I’ve always had a fascination for stats, and a sadly photographic memory for stat-related trivia. This problem surfaced as a youngster. As a 10-year old I could reel off the brake horse power and top speed of pretty well any car in my Top Trumps sports cars pack.
I even began to memorise chunks of the more interesting sections of my 1977 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records.
When it came to football I could bore with the best of them on stats and figures. It partly came from spending too much time staring at Ceefax on a Saturday evening following the day’s results (pages 312 through to 324, for those in the know).
And I could probably tell you the attendance, to within a couple of a hundred, at most of Birmingham City’s key home games in the past 20-odd years.
So, no surprise then, that one of my favourite quotes ever comes from Vic Reeves who once said that “88.2% of statistics are made up on the spot.”
