Guardian falls of Wembley spoof story

Guardian falls of Wembley spoof story

On 9 March 2007 the Guardian fell for one of the silliest spoofs in the football world.  On its Sports Blog it ran a gushing story praising the new wonder Wembley, extolling its virtues and telling us all how this had really been worth waiting for.

Anxious to show its historic awareness the Guardian included details of the town of Wembley’s history, tracing it back to the Anglo Saxon period.

Unfortunately they fell into the trap that every journalist worth a fraction of a farthing would avoid – the writer relied on one source and one source only.  That source was the official website from the London Borough of Brent.   

On this site there is a supposed history of the borough, including a reference to the 9th century when the settlement was “in the north west of London”, and was known as Wembalea – and noted as Wemba’s forest clearing, apparently recorded in AD825.

This story is utter nonsense – and the fact that it is a spoof is revealed as soon as you try and say “Wembalea” – which of course comes out as the rather boring song that fans sing when they think their team might be getting to the FA Cup Final at “Wem – ber – ley”.

The source of this invented name can be traced back to on G. Hewlett who wrote the original article for the Wembley History Society in 1976.  As far as anyone can tell Mr/Ms Hewlett was a local enthusiast, not a historian, and so he/she either made up the story or was given it by a football fan with a sense of humour.

The lack of truth in what must always seem an extraordinarily unlikely story is that there is nothing recorded anywhere else in relation to “Wembalea” and all references to the name end up with G Hewlett.  Thus there is nothing in Doomsday, nothing in the Anglo Saxon Chronicles and so forth.  It’s just a spoof – and the fact that there is only one source should have alerted the Guardian.  The fact that it did not, and that they happily ran the story, and indeed did not later admit their error, says something quite important about what we read in the papers.