WHERE HAS ALL THE HUMOUR GONE?

When we were writing blogs regularly, I couldn’t help but wonder whether we were adding to a saturated market. There were hilarious Albion blogs everywhere - you know, the ones that provided an alternative viewpoint to the usual crap served up by the official website. Or channelled through a local newspaper so worried about losing access to the club that their stories appear like club press releases. We have taken a back seat from providing this amusing commentary after six years or so (we thought that Colin Hawkins jokes could offer you no more amusement) but recently we’re finding it hard to find anything remotely funny (or even different) being written about the club at all. Well, that is without it being hidden by six pages of irrelevant material on a North Stand Chat thread about extremism in schools.

Outside of the Argus and the club website, there are plenty of blogs simply regurgitating match reports. So many I’m not even going to regurgitate them here. More often than ever when I flick across to Newsnow’s Albion page, it is stuffed with several versions of the same story (and I’m not having a go at Newsnow - they list us, FFSMurray). In fact, they’re not even stories anymore, they’re club press releases. Rarely rewritten. Simply copied and pasted onto a different website. For a different set of advertisers who nobody notices. Newsnow over the past two days has published 18 Albion stories. Eight of them are club statements on the official website and a further six are from the Argus. I know, it’s an international break but where are the funny stories about Casper Ankergren smoking or Leo Ulloa snogging some girl down West Street who isn’t his wife? There used to at least be a few of those...

We Are Brighton have either got as bored of blogging as we seemingly have, or have been subject to a hostile takeover by the club website. Their latest post is a copy and paste job from the official website about Tottenham tickets going on sale. Their previous post a match preview for the ‘upcoming’ Charlton match. Their hilarious posts of last season - like comparing Kemy’s driving points total with the number earned by P****e seem a distant memory.

Then there’s The Goldstone Wrap - the light-hearted look at some of the preposterous Albion media coverage of yesteryear. On 25 June 2014, a post - It's a Wrap - suggested that we would be shown no more delightful examples of how the Albion has been portrayed in the media down the years. Luckily, the man behind the blog hasn’t quite fulfilled that promise and has treated us to four posts since. But they’re now few and far between.

Now I’m less critical of these two as they always featured in TSLR. Not Worth That has developed a wonderful blog, it’s more amusing than the traditional media and can often be confused with proper journalism. Whilst it moved beyond simply taking the mickey out of the club it was valuable to have a source of information outside of the club, or the club’s trance. But since the summer Not Worth That has seemingly gone underground.

At The End of the Day Des was another of our early recruits and, to be fair, was always a bit slack on updating the blog. However the last thing published coincided with the last ever hard copy version of the fanzine, back in April. Even Jem Stone’s Buzzfeed lists have dried up. I'll even take a Mendoze Sky Sports column right now. Where have all the funny Albion fans gone? The ones replaced by a miserable, ageing subsection of Albionites we used to store amongst the weeds of the East Terrace.

Perhaps this is why we started a fanzine in the first place. Anyway, apologies for the rant, I’ve just realised that writing about nobody writing funny stuff about the Albion isn’t at all funny. I’m off to find something humouress to write about. Maybe Colin Hawkins can help.