A long time ago, in a land far away.....no hang on, that's the Clangers.

A couple of years ago, when this page was just beginning to find a place in the hearts of a grateful nation (and it's authors were still replete with full heads of hair), a casual remark led to the christening of this man: 

That's right, the face that launched a thousand quips, our very own Councillor Cox.  A shamelessly-lifted comic creation of Darlington's Top light entertainer Jim Moir (aka Vic Reeves), it just seemed so right for our purpose, to take the proverbial out of the official Newcastle United web page, now known to all and sundry as nufc.cock Although .cock has always been done on a "no names" basis since the departure of former editor Jon Driscoll, a chance comment by a probably inebriated gentleman of the press confirmed that the identity of the cockmeister himself was a certain media mover and shaker by the name of Cox....

Thus armed with this shard of knowledge, we found the picture above and added the character to our already-existing catalogue of .cock information disasters that appeared on NUFC.com. Hey presto! Councillor Cox's Cockup Corner was born, and begat the annual end of year Coxy Awards.

Already overly-familiar with the shortcomings of .cock and their stream of inaccuracies, it suddenly became blindingly obvious why so much absolute cack was appearing on the site - wor Coxy in reality was a gas-mask wielding disciple of the sinister cult of Wilf Mannion.

And when unsuspecting toon fans logged on to .cock one morning to find it replaced by the Boro home page the cat was well and truly out of the sack - not only did we have a double agent on our hands, but he was moonlighting... 

Sadly Coxy has now left us for more polluted pastures, and is now the minister for misinformation at the smellnet Riverside Stadium. However his man at C & A (that's Christian Aid) trend-setting fashion statements can still be glimpsed when the smoggies are in toon, as he fashions his unreliable nuggets of nonsense for the inbred wretches who live in the shadow of the transporter bridge. 

Then, with a theatrical bow, he takes his leave and scurries off into the Tyneside night, kipper tie and flares a-flapping in the breeze.

Since then, things have improved to a certain extent as .cock wisely opted to explore the novel approach of employing a toon fan to contribute reports and stories. However, the negative influence of the .cock paymasters in London ensures that a steady stream of nonsense still appears, garbled from it's original meaning into some hybrid cockney cobblers. Two steps forward, one step back.....

Anyway, back to the story, and as more and more folks started seeing the Cockup corner, so they picked out other examples of coxy's elsewhere in the world of TV, newspapers, teletext, footie programmes and indeed anywhere that took the name of Newcastle United in vain. 

The result is that we now regularly feature daft nonsense from the gutter of sports journalism on NUFC.com - while the godfather of gobblegook, old Coxy himself, looks down benignly.... 

Serious Bit

From time to time we get emails from people who rightly pick up errors we've made on NUFC.com, and then accuse us of dwelling in glass houses by ripping the urine out of other people. If we can be bothered, we often write back and try and explain ourselves, and it normally goes a little something like this:

We are two 30-something toon fans who put together and keep going a website about one particular club. We both have full-time "proper" jobs and at least a semblance of a life away from football, meaning that we are often writing and updating when normal folk are fast asleep as well as "just finishing off that important document" at work, when in reality we're updating the reserve league table. Or summat like that.

Yes we make mistakes, we foul things up on a daily basis, we get fed false stories. But we'll put things right as soon as we humanly can, and have stuck ourselves in Coxy's corner when we've really burnt the biscuits. 

We don't claim to know about all facets of football so we don't write about them - you want critiques of Beckham's England captaincy or why Peter Taylor made such an arse of the Leicester job - go somewhere else. You want the world through toon eyes - stop here.

But what really p****s us off is:

So-called professional media organisations employing full-time soccer experts, who roll out rubbish by the yard, cluttering up an already overcrowded marketplace with inaccurate stuff and nonsense. It's the work of those people we're dedicated to highlighting - we don't normally mention fanzines or other unofficial websites because we know only too well the pressure they're under, but everyone else is fair game.

The next time you read some obviously incorrect crap about Newcastle in a paper or a big website, remember someone was paid to write that. 

Certain organisations claim to have special Newcastle correspondents, but oddly enough they don't go to the games and some of the buggers don't even support the toon. 

Would you read the Delia Smith book of car maintenance? Why believe the invented rubbish of people who shamelessly pilfer stories from sites such as NUFC.com, making little or no attempt to check their validity, and just publish it as gospel. Half-baked theories and gossip from the back bar of a boozer presented as journalistic fact? Now that is extracting the proverbial.

Of course you can't please everyone, and there will always be a certain percentage of people not satisfied by what we write. All we can do is apologise for not being perfect and respectfully suggest you redirect your browser elsewhere. Or unplug your pc.  

PS - All the above is just presented on a general passing-on of knowledge basis, a bit like NUFC.com really. We aren't looking to replace people in the "proper" jobs at .cock or anywhere  - believe us, none of it is motivated by jealousy of the so-called professionals.

Niall and Biffa, somewhere in England, 17th October 2001.