Football pin badges.
What's all that about?

Why should a penchant for miniscule, almost weightless bits of metal and enamel afflict the sensibilities of otherwise rational football supporters? Does the average badge fanatic have at home a smorgasbord of other fashion attachments? Maybe a brooch for that special company Christmas dinner, or a selection of poppy designs dating back to the late 1970s.

I just don't get it. Your team is trailing 3-0 at home on a cold Tuesday night. You're already adorned in forty quid's worth of ill-fitting 100% cotton mesh, and the away fans to your right are casting loud aspersions over your nose's relationship to a set-square. Yet just to top off the look, you thought you'd slide a tacky pin badge into the equation.

Then you get those geezers who collect badges from other clubs, smothering every clothed surface like they're some sort of human pin cushion. I bet they'd momentarily shit themselves should they trip over on the way back from the pub.

So why collect these things? Collect mind-bending drugs instead. Or pornography. Even fecking autographs if you like.

But the pin badge revolt starts here - just as soon as I've won the bid on this rare Reading badge which looks set to top £100!

(Now that's a lot of porn.)

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