I can't stop myself. I'm compelled to ask. Is it possible that Chic Charnley was named after 'Sunny Jim'?
Surely Jim Callaghan wasn't a household name when Charnley was born in '63? The Labour Party was still in semi-permanent opposition but, on the other hand, it was also the year that Hugh Gaitskell died and Jim Callaghan stood against Harold Wilson and George Brown for vacant Labour Party leadership position (coming third in the first round, and thus being eliminated).
But how does a family in Glasgow end up naming their sprog after a Labour politician, born in Portsmouth, but who was representing a Cardiff constituency at the time (FA Cup final alert)?
It's not so much the novelty of future footie players being named after Labour politicians of the day; it's more the outlandish notion that there were Gaitskellites in Glasgow in the early 1960s. I thought it was just the late John Smith and the late Donald Dewar on their political tod at the Glasgow University debating society.
Btw, this is (possibly) the start of a new series for the blog. Yeah, I know that I've missed the boat with the harebrained idea of a 'Mixing Footie and Politics' theme to go alongside with 'Mixing Pop and Politics' and 'Do They Mean Us?' threads, but the blog sub-heading must count for something.
I just know that I'll never top this old blog post on Paul Breitner (or even this post on Anarchist footie) when it comes to mixing footie and the fun stuff.
Image courtesy of Riot Ink blog.
