Dessert anyone?

Two things inspired the subject of this particular entry, namely a chance to watch The Great Escape again, and the re-introduction of Kevin Keagan, to Newcastle United. Well what really caught my eye was 'King Kev returns to the Magpies' and I suddenly got all enthusiastic for nicknames.

Football nicknames, particularly for players, seem to be fairly mundane on the whole, King Kev is not very imaginative is it, and Quitter Man returns probably doesn't give the right image. Most players have 'ie' added to their name and become Kingie, Smithie and so on. In days gone by the nicknames seemed more imaginative, Ron Atkinson was called Mr Bojangles. He would probably of been called Bling these days though, and the great Alan Ball could easily have been Ballie, but was referred to as Bouncy!. The German captain Franz Beckebauer was fittingly referred to as the Kaiser.

Football club nicknames are more imaginative and traditional, hence the Magpies nickname reflecting the fact Newcastle play in black and white. Interestingly though, a magpie is a very deep purple, they just look black!

The Great Escape indicated how POWs all tended to have nicknames, the film featured The Tunneller, The Scrounger, and for Steve McQueen, the Cooler King, give the number of hours he stayed in there. Institutional nicknames come to the fore in many popular TV programmes. In Porridge, the nicknames were usually the persons surname, Fletch, Godper and so on, although the King of the Jungle, Christopher Biggins, was referred to as Lukewarm.

Londons Burning introduced us to the nickname culture which prevails in the fire service. Bayleaf, Sicknote, Zorba and Vaseline being some of the more regular characters.

Other walks of life have their own legendary nicknames. In politics, for example, David Lloyd George as the Welsh Wizard, and Margaret Thatcher as the Iron Lady tend to stick. Two famous golfers have turned their nicknames into world wide sporting brands as Greg Norman launched The Great White Shark, and Jack Nicklaus, the Golden Bear range of products.

I never had a clever nickname at school, where children can be particularly cruel with some of their choices. Apart from the obvious ones like carrot, for the red heads, our year seemed to specialise in Lord of the Rings nicknames, so we had a Bilbo, Barkis and Frodo in the late '60s well before the films gave them cult status.

One of the magical nicknames I have come across though is for my friend Martin Wooden. Martin was 1st XV captain at Twickenham and a seriously good prop, and he had the nickname 'Pud'. Now I always thought this related to his waist measurement, but no, you need to read The Good Ship Venus for the answer.

The trainee cook was Wooden
by Christ he was a good 'en
he t***d off twice in a bag of rice
and called it sago puddin'