First published 13 May 2016
It’s over 50 years since I lived in Leicester and only now have I found something to boast about. Alec Hogg sums it up well. “An even more astonishing longshot [than Donald Trump] arrived in the sporting world. At the beginning of the English soccer season bookmakers offered 5 000/1 on Leicester City winning the Premier league. For context, that compares with 2 000/1 for a bet Elvis Presley would be found alive and 500/1 on someone proving the Loch Ness monster exists. Leicester are about to be crowned champions.” Roll on Elvis and Nessie. If I had placed a bet equal to my weekly allowance at that time I could have won the best part of £1,000. I’m as much pleased for manager Claudio Ranieri, as for the team itself, after some of the comments following his appointment. Just a pity they play at King Power Stadium when the real guys played at Filbert Street. Of course they aren’t in the same league as Huddersfield Town, First Division champions three years running in 1923/24, 24/25 and 25/26. I just can’t understand why they can’t do this again, especially as the same guys seem to be playing still. Leicester’s only other claim to fame seems to be finding the bones of Richard III. Look, as far as I was concerned I accepted the fact that he had died but if the House of Windsor felt that their legitimacy was in question and needed some reassurance that there wasn’t some other guy lurking in the background then all well and good. Otherwise I’m not sure what finding his bones achieves unless my alma mater had a spare showcase with nothing to fill it now they’ve taken out my mixed hockey colours (my hockey was very mixed, I admit) unless of course conventional historical accounts are not correct. His bones are said to have been found under a council car park and not thrown into the Soar as earlier believed. My research indicates that this was in fact previously a council horse park and that he had traded his kingdom for a horse but it matched his kingdom at that point and could only make it from Bosworth to Leicester. Luckily he had the 5 guineas that, even as early as this, English councils were charging for parking, excluding feed. These extortionate charges led to emigration of brighter minds right up to the early 1970s.
Livewiresa Blog 