Читать книгу Dance Like Everybody’s Watching!: The Weird and Wonderful World of Sporting Mascots - Nick Miller - Страница 9

NAME GUNNERSAURUS REX

TEAM ARSENAL

SPORT FOOTBALL

YEARS ACTIVE 1994–PRESENT

STYLE BIG, GREEN, GOOFY, AND A DINOSAUR THAT INEXPLICABLY LIVES IN NORTH LONDON

FAMOUS FOR IMPECCABLY OBSERVING MINUTE’S SILENCES

It’s easy to make fun of Gunnersaurus. Broadly because, well, it’s easy to make fun of him. He’s a giant green dinosaur that’s the mascot for a team in a very urban area of north London, with wide, vacant eyes and a big stupid grin. He has a long neck on which he seems to wear a choker with an Arsenal badge, which makes him seem a bit like a 14-year-old girl in around 1999. He looks like Barney’s long-lost cousin who was exiled from the family after clumsily knocking over a vase one too many times. Very little about him makes sense.

But there’s a very sweet story behind Gunnersaurus. The club ran a competition to design their mascot back in 1994 and it was won by 11-year-old Peter Lovell, who at the time thought up the dinosaur idea because he a) was obsessed with Jurassic Park and b) thought it represented ‘the ferocity and power of Arsenal Football Club’. Stop laughing at the back there. Anyway, 20 years later Peter got married, and who should make an appearance at his wedding but Gunnersaurus himself, bringing gifts from the club including a letter from then manager Arsène Wenger.

Gunnersaurus is undoubtedly the most well-known mascot in football, so by that measure he’s obviously been a huge success. And he really is the best representative of mascots in the game, in that he’s inherently absolutely ridiculous, something most clearly displayed when he solemnly observes minute’s silences along with the Arsenal players.

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