Private Eye magazine - great stuff. I get it from the Christchurch public Library sometimes.
I used to like the Neasden FC spoof team they ran for years - only appears on special occasions now.
http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Neasden_F.C..html
Neasden FC audio sketch Peter Cook & Dudley Moore:
| 52 | Ashen-Faced Ron Knee of Neasden Fc | Peter Cook, Dudley Moore & The Private Eye All-Stars | 0:37 | £0.79 | View In iTunes |
You can listen to most Peter Cook & Dudley Moore albums here (click on links saying 'Download" - in fact will just play):
http://stabbers.truth.posiweb.net/stabbers/html/discography.htm
http://stabbers.truth.posiweb.net/stabbers/html/discography/singles.htm
"Neasden's long-running series of defeats, in which they typically fail to score while conceding goals in double figures, have led to many crises for their manager, the "ashen-faced" Ron Knee for ever "aged 59", who has often been assaulted by the team's only supporters, the husband-and-wife Sid and Doris Bonkers. Perhaps their most famous player is the one-legged goalie, Wally Foot. Their leading scorer was Baldy Pevsner notorious for scoring own goals, and frequently gracing his team's own scoreline with "1 boot". The side are sometimes helped by goals scored by thereferee Sid Himmler. The club is owned by Brigadier Buffy Cohen, the local dry cleaning magnate.
Many of the reports of their activities are written by E.I. Addio (a reference to an actual football chant), who is referred to "our man in the stand", "our man in the shower" or a similar description.
The club are based at the Neasden Bridge Stadium, in Neasden, London, and their slogan is "We're on the way to Wembley...You have to go through Neasden to get there". Neasden's arch-rivals in the North Circular Relegation League are Dollis Hill. The wonderfully doom-laden concept of a relegation league may be a metaphor representing the British love of gallant losers, as is Neasden F.C. itself."
Funnily enough, these days there is a real Neasden FC who play in a minor league in London, the "Corner League" - and it's just so fitting they have mediocre results like their fictional progenitor:
Their results are on the official FA website: http://fulltime.thefa.com/DisplayTeam.do?divisionseason=891044054&teamID=153009367
Lost 11 - 3 to Stonebridge and 8 - 3 to Hillside FC recently. Fantastic !!! Scores in the great Neasden tradition !!!
Corner League Table 2013 - 2014| 1 | Stonebridge FC | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 13 | 6 |
| 2 | Hillside FC | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 4 | 6 |
| 3 | St Raphaels FC | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 6 |
| 4 | Wembley FC | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 6 |
| 5 | NW9 FC | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 6 |
| 6 | Cricklewood FC | 3 | 1 | 0 | 2 | -1 | 3 |
| 7 | Chalkhill FC | 3 | 1 | 0 | 2 | -5 | 3 |
| 8 | Neasden FC | 3 | 0 | 0 | 3 | -15 | 0 |
An official website promoting London can't find much good to say about it: http://hidden-london.com/gazetteer/neasden/
NEASDEN, BRENT: Once nicknamed 'the loneliest village in London', Neasden is now a characterless suburb sliced in two by the North Circular Road and separated from Wembley by the River Brent.
...Neasden’s name may have meant ‘nose hill’, a reference to its location on a small promontory at the end of the Dollis Hill ridge. Before the Norman conquest Neasden may have been more important than Willesden but it was no more than a ‘retired hamlet’ when enclosure was completed in 1823......a former outbuilding, which Hall had converted into a house that became known as The Grange. Now a ‘hub’ for small businesses, The Grange is Neasden’s only building of any serious vintage...
The North Circular Road was built in 1923, and over the next decade massive private housing estates swallowed up almost all the remaining farmland. A shopping centre was completed shortly afterwards and the Ritz cinema opened in 1935. All of Neasden’s older houses were demolished during this period – except for The Grange – and the Spotted Dog Inn was rebuilt in mock-Tudor style. A number of houses were sacrificed to the enlargement of the North Circular in 1973, which blighted the shopping centre. Superstores and retail warehouses have since clustered around the road in the southern part of the district.
In 1995 the far south-west corner of Neasden became the unlikely home of the biggest Hindu temple outside India: the Shri Swaminarayan Mandir."