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Bunhill: Stand or sit?

Dominic Prince
Saturday 17 September 1994 23:02 BST
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TO Stamford Bridge on Thursday evening to watch Chelsea Football Club play against the Czech team, Viktoria Zizkov.

These all-seater stadiums are tedious in the extreme. Before the Taylor report, those who wanted to stand went on the terraces and those who wanted to sit sat. But now everybody has to sit. At least, that is the theory. In fact, what happened on Thursday is that tickets were wrongly allocated, so hundreds of people had to stand in the West Stand, which is inconveniently full of seats. It was chaos, especially as many were waiting to get into the stand for half an hour. Ken Bates (Chelsea chairman and overlord), please note.

THIS, I promise, is true. The story comes from someone who knows about these things. In 1981, Jeffrey Archer was put forward for an honour, a knighthood to be precise. The late Ian Gow, who was at the time Mrs Thatcher's PPS, was consulted by his then boss. Gow thought otherwise.

Intriguingly, Lady Thatcher herself says in her memoirs: 'Jeffrey's political judgement did not always match his tremendous energy.'

The red pen came out and was firmly put through Archer's name. The rest, as they say, is history.

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