I’ll be in the Cricketers pub in Gillingham at lunchtime on Saturday.

I love it there.

The paint work is awful, the staff surly and the place full of fat men with replica shirts stretched over their beer bellies.

I’ll be there because it’s the start of the football season and I’ll be on one of my three-times-a-year trips to see my team Gillingham play.

Look people of Brighton it’s not my fault.

I was born in the Medway towns and I follow the golden rule that says you’re stuck with your local team through thick (ha) and thin (that’s more like it).

In truth I’m falling out of love with football of the overhyped, spoilt brat, Premier League type.

But on Saturday three generations of the Gilsons will be misguidedly and inexplicably excited about the forthcoming League One game even though we’ve absolutely no prospect of seeing the free-flowing, tikki-takka of the mythical beautiful game breaking out Like goldfish, the lower league football fan forgets the awfulness of much of the fare he or she is about to witness but fuelled by modest amounts of alcohol talks only of prospects for the season ahead and great goals after 15-pass moves they’ve seen back in the day.

Just as importantly we continue going because of fear.

Fear that we will miss the once-in-a-lifetime moment of marvel.

As a man who once saw moustachioed maestro Terry Cochrane score from the halfway line in the early 80s I’ve seen the anguish on the face of the person I was asking: You mean you weren’t there?

But invariably twenty minutes into the game the ridiculous Cricketers level of anticipation will be replaced by collective torpor as your left back shins one into the stands again.

My Dad inflicted Gillingham on me and in turn I’ve inflicted the team on my two sons.

They’re too smart to claim the Gills (the least scary team nickname ever) as their own but they come along to see Grandad and to enjoy the kitsch-type fun of it all.

Anyone can tell their mates they were at Old Trafford but there’s more scope for humour in relaying tales of a dreary 0-0 against Stevenage at the mighty Priestfield Stadium where individual rages from the terraces can sometimes reach Shakespearean levels of anguish if not language.

We’re playing promotion favourites Sheffield United on Saturday.

I’ve absolutely no expectation of a win, indeed I am looking forward to the welcoming warm embrace of creeping disillusion.

It’s a ritual. I have to do it.

The Argus: Mack And Mabel at Chichester Festival Theatre July 2015.   Picture: Manuel Harlan

What me? Why would I go to a musical?

I can’t think of anything worse.

Except maybe Formula One motor racing.

Besides I’ve still the mental scars from Blood Brothers for my mum’s birthday treat.

Two hours of lachrymose hell I will never get back.

So later that day, in the foyer of Chichester Festival Theatre, I’ve a face like a wet Wednesday waiting to go into Mack and Mabel.

And bloody Michael Ball is the lead.

Two hours later I’m elated.

The show is simply wonderful – it refuses to let you abstain.

Sweeps away the cynic like a timber house in a tsunami and Ball is not just bloody, he’s bloody brilliant.

In Jonathan Church the CFT has an artistic director with the Midas touch.

They’ll lose him at their peril.

Catch Mack and Mabel while you can.

It’s two hours you won’t want to get back.

The Argus: The Raving Beauties On The Radar June 2014.  Picture: Warren Pleece

Flattery should not be the way to get a mention in an editor’s column.

The good folks at Brighton’s At The Helm Records sent me a CD by a new band this week with a letter stating that they had gleaned from my articles that I was a “discerning music fan”.

I guessed it was for my high praise for Brighton’s Go! Team’s excellent new album this year.

They sent a long player by a new city band The Raving Beauties.

I put it on and it is very good.

Hugely retro, Byrds-tinged jingle jangle backing lush harmonies. It’s the soundtrack for a drive off into the sunset.

But I warn you flattery will get you nowhere.