Stop the train, I want to get off

2:15pm Tuesday 25th March 2008

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TRAVELLING on the London Underground is an unpleasant experience at the best times, but, for me, it reached an all-time nadir last week when I had the misfortune to be trapped at peak time for 20 minutes somewhere beneath Russell Square with a carriage full of Eindhoven supporters.

If you are unlucky enough to be a daily user of the Tube, you'll know that rush-hour delays are a regular occurrence. Once the doors have closed, leaving you squashed up against the glass in a nose-rearranging kind of way, the likelihood is that once the train has moved off into the tunnel it will lumber to a halt about 20 seconds later leaving you playing a particularly intimate game of sardines with 100 total strangers.

There you all are, making full bodily contact with at least four other people trapped around you, inhaling the mingled odour of their perfumes and personal hygiene issues in completely respectful silence.

Your face might well be pressed uncomfortably into the armpit of the City gent next to you, and his briefcase could be wedged snugly into the buttocks of the large lady on his left, but because you are British none of you would dream of commenting on the situation or indeed making any kind of noise at all.

Normally you'd all stand there in stoic silence for 20 minutes or so, resigned to the fact that eventually the train will start to move again and it will soon be over.

Just occasionally, the silence will be broken by a sneeze, a cough or perhaps, in extremis, an exasperated tut'. But never will the sound of a fully formed sentence break into the solitary splendour of transcendental irritation that is the birthright of every Briton trapped on an underground train between 5pm and 7pm on a weeknight.

Try telling that to an Eindhoven supporter. I should have realised that taking the bus from Holborn to St Pancras would have been a better idea when I had to queue for 15 minutes just to get on to the platform.

By the time I reached the second escalator, there were so many people massing behind me that the option of turning back and escaping into the fresh air was impossible.

Trying to banish thoughts of the Bethnal Green Tube disaster, which unsettlingly enough I'd just been reading about, I continued to travel downwards, dimly aware that somewhere far ahead I could hear a roaring sound that had nothing to do with the ventilation generators or the groaning of the escalator.

By the time I reached the platform all became clear. On top of the thousands of regular passengers who shoehorn themselves onto the Piccadilly line at 5.30pm, London Underground staff were also having to cope with thousands of Eindhoven supporters, whose inability to grasp the basics of tube etiquette was matched only by their contrasting and clearly prodigious ability to sink vats of lager as a pre-match warm-up exercise.

Batches of yodelling football fans were herded into carriages alongside us regulars and we were fortunate enough to be on the receiving end of 40 or so specimens, who managed to lower our journey to a totally new level of purgatorial horror.

"It's okay - I'll be off this train in five minutes, next stop but one," I told myself, as the beer-belching fans broke into a ragged chorus of something very loud and slightly scary that presumably expressed their deep love of Eindhoven through the medium of song.

Unfortunately the Piccadilly line had other ideas, grinding to an ominously silent halt 30 seconds later.

I say silent, as it was indeed quiet for about five seconds or so as the slack-jawed supporters stared expectantly at the doors waiting for them to open. When they didn't, the fans started up another rousing chorus of Eindhoven Forever or something similar, supported by a tympanic accompaniment of door kicking.

After four minutes or so they got fed up with that and instead treated the carriage to a tuneful tirade of the rudest words they knew in English. Fortunately for us, most of these weren't very rude at all, although I'm sure we all felt quite privileged to learn that Andre - a plump ginger-haired Eindhoveran, had very large genitals. In fact, an approximation of this was sung over and over again by the increasingly excitable group until they got bored and started hitting each other instead.

All around them, groups of silently suffering commuters exchanged furtive eyebrow lifts as they tried, in vain, to squeeze as much space between themselves and the supporters as possible.

Eventually, one of the fans landed in the lap of a seated passenger and that prompted them to calm down a bit. By that I mean they stopped fighting and resumed the tuneless singing - oh, and one of them was sick.

After what seemed like an eternity,, the train started off again and I was grateful to get out at the next stop - stepping gingerly over a pool of something steaming by the door.

Please don't think I've got a particular downer on Eindhoven supporters. I'm absolutely certain that British football fans are even more disgusting when exported to Europe.

What I do think is peculiar is that this sort of pack behaviour seems to be the exclusive preserve of males, wherever they are from. Oblivious to the people around them, they are possessed by a competitive, alcohol-fuelled desire to be as obnoxious and incoherent as possible.

They aren't even talking to each other, just vying to see who can bellow the loudest.

I was horrified to read last week of the British squaddies who disgraced themselves in a Norwegian bar while celebrating the end of a practice exercise.

This loud and obnoxious bunch drank themselves stupid, hurled abuse at other customers, stripped naked and then urinated on a, by now, comatose member of the company who had passed out on the floor. Makes you proud, doesn't it?

I don't know if it's a latent hunter-gatherer thing, a deeply buried memory of the days when very hairy men went off on a very challenging boar hunt and then went a bit loopy on fresh meat and fermented yak juice when they brought home the bacon, but there's something quite disturbing about male bonding and excessive levels of testosterone. You can take the caveman out of the cave but By the way, at the same time the women were at home in the cave developing the principles of language.