Today’s item comes from a Slog reader in Scotland, who writes [footnotes are mine]:

Hi Christopher,

I’ve been enjoying the BSFOTDs, so nevermind the naysayers.¹ And I thought you’d enjoy this: I just turned on BBC1 and they were showing highlights of the Chelsea/Newcastle football match² tonight, set to “The Blues are Still Blue.”³ It wasn’t so long ago that the thought of B&S being used to convey the glamour and athleticism of professional sports would’ve been unthinkable.⁴ Imagine highlights of Michael Johnson⁵ running the 100 while Stuart shyly mumbles “Stars of track and field are beautiful people.”

Best,

Gabriel in Edinburgh

1. The identity of one of my naysayers has recently come to my attention. Turns out this is someone who for years has been rolling his eyes at me because I am not up on what is *cool* at any given second, disqualifying himself as someone whose concerns I’m going to take seriously.
2. Chelsea won, 1-0.
3. Track four on the new album, The Life Pursuit, and the second single to be released, “The Blues Are Still Blue” is a groovy ditty set in a launderette about how when you put all your clothes together in the machine and then take them out, the black will be gray and the white will be gray but the blues are still blue.
4. It’s true, athleticism isn’t really associated with the band’s milieu, but this has been a misconception from the beginning. Stuart Murdoch is a football—er, soccer—player; according to Paul Whitelaw’s book Belle and Sebastian: Just a Modern Rock Story, Murdoch has “been chancing his shins on the football fields since an early age and continues to play in his local sport center’s five-a-side team to this day, alongside B&S keyboardist Chris Geddes and manager Neil Robertson… Something of an athlete in his youth, a still-spry Stuart can often be glimpsed today sprinting determinedly around Glasgow…”
5. Former U.S. sprinter; holds five Olympic gold medals.

[This has been an international installment of Belle and Sebastian Fact of the Day. Gabriel, thanks for writing. To the man who has promised an Interpol fact of the day every time I post a BASFOTD, the comments field is right there; make it good. Everyone else: Belle and Sebastian play the Paramount this Saturday. The New Pornographers open. Do whatever you can.]