places as well as some camera trickery and illusion, the picturesque German Expressionist-influenced cinematography of Erwin Hillier brings the settings a fantastical, mysterious, even spiritual character."

Steve Richards has some remarkable photographs from 1973, when trains bound for Ruddington Ordnance & Supply Depot had to reverse at Weekday Cross in the heart of Nottingham. 

Lib Dems repeat call for free-to-view Premiership games as new football season begins

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On the opening day of the new Premiership football season, Calum Miller, the Liberal Democrat MP for Bicester and Woodstock, has called for some games to be shown on free-to-viws television channels.

In a letter to Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary he says:

"I am calling on you to have discussions with the Premier League to tear down the paywall and give football back to the country."

The Lib Dem manifesto at the general election included a pledge that at least 10 Premier League games would be screened free of charge.

According to the Mirror, an agreement with the television stations and football authorities sees one La Liga game shown free each week. So it is possible for such arrangements to be put in place.

I support this benignly populist measure, but what I really want to see is the new government overturn Nadine Dorries's decision on who Chelsea's new owners should be.

And maybe call a judge-led inquiry.

Shropshire: It's more like it was now than it was then

As my Twitter followers may have gathered, I've made it back to Shropshire for a few days.

Of course, there have been changes. The Plough at Wistanstow has closed. You can't have tea in the courtyard at Stokesay Castle any more. The Land of Lost Content museum at Craven Arms really has gone.

But then I decided I was looking at things the wrong way. My memories of exploring the Shropshire hills cover nearly 30 years from the late 1980s - I first encountered Snailbeach and the Stiperstones on the day we won an important qualifying-group game against Poland on our way to Italia 90.

As a result, what I have is a jumble of memories that I sometimes struggle to put together into a single holiday or even a single day. 

Where, for instance, was I walking to or from when I discovered the little Catholic chapel at Plowden? I think it was on a walk from Church Stretton to Bishop's Castle - the first time I saw the latter town - but I may well be wrong.

So I decided to stop hankering for a past that may never quite have been and make some new memories. I went to look for Halford church on the other side of the Onny from Craven Arms. 

Not only did I find the church, I also found an agricultural village that long predated the founding of the town. I won't share the photos with your today - this is, after all, meant to be a holiday - instead, the photo above shows the Plough in its pomp

I shall leave you with a thought from the Shropshire-based sitcom The Green Green Grass. In one episode, an American returned to the county, where he had been stationed in the Sixties, and wondered if it had changed.

"Oh no," a local reassured him, "It's not changed. If anything, it's more like it was now than it was then."

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"Along with a shortage of GP appointments and an excess of potholes in the roads, the issue exercising Henley’s well-heeled voters above all else is the state of the famous waterway sparkling just beyond the high street." Esther Webber looks at evidence that something is changing in the heart and soul of Tory England.

Chris Grey considers what the party manifestos say about Brexit and post-Brexit relations with the EU.

Julian Barnes says Britain must legalise assisted dying: "Most of us want to die with our personality intact, rather than have it swamped by blank misunderstanding; many fear a long process of dying, in which the body outlasts the mind, and indignity, humiliation and panic may ensue."

"When it comes to the England men's football team, the backing of fans, the press, pundits, and the country as a whole cannot be taken as a given. When the team does well, the whole country goes mad with excitement, but when it does badly the nation comes down on the players like a ton of bricks." Jan Dehn asks why the England men's football team plays so badly.

Katja Hoyer offers a German view of British humour: "I have never understood why so many Brits seem embarrassed about the German scenes when talking to me about them. Yes, of course Fawlty’s behaviour is ludicrous, but that’s the point. It’s the German family who are depicted as sensible and rightly offended by his antics. Exasperated they wonder at the end, 'How ever did they win?'"

No, the Black Death was not the result of a medieval pogrom against cats. Eleanor Janega explains.

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"There is no disguising the fact Sunak well knows when Williams, his ex-PPS, first learnt of the election date. The same, unsurprisingly, can be said of his director of campaigns, Tony Lee (Laura Saunders’ husband). But still the PM refuses to act, nobly cognisant of independent inquiries - but entirely ignorant of the episode’s raw politics." Josh Self says that if Tory England is dead, then Rishi Sunak killed it.

Peter Jukes sets out five questions that Nigel Farage needs to be asked about Brexit, Trump and Russia.

"Former Soviet states have not been expanded ‘into’ by NATO, but joined at their own request. The Kremlin attempts to present NATO as a Western plot to encroach upon its territory, but in reality the growth in Alliance membership is the natural response of those states to its own malign activities and threats." Ben Wallace on NATO, Ukraine and Russia.

Harriet Grant takes us to a Brighton primary school that is fighting to provide children with enough play: "We played football recently against a private school. Their children play football for an hour four times a week. How do they have time for that? It’s simple. Because they don’t have to do Sats."

June Thoburn argues that social workers need to understand their power: "One prospective adoptive parent told her, 'If the social worker says jump, I jump'. The fear of the social worker's power to remove children was present in all families she spoke with."

"The absolute avatar of this new generation of eccentric, hip, clever, spoilt, sexy, sometimes pretentious young actors was Donald Sutherland, a Canadian (and thus already an outsider) who had a career in the non-new, non-transgressive, sludgy cinema of the previous era (and in the theatre) but who really thrived once things got freaky in the 1970s." Steve Bowbrick pays tribute to Donald Sutherland.

Eric Cantona spotted walking goat outside old school Bermondsey boozer

Thanks to a nomination from an eagle-eyed reader, Southwark News wins our Headline of the Day Award.

The judges were unanimous in their opinion that there was only one video that could accompany this story.

Take it away, Sid.