More Heroic Failures

The Smallest Football Crowd 
Who remembers that great game between Leicester City 
and Stockport County on 7 May 1921? It is famous for 
having the smallest crowd. Only thirteen people watched 
it. In fact both sides were playing away from home. 
Stockport’s home ground was closed and so they had to 
play in the very large ground belonging to the well-
known club Manchester United. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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The Happy Failure 
A Norwegian singer was singing a wonderfully boring 
song in the European Song Show in 1978. Many singers 
from different countries were there. At the end of the 
show people from each country had to decide which song 
was the best. They also decided which song was the 
worst. Unusually they all agreed: ‘Norway gets zero out 
of ten/ 
Next morning the newspaper stories were naturally all 
about the Norwegian singer, Mr Teigan, while there were 
only a few words about the winning singer, Izhar Cohen. 
After the show newspaper photographers crowded round 
Mr Teigan, welcoming him like a popstar. 
‘This is my greatest success,’ he said. ‘I have done 
something that nobody has done before me. I’m the first 
Norwegian to get zero. After the show they asked me to 
sing parts of the song sixty times for the photographers. 
And I’m going to be on television and singing all over 
Europe. People have never been so interested in me 
before.’ 
The Funniest Modern Pictures 
To understand modern pictures, you have to be able to 
think in a free way about them. Nothing has shown this 
more than a Frankfurt show of works by an exciting new 
painter, Yamasaki, in 1978. The man who was showing 
the pictures, Mr Feddersen, wrote about Yama-saki’s 
wonderfully bright colours and strong, interesting 
shapes. In only three hours, visitors bought all twenty-
two of the pictures for as much as £500 each. 
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The Funniest Modern Pictures 

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Excitement grew when the news came that the painter 
was there and was ready to answer questions about his 
work. You can guess how glad all the free-thinking 
people were when Mr Feddersen brought in a 
monkey. 
‘He just threw paint all over the place,’ he explained. 
He wanted the money for a different kind of show in 
which animals did funny things for children to watch.