LEYTON ORIENT

‘A message to all London football fans. You can’t have a second-favourite child or a second-best mate and we don’t want to be your second-favourite football team.’

BOB MILLS comedian, talkSPORT contrarian and Orient fan

‘The cello! How can you give up your football team? You can never give up your football team!’

JULIAN LLOYD-WEBBER world-renowned cellist, on being asked what he would give up if he had to choose between his livelihood or his football team

I’m a bugger for a bit of classical music, and for me Julian Lloyd-Webber’s playing of Elgar’s Cello Concerto is right up there with the legendary Jacqueline du Pré.* I like him even more now I found that quote. Especially since in the same interview he was asked about naming his daughter Orienta: ‘It’s better than being called “Arsenalla” isn’t it? That sounds like you’ve got some bacteria up your bum.’ Good man. Proper supporter.

I wonder if he was at this particular game? It’s a long time ago now, but one of my happiest away experiences was one of my earliest. It was 5 May 1979, two days after my 18th birthday,† and we were off to Orient for the penultimate game of the season, a game we needed to win to sustain our hopes of promotion back to the First Division (spoiler alert: we did). The official crowd was 19,945 but I’m sure it was more, and in my mind, only about the 945 were Orient fans, and I’m pretty sure none of them had a cello.

The whole of Brisbane Road was a glorious, seething kaleidoscope of red and blue, and at one stage I was seriously worried that we may end up being squeezed like a champagne cork into the gardens of the terraced houses behind. At the time, Orient were an established Second Division team (a very rare thing in their history) but that day, with not a hint of malice or violence, I first fully realised the joy of belonging to a large and boisterous tribe.

My other abiding memory of that day is how long it took us to get there. Something we forgot every time we went back. It’s in London, for goodness sake, so what are we doing on a motorway?

It is London’s most easterly club, and probably London’s most patronised club as well. Growing up, London football was an intricate web of conflicting rivalries that varied in intensity from season to season and decade to decade, but no one ever hated Orient. If anything, the one thing that united fans of all London clubs was that we all wanted them to do well, in a kind of ‘aah, ain’t they cute’ type of way. And chances were that if a London club’s best player got old and past it, he’d go to Orient for one last payday. Indeed, Palace legend John Jackson was in goal for Orient that afternoon.

And if Orient are the most easterly and the most patronised club in London, they are also the hardest club in the capital to pin down name-wise. Even why they were called that in the first place is still a bit of a mystery. Being of a poetic, romantic nature, even as a child,‡ I always assumed that they were called Orient because they were so far east, but it seems more likely that an early player worked for the Orient Shipping Line and suggested it as a handy name for them. No one can actually agree who that player was or when he made the suggestion, but the Orient shipping line sailed to the far east, which would make me right as a kid, so let’s agree it’s true.

And they weren’t Leyton Orient right at the start either. They were Glyn Cricket Club when they started a football team in, probably, 1881, changing their name to Orient, in, probably, 1889. I say ‘probably’ because between playing cricket and running a shipping line they seem to have been too busy to write anythingdown. In 1898 (definitely) they changed the name to Clapton Orient because Clapton was posh and they wanted to attract a more affluent sort of supporter.

It didn’t work. In 1937 they moved again and officially became Leyton Orient in 1946. In 1966 they decided to drop the Leyton and became Orient again, then in recent years they decided to add the Leyton again. It’s quite possible that by the end of this chapter they will be Leyton Orient Athletic. Still, at least they provided regular work for east London signwriters.

They moved grounds a lot too, at one stage in 1930 playing two League games at Wembley because their own pitch was too narrow. They eventually settled at Brisbane Road where they still are, despite a concerted attempt by their chairman to persuade the Mayor of London that if anyone should inherit the 2012 Olympic Stadium as a football home, it should be them.

Kit-wise, they have been just as relaxed. Red, white and green stripes, red and white hoops, white with red chevron, white with blue chevron, red and white checks and a complete meltdown in the 1960s when they went from all blue to all red to all white in the same decade. They obviously thought east London kit manufacturers should be kept in regular work as well.

Rather wonderfully, though, their nickname is the O’s. As you know, I don’t approve of lazy nicknames, but this one stems partly from their name, and partly because one of those early kits had a massive O emblazoned on the back.

Sadly, their history on the pitch is nowhere near as interesting as their sartorial one off it. The blue kit was worn in their only season in the First Division and they’ve won a couple of lower league titles since, but a disastrous spell of irresponsible ownership saw near-financial disaster and a drop into the National League in 2017.

Happily they are back now and seem to be in safe financial hands. Which is a relief to their fans. I would say that the rest of us are pleased to see cute, harmless little Orient doing well too, but that would really annoy them.

Why You Shouldn’t Support Them

■ Well, for a start, you’d be patronising them and they don’t like that.

■ Are they actually a London club like they claim? It’s bleeding miles away.

■ Bob Mills is from Chester.