Alan Brazil’s Nuts

Alan Brazil - Ipswich Town - 1982
Alan Brazil in his Ipswich Town days

Football fans of a certain age and era (i.e. 40 plus and late 1970’s) will be familiar with the name of Alan Brazil.

Famed for his bushy blonde hair, the former free-scoring striker of Ipswich Town, graced the field for a number of clubs including Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United.

Some of you might even remember him as being part of the Ipswich Town team that won the 1981 UEFA Cup Final by beating AZ Alkamar 5-4 over two legs.

He also represented his beloved Scotland on 13 occasions – the highlight being an appearance in the 1982 World Cup in Spain.

On a more personal note I remember him more from my days as a kid, watching him line-up for Ipswich against the Swans in the old First Division (1981-1983)  at the now non-existent Vetch Field.

He was also a stand out figure in my Panini football sticker book.  Do you remember collecting them?  If not, this image should bring back a few memories – especially at 12p a packet!

 Panini football stickers

Nowadays, the likeable Glaswegian can be found presenting the ‘Sunday Exclusive’ and ‘Sports Breakfast’ shows on the radio station TalkSport.

So to quote a well known Brazilism “why” blog about him I hear you ask.

Well apart from the fact that he has always – when I’ve been listening anyway – been highly complimentary about my beloved Swansea City, he’s actually gone to great effort and sent me his nuts!!

Now before you all think that I’ve gone a little bit bonkers, let me explain.

As someone whom uses Twitter quite a lot, I was intrigued to see several retweets (RTs) on Monday this week about winning Alan Brazil’s nuts – not because I’ve decided to bat for the other side, but because I remember him as a football icon.

Basically the 300th Twitter follower of Brazil’s Nuts would win just that – Alan Brazil’s nuts.  There are no prizes here for guessing who won this accolade, yep that’s right me 🙂

And here’s the prize – 10 packets of his salted and dry-roasted peanuts. Thanks Alan!

Alan Brazil's Nuts
Brazil's Nuts

But all nut jokes aside, there is a serious and worthy reason behind the Brazil’s Nuts story – money will be donated to charity for every packet sold.

The Sir Bobby Robson Foundation cancer charity will benefit from each sale of the snack and it is hoped that between £70,000 and £100,000 will be raised for the charity this year alone.

As Brazil’s Nuts are a new snacks range, they are currently only available as original salted and dry-roasted peanuts, but plans are being made to release chilli peanut and cashew nut versions later this year.

They’ll be available to buy in all good supermarkets and some rubbish ones too.

If the incentive of helping charity isn’t enough to get you to buy a packet, then maybe the fact that each packet of the nuts feature a QR code enabling you to access Talksport competitions, videos and exclusive content on the Talksport website is perhaps?

So whether you decide to buy the snacks or not is up to you, but at least get following @brazilsnuts on Twitter and help spread the word about Alan’s nutty fundraising efforts 🙂