Beyoncé? I prefer the anti-racists of Millwall

My most thrilling moment of 2016 so far — aside from watching a smug-looking woman carrying a copy of the Guardian get the heel of one shoe stuck in the escalator at Canary Wharf station (boy did she howl) — was having a Facebook friend request accepted by Trevor Lee.

Trevor is a hero of mine. He was a very fast and skilful winger for my team, Millwall, and played a crucial role in our 1975/76 promotion season. He went on to play 108 times for the Lions and was adored by supporters. His name is still spoken of with a certain reverence down The Den, much as fanatical Tories will come over all breathless if you mention Sir Keith Joseph. He was also black — Trevor, not Keith, of course — one of the very first black players to make an impact on the British game. That he was not absolutely the first is why few people beyond the world of football have heard of him. He had an afro. We liked that, too, we racist scumbag Millwall supporters. For a certain tranche of pig-ignorant liberal middle-class opinion (personified by the idiotic journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown), Millwall FC is the very expression of knuckle-dragging white working-class racism. And yet it was one of the very first clubs in the country to embrace local black footballers, the first to have a black chairwoman and our supporters invariably elect a black footballer as player of the season: the wonderful Comorian midfielder Najim Abdou — or ‘Jimmy the Muslim’, as he is known to many supporters — has won it twice recently, deservedly.

Back when Trevor was playing there was a lot of racism on the terraces, of course. But the gradual emergence of black footballing talent saw the abuse change, modify and then disappear altogether.