Wrestlers ringing the changes (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Wrestlers ringing the changes

6:36pm Tuesday 27th December 2011 in Emma Clayton By Emma Clayton

There are several rules that apply whenever my nephews stay overnight.

We have to make hot chocolate, topped with squirty cream and accompanied by chocolate fingers, and watch Ice Road Truckers, The Simpsons and Top Gear. We do this from a den made of cushions – which end up covered in chocolate handprints and squirty cream.

The other day some new rules crept in, in more ways than one.

Spluttering over my hot chocolate in the den, I turned into one of those shouty old ladies on the front row of a wrestling match. “He’s hitting him with a chair! They’re not even in the ring!” I shrieked. “That can’t be allowed.”

“It is allowed. It’s TLC – tables, ladders and chairs,” ten-year-old Sam informed me.

We were watching WWE Superstars, a chaotic jumble of beefy tattooed blokes shouting in each other’s faces then throwing each other around a wrestling ring. Then one chased the other out of the ring, grabbed a chair and whacked him with it.

Then someone ran out of the audience, hurled abuse at the beefy bloke with the chair, climbed a set of stepladders and jumped on him. Another wrestler grabbed his rival by his badly-permed hair and threw him across a table.

“This wouldn’t have happened in Big Daddy’s day,” I muttered. “Who’s Big Daddy?” asked the boys.

They soon lost interest when I explained he was a fat man from Halifax who wore a leotard with a big D on the front and ‘belly-butted’ his opponents around the wrestling ring. It didn’t seem as flash as the oiled-up WWE Superstars spouting homespun philosophy at each other.

But in his time, Big Daddy was, well, ‘the Daddy’. Maybe it was because it was the Seventies and we only had three channels, but watching Big Daddy on World Of Sport flattening someone with one of his famous belly-splashes passed for quality entertainment in our house.

My brother and I loved to read the ‘Big Daddy Vs Giant Haystacks’ lists of the wrestlers’ daily food intake, which invariably appeared in a newspaper prior to a big match. The lists included things like ‘a dozen eggs and ten rashers of bacon’ for breakfast and ‘a whole chicken and a crate of chips’ for tea.

We were very impressed that our dad knew Big Daddy, having grown up in the same neighbourhood back when he was Shirley Crabtree.

Wrestling has always been about choreography and showmanship, but Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks are a world apart from the WWE guys, with their bling and their stepladders. I bet they couldn’t manage a whole chicken for tea, though.