ARSENAL

‘Arsenal are the most beautiful club in England. At Man City and Chelsea they will never have that class and style.’

MARCO VAN BASTEN Dutch football legend

‘They are, and forever will be, a south London team.’

ANDY LINDEN comedian, actor and Spurs fan

In 1886, a group of workers at a munitions factory in Woolwich, south-east London, started a football team by the name of … Dial Square. Because there was a sundial on top of the factory gate.

Then someone with an early sense of PR flair decided they needed a fancier name … Royal Arsenal. However, that was a bit too fancy for south-east London, so they changed it again … to Woolwich Arsenal. Then they borrowed a set of red shirts from Nottingham Forest, and thus began the story of one of the most famous football names in the world.

In 1913 they found a new home at Highbury, in north London, kicking off one of the most famous rivalries in world football. And much of the animosity between Spurs and Arsenal still rests on that move across the river.

It’s difficult to explain the whole south London/north London thing to an outsider. When Ali first moved to London as a student, she found a bedsit in Crouch End. It’s a smart part of town with a lively cultural scene, many independent shops doing edgy things with cheese, and eye-wateringly expensive houses, so obviously it is home to 90% of the country’s left-wing stand-up comedians and TV producers. Ali loved it, and couldn’t understand why I hated visiting her there, especially as, it being a new relationship, we spent most of the time in the bedsit anyway.

And I did hate visiting there. It’s still London, which is good, but it’s a sort of ersatz London that tries too hard to be different and quirky. Ali only understood that when I took her south of the river (not a euphemism). Basically, they got all the Tube stations and hills, and we got all the open spaces and proper pubs.

They feel the same way about us. When we play Arsenal at Selhurst I nearly always entertain a couple of Arsenal-supporting comedians in the Pawsons Arms, and they are visibly on edge the whole time, although that could also be because they are in a pub full of Palace fans who all know they support Arsenal.

Look, there’s no logic to why it feels different up there, it just does and we’re better. Which is why, even now, when me and the boys cross the river back from an away game we will spontaneously burst into a round of ‘Oh south London … is wonderful … oh south London is wonderful’.*

It is 107 years since Arsenal dropped the ‘Woolwich’, but to Tottenham fans they are still interlopers, a feeling that is made worse by the implacable conviction of smug Arsenal fans that they are north London’s true and only club. And believe me, there are a lot of smug Arsenal fans. Annoyingly, though, those Arsenal fans are right, there is something about Arsenal. It is a classy club.

Alan Davies is a comedy legend, a dedicated Arsenal fan and an old mate. He is also a very modest man except when it comes to the club he loves: ‘Kev, I am absolutely secure in the knowledge that we are the best and classiest club.’ In London? ‘In London and beyond. Everywhere.’ But you haven’t won anything lately. ‘Three FA cups and a European final in the past few years. We’d have killed for that in the sixties, you’d kill for it now!’

Ah, always with the history. But, for lovers of football history like me, the old Highbury was a place of beauty – an art deco masterpiece of a stadium, complete with marble walls and floors and an actual doorman who would tip his actual hat as you entered. Or he would if you were wearing a suit and accompanied by a camera crew, like I was on several occasions. I don’t remember much hat-tipping when I went in wearing jeans and a Palace scarf. Even when I was thrown out of there one time, for sharing witty pleasantries with the home fans after Palace conceded yet another goal, I was ejected by the stewards and police† with a degree of style and charm you simply wouldn’t encounter at other clubs.

It was also quite classy that their legendary manager Herbert Chapman managed to persuade London Transport to change the name of the nearest underground station from Gillespie Road to Arsenal, still the only Tube station in the country named after a football club. If you win a pub quiz with that fact, make a small donation to charity. Chapman it was too who invented that iconic red shirt/white sleeve kit they’ve been wearing since 1933. Legend has it that one of the players turned up for summer training wearing a red sleeveless pullover on top of a white cricket shirt and Chapman thought it looked so cool he declared it immediately as their new kit. Good job the player wasn’t wearing sunglasses as well, then.

Interestingly, though, for two years the socks had white tops above what looks like a suspiciously Tottenham blue. Was that a subliminal message that red and white would always be above blue and white? Am I reading too much into it? Almost certainly. Fun, though, isn’t it?

But the average Spurs fan’s resentment to Arsenal is not just geography- or sock-based. Oh no, it’s much deeper than that and it’s been festering since 1919. As a fan of the festering grudge, I really admire that. I still remind my dad of the Christmas he bought me a set of darts instead of the train set I asked for. I wouldn’t have minded except (a) we didn’t have a dartboard and (b) I was seven. My dad essentially gave a child three tiny weapons.

In 1915, when the Great War put an end to football, Arsenal were fifth in the Second Division and would have expected to remain in that league when it all kicked off again in 1919. However, it was Spurs who kicked off. The First Division was extended from 20 to 22 teams and tradition suggested that the two clubs who were bottom of that division – Chelsea and Spurs – when the war started would retain their place in the top flight, along with the two teams at the top of the Second Division. Chelsea and the Second Division teams duly took their place in the top league. But it was suggested that a ballot should take place for the remaining spot. And it was suggested by Henry Norris, the chairman of Arsenal.

Worse still, in an infamous speech before the ballot, Norris suggested (or ‘demanded’ if you’re a Spurs fan) that as Arsenal were the longest-established team in the ballot, and the first League club from the south, they should get the coveted spot, despite having only finished fifth back at the start of this story. And the board of the League agreed, despite the technicality pointed out by Wolves that they were several years older than Arsenal, and the equally convincing technicality pointed out by Tottenham that this was all a bit fishy. As it was: even Arsenal’s official club history admits that Norris may have ‘influenced’ the voters, either with words or money.

Whatever he did say, or pay, Arsenal are the only club to have stayed in the top division continuously ever since, and they are the only club not to be there on merit. But (and Spurs fans will hate me for saying this) that level of skulduggery does take a certain sort of class, doesn’t it?

However, there is a late and slightly worrying development to this chapter. Alex Brooker is the twinkly-eyed little charmer from The Last Leg on Channel 4. He is also a massive Arsenal fan, even though he is from Croydon and his family all support Palace. He says me and his nan are the only people who ever give him stick for that, which is also his way of calling me old. He says there are Spurs fans like Andy Linden who ‘give it the whole south London thing’, but all he has to do is ask what they’ve won recently because ‘trophies trump geography’. Then he added that, lately, Chelsea were becoming more of a rival than Spurs, a sentiment that was echoed when I asked some other young Arsenal fans in the office of a football show I was writing on.

This was slightly disconcerting to hear so early in a book like this. Are there other fans out there making up their own rivalries? Is there a factory somewhere in Manchester where City and United fans work in cheery harmony because now they both hate Bristol Rovers instead?

Luckily, a quick question on the WhatsApp group confirmed that Palace fans all still hate Brighton, even Chirpy’s two-year-old grandson. Or, as Chirpy said, especially his two-year-old grandson.

But if Arsenal fans are not hating Spurs, I could have a problem. I turned to Alan Davies for clarification. He looked puzzled for a second, like Jonathan Creek finding a new clue, then said simply: ‘No, it’s not a thing. Ask those weirdoes which of these scores they would prefer: Chelsea 9 Spurs 0, or Spurs 9 Chelsea 0. Chelsea are intolerable in every respect but they’re still just irritating. Spurs are the enemy.’

Thank Jesus for that!

Why You Shouldn’t Support Them

■ The wrong side of the river.

■ Possibly the smuggest fans in the country. (Not you, Alex and Alan. The others.)

■ One of the coppers who threw me out had seen me do a gig and said I wasn’t funny then, either.