Hell, what are we going to chant at Sol Campbell now? The coppers have moved in on a bunch of Spurs fans who subjected the chap to a musical tirade of what everyone is agreed was “vile” abuse. The clincher, for the cops, seems to be an allegation of racism.

If you’ve heard the song, then it seems to me the only manner in which Sol was not insulted was racially. They sort of covered every other base, I think, but not racism. Unless you believe that the line “hanging from a tree” is a consciously evoked racist signifier, a deliberate attempt to evoke the plight of African-Americans in the deep south during the early and middle parts of the last century. You can believe that if you like. I just think they were expressing uninterest in whether he was hanged or not.

Unless the police mean the line about HIV was racist, referring to the high rates of the infection in some, but not all, sub-Saharan African countries, in which case that gets them off the homophobia charge.

I assume this is the start of a sort of clampdown on being nasty to professional footballers, given that the Campbell stuff emerged in the week that the old bill were scouring the streets of Newcastle looking for people who’d called the Middlesbrough forward Mido a “shoe bomber”. It’s going to be a tricky thing making the racist abuse charge stick there, too. The shoe bomber – the cretinous Richard Reid, who tried to blow up a jumbo jet with explosives in his trainer but forgot how to light the fuse – was half Jamaican, half English. Is it racist to call an Egyptian a Jamaican?

I suppose the police will win in the end. After all, they charged a chap with the crime of subjecting a police horse to homophobic abuse (he had called the creature “gay”, which apparently transgressed its unhuman rights and thus made it feel, said the police, “distressed”). If they can make that stick they can probably do anything to anyone.

Lord Triesman, who is currently doing a good job at the Football Association, has called for all the supporters concerned to be banned for life. Triesman is a Spurs fan, many of whom describe themselves as yiddos, not that he is Jewish. Although he may be Jewish.

But I’d like to make clear that I wouldn’t use that word to describe Jewish people; it’s simply a word an awful lot of Spurs fans use. It’s also racist – so come on, ban ’em all. I think you can still be done for racism if you call yourself by a racist epithet. That should reduce the attendances at White Hart Lane.

This is the problem with that long and continuing process, the embourgeoise-ment of football, which began about 15 years ago. We now have nice sandwiches, all-seater “stadia” that a lot of fans cannot afford to attend, no smoking and no standing up, no swearing, no saying nasty things at all. You may think this is welcome evidence of a civilising influence that has been far too long in coming, and you may be right. But it has also ripped football away from its natural base, its roots, which lie in a politically neglected community disposed towards a rather coarser and more direct demotic than that habitually employed by the likes of, for example, Lord Triesman.

The fans I share my Saturday afternoons with have a tendency to fling at the opposition whatever they can find that is most hurtful and, preferably, obscene. Obviously, I always remonstrate with them – no, no, please desist, Paulie, that comment you addressed to Nicky Butt could be considered both disablist and homophobic – but the tradition still persists, especially in the lower leagues. The working class, huh. What can we do with this scum?

You can accuse me of a misplaced allegiance and a regrettable sentimentality. I think there’s some truth in that. It is also true that some fans from the old supporter base, the one that sustained the clubs through 100 years of otherwise solitude, do indeed refuse to take part in some of the more outlandish songs and chants. But the elevation of football from a predominantly working-class pastime characterised by loyalty, passion and exemplary foul language, to a branch of sanitised celebrity culture with which all politicians are only too keen to associate themselves, has brought with it a clash of cultures. And it seems as if the middle class win every time.

I’m glad we don’t have the kind of racist abuse that was once endemic within the game, heard at every ground in the country, every week. The change in sensibilities has been wreaked not through the police raiding homes at dawn, but through the gradual and welcome evolution of society.

But there is an impatience afoot now; the uncouth should stay at home and watch the game on Sky and leave the stadia for people of all genders, races and creeds who wish to watch in, if not total silence, then merely with occasional murmuring of awe. Is it better this way, is it right? Maybe; but it is not how it was, when football was a recourse for the working man to let off a little steam of a weekend.

You may argue that times change and a good thing too, that there is no room anywhere in society for the sort of bestial stuff that was bellowed at poor Sol Campbell. Well, sure. But it will still be there: just not at football matches.

Meanwhile, I’m left with a grave problem. Just what on earth are we allowed to sing the next time Brighton visit the Den?

Real fantasy football

A HUGELY impressive 20,470 supporters turned up to see bottom-of-the-table Charlton Athletic lose at home to Coventry City in midweek. Except, it seems, they didn’t. Indeed, when the ‘attendance’ figure was announced during the game it provided a rare moment of levity for the home fans – according to a couple of authoritative sources, there were actually 13,000 people inside the ground. Charlton, apparently, have pioneered a morale-boosting approach that involves them counting not only the people who turn up to watch the game, but those who briefly thought about it and then decided that they couldn’t be arsed and went down to the pub instead, or hung out on London Bridge station with their little notebooks and Thermos flasks. Good idea, chaps.

Personality isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be

THE BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year award is becoming all too predictable and tame. I only really enjoyed it the year they gave an award to Tanni Grey-Thompson and then made her scale a large wall to get on the stage. They ought to do stuff like that more often. Instead, they play it safe.

This year, for example, they’ll give the award either to that Scottish bloke on a bike or that woman from the East Midlands who can swim well; two extremely likeable and deserving athletes who have retained a sense of modesty and perspective about their superb performances. Where’s the fun in that? Chris Hoy has never roasted a slapper in a hotel or run anyone over while drunk, and Rebecca Adlington isn’t on drugs, despite living in Mansfield.

The world of professional football has been ignored for far too long.

Don’t forget, the award is for a personality, not an achievement – and it doesn’t say it has to be agood personality. It could be a complete and utter twat, so long as they have given the rest of us a little pleasure. So I think that this year they should give it to Mr Potato-Head Wayne Rooney, for his exquisite sportsmanship, in evidence again last week when he tried, with some success, to deracinate a Danish footballer with his studs because he was in a bad temper. Or maybe Roy “I’m a Fighter, Not A Quitter”, Keane. The awards should be presented by the double act of Sir Alex Ferguson – red face about to burst, totally silent because it’s the BBC and they once said nasty things about him, bless – and Joe “You ****” Kinnear. Or Cristiano Ronaldo could present himself with all the available awards, before diving from the podium.

Someone have a word with the producers – let’s liven it up a bit.

- Hugh McIlvanney is away