I'm only half-serious when the thought occurs to me (is it normal to joke with one's own mind, to deceive it even though the deception was cooked up in that same apparatus?) but nevertheless I have disposed of any number of 'facts' which coloured my formative years:
- if you buy a piece of music by a gay artist, he or she puts a percentage of the money into a fund to promote 'gay propaganda'
- every politician who has ever lived has got their nose stuck fast in the trough;
- it is not possible for 'the likes of us' (working-class northern English stock) to do anything of significance between taking our first breath and our last;
- that bastard Gerry Adams deserves to die;
- them what steal should 'ave their bloody 'ands chopped off, an' all;
- dun't ivver go to Liverpool. A tha listenin', mun? Dun't ivver go. The'll bloody knife thi when tha at cashpoint, an' then the'll laugh abart it. The' reight gets!
When I was four years old, it was the rite of passage in a boy's life that I should choose my football team. It didn't take long - a quick glance at the top of the old Division One told me all I needed to know - I'd follow Liverpool.
Thus ensued my father's ranting about the place, and everyone associated with it. I'm not taking you to Liverpool! We'll never get out alive! As soon as we open our mouths, that's it - well be dead. Dead!
I never managed to sample the dangers of Liverpool for myself until 2008, ironically when I went to watch a football match against the team I'd adopted when I was a child. FA Cup fever had hit Barnsley when Liverpool came out of the hat, and all six thousand tickets for away fans had gone within the space of 24 hours.
I was as angry as I ever become when I failed to get hold of one. What an affront - to lock me out when I've travelled all over the place for 13 years watching mainly dross! All those cold nights in the middle of nowhere putting my own ambitions on hold, only to get back home at four in the morning, disappointed and exhausted!
After weeks of wrangling with my conscience, when I'd already decided to break off my support once and for all, I hit upon one last desperate plan: a ticket tout! To cut a long story short, I eventually coughed up £92 for a £29 ticket - in the wrong area, that is the Liverpool section, of the ground.
Remember - open your mouth, and you're dead. Dead!