Football Diary: Only one Gary Flip Flop

GARY FLITCROFT got quite a welcome when he came on for Manchester City at Bristol Rovers on Wednesday. The Twerton Park announcer struggled with the teenage midfielder's name, after six attempts coming up with what sounded like 'Gary Flip Flap'. Rovers fans took up the challenge, chorusing 'One Gary Flip Flop, there's only one Gary Flip Flop'.

GARY LINEKER tells the tale of an evening with Paul Gascoigne in London's West End. The pair climb on a bus and Gazza asks the driver to take them to Lineker's house, which is not on the route. The driver and other passengers agree. The star of 'Fog On The Tyne' repays them by blasting out 'We're all going on a summer holiday'. Plenty of other amusing anecdotes in Ian Ridley's 'Season In The Cold', an odyssey through last season published on Monday by Kingswood at pounds 8.99.

DAGENHAM & Redbridge canvassed fans about a new nickname and the favourite is the Daggers. The thought process of prising Daggers from Dagenham is straightforward but the newly merged Vauxhall Conference club are still bemused as to the origin of two suggestions, 'The Plums' and 'The Pilchards'.

THE Second-Hand Club gained a new member when Port Vale acquired Chester's old stand. Frank Conway, from Manchester, is an expert on such architectural transfers. 'That's why us Coventry City fans start to sing whenever the train goes past Crewe's ground - it's our old floodlights we're singing about]' Conway adds that Wrexham sadly had to leave the Second-Hand Club in 1978. 'After promotion in 1962, Wrexham bought the upper deck of the town's Majestic cinema and used this as their Pigeon Loft stand until 1978 when it was passed on to Wrexham Rugby Club.' Any other Second-Handers out there?

DON'T throw away your old goats or milk crates just yet. Danny Baker, who sang the virtues of both venerable milk carriers on Radio Five's anarchic 6-0-6 show, has moved on but Duncan McKenzie, his successor from tonight, promises to be on the same irreverent wavelength.

The outspoken ex-Leeds and Everton striker has a tough act to follow. The fabulous Baker boy fielded calls about everything from errant goats ruining pitches, to a Leeds jobsworth who would not let a kid stand on a milk crate. On Baker's urging, protest milk crates were left outside the ground.

JOINING the Pope (a saver of goals before souls) in the ecclesiastical dream team is the Archbishop of Finland. John Vikstrom works closely with the Finnish FA to promote the game and also plays for his own club - called the Bishop's Boys.

IT WAS almost impossible to decide who should win the Aberlour Whisky for weird fact or figure from last weekend's football. The research was impressive, the imagination truly stretched. Special mentions to: Ian Graham, from Bully country, for spotting that Wolves' last two weekend games (at Birmingham and Molineux) attracted the same crowd, 14,391; and Mike Beaumont, from Surrey, for finding a 'Royal Variety Show of talent hitting the back of the net': (Jimmy) Jewell (Bradford City); (Christopher) Biggins (Barnsley); (Jim) Davidson (Preston); (Larry) Grayson ('who helped shut that door on Barnsley when he scored for Leicester'); (Tommy) Cooper (Bromsgrove); (Billy) Connolly (Wrexham); (Arthur) Askey (Macclesfield); (Bruce) Forsyth (Kidderminster); and (Ernie) Wise for Chelsea. But the Malt goes to Keith Smith, from Bromley, Kent, for this simple Anfield offering . . .

'Surely the strangest fact of the week is that, when Ian Rush went down in the box at the Kop end, following a clumsy challenge by a Wednesday defender, the ref did not award a penalty. Has this ever happened before? At Anfield?]'

All freak facts and figures to Football Diary, The Independent, 40 City Road, London EC1Y 2DB.