Just before I leave, he tells me about his 2010 commission to redesign the England football shirt: he came up with the idea of multicoloured crosses of St George. "The red and white thing has been entirely marginalised by one kind of person. It's synonymous with an attitude that is naive, xenophobic, bullying and self-marginalising. I thought, that's not reflective of the team, or football, or of the nation at all. But it turns out the market for those shirts are those bloody-minded xenophobic individuals with the shaved heads. When it came out, they did not like it. They did not like it at all."
He laughs in manner that doesn't sound rueful or abashed so much as delighted. "Oh yeah," he nods, still laughing, "they fucking hated it." (Petridis, 2013).
RSS Feed
