3 Collingwood Street, Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom. Boris Johnson's London Cycle Hire scheme flogs our birthright to Barclays. Wheel and deal ...
A Barclays Cycle Hire docking station beside the Thames in London. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/PA London's long-awaited cycle-hire scheme is launched this week. While there's no doubt it's a valuable addition to the capital's public transport options, it strikes yet another blow to the idea of London as a dignified city. First of all, there's the name. Andy Carroll a hard man? He'd not last two seconds with Mick Harford.
The other day I came across a tape of an interview I'd done a dozen years ago with the late Wilf Mannion.
For those of you not raised on Teesside I should maybe explain that Mannion was an inside forward who played for the Boro from 1936 to 1954 and whose angelic skills blighted the life of any fan who was too young to have seen him play – the consensus among the older ones who had been so blessed being that those who hadn't didn't have a bloody clue what the hell they were talking about. The talents of George Best, Bobby Charlton, Jimmy Greaves, Denis Law, would all be dismissed by the Wilf Generation with a disdainful "Paph", like the noise of somebody hitting a maybug with a rolled-up copy of Speedway Stars, or a Parisian being handed a Pot Noodle.
In the late-1960s the phrase "He's not fit to lace Wilf Mannion's boots" was so commonly used in Middlesbrough that nowadays you'd be able to download an emoticon for it.
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