george best - stylo matchmakers and blue suede adidas sambas

Much as l loved the great and good George Best, l got well and truly suckered into buying a pair of his endorsed  football boots (above) with my hard earned paper round money when l was a kid.
They were crap.
That didn't stop me buying a pair of the Ben Sherman George Best trainers that were modelled on them a few years ago (now stored away in  the original box).
As for my blue suede Adidas Sambas also purchased from paper round earnings....................
Magnificent.  I can still remember the smell of them when l took them out of their box.

A classic of the trainer world, despite their overuse during the Brit pop years.

I think it's time for a lie down.  l feel a bit giddy with the trainer fumes flashback and thoughts of Bestie.

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back to the future trainers

Looking at trainers on ebay (OK, l know l am sad), l found these little beauties. They are not really my scene, as l mainly prefer the old school Puma and Adidas types, but these are being auctioned to raise money for Parkinson's disease through the Michael J Fox foundation. Only 1,500 pairs are being made so snap some up now!

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awaydays and hot tub time machine

I enjoyed the Awaydays (2009) film, which is based on the same named book (1988) by Kevin Sampson, but it was a lot more homo-erotic than l remembered in the book. It concerns a group of Tranmere Rovers fans who travel on the train to cause a rucus. As usual in these type of films, it's to do with male bonding, in this case between Carty (Stephen Graham) and Elvis (Liam Boyle). It is also about who you can trust, standing your ground etc, before some kind of revelatory bit at the end. Good shots of the trainers and an excellent soundtrack, but some really crap haircuts.

Hot Tub Time Machine (2010) was crapper than the haircuts in Awaydays. I only started watching it because John Cusack starred, and he was great in the film version of High Fidelity. What a mistake. Four lads go back to the 1980's in a hot tub for (supposedly) hilarious results. I lasted about 40 minutes. I would also have let their mate, Lou (Rob Corddry) commit suicide, rather than be stuck with him at the ski resort. There was nothing funny or loveable about him, an American version of a wild party animal past his sell by date. Very dire.

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the firm and adidas trimm trabs

This film (from 2009) is a remake of the 1988 one starring Gary Oldman, which is a hundred times better. It is about the bad boys of West Ham's firm and a young lad who wants to join in and then discovers it's maybe not as glamorous or as much fun as he thought it would be. He starts of idolising Bex, the top boy but then discovers he is not as great as he thought. Pity the film was pretty crap, which surprised me as it was by Nick Love (proper geezer, Millwall fan etc), who also did 'The Football Factory', which was miles better and much more realistic. The film was like one long advert for Fila, Sergio Tacchini and these bad boys below. Ah, took me back a bit, l used to have a fantastic Sergio Tacchini tennis top, if only l could fit into one now......

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