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Fast forward to this morning when I heard Liverpool FC chief executive Rick Parry whinging on the radio, and the answer hit me. In my dreamworld I must have played for Manchester United.
Of course there is another possibility, that I was a Labour party donor, but not in my wildest, cheese-induced nightmares would I be one of those, so Man United it must have been.
Rick Parry, whose credentials as a Liverpool fan don't extend to his accent so he wears a terrible perm instead, makes a good point.
Man United won the European Champions Cup once under Alex Ferguson and he was knighted. They won it once under Matt Busby and he was knighted. So was their captain, Bobby Charlton.
Liverpool won it three times under Bob Paisley, but Bob wasn't knighted. They won it again under Joe Fagan, but Joe wasn't knighted either. Nor were any of the Liverpool players, even though many of them played in three or four of those victories.
What Rick was getting at was that Liverpool have just won the damn thing for a fifth time, but got no recognition whatsoever. Perhaps Stephen Gerrard, the captain who carried the team to victory, is "too young" for a knighthood, but a simple MBE would have been a start. Blimey, even Paul Collingwood got one of those for scoring seventeen runs in the Ashes series. Perhaps Rafa Benitez, the manager, is too foreign to get a gong, but that didn't stop Berhard Langer from getting an honorary one.
This latest snub seems perversely inequitable, doesn't it. But the answer is obvious, although it didn't hit me until this morning, and I could kick myself for being so naive and not realising it before. It is because Labour can already count on scouse votes.
Manchester United have a massive middle-England fan base, particularly in the marginals. Cricket is primarily a middle-England sport, as is golf. But you could pin a red rosette on a turd and scousers would vote for it. Labour take them for granted, and the Tories treat them as a hopeless case.
So, all you scousers out there. If you are sick of watching your deadly enemies receive honours that you should have got, vote for someone else at the next election!
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wendigo
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