“Kettering and Proud (ish) to Be!”

Many moons ago, in its previous paper incarnation Patgod tackled head-on the malicious lie that Kettering was a town where nothing had ever happened and no one famous was born. Over the course of a couple of issues we assembled a mighty selection of fabulous facts and famous faces associated with our fair town.

Obviously none of these events or personages come immediately to mind now, but take it from us, they were both famous and fabulous!

At least nothing DID come to mind. Now it has! Quite recently the fastest man in history, Usain Bolt was routinely winning a 100 metres despite the fact that he elected to hop on one foot just to give the other competitors a chance. Whoops, settle down there everyone! Obviously we are not about to drop the bombshell that Usain himself was from Kettering, although that story would go some way to finally put this God-forsaken blog on the map. No, during his post victory warm down (just as the other runners had reached the 50 metre mark) one of the commentators (possibly Sally Gunnell, or someone good) happened to mention that Usain’s old school was “The William Knibb Memorial High School”.

William Knibb! Kettering’s own William Knibb! One of town's favourite sons. OK, as with anyone vaguely famous from Kettering he hot-footed it away from here as soon as he could, but still, he was born HERE, and despite the enormous weight of worthy deeds he performed in later life, he couldn't erase that embarrassing fact.

Knibb’s work in Jamaica in helping to bring an end to slavery has never been forgotten there obviously. And to be fair, for a change, his work is recognised in the town of his birth. A freed slave adorns our town’s crest. One of the council wards in this town is named after him. And there is the William Knibb Centre of course.

Mind you, as far as we can tell, the W.K. Centre seems to cater solely for our local thick shits and slappers, giving them somewhere to hang around with cans of cider, swap bodily fluids, and give each other homemade tattoos with bottles of ink and bits of broken glass.

Mm…Maybe we haven’t served his memory as well as we could have…?

For more information about our foremost former Cytriginian have a gander at this –

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Knibb

I'm sure though that Wikipedia could find a better picture to use though as the one they use makes it look as though he's been "goosed!"