With matches on Boxing Day, what can Johnny Shinpad scoff on the big day, asks our festive gustation correspondent Phil Ascough.

With another packed programme of festive football matches, you can bet your last After Eight mint that the players of Hull City and every other professional club will be watching what they eat and drink. Is turkey on the menu? Probably. Christmas pud? Unlikely. A few shots of Baileys? Not a chance.

In truth it’s not only at Christmas that players have to stick to strict diets. The mum of one family with three generations of players, two of whom played in the Premier League, told us of pre-match hydration checks which will establish whether a player has been sticking to the rules. As a result the players themselves tend to be more disciplined than in the past, with severe consequences facing those found to have overdone things.

For her husband it was the norm to head out at 8am on Christmas Day for training and not to return until around 2pm, thereby missing peak present unwrapping time with the kids. If the club was preparing for an away match on Boxing Day he could expect to join his team mates for a Christmas night stay in a hotel, where the manager and coaches would oversee a strict regime of rest and nutrition. For a home game, players can generally enjoy Christmas dinner with the family, but with only modest portions, followed by pasta in the evening to get the carbs in their system for the match the next day.

But it wasn’t always like that, and anyone who has ever watched a Boxing Day football match will have had their suspicions that some of the players were carrying a bit too much weight from celebrating excessively. Peter Swan, who played for Hull City from 1989 until 1991, said managers would impose their own standards, and players would respond in their own way. Could he think of any players who became known as the bad boys of the dressing room? Always trying to beat the boss’s system? “Yes, me”, he replied. “I had four or five great years when I manage to get suspended just in time for Christmas.”

It started innocently enough. As a centre half Swanny would naturally accumulate bookings and would notice over the years that the totting up procedure could result in a Boxing Day ban. Towards the end of his career he admits he engineered it.

He said: “It’s known that I used to like being suspended at Christmas. At that time we didn’t have sports scientists – and it’s a good job!”

Swanny’s contract with City under manager Stan Ternent included a clause that allowed a fine to be imposed if the player was suspended on Boxing Day. But Swanny adds he had great respect for Ternent, who would discuss the approach to Christmas fixtures with the players in advance in an attempt to accommodate their needs. Some wanted to celebrate, some wanted time with families, the club wanted them in good shape for the matches to come. He admits there was a drinking culture in all his teams but he always respected the players who didn’t drink. As a media pundit now he sees the tighter controls as a factor in the dearth of characters and leaders in the game. He said: “Some of the players don’t even speak to each other”.

Joining Doncaster Rovers on away trips in the late 1970s, I’d see the players sitting down for steak or scrambled eggs as their pre-match meal. Almost every player profile in a football magazine or match programme would reveal their favourite food to be steak. Much more recently Alan Shearer hit the headlines for his adherence to a diet of chicken and beans. Jelly babies and Jaffa Cakes used to be popular as a source of energy.

Tom Wilson, a centre half with City from 1967 until 1971, told how he didn’t get any such delights in his playing days. City actually played on Christmas Day and Boxing Day in 1905, 1947 and 1957. They were luckier In 1965 when a match against Millwall on 27^th December gave them more time to prepare. Tom was with Millwall at the time and told how their plans for a pre-match meal went off the rails at Doncaster.

He said: “We travelled up by train on the morning of the match and the plan was to eat on the way. But there was no restaurant car on the train. We had to change at Doncaster to get the train to Hull but the café was closed so there was a rush for the food machines. Between us we had four packets of crisps and a couple of bottles of orange.”

City won 1-0 with a score which Tom says was an own goal but was claimed by Waggy. After the match both teams caught the same train back to London for the return fixture the next day. Tom said: “We won that one 3-1. I’m pretty sure City had a decent pre-match meal and were still full!”

Phil Ascough

Producer of Hull Truck’s current hit panto Oliver Twist Luke Dankoff guides us through his picks of the best stuff currently out there.

Former Hull and Hessle MP (and Secretary of State, let’s not forget) turned author Alan Johnson selects a proper owld building.

Sports writer Tony Collins heads to some waste ground on Anlaby Road to link goodies and a very good player.

Our festive parturition correspondent Angus Young marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of Hull’s favourite sons. At least, until his mic breaks…

We all know about the little chap from Bethlehem but when it comes to Christmas Day births, there’s really only one worthy of our attention here at Curiosity Towers. Of course, we’re talking about the one and only Norman Collier. The late king of comedy was born in Hull on December 25, 1925 so what better way to  celebrate what would have been his 100th birthday than a look back on the great man’s life?

Norman was the eldest of eight children, brought up in a classic two-up two-down terraced house with no hot water. He later attributed his sense of humour to being the eldest kid in the house. “It fell to me to go on errands and I even had to wash the kids. I used to heat up the water, stand the children on the table, wash them one at a time and put them to bed. We were like rats in a box.”

After serving as a Royal Navy gunner during the Second World War, he worked as a labourer and married his wife Lucy in 1948. Thanks to post-war rationing, he would later recall the highlight of their wedding reception was a bit of boiled ham. In the same year his life would change forever. On a night out with friends at the Perth Street Social Club, he volunteered to go up on stage for the first time after the booked comedy act failed to turn up. “It was as if I’d been doing it all my life,” he said later.

Despite his natural talent, it wasn’t until 1962 that he decided to quit his day job and become a full-time comedian. Within a few years, he was touring with the likes of Cliff Richard, Tom Jones and The Everly Brothers after being spotted by entertainment impresario Lew Grade. His debut appearance at the 1971 Royal Variety Show made him a national name and some of his routines – including the broken microphone and his strutting chicken – became legendary.

Often dubbed ‘the comedian’s comedian’, Norman never used bad language or poked fun at an audience member. Instead, his act was a simple mix of funny stories and clever, physical comedy. He was also a talented ventriloquist, becoming a regular on the Saturday morning children’’s TV show Tiswas. Former Tiswas gag writer David Mc Keller recalled this largely forgotten part of Norman’s act. “I remember he took me into a restaurant one night in Birmingham on the Friday night before the show and he came in with a ten-foot ventriloquist’s dummy. He put it on the chair next to me and the waiter came along and gave us three menus. The dummy ordered a whole meal then Norman got hold of a popadom, held it under the table and there was a Woof! Woof!  Sound. They threw him out because they didn’t allow dogs in the restaurant but he had no dog. He left me sitting there with a ten-foot dummy.”

The pair also visited Gibraltar on holiday, taking a trip to see the Rock’s famous Barbary apes. “Norman goes over and feeds them so their lips start moving and he starts talking to them and venting them talking to him. We were there for an hour and a half. There was this couple from Alabama and they left thinking the apes actually talked. Norman stayed there until they were convinced. They would have been telling everyone back in Alabama about the talking apes in Gibraltar.”

Norman toured all over the world but always returned to his family home in Welton, having steadfastly refused to move away from the Hull area during his career. He would rate his appearance in the 1986 Hull New Theatre pantomime with long-time friends Little and Large as one of his favourites because it meant he could go home after the show.

Off stage, he helped raise huge sums for charity as a leading member of the entertainers’ charity The  Grand Order of Water Rats and the Variety Club of Britain. Norman died in 2013 having suffered from Parkinson’s Disease for many years. His autobiography, modestly titled Just A Job, had been published four years earlier. Incredibly, despite his long and successful career and his charity work, he was never awarded any kind of national honour during his life.

Even in his home city, the only visible commemoration of him is a portrait in Ed Ulyart’s mural of well-known Hull figures on a gable end wall in Clumber Street. Perhaps it’s time for a campaign to get a statue made to mark Hull’s finest comedian. Where should it go? How about the spot in Perth Street where it all began. The old social club was demolished a while back to make way for a new housing development which abruptly came to an undignified halt a few years ago. The half-built site is currently up for sale. Would a new owner consider a fitting tribute to our Norman standing outside? I hope so.

Angus Young

They may be very useful in the car or when you’re gardening, but does the spoken word count as one of your five-a-day? Caitlin and Ally-mai swap opinions.

Dan, from D.A.N. at Artlink, picks some of his favourite things, all of which Seem to be food. Good lad!

The remarkable story of diarist Winifred Essen and her exceptional and essential note-taking is relayed by our siren chronicling correspondent Angus Young.

Sometime on 4th September 1939 Winifred Essen picked up a pencil and carefully detailed the events of the night before on the first page of a small notebook. “Warning: 2.40am. All clear: 3.30am. Sirens: 1. Date: Sep 4th. Description: First night of the war. Length: 50 min.”

Thanks to the 25-year-old grocery shop assistant’s diligent record-keeping we now know just how many times air raid sirens were activated in Hull during the Second World War, giving a new and sometimes terrifying insight into what life must have been like in the city at the time. For Winifred continued making hand-written notes about each warning siren for the duration of the war, recording the length of each episode to the exact minute. She also added brief details about certain air raids including the numbers of people known to have been killed or injured, some of the types of bombs involved, the places and buildings damaged and even the weather at the time as well as snippets of national and international  news about the war.  

Overall, she counted sirens being sounded in Hull on no fewer than 823 occasions during the war. The shortest siren lasted just eight minutes. The longest on 18th March 1941 continued for eight hours and 50 minutes. On some days, there were multiple siren bursts. On 7th March 1941, the first siren sounded at 11.41am and was followed by three more ending at 5.46pm.

Not every warning siren was followed by bombs being dropped on Hull or the surrounding area. In her notes, Winifred records some sirens going off as Luftwaffe bombers flew high over Hull thought to be heading for targets such as Sheffield and Liverpool. On some nights, she simply states: “Nothing to report”

However, other descriptions capture the sheer terror of warfare arriving on Hull’s doorstep. “Warning: 11.30pm. All clear: 4.25am. Siren: 1.Date Aug 24th. Hull’s biggest raid to date. Dropped high explosive and screaming bombs. Heavy gunfire. A lot of planes over. Dropped flaming onions and tracer bullets. One of our planes hit and caught fire, pilot jumped in parachute. 8 killed, 62 injured. 2 shelters hit. 3 children of one family killed.

It’s thought she filled two notebooks (only one survives) before transferring her records at a later date into a single handwritten chronology which she kept until her death in 1996. Having never married and with no immediate family, she left no will. As a result, it’s believed that her belongings – including her chronology and notebook – were eventually sent for auction.

After being bought by an antique dealer as a job lot, they remained untouched in a box of items until 2023 when the Nottingham-based dealer returned to Hull and offered them to bookbinder Stephen Ingram, who is based at the Carnegie Heritage Centre in Anlaby Road. Once the sale was agreed, the chronology was found but without featuring the author’s name. However, the items also included Winifred’s National Identity Card so volunteers at the Carnegie began piecing together both her story and the remarkable document she had created during the war.

Their combined efforts, which ranged from tracing Winifred’s surviving family to identifying some of the words and abbreviations she used in her handwritten notes, have helped turn the forgotten chronology into a new book – Hull, World War Two’s Forgotten City, published by the Carnegie Heritage Centre. The book also attempts to answer the question of why a young grocery shop assistant living above the family shop in Clough Road embarked on such a personal and detailed diary of the air raids.

Editor Christine Pinder, who also researched Winifred’s life, discovered she enrolled as a fire guard in 1943 and may well have carried out an undocumented voluntary role in air raid operational work before then. As such, she would have been privy to much detail about the bombing raids on Hull and the timings of when the warning sirens were turned on and off. Christine said: “The level of detail in Winifred’s chronology is considerable and how she accumulated this has been the subject of much discussion among the Carnegie volunteers and others who have seen it. We will probably never know  for certain.”

Angus Young

Actress Jessica Jolleys – currently starring in Oliver Twist at Hull Truck – selects some of her current favourite culture highlights.

Design journalist Leanne Cloudsdale tells us of her fondness for one of the best-known artworks in the city.