Happy Mondays singer Rowetta Idah has been outed by The Observer as the closet Spurs fan lurking in the famously Manchester United-supporting band’s closet.
Yesterday’s “Sunday With…” column in the paper, which as the Sunday version of The Guardian is technically from Manchester and probably should know better, featured an intriguing selection of answers to the standard trivia questions that make up the piece.
We learned that Rowetta has a 15-month-old son (she doesn’t), a Norwegian wife (see previous parentheses), and perhaps most damning of all that she’s a Spurs fan.
Now I’m no expert on Rowetta, but I do recall the trauma of being a teenage Manchester City fan at the zenith of The Happy Mondays’ popularity, finding it troublesome to reconcile the fact that The Happy Mondays were probably the best band not to begin with Joy and end in Division to have released any tunes on Factory Records. All the while loudly proclaiming their United loving tendencies at every available opportunity on TV, radio, and the pages of Melody Maker and the NME (remember them?)
So great is their affinity with the red side of Manchester that they even warrant a place in a blog on United’s very own website dedicated to fans that have headlined Glastonbury. Confusingly Oasis feature in the same story, but I don’t even want to get into the complexities of explaining I have little time for a third-rate Slade covers outfit, even if we happen to support the same football team.
Thankfully, social media was on hand to correct this fairly monumental error, and it seems that The Observer’s subs had mixed Rowetta up with Matthew Horne. Horne is an actor and sometime singer who is best known for his starring role as Gavin of Stacey fame, a dismal sketch show with James Corden, and supporting Spurs alongside the actual Norwegian wife in question, who is called Celina since The Observer didn’t offer that information.
Rowetta herself has maintained a fairly dignified silence on being accused of supporting Spurs, though she did have this to say:
And she was perhaps not best pleased to learn her new-found Spurs fandom was in print as well as online:
Over at The Observer, meanwhile, we can only assume they’re hoping nobody spots the clear case of Lazy Itis in the story they Wrote For Luck:
Rowetta may or may not also love Bette Davis movies and Sunday roasts, and who doesn’t?
