“Lucy Letby, she’s one of your own,” sang a group of Chester fans, as they taunted Hereford fans at last weekend’s game. A group, not all of them, but nonetheless a number of football fans thought it fun to invoke the name of someone who murdered babies, presumably to wind up the opposition. No wonder the Daily Mail was frothing at the mouth. So was I.
I’ve done ‘sick’ jokes before. Let he who is without sin and all the rest of it, but perhaps old age has mellowed me a little. Now, if a group of fans chant “murderers” at Liverpool fans over Hillsborough, or other fans – and Liverpool fans have been guilty of singing this one too – singing ‘Who’s that dying on the runway?”, about the Munich air disaster, I feel slightly sick. Tragedy chanting, they call it.
Quite why you would find yourself laughing along with a puerile ditty about Letby, I do not know. Some things, you might think, are beyond the pale, yet a bunch of lads – and it’s bound to be a bunch of lads – think this kind of singing and chanting is perfectly reasonable. I cannot believe they have thought through the story, nor how they would feel if it was their baby who was murdered. When you talk about mindless chanting and singing, here’s your definition of it.
A few websites are suggesting that the police are investigating this chanting. I would have thought they’d have better things to do with their time but I suppose anything is possible these days. Personally, I would be sufficiently satisfied if they were to be identified publicly and if not put in stocks then put on the front pages of all the newspapers in the land. And they could then be asked what the big joke was.
I have a weaker stomach about this kind of thing these days, something I realised when I was watching my team Bristol Rovers playing Millwall when the opposition striker Neil Harris, who was recovering from testicular cancer, was abused by one ‘fan’ who shouted that the player was “a fucking eunuch”. Harris would definitely have heard the abuse but to his credit completely ignored it. I would not have blamed him if he had climbed onto the terraces and chinned the idiot. I emphasise the point that only one idiot was shouting and some 7000 people weren’t, so it would be quite wrong to condemn all Gasheads, as it would be wrong to blame all Chester fans for their hilarious joke about Letby, but one idiot is all you need.
Hillsborough wasn’t funny, neither was Munich. Letby is pure evil and will rot in prison for the rest of her days. I’m not sure cancer is a particularly effective subject to abuse someone either. But each to their own. Haters gonna hate and if you are that full of hate, I don’t see that you will be that happy.
