‘Children in football kits start kicking me up the bum’: my life as a mascot

Remember football – the crowds, the noise, the goofy beaver dancing on the touchline? Welcome to the weird world of the matchday mascot

There is no force in the universe more irresistible than a high five from Reading FC’s lion mascot, Kingsley. The only thing that comes close is a hug from Kingsley’s mascot wife, Queensley. Do not ask why a mascot needs a mascot wife, because I cannot explain that in any meaningful way. Mascots intersect society at the exact same angle as cereal box characters: we never question why they are there, what they mean, or why they never blink; but we do demand complicated backstories for them, and extended family trees.

Before all this happened – before the lockdown and the boarded-up pubs, and the groups of no more than two, and the two-metre distancing and the isolation and the ransacked supermarkets, and most crucially the suspension of every single sport on the planet, all at once – I became obsessed with mascots. There they were: jiggling, expressionless monoliths made of felt, pacing up and down the touchline, a seen-but-unseen aspect of modern sport, ever-present and never questioned. In the current void, you could be forgiven for forgetting all about them; but they are just as crucial to the matchday experience as the people kicking the ball, and the other people running after it, as crucial as being one 60,000-throated voice, shouting them all on, as crucial as the pies and the scarves and the long winding walk to the stadium, the urinal queues and the matchday programmes. And there, look: there’s a person in a bumblebee outfit, waving at you. Who are they? What are they for?

Continue reading...

from Football | The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/apr/25/children-in-football-kits-start-kicking-me-up-the-bum-my-life-as-a-mascot