Grounds for discussion

Oliver Holt, chief sportswriter for the Daily Mail and a self-confessed ‘stadium nerd’, has just completed his personal odyssey to every current Premier and Football League ground.

The final one was Harrogate Town, making it 92 in total, but it may not be the end of Holt’s journey because promotion from the National League, the fifth tier of English football, sometimes introduces new grounds to the Football League.

Alternatively clubs move to a new stadium. At the end of this season, for example, Everton will move from Goodison Park, their home since 1892, to a new stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock in Liverpool.

Holt’s job has presumably made the task a little easier but it’s still an impressive achievement, prompting similar stories from other football fans.

One person, for example, wrote that he too has visited every Premier and Football League ground and is doing it all again, this time under floodlights.

Compared to that the list of football stadia I've visited is pretty feeble, but I’m going to list them anyway. (If you're not interested look away now.)

In England I’ve been to 15 Premier and Football League grounds, although three no longer exist:

Chelsea (Stamford Bridge)
Derby (Baseball Ground and Pride Park)
Aston Villa (Villa Park)
Liverpool (Anfield)
Manchester United (Old Trafford)
Tottenham (White Hart Lane)
Crystal Palace (Selhurst Park)
Ipswich (Portman Road)
Southampton (St Mary’s Stadium)
Watford (Vicarage Road)
MK Dons (Stadium MK)
Leyton Orient (Brisbane Road)
Cambridge United (Abbey Stadium)
Chesterfield (Recreation Ground)

As I've mentioned several times, I was a regular at Stamford Bridge in the early Eighties, and a frequent visitor to the Baseball Ground for most of that decade after my parents moved to Derbyshire.

The Baseball Ground is one of the three grounds that no longer exist, the others being White Hart Lane (Tottenham) and the Recreation Ground (Chesterfield).

My experience of White Hart Lane wasn’t great. I went with a friend who was a Spurs supporter and one of the first female football writers.

We stood on a packed terrace behind one goal and had to dodge a hail of bricks that were lobbed in our direction by Arsenal fans in an adjoining enclosure.

The Recreation Ground in Chesterfield was the first football stadium I took my son to, but it wasn't my first choice.

He must have been six or seven and we were staying with my parents in Derbyshire so my intention was to take him to Pride Park, the new stadium Derby moved to in 1995. However, Derby weren’t playing at home that weekend so we went to Chesterfield instead.

Since then we’ve gone to quite a few matches together, in England and Scotland.

My daughter, on the other hand, was 20 when I took her to her first (and only) men’s match. On that occasion we travelled to Motherwell to see Dundee United play St Mirren in the final of the little known Scottish Challenge Cup.

To date I have visited 18 of the current 42 league grounds in Scotland, to which you can add St Mirren’s Love Street which no longer exists. The full list is:

Dundee United (Tannadice)
Dundee (Dens Park)
Aberdeen (Pittodrie)
Celtic (Parkhead)
Rangers (Ibrox)
Hearts (Tynecastle)
Hibernian (Easter Road)
St Johnstone (McDiarmid Park)
Motherwell (Fir Park)
St Mirren (Love Street)
Raith Rovers (Starks Park)
Inverness Caledonian Thistle (Caledonian Stadium)
Arbroath (Gayfield Park)
Hamilton (New Douglas Park)
Partick Thistle (Firhill)
Stranraer (Stair Park)
Greenock Morton (Cappielow Park)
Dunfermline Athletic (East End Park)

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been to Tannadice (it’s well into three figures) but my favourite Scottish stadium has to be Tynecastle in Edinburgh where the steep stands are close to the pitch, creating a brilliant atmosphere.

Inverness, in the Highlands, and Stranraer, in the south west corner of the country, are the furthest I’ve gone for a match.

The trip to Inverness – aboard the overnight sleeper from London’s Euston Station – is something I'll never forget, especially the view of the snow-capped mountains as dawn broke over the Cairngorms.

Pittodrie (Aberdeen) and Gayfield Park (Arbroath) are among the coldest grounds I’ve experienced, largely because they sit right next to the North Sea. Starks Park (home of Raith Rovers in Kirkcaldy) isn’t much better.

In England I loved the Baseball Ground, and for the same reasons I like Villa Park too. It's an old fashioned football ground with enormous character, a sense of history, and a fantastic atmosphere when full.

In my experience, having sat among them, Villa fans are fatalistic but funny, which in my book is a winning combination.

Anfield, oddly enough, didn't do it for me, despite its reputation. Then again, I watched a drab 0-0 draw between Liverpool and Coventry City, so I obviously picked the wrong match.

I’ve visited one non-league ground (Maidenhead United) but that was in 1968. York Road has been home to the club since 1871 and is said to be the ‘oldest continuously-used senior association football ground in the world by the same club’.

I might revisit it, if only out of curiosity, because I’ve read that it’s hardly changed in the 57 years since I was there.

I’ve also been to Blackpool FC but that wasn’t for a football match. I was a guest at a dinner hosted by the Clubs and Institutes Union who were holding their AGM in Blackpool and the function room overlooked the pitch.

What else? Oh yes, I’ve been to Wembley, old and new. The first time I went to the old Wembley was in 1982 when England beat Hungary 1-0.

The ‘new’ Wembley, which is almost 20 years old, leaves me a bit cold because it’s rather characterless, like so many 21st century stadiums in the UK with their coloured plastic seating and tacky seat typography (yes, that’s what it’s called).

To be fair, the sight lines and facilities are far superior to the old stadium, but I loved the ‘twin towers’ and the long walk the players had to take from the dressing rooms behind one goal.

They were unique to Wembley and apart from the arch (which you don't really notice when you're inside the stadium), I don't think there's anything unique about the 'new' stadium at all.

Compared to some modern stadiums in other countries it's a bit disappointing. But at least it's not Hampden Park which should have been demolished, like the old Wembley, and replaced with a new stadium years ago.

I've been to Scotland's national stadium eight or nine times but never to watch Scotland. Each time it’s been to support Dundee United in various cup finals so apart from 1994 and 2010 it's rarely been a happy experience.

The other national stadiums I’ve been to have all been rugby grounds - Twickenham (England), Principality (Wales), Murrayfield (Scotland), and Aviva (Ireland).

Murrayfield (in Edinburgh) was the first rugby stadium I went to. It was in the late Seventies, I think, and I remember climbing up a steep bank of stairs in order to stand on an enormous concrete terrace. (In those days, apart from the main stand, most of the ground was uncovered, if I remember.)

Steep terraces with crush barriers were not unusual in those days, even after the Ibrox Stadium disaster on January 2, 1971, when 66 people died when they fell and were crushed on a stairway towards the end of an Old Firm derby.

When I began watching Dundee United in 1969 the terracing at Tannadice was pretty steep too, albeit on a smaller scale, but I loved it because the view was brilliant. (In those days opposing fans weren’t segregated either and often swapped ends at half-time.)

On reflection though it probably wasn’t the safest place when there was a capacity crowd. The problem was, if someone was inadvertently pushed from behind where there was no barrier to stop them pitching forward, it could lead to a domino effect, with gravity doing the rest.

We didn’t think about it at the time, but when everyone around you was jumping up and down, celebrating a goal, you had to keep your wits about you and stay on your feet.

Cricket wise, I’ve been to pitifully few grounds – Lords, The Oval, and Trent Bridge in Nottingham come to mind – and I once watched a John Player Sunday League match in Canterbury.

I know it was a long time ago because apart from the competition sponsor (a tobacco company) the matches were 40 overs a side, a format of the game that is no longer played in professional cricket.

If you’ve come this far and would like to nominate your favourite (or least favourite) sporting ground, please do.

I should add that I have never been to a football match abroad, but if Chelsea Women upset the odds, beat Barcelona in the semi-final of the Women’s Champions League, and reach the final at Estádio José Alvalade in Lisbon next month, I might be tempted.

Above: Caledonian Stadium, Inverness (March 2014)
Below: Tannadice Park, Dundee (December 2019)

Working lunch

I had lunch this week with an old friend and colleague.

It’s 20 years since I first met Jacqui. She was working as a consultant to a PR firm called Kaizo that was recruited to work on Forest’s campaign against the workplace smoking ban.

It was my first direct experience of working with a public relations company since I was in PR myself in the early Eighties.

Back then I was a lowly account executive and I found dealing with some clients quite frustrating, so I was determined not to be THAT client when working with Kaizo.

In particular, if you hire someone for their creativity and expertise, don't fight or continually dilute their ideas because the end result will probably please no-one.

If they get it wrong the chances are you didn't brief them properly and they misunderstood what you wanted.

On the other hand, I once had to work with a graphic designer who was so hostile to any feedback I found it quite stressful, if not intimidating. Then again, I was 22 and it was my first job.

By coincidence Kaizo's office in Margaret Street near Oxford Circus was very close to the office Forest moved to when we left Audley House in Palace Street in Westminster in February 2005.

A small team, including Jacqui, was assigned to the Forest campaign (Fight the Ban: Fight for Choice) and we had great fun generating ideas with Kaizo’s creative team and executing them.

Subsequently employed directly by Forest as a consultant, Jacqui has worked on numerous events and campaigns, and to quote the late Cilla Black we’ve had a lorra lorra laughs.

For the best part of a decade she lived in Pembrokeshire in Wales, but a few years ago she moved to Herne Bay in Kent where she opened an independent bookshop.

The Little Green Bookshop is now in its third year and doing well, despite the difficult financial climate and opposition from the likes of Amazon and big high street chains like Waterstones.

Among the things we discussed this week was a forthcoming Forest lunch at Boisdale of Belgravia which is part of our 'Freedom Up In Smoke' campaign. Watch this space.

Big Benn

Had he not died, aged 88, in 2014 Tony Benn would have been 100 yesterday.

The centenary of his birth has prompted a number of articles and on his Facebook page singer songwriter Billy Bragg has taken a pop at Elon Musk by listing the “five questions to ask the powerful” that were once asked by the former Viscount Stansgate, a title Benn renounced in order to become an MP in 1963.

The Spectator, meanwhile, has published a review of a new collection of Benn’s speeches and articles (The Most Dangerous Man in Britain? The Political Writing), giving it the apt headline, Tony Benn, bogeyman to some, beacon of hope and light to many.

I say apt because I remember all too clearly when Benn was considered a bogeyman and a serious threat to the country.

Thankfully he finished a poor fourth (out of six) when standing for leader of the Labour Party following the resignation of Harold Wilson in 1976, and his ministerial career, which began as Postmaster General, concluded as Secretary of State for Energy under Jim Callaghan.

Thereafter, with Labour in opposition for 18 years (1979 to 1997), and fellow socialist Michael Foot destroyed at the ballot box in 1983, any threat Benn may have posed was a distant memory.

Instead he became, to some, a national treasure, while others (including me) viewed him as something of an irrelevance.

Nevertheless, in the summer of 2002 I interviewed him for The Politico, a short-lived magazine I founded with Iain Dale who was the owner and MD of Politico's Bookshop in Westminster.

We met in Edinburgh where he was appearing at the Festival Theatre, and to mark the centenary of his birth I am reposting it here.

BIG BENN

‘Hello, Edinburgh!’

If those weren’t the exact words Tony Benn used to greet the 1800 people who filled the city’s Festival Theatre to hear the 77-year-old Labour legend, they should have been. The presentation might be slightly different but to these ears 'An Audience With Tony Benn' is more pop than politics. Indeed, for all his protests that this is a ‘public meeting’, I can’t imagine that political debate has ever been this cosy.

Reviewers have complimented him on being a ‘natural entertainer’. ‘Old stager Benn brings the house down’ gushed the Daily Telegraph in January. In July the Guardian likened him to Ronnie Corbett (complete with armchair) and the comparison is spot on. Except that Benn, the former big bad wolf of British politics, gets more laughs.

Insistent that his nationwide tour is not a ‘show’, Tony Benn politely declined to be interviewed backstage in his dressing room. Instead, we met the following morning at his hotel where we made ourselves comfortable while he kindly ordered tea and biscuits.

‘I always intended they would be public meetings,’ he begins, ‘[but] the media won’t report public meetings. They are a big no-no. But if they are called a roadshow they do.’

He seems slightly bemused by the media attention. Reviews, interviews, profiles, 'An Audience With Tony Benn' was even broadcast on BBC4 and may transfer to BBC1. ‘It seems quite astonishing because I have addressed far bigger audiences this year at peace demonstrations on Iraq, on Palestine, on privatisation, but none of them are reported. You get these huge meetings going on all over the place and not a word appears.’

The current tour, he says, is an attempt to bring back the public meeting. ‘We’re bringing politics back to where it belongs. I really feel that.’

He explains the humour by arguing that laugher is important as long as it doesn’t get in the way of the message. ‘You don’t want to be a po-faced academic. You want to make it come alive. The point is that in modern politics they try to control what you say, what you think and what you do all the time. If you can make that funny it is more effective than just looking at it in a grim way.’

As public meetings go these aren’t cheap. In Edinburgh it could have cost a family of four £60, which is no doubt why the overwhelming majority of the audience were middle-aged and middle class. Who would Benn have paid to hear? ‘Mr Gladstone, obviously. Lloyd George I met and some of his stuff was really powerful. Churchill was very interesting. I used to sit in the House and listen.’

You don’t have to agree with Benn’s politics to acknowledge his extraordinary charm and his insatiable appetite for work. As well as the tour, he is about to promote Free At Last, the latest volume in his seemingly endless series of published diaries.

He began writing a journal during the Second World War. ‘It was illegal to keep a diary during the war just in case you were captured by the Germans. So I had to put key words in code. It was very simple Morse code which I learned as a boy scout. I had to decode it in order to publish it.’ He then dictated his diary to a secretary until he first got in the Cabinet. ‘I had this funny idea that Cabinet was secret and I couldn’t dictate to a woman who hadn’t taken the Official Secrets Act.’

The publication of Free At Last means there are now 61 years of published diaries from 1940 to 2001. The discipline involved is truly mind-boggling. I feel exhausted just thinking about it. ‘If there was an interesting Cabinet I’d miss my lunch and dictate it while my memory was fresh.’ But in general, says Benn, he writes it ‘before I go to bed or sometimes in the middle of the day if I’ve got ten minutes to spare.’

Some entries are quite short; others can stretch to 10,000 words. ‘If you’re very, very tired at night you yearn to go to bed but you can’t. I once went from London to Tokyo on a ministerial trip and I was so tired when I got to Tokyo I turned on the tape recorder and went to sleep while I dictated my diary and my diary records that moment.’

It isn’t only the diary that has to be maintained. ‘I have three or four parallel files. I have this thing called my diary notes – all the minutes of meetings that I attend and any key letters that supplement or illustrate what’s in the diary. It’s all terribly time consuming. In fact it takes much longer to keep the papers and sort them than it does to dictate the diary.’

What motivates him to maintain this extraordinary document? There is a responsibility, he says, to account for your life when you die. ‘I think when the Almighty says, “What did you do with your life?”, if you can give him 15 million words on a CD-ROM that at least answers the question.’

The diaries also act as his working papers. ‘I use them all the time. If you do it meticulously every day, which I do, it’s a very, very valuable working document. That’s really why I keep it. I think, probably, it is the most useful thing I have done in my life. You have made available in detail to anyone who wants to look at it later what the political developments were over a period of 60 years. I’m sounding a bit conceited, but I think having recorded all that was really useful.’

He admits that his temper occasionally gets the better of him and his colleagues get the sharper side of his tongue. ‘You have to let it out, so it goes in the diary.’ The uncut diary, he tells me, is five times as long as the published diary and has ‘no limitations’. One day, he says, it will be placed in the public domain but ‘I’ll be dead and gone before that happens.’

Accuracy and integrity, he says, are vital ingredients. A diary must also be honest ‘in the sense that you mustn’t suppress the mistakes you have made. It is not a memoir where you invent triumphs and forget failures. A diary is a confession. You can’t include everything so have to choose things that obviously stand out as having been fundamentally important and things that are still relevant.’

Other people’s diaries don’t really interest him (‘I write diaries, I don’t read them’). Today he rarely reads books at all. ‘I suppose I should read more than I do but I find it quite difficult to read now. I just find I doze off and I don’t pick up ideas as quickly from the printed page as I do from when I listen and watch somebody.

‘I get my information much more orally than by reading. I suppose I should be ashamed of it but I find you can pick up something much more quickly listening to somebody than by reading it.’

I read somewhere that Benn is obsessed by the concept of time. He tells me that to write that something is a complete waste of time ‘is probably the greatest insult I can fashion.’

‘My father,’ he explains, ‘read a book by Lionel Bennett, How To Make 24 Hours Out Of Every Day. I got a copy of it for the first time about six months ago. I’d never seen it before. Bennett’s very Victorian idea was that everyone is equal in one respect: nobody’s got more than 24 hours a day and nobody’s got less, however rich or poor you are.’

‘My father had, when I was young, a time chart where he listed the number of hours’ work he did and the number of hours’ sleep he and and in theory work and sleep would equal 24.’

At his father’s request Benn also kept a time chart for a period. ‘I’ve still got it – work and sleep and I forget what other category I had. But that’s a Victorian idea. So although we are now in a new century I think a lot of my ideas and principles are rooted back in that society.’

More people should listen to Tony Benn. He makes politics – and life – sound interesting and insists there are a lot of good politicians at work today. ‘It’s very easy for old men to say “It isn’t as it was in the old days.” But then people used to say there was nobody like Gladstone and Lloyd George. There are some brilliant people in parliament now. Richard Shepherd [Conservative MP from 1979 to 2015] is a very able guy; Alan Simpson [Labour MP from 1992 to 2010] is brilliant on environmental and other matters. But they are dismissed at the moment.

‘I am really quite emotional about the political process. Somebody said to me last night, “Oh, it must have been an easy life being an MP” and I thought, “My God, if you knew.” I got 25,000 letters for the last year I was in Parliament and I read them all and answered them all. I did hundreds of meetings. I was in the House till eleven or twelve at night. Five-thirty every Friday morning I went to Chesterfield where I did an eight hour surgery.

‘The physical strain of being a conscientious member of parliament is absolutely phenomenal. This idea that being an MP or a minister is a cushy job is a complete illusion. It’s terribly hard work. I couldn’t do it now.’

Instead Tony Benn is taking politics back to the people. The gist of his argument is that politicians rarely get to say anything on television or radio without being interrupted by the likes of Paxman, Humphrys or Snow. Hence his forthcoming debate with hard-hitting Tory David Davis. With Ashdown, Widdecombe and (allegedly) Heseltine waiting in the wings to follow his example with ‘meetings’ of their own, it seems this is one crusade that Benn might actually win. Fasten your seatbelts now.

Following a stroke in 2012, Tony Benn died on March 14, 2014. He was 88. On March 5, 2019, it was announced that a large political archive of Benn's speeches, diaries, letters, pamphlets, recordings and ephemera had been accepted in lieu of £210,000 inheritance tax and allocated to the British Library. The audio recordings are said to total thousands of hours of content.

Skye news

Today is our 33rd wedding anniversary.

It's not a big one like our 25th or 30th, both of which we marked by going on a cruise with friends who got married the same year, but – as my mother has been saying for several years – "It's an achievement".

I won't bore you with another account of our wedding day, which I wrote about here, other than we began the day in Eaglesham, just south of Glasgow, and ended up on the Isle of Skye following a five hour drive.

As it happens we are returning to Skye quite soon and it will be the first time we've been back since that miraculously sunny day in 1992.

I'm really looking forward to it and if we're as lucky with the weather as we were then I'll be very happy.

Watch this space.

Below: Yours truly on the Isle of Skye on our first visit to the island in May 1990. Two years later we stayed at the same hotel following our wedding in Eaglesham on April 3, 1992. That yellow car was not mine, by the way. Mine was bright red.

Vapers suck - literally

The image above was posted on social media by a pro-vaping campaigner.

I won't mention their name because I don't want this to be a personal attack on someone I think is well-intentioned, but it begs the question, if 'smoking sucks' what does it say about the millions of people who enjoy smoking and don't want to quit?

At the very least it reveals a belligerent intolerance of someone’s else habit. That would be bad enough coming from a never smoker, but the person concerned is a former smoker. Naturally.

I'm going to control my language, but I genuinely don’t understand why ex-smokers feel the need to disparage and denigrate their old habit, impervious to the potential impact their comments may have on those who continue to smoke.

‘Smoking sucks’ is the sort of childish taunt you might hear in the playground and is arguably, in modern parlance, a form of bullying.

Why should current smokers have to put up with it, especially from former smokers?

If you have chosen to stop smoking and have found an alternative nicotine product that reduces the risk to your health and makes you happy, good luck to you.

But stop trying to make those who enjoy smoking (and don't want to quit) feel bad about something you previously engaged in, and probably once enjoyed.

Oh, and before anyone else claims that ‘smoking sucks’, there’s something they ought to know. Vapers suck too. Literally.

PS. Since we’re on the subject of smoking and vaping, this article - published yesterday on the BBC Science Focus website - is worth reading:

Is smoking or vaping worse for you? It depends who’s asking

No stopping the stop smoking brigade

It will surprise no-one that the Tobacco and Vapes Bill is not the end of the war on tobacco.

Not content with banning the sale of tobacco to all future generations of adults, tobacco control campaigners also want to ban cigarette filters (effectively outlawing most cigarettes) and impose a “polluter pays” levy on the tobacco industry.

The latter idea has been around for a decade at least and it's important to anti-smoking campaigners because the aim is to use the money to fund their activities for decades to come.

Anything else? Oh yes, they also want to ban cigar lounges, the type that can be found in cigar shops and are used exclusively by cigar smokers wanting to sample the product before buying.

All these demands were reported today following the publication of a ‘major new report by the influential cross-party All Party Parliamentary Group on Smoking and Health’.

Led by Conservative MP Bob Blackman, the APPG has called for ‘all political parties to back a bold, fully funded strategy to make smoking obsolete within 20 years’. 

So, what next, a ban on smoking terraces such as the one at Boisdale of Belgravia where Forest hosts our annual lunch?

And what about smoking in the home? Last week Professor Sean Semple of the University of Stirling called for legislation to stop people from smoking in houses with children.

Truly, the tobacco control industry won’t stop until there is not a single smoker in Britain.

Anyway, you can read my response to the APPG’s report here.

Bristol was predicted to be smoker free by 2024 - how’s that going?

Kick the habit, change your life: take the first steps of your smoke-free journey with friendly guidance and professional support from Bristol City Council.

Whenever I read articles like this advertising feature I am reminded that Bristol was supposed to be smoker free by 2024.

In 2018 research commissioned by (who else?) Philip Morris predicted that Bristol would be the first English city to achieve this distinction. According to one report:

Bristol is likely to be the first city to kick the habit entirely, with data suggesting the West Country hub will not have a single smoker by 2024.

Six local authorities were predicted to follow Bristol including Wokingham and York (2026), East Riding (2027), and Portsmouth (2028).

In contrast London was not expected to be smoker free until 2042, with the likes of Derby and North Lincolnshire lagging even further behind (beyond 2050).

At the time of the smoke free city research Philip Morris had opened 16 stores in Britain dedicated to selling its iQOS heated tobacco device.

Two of them were in Bristol, home of Imperial Tobacco, and the following year (2019) it was reported that Philip Morris was considering opening ‘hundreds’ of iQOS outlets across the country.

Instead, in 2021, most of the 16 iQOS stores in London, Manchester and Bristol were shut down.

Since then, far from eradicating smoking, it has been documented that ‘14.8% of Bristol adults smoked in 2022, higher than the national average of 12.7%’.

Last year, as a riposte to the prediction of a smoker free Bristol by 2024, I was tempted to commission a glossy publication featuring photos and interviews with some of the city’s many smokers.

I didn’t but it’s something we might consider for 2030, the random year chosen by Theresa May when she targeted a ‘smoke free’ England in one of her final acts as prime minister in 2019.

Put it this way, while the Labour Government may be on track to introduce a generational tobacco sales ban from 2027, few people genuinely believe a single English city will be smoker free by 2030.

As for the suggestion, by Jacek Olczak, PMI’s chief executive, in 2021 that the company could stop selling cigarettes in the UK within ten years, that also appears to have been a case of wishful thinking.

Either that or it was a PR stunt because I don’t recall it ever being mentioned again. I wonder why.

See also: PMI’s 2030 vision

Origin tale of cigarette ash and trouser cuffs

Last week I was interviewed on Newstalk radio in Ireland.

The subject was cigarette litter and it followed this report in the Irish Times - Tobacco companies give €250,000 in first street-cleaning payment.

I began by saying that smokers should take more responsibility for their cigarette butts but councils should also do more to provide cigarette bins.

I suggested that smokers should try and carry a pocket ashtray, explaining that they vary from small plastic wallets to large leather pouches.

A friend was listening and sent me a message:

My dad once told me that the turn ups in trousers were used for cigarette ash back in the day.

His father was renowned for obsessively telling jokes so I assumed this was a joke too until my friend sent me a link to an American tailor’s website that features a list of ‘mythical tales’ concerning the origin of trouser cuffs.

They include:

• Cuffs started with men rolling up their trousers to avoid getting mud splashed on them when roads were still unpaved.
• Parents used cuffs to extend the life of children’s clothes by buying pants that were too long, cuffing the legs and then unrolling them as the child grew taller.
• Cuffs were invented by fashion designers to add weight to the bottom of the trouser, improving the overall drape and line of the pant on models strutting down the catwalk.

But in the context of cigarette litter, the origin tale that appealed to me most read:

• Men used trouser cuffs to catch the ashes from their cigarettes, before there were proper ashtrays in places like trains and public waiting rooms.

It can’t be true, can it?

See: Cigarettes buts are most common litter item - should smokers pay for the clean-up? (Newstalk).

Includes a quote from me and a link to the full eleven-minute interview.