Mark Webster is a West Ham United Season Ticket Holder, author, talkSPORT 2 broadcaster, popular cultural commentator and lifelong Hammer.
In his latest Added Time Tunnel article, which would have been published in Sunday's Official Programme for the Premier League fixture with Chelsea, Jermain Defoe, Stanley Kubrick and the Grand National and a Norwegian ice hockey team take us back to 5 April 2000...
Hello and welcome to another trip through the temporal toll booths and into the Added Time Tunnel, where we have arrived on this day in 2003.
Back then a point was salvaged at Southampton in the 83rd minute by one of the most prolific goalscorers in the game, Jermain Defoe.
With over 600 games as a pro, as well as 50-plus England caps, Jermain came from just north of the river but actually started his youth career a short Woolwich Ferry ride at Charlton Athletic, before joining the Hammers in 1999.
He was born on 7 October 1982, and – just like The Greenway, which runs all the way past London Stadium – comes out of Beckton which, up until 1969, when it was finally closed, was best known for the giant gasworks that were built there in 1870 by (and the clue is in the name) one Simon Adams Beck.
The waste from the gas works also gave the area the infamous Beckton Alps, which once even served as a dry ski slope.
However, in the mid-eighties, when young Jermain was kicking a ball around the back streets of Beckton, the works were derelict and condemned. That’s why it was chosen to double as war-torn Vietnam for Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 drama ‘Full Metal Jacket’.
For two months, the old gas works were blown to bits by the explosions of Kubrick’s special effects team. And it is said they did as good a job of demolishing the site as any professionals could.
It is also said there was as much drama in the making of the movie as there was on the big screen.
And while Defoe was earning us that point on the South Coast, across the Atlantic, one of its stars, actor Matthew Modine, was busy compiling his notes about the film’s trials and tribulations.
His director had encouraged the young actor to keep a daily record of the shoot. And in 2005, Modine’s story was published under the title ‘Full Metal Jacket Diary’. Appropriately enough, with a metal jacket for its cover!
Even though there was no winner in our game at St Mary’s Stadium on 5 April 2003, there most emphatically was at Aintree as anyone who tuned in to BBC 1 that day for Grand National Grandstand found out.
Hosted by Sue Barker and Clare Balding, the 156th running of this momentous race had commentator Jim McGrath bringing the winner Monty’s Pass home by an impressive 12 lengths.
Jockey Barry Geraghty said his mount ‘jumped like a cat’ around the famous course, which threw up some pretty high profile non finishers, in the process. Hot favourite Shot Gun Willy, ridden by the legendary Ruby Walsh, failed to complete the race, while another horse that took an early bath went by a name that had clearly resonated with the local Liverpool crowd, the joint second favourite on the day, Youllneverwalkalone.
That catchy little number made its debut on the Broadway stage in 1945 in the musical ‘Carousel’. And in 2003, it was celebrating its 40th birthday as a number one for Gerry & The Pacemakers – the record that gave the Kop its unique anthem back in 1963.
That is pretty impressive, until you check out the history of a little ditty called ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’. That song also made its debut in a musical, only this time it was in 1918 in ‘The Passing Show’, which happened to feature a young dancer by the name of Fred Astaire.
A year later the same song was one of the first jazz hits on record by The Original Dixieland Jass (an early spelling) Band. While it was also being used to parody one of America’s greatest sporting scandals. ‘I’m Forever Blowing Ballgames’ became the song that was sung about the Chicago White Sox baseball team who were caught deliberately losing the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds.
Come the 1920s, it was starting to become one of the most popular songs in English music halls, which is where it was first adopted by the Upton Park faithful to welcome the team onto the pitch.
And today, we even get to share it with a Norwegian ice hockey team from Sarpsborg called the Sparta Warriors. Where it is rather catchily called ‘Bla Bobler’.
Or to put it another way… and the result is in from the Grand National of Anthems. And the winner is ‘Bubbles’ - ridden by the jockey in the claret and blue silks - which has romped home by an impressive 12 lengths! Altogether now...
