Playing the footie card

Obligatory at election time are party leaders compelled to treat voters as dolts by declaiming lifelong devotion to the people’s game. In 1997 Mr Blair made a complete idiot of himself with a tear-inducing reverie of a childhood on the terraces at St James’ Park drooling over Newcastle United’s Jackie Milburn — but without checking first whether he would have been out of nappies when the black-and-white legend last played there. Shamelessly undaunted, Master T has played it safer this time, nominating a comparative modern — the eager pudding-basin scruff Peter Beardsley — as his favourite player and, for his most memorable goal, ‘Alastair [Campbell] tells me it has to be Malcolm Macdonald’s which put out Burnley in the 1974 FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough.’ Meanwhile true-blue Mr Howard’s blood runs deep red for Liverpool FC. Most topping goal he ever cheered was the fulminating header (in the European Cup final in Rome in 1977) by his all-time favourite Tommy Smith.