In praise of Blue Kipper
By
Mickey Blue Eyes

At the start of this season I met with Kipper. After four years of opinionating on Bluekipper.com I said at the end of this season I would be moving on to broader non-footy things. We agreed season 2005-2006 will be limited to occasional pieces and – if we get there – perhaps some reports from Europe. In keeping with the founding and development of the website we will play it spontaneously.

So I thought this an opportune moment to say thanks to the founders, owners and operators of the site, Kipper, Keith, Lard, Jogger, Stingray, Sausage and Lavo, and to wish them good luck in all future endeavours. It has been a terrific and interesting time and often paralyisingly funny. For me it was another opportunity to experiment with internet communications and also one more way of settling back in England after more than two decades of international work, domicile and travel. It has the added bonus of enduring friendships, the sort which matter.

For me it finally coalesced last season when I went to the Fulham FA Cup away replay with Kipper. For the vast majority of the game we had been outplayed all over the pitch, were one down and headed for an inglorious exit. Then the final five minutes saw a complete turnabout and an onslaught on the home goal that had them reeling as we got a succession of corners. Despite the circumstances Kipper grinned broadly and said, agog amidst the pandemonium, “This is what we come to games FOR!” We equalised with seconds remaining, thus proving that footy glory comes in different packages not all of which contain trophies. That moment said it all even though we went on to lose the game deservedly in extra time. The values were right.

From my e-mail bag it is plain some people think I am one of the owners of the website. Not so. I have merely been engaged from the start in writing match reports and opinions on various issues. In four years Kipper edited only four pieces. I agreed with one of the exclusions, which was a non-footy matter everyone still aches with laughter over. Of the other three, much more serious, I would change nothing at all – quite the opposite; I am inclined to emphasise them. Two of them have eventually coincided with club policy so I feel more than vindicated. The third was one of those subjects everyone wants to avoid and which with some luck may yet cause deserved legal problems for those involved. It is a mark of friendship that none of this has affected the situation in any way: I still write and say what I want. Quite frequently some or all of the rest of the team disagree with my views. So what? Democracy can be an uncomfortable state. On other occasions I have been asked for an opinion on some internal matters and have been more than willing to give it. And that has been the limit of my involvement.

I first met the Blue Kipper team when they visited the Black Horse pub, once a pre-match haunt for many years before the loss of my friend Bill Newman (see here) left it with too many ghosts and I and friends moved on elsewhere. The chemistry was good from the start. I thought Blue Kipper was overtly amateurish and all the better for it. Nevertheless, lessons were learned and applied sensibly. Hard updating work has made it better and more professional but it has never lost the spontaneous popular feel, humour and scattiness of a true fans’ website. This comes from the temperament of its creators and cannot be manufactured. On one or two occasions this got them into trouble and Kipper (for it is he who does most of the donkey work) had to move deftly to extricate the situation. Even this had a hugely humorous side.

From the beginning I offered a warning to Kipper that if they made a fist of it – and the site hits prove just how succesful they are – they were bound to attract the kind of envy you get from a gaggle of poisonous old fishwives. Sure enough it came about in different guises and various ludicrous attempts at cyber sabotage, surely one of the more pointless of human activities. There are many examples but my favourite involved a loony from, where else, an internet forum.

One day during the last World Cup I had a phone call from Jogger. He had, he said, been reading the Blue Kipper forum (my immediate response was a swift and brutal, “You daft bastard, you deserve what you fucking get then”) and someone calling himself “thommo” had posted something like, and I shit you not, “I hate Blue Kipper with my heart and soul and won’t be responsible for my actions.” Jogger was truly bewildered and wanted my opinion. I was prostrate on the floor with laughter, and not only at the notion that if Jogger hit you you wouldn’t get up for a week. Hate-filled nutters like “thommo” were the reason I long ago stopped taking internet forums at all seriously, ignored them, and went on to write opinion pieces instead. It is a much more satisfying method of expressing yourself while simultaneously having some knockabout fun, as some deliberately provoked weird responses in my e-mail bag will testify. At any rate, the next World Cup match was on the big screen in the Black Horse. By that time Bill was confined to a wheelchair but when I recounted the “thommo” saga he too almost fell out of it laughing and said there was no chance of him missing the England-Denmark screening when, apparently, “thommo” was going to do all kinds of mayhem to anybody connected to Blue Kipper. So there we all were in the Black Horse, part of the great mass willing England to beat the Vikings, which they did easily in due course. Just before the kick-off I stood up and loudly invited “thommo” to join Blue Kipper’s table. Needless to say he didn’t show. Which was a pity because Jogger was just DYING to meet him.

Initially Kipper would forward e-mails to me and ask if I wanted to respond. With one exception, I never did. I couldn’t see the point. I had had my say and that suited me fine. If people liked what I had to say it was very gratifying but it certainly wasn’t going to nudge the Earth’s axis any more than my opinions were. If a few disagreed with my views, hated them even, so what? That’s life. Everton Football Club will continue to be a healthy escapist hobby if sensibly pursued by sensible people. The Earth will continue in orbit for whatever time it has left. Professional football will continue in a state of perpetual crisis. Self-obsessed humourless and friendless cranks will still carry on as static background noise in internet forums, electronic loons flying south in winter. Two-bit opportunists will still try to make money by selling greed in the guise of footy altruism. Paranoid self-righteous “campaigners” will still – quite rightly – suspect somebody, somewhere, is actually enjoying football without giving a rat’s ass what the “campaigners” thought one way or the other. Everton directors will squabble. We might get into Europe. Or we might get relegated. Players will come and go, some good or even great, some bad, some average. The circus will move the tent every now and then. It will rain. Why, then, bother responding to someone you hadn’t met, didn’t want to meet, or thought mad or just plain weird? Why bother with a stream of electrons playing the same interminable game of computer verbal tennis in a purgatorial dull-witted ping-pong sequence? A sense of perspective tells you there’s much more to life, even more precious qualities still to find in family and friends, and new places to seek out. You move on, always. Football is a hobby, nothing more.

Meantime, the website flourished and led to various activities its founders never even dreamed of. Which of course makes its success even more satisfying. Spontaneity always has a better feel. And in doing so drives envy even further up the wall. You can bet your bottom Euro there are still plenty of “thommos” gibbering away out there over their padded keyboards. But what matters are the successes and the harmless good will they generate. All of it was achieved without any business plan or marketing ploy or “synergy” or, gawd forbid, any prawn sandwiches. There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

The Blue Kipper annual Do proved a near-instantaneous success with the fans. Despite some organisational hiccups it has improved each year to the point where it is almost unmissable for the sheer waves of fans’ enthusiastic loyalty. Anyone who has attended one of these will tell you how wonderfully artless this is especially when, inevitably, things have gone awry. Humour still prevails. For instance I would have given anything to be a fly on the wall when in the private bar Kipper told one recipient of the Player Of The Year award, paraphrased, “Every time we give this to someone he fucks off the next season. Promise me you’ll stay.” You can’t script or buy shares for moments like that. Even the early award trophies have a comical story to them, but I’ll leave that for Kipper to tell on another occasion. Of course none of this is to underestimate the unseen hard organisational graft and occasional stage fright of the event. It’s just that nobody gets precious about it. Nobody is interested in celebrity, internet or otherwise. That is left to others who obviously need it.

Then came the comedy challenge footy match. You wanted to warn the challengers what they were getting themselves into but sympathy quickly vanished when the opposition captain turned up with an armband reading, erm, “captain,” and the kind of mysteriously antagonistic attitude that had him instantly vertically inverted on the end of one of Lard’s sumptuous and unceremonious tackles. The very worst thing the “captain” could do, he did. That is, snigger like an acned fourteen years old when Kipper told him the previous night he had been to a gig of one of his favourite bands. Looks were exchanged wordlessly, tactics and motivation decided without discussion. The Kipper boys can play…………… No, I mean really PLAY. The score was 6-0 but could have been an awful lot more. The team foot came off the gas at six. It was, after all, only in fun. I think……………

And who could forget Steve B at a Hall of Fame Do telling us of his attempts to get a good TV signal while on board a container ship? He ended up chasing around the heaving deck trying to get the antenna right for a derby match………………got it right………………and then the captain changed course. One’s imagination conceives of Steve’s purple phrases being whipped away stillborn on stiff salt air. Most expatriates or members of the military will have a similar story of equally desperate long distance communications in a neurotic search for the latest results. The deeper your roots, the more desperate the search. And a man who forgets his roots isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit.

Such has been the pressing success of the Blue Kipper Lounge that it will be relocated to larger premises next season, to Crofts on City Road. After that, who knows? Out of the blue, people now contact Kipper with various propositions that might or might not work. All things are possible, as they should be. Except that two-bit opportunists needn’t apply.

A few months ago the site went down temporarily when inadvertently it exceeded its agreed capacity with the then provider. The demand was insatiable. Since then the IT situation has been corrected and put on a self-sufficient basis. Another lesson learned, the same problem will not re-occur, another example where experience is clearly the best tutor. And so it goes.

Growth has inevitably challenged the initial happy-go-lucky fans basis of it all. Recently it has required better organisation and application that under more adverse circumstances might have over-compromised simple enjoyment of the whole process. But crises have been met and overcome and the website goes from strength to strength, warts and all, laughs still the main goal, all of it fuelled by the harmless, straightforward loyalty of supporting Everton Football Club.

So get cracking, opinionators. There’s a vacancy and you could fill it. All you have to do is apply. The only qualifications are a reasonable aquaintance with the English language, a sense of humour, clear opinions, and membership of the Everton family. No self-promoting celebrities, dogs or misery-arses wanted. See, it’s easy.

As regulars know, one thing you will never need to say to Kipper, Lard, Jogger, Stingray, Keith and Lavo of this website is:

CALL Y’SELF AN EVERTONIAN? (03/04/05)

Mickey Blue Eyes - All His Stuff

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