I have to accept that every time I listen to this song there are going to be some inevitable risks and consequences. For a start I absolutely know that I�m going to have it stuck in my head for the next three days. I just listened to it again in order to write this piece, and yep, I�m going to be singing the chorus under my breath for the foreseeable future, and frankly this isn�t a lyric for all occasions, so when people ask me what I�m singing and I say, �We live on blood / We are Sparta FC,� well, not everybody quite understands the ironies involved.

And I do think there are plenty of ironies. I think the song really is a parody of crass, violent football chants. Nevertheless it does stir up the blood just like an actual football chant, and it does indeed make you want to become a Spartan and, oh I don�t know, go attack the Persians.

What I think Mark E. Smith is saying here is that we have a tendency to think of great warrior tribes as some special and unworldly breed, when in fact they�re more likely to resemble football fans. The Spartans, the Crusaders, Oliver Cromwell�s iconoclastic Puritans, and I dare say the Taliban, may have been zealots, but first they were lads who liked a bit of aggro.

At least that�s what I hope he�s saying.

Only a fool would claim to �understand� many of M.E.S.�s lyrics. Typically when I hear a Fall song for the first time I can pick out a few words, and although I don�t quite get the meaning, I still get the impression that something is actually being said. Then I look at the lyrics and see that he�s banging on about provincial pus or having a metal leg or that Cary Grant (or just possibly Buster Keaton) wasn�t a woman. It�s not all gibberish exactly, but there�s a very fine balancing act going on between coherence and impenetrable private meanings.

The lyrics of Sparta F.C. aren�t exactly free of this stuff � mugging old ladies in your bobble hat, and having your fleecy jumper in the boot of a car, for instance - but by the standards of some Fall songs they�re a model of the well-honed songwriter�s craft. And the fact is, the Spartan�s really did live on blood; they ate a kind of blood soup called melas zomos. The recipe, apparently, has been lost to history.

And of course the other thing that makes Sparta FC such a great song is that it has a killer guitar riff: I won�t be getting that out of my head for the next three days either.

Geoff Nicholson is the author of a bunch of novels including �Flesh Guitar� and �Bleeding London�. His most recent book was �Sex Collectors�, a non-fiction study of people who collect "erotic materials." He lives in Los Angeles and Suffolk.

© 2007 Laura Hird All rights reserved.