Uli Hesse in Germany

The story of that logo goes back to the 1980s. The exact year is a matter of debate, because the man who got the ball rolling was drinking heavily then.

Thus the details are hazy, though St Pauli's recent centenary exhibition says the year was 1987 and circumstantial evidence has me presume that's correct.

What happened that spring was that a punk rocker known as Doc Mabuse passed through the famous Hamburg funfair called the Dom on his way to a St Pauli game and somehow arrived at the ground with a pirate flag in his hand. (These days, he sometimes says he actually paid for the flag, but that's far-fetched.)