CITY IS BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH

According to a new study by Staffordshire University, supporting a losing football team is bad for your health, causing sleeplessness, anxiety and headaches. It's hardly surprising. After all, only last year there was another report saying that watching your team lose at home increased your chance of a heart attack by 30%. But is it all true?

Let's explore this scientifically. According to a 30-year-long survey carried out by the esteemed research organisation SIMON, Manchester City fans are far more likely to be bald, fat and unhealthy than Manchester United fans. SIMON says that while City fans are more likely to have high blood pressure and heart attacks than United fans, this is not a poor performance indicator - it is a reflection of class, wealth and breeding. City fans fulfil every northern cliché: we love our fish, chips, mushy peas, gherkin on the side, four slices of bread and butter, and bucket of ale to wash it down. United fans are less likely to fulfil the classic northern cliché because they are less likely to come from the north.

(Ed. It obviously needs to be pointed out to Mr. Hattenstone than Manchester is north of Stockport)


Another measure of football health is celebrity supporters. Now, at City we have more than our fair share of famous fans, and they tend to back up the
Staffordshire thesis. Kevin Kennedy, who played Curly Watts in Coronation
Street for so many years, blamed his alcoholism on being a City fan. Eddie
Large, half of the legendary comedy team Little and Large, is appropriately large and unhealthy. Bernard Manning would doubtless be svelte, fit and politically correct were he not a City fan. (Ed. Famous? arf!)

And yet anecdotes - even anecdotes supported by fact - do not tell the full story. Let me tell you the tale of my Uncle Maurice from Southport. You couldn't have met a finer man than Uncle Maurice, even though he was a mad United fan. Uncle Maurice was getting on a bit, had a slightly dicky ticker, and United were playing Everton in the FA Cup Final. Uncle Maurice told Auntie Bess that he couldn't face watching the match because it gave him all sorts of stresses that he could well do without. Now Bess, who loved Maurice like nobody's business, told him he was being a daft bugger and that he shouldn't deny himself one of life's great pleasures. So she turned the telly on for him with a few minutes to go. The score was 0-0. United broke away, Norman Whiteside scored one of the great cup final goals, and Uncle Maurice had a heart attack and died on the spot. Which only goes to show that supporting a successful side can be equally bad for your health.