My big day out at a Cup Final

Is true happiness best left unknown?

An enduring memory from my first time seeing Newcastle United, my team, playing in a Wembley cup final will be the smell of farts. That’s what a Gregg’s based diet will do to a fanbase. Stereotypes can be harmful but they can often be based in an underlying truth and that truth was in evidence in the tube carriages, in the causeways and in the stands. The dominant scent emanating from a mass of Geordies having one of the biggest weekends of their lives, sustaining themselves on beer and pastries, is one of farts.

I wasn’t supposed to be going. For weeks I’d hoped that I might. The way I saw it there were 30,000 tickets allocated to Manchester United fans and 30,000 tickets allocated to Newcastle United fans. With Wembley’s capacity being roughly 90,000, that meant that there would be 30,000 more tickets just floating around in the ether, being passed between those with corporate contacts and illuminati membership. Now, I may not have the funds of the liberal metropolitan elite but, thanks to twenty years on the periphery of show business, I do have access to the liberal metropolitan elite. Let’s just say, not to put too finer point on it, I once urinated next to the Irish bloke from Liberty X.

I thought that there was a chance that a ticket might just show up. They show up for other events sometimes. In a story I never tire of telling, David Hasselhoff once invited me to sit next to him in the royal box at Wembley to watch an NFL game. Never mind that I only got the ticket because Brett Goldstein turned it down. If you’re wondering, David Hasselhoff doesn’t smell of farts, he smells of cologne, the finest cologne. 

As it happened, as is often the way, a ticket showed up just when I stopped trying. An old school friend texted on Saturday night to suggest that his brother might have one. It wasn’t my contacts from the upper echelons of the entertainment industry who got me in, it was my contacts from Notley High School. I should have known. My industry contacts can’t even get me a job.

The ticket wasn’t free. £250. £250 which I can little afford. My girlfriend said I had to take the opportunity. Permission granted! The high price wasn’t a mark up, but was thanks to the seat being in Club Wembley, the fancy corporate section. If you’re wondering what £250 gets you it’s a slightly nicer seat and a free programme. 

The day’s first few hours were nervy. First there was the wait to receive confirmation that I could definitely get a ticket. Then, upon learning that there was only one ticket available, there was the tricky abandonment of the friend I’d arranged to watch the match with in a pub - a serious betrayal. But the world is a tough place. You’re on the good side of the curtain or you’re not, you’re either in or you’re out and I was in so fuck him. I didn’t need friends anymore. I was one of the chosen ones. 

But would it actually materialise? I resolved not to believe it until I was inside the stadium. I’d arranged to meet my mate’s brother at Wembley, hours before kick off, but we didn’t account for the mass of people meaning that phone signal stopped working for a while. That was a very nervous half an hour. I anxiously ate a cherry bakewell and hoped for the best. Eventually, once EE briefly deigned to do their job, we managed to get in touch, he handed over the golden ticket and minutes later I was inside. Then came two and a half hours of reasonably successful small talk with a 35 year old man who I knew best when he was eight. 

Then the match. The match. What makes sport both great and miserable is that we don’t know what the final outcome will be. Despite us being underdogs there was the chance that the day would end in me seeing, for the first time in my life, a men’s football team that I support lift a (relatively) major trophy. How would I feel in such a moment? I’ve envisioned it many times. Will I automatically pass into a higher plane? Melt into a new form of true happiness, one only experienced by the fans of Wigan Athletic and the hundred other clubs who’ve won a domestic trophy since Newcastle last did in 1955? Or would it only be a temporary, moderate relief from the grim, one that’s gone within a couple of hours, leaving my head to hit the pillow that night with all the familiar anxieties of the days before? Either way, I wanted to find out.

Of course, I didn’t. We lost 2-0. Perhaps it’s best that way. Never meet your heroes, they say. For as long as Newcastle fans do not get to experience that first moment of victory it can remain in our future, in our hopes and dreams. It can be something to look forward to, an unknowable nirvana, all the better for its mystery. 

And so home I trundled, no trophy under my arm but a train station bought pasty in my hand. And here I sit, the morning after, in my own farts, wondering what might have been. Three cup finals for Newcastle in my lifetime, three 2-0 losses. If I’d have known, for sure, how it would end, would I have spent that £250? Yes? Maybe? It was good to be there, to be part of the story, even if it had a sad ending. I guess nice (murderous oil state owned) guys always come last.