One of my favourite annual events is due to take place on Saturday. For Nationwide League football clubs and supporters like myself, Saturday marks the start of a new season. The beginning of a new campaign is always an exciting moment, full of hope and anticipation. From Carlisle to Torquay and from Cardiff to Norwich, fans will be persuading themselves that this is going to be their team's year - and as yet, there are no league tables to tell them otherwise.

Naturally, I'll be joining in the fun, cheering on my beloved Bradford City against Barnsley.

As I do so, I'll be sitting in the Bradford and Bingley Stadium. It's a reasonably appropriate name for the stadium - after all, it is in Bradford, and the town of Bingley is just a few miles up the road. But of course, that isn't the reason why the club changed the name of the ground, which had been traditionally known as Valley Parade. They did it because they were given a large amount of money to do so by a finance company, the Bradford and Bingley Building Society. For similar reasons, the part of the ground in which I sit is now known as the Carlsberg Stand.

I'm not complaining. Given that every major soccer team in the country eagerly accepts sponsorship from commercial backers, City couldn't do otherwise without putting themselves at a major disadvantage. Sponsorship in sport is an inescapable reality, and we fans just have to hope that some dignity can be retained.

For example, it is just as well that the Nationwide Building Society won the bidding race to sponsor the Football League. They have bestowed an appropriate name on the competition, and it could have been much worse. Reports at the time suggested that the bidding was pretty keenly contested, and that we fans almost found ourselves watching the Burger King League.

And at least my team now has a non-embarrassing shirt sponsor. It wasn't always thus. Some years ago, the shirts were sponsored by a local toy shop, and Bradford City had the words 'Toy City' emblazoned on their chests. Some of their performances made those words seem all too appropriate.

But I wouldn't want things to go any further. I certainly wouldn't want to see any expansion of one worrying trend that has been seen in the semi-professional League of Wales. There, the very names of clubs have been sold off, and Inter Cardiff, Cefn Druids and Llansantffraid have mutated into Inter Cable-Tel, Flexsys Cefn Druids and Total Network Solutions FC respectively. And although it's irritating, I can cope with our team captain having the name of his personal sponsors read out just after his shirt number when the team line-ups are announced before the game - as long as we can still call him Stuart McCall rather than Stuart Big Mac, or some other such nonsense.

Could the next trend actually be the buying of players' names? Given the greed of so many professional sports people, and corporate types' current obsession with 'branding', I wouldn't be altogether surprised. (Incidentally, am I the only one for whom that word 'branding' conjures up a disturbing mental picture of executives getting together for weird sado-masochistic rituals involving hot irons?)

Can't you just imagine the news story?
'And now, today's sports news, brought to you by Jaws Financial Services. Following a multi-million pound sponsorship deal, David Beckham announced today that he now wishes to be known as David Juicy-Burgers.'


'This follows the similar deal made recently by his wife. Victoria Beckham was renamed after the record company that she and the other Spice Girls record for, thereby becoming Victoria Virgin.'

If you think that's far-fetched, think again. An American couple, Jason Black and Frances Schroeder, recently placed ads on the Internet in which they offered to sell the rights to name their then-unborn son for $500,000. The baby has now been born, and their offer has attracted some interest. Last weekend, Black claimed to be close to clinching a deal with a corporate client.

It sometimes seems as though there is now an area of our lives that is beyond the reach of corporate tentacles. But there is one consolation in the above depressing story, and it lies in the fact that we don't just have a corporate culture these days. We also have a compensation culture.

Just imagine how much compensation that unfortunate child will be able to extract from his parents in the future for mental cruelty and trauma, if they actually do succeed in landing him with a name like Tiddles Cat Food.

There are very few jobs that appeal to me less than that of call centre operator. Taking phone calls all day from strangers who've been stuck in a queuing system and will probably want to take out their frustration on you. Having to stick to the same tightly-controlled script for hour after hour, day after day, and always having to wind up the conversation within a prescribed amount of time. Having to remain friendly and polite no matter how annoying the customers are. Sounds like hell on earth to me.

A lot of people in Holland evidently feel the same way, because one call centre company in Rotterdam was having a lot of trouble finding operators - until they came up with a novel incentive. Their ads asked:
'Always wanted to work in the nude?'

and added:
'In an office job like a call centre, it doesn't matter what you wear because the client does not see you.'

The response was amazing. Previous call centre recruitment ads had attracted no more than one or two replies. But the request for nude operators attracted 75 replies. How many of them came from women has not been revealed.

However, one of the company's owners, Michel Voulon, has assured would-be applicants that they will be looked after. He has promised that the new nude staff will be given special chairs - non-stick, presumably. They will also be provided with slippers and bathrobes in case they want to go out for a moment. It isn't clear whether or not they'll also be given towels to complete the Arthur Dent look, but the very fact that Mr Voulon is allowing for the possibility of staff taking a break during the working day suggests that he may be a more humane employer than many call centre managers.

When asked to explain this novel approach to work, Mr Voulon has said:
'We have more than enough clients but we don't have enough employees to handle the business. The Dutch labour market is so tight at the moment that you have to come up with new ideas to attract people.'

The new company is to be named Au Nature Telesales, and will open for business in October. Applicants for the 15 available jobs will be interviewed soon, but they will not be required to turn up for the interviews in their, so to speak, working outfits. Mr Voulon has said:
'They will be normal interviews, We are just businessmen, not naturists.'

I just hope that the heating in the office never breaks down.

Congratulations to all at Fife Council in Scotland. The council has taken a bold and successful stand this week in defence of what had now been declared to be a fundamental human right: the right to drink.

The planning department of the council has refused to allow the owners of the Cambo Arms in Kingsbarns, near St Andrews, to convert it into houses. It's the only pub in Kingsbarns, and the council has ruled that the conversion would contravene European law by denying the human rights of villagers who drank there.

Actually, nobody's been drinking in the pub since last November. The owners, Al and Anne Fraser, closed it then because business was bad. They claim that they've been unable to sell it as a going concern, but the council's ruling means that they'll have to keep trying to do so.

Kingsbarns villagers got together with the Campaign for Real Ale pressure group and set up a campaign to save the Cambo Arms. This week, they convinced council officials that the pub was an essential part of Kingsbarn life.

Fife council planner Alistair Hamilton ruled:
'Because this pub made such a significant contribution to the local community , we are not prepared to allow this change of use.'

I hope the Frasers soon find a buyer and the Cambo Arms is restored to its former glory. I'll think of it the next time I drink a pint of human right.

This column has often been somewhat critical of President George W Bush, but I feel that the latest complaint that's been aimed at Dubya is unjust.

In a story that seems to confirm once again the cosmic significance of the number 42, the Washington Post newspaper has criticised Bush over the month-long holiday he's currently taking at his ranch in Texas. The paper has calculated that Dubya has been on vacation for 42 per cent of the time since his inauguration, and an opinion poll has suggested that 55 per cent of Americans consider his latest 31-day break to be too long.

Bush has defended his holiday. Speaking to reporters just before beginning an early-morning round of golf, he explained:
'Washington DC is a fine place and I'm honoured to be working in the Oval Office and staying in the compound there. But I'm the kind of person that needs to get outdoors. It keeps my mind whole, keeps my spirits up.'

If getting outdoors keeps Bush's mind whole, you have to wonder how much time he spent indoors before taking decisions like the one to reject the Kyoto protocol on global warming.

But any Hitchhiker fan can surely see the significance of that statistic in the Washington Post story. The answer, as ever, lies in the figure 42. It just needs to get bigger.

Bush shouldn't be criticised for going on holiday. Quite the opposite, in fact. If only he could be persuaded to increase the percentage of time he takes off work by, shall we say, another 58 per cent, then the world might become a much safer place.

Ormondroyd

09.08.01. Front Page

Back Issue Page