Bizarre Football-related Games/Memoribilia

Anyone who knows me well enough will be aware of my unhealthy affliction of being a football fan. With this comes a further obsession with any piece of tat that is associated with it. This includes games with a football theme. For most people (me included), this usually manifests itself in the video game, FIFA (yep, i can be that boorish). However, i did manage to discover these games of yore created before the days of FIFA, PRO-EVO or even Subuteo. The lazy football fan of the past whose shoes i began to fill around 1998 would play these strange assortment of games instead of actually taking a football to a park. It was in these ways that the football lazy boy would emulate his heroes' real-life achievements. One of the finest out of this maverick bunch of misfit games to me is the one in which the players appear to be key figures of politics, entertainment and the army just after the turn of the century, namely Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Haig and David Lloyd George. Anyway, i hope you enjoy them as much as my childish mind has. More football related stuff to come. Stay tuned, folks. That's right, all 14 of you.

John Bull Magazine Covers.

I recently found a huge collection of these on line. I can't remember the site though, sorry. John Bull Magazine was a weekly periodical magazine that ran between the years of 1820 to 1964. I think they're stunning. For someone like me who is a sucker for colour and good draughtsmanship, these covers are a real revelation. I suppose one of the things that really appeals to me is the fact that whilst different artists were used for various covers, they always seem to track not so much the development of the British landscape in the 20th century but instead the British public's perception of itself. There are wholesome depictions of model, modern families, imperious images of London and glittering yuletide scenes. It is perhaps an Britain that never did exist rather than the ideal that certainly does in the national sub-conscious. This can be seen every Christmas on T.V sets with the annual John Lewis, moving John Bull front cover advertisements of free-range chickens happily running round in an Oxfordshire or Wiltshire field.