Is the right to bear celery a civil liberties issue?
It certainly wasn’t what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they drafted the US constitution. However, this week’s news that Chelsea FC has banned celery from Stamford Bridge has pushed this humble vegetable to the forefront of the civil rights agenda. To paraphrase Voltaire: I don’t like to eat celery, but I’ll defend to the death your right to throw it. Celery throwing, in case you weren’t aware, is a slightly surreal Chelsea tradition that dates back to the 1980s. The vegetable throwing is an accompaniment to the famous ‘Celery song’, a paean to the erotic properties of the humble apium graveolens dulce: ‘Celery, celery, if she don’t come, I’ll tickle her bum, with a lump of celery’. Until this week the origins of the chant were a mystery to me. However, after trawling football websites, I came across the theory that the chant is based on a Chas and Dave recording of a traditional cockney singalong called ‘Ask Old Brown To Tea’. Not being particularly familiar with the Chas and D
