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I know no-one who supports West Ham, but I know one bloke who supports Charlton Athletic and one guy I used to work with years ago was a fanatical Crystal Palce supporter.
Why do West Ham fans sing I'm forever blowing bubbles ?
OR...
It was not until around the mid-1920s that the tune was probably adopted by West Ham United supporters, but doubtless it had been heard at the Boleyn Ground in one form or another since the beginning of that decade. The circumstances of it being sung by the fans for the first time were somewhat unusual to say the least.
At the time, schoolboy soccer was extremely popular and there were often 1,000 or more fans around the touchlines of pitches in the West Ham area when matches took place on Saturday mornings between teams of 14-year-olds (the school leaving age at the time). During that era the County Borough of West Ham, as it was known before its amalgamation with the County Borough of East Ham some four decades later into the London Borough of Newham, had many more schools than it has at present. The West Ham Schools' League was divided into sections with Championship play-offs at the end of the season. One of the West Ham Champions was Park School - situated in Ham Park Road - near West Ham Park in the Upton area of the Borough. Park School was so successful that it was able to field seven or eight teams each week at different age levels. Its headmaster was a Mr. Cornelius Beal who was a great football enthusiast, and a friend of the then West Ham United trainer and subsequent Manager - Charlie Paynter.
"Corney" Beal also had a talent for music and rhymes and wrote special words to the tune of "Bubbles" and when any player of the Park School was having a good game the spectators would mention him by name in a parody of the tune. These ditties were a form of predecessor to the terrace chants that became popular many years later.
Why do West Ham fans sing I'm forever blowing bubbles ?
In a letter to the local Beckton Gas Works "Pensioners' Bulletin" magazine during 1983 by a former employer who recalled that for a period of time (around the 1920s to 1930s presumably) the Company Band "were engaged by the West Ham United Football Club to play for 20 minutes before the kick-off and 10 minutes at the interval." He added: "We played "Bubbles" and it very quickly became a favourite with the crowd. If we did not play "Bubbles" the crowd would sing it - so we always played it just before the kick-off."
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