In the last week barely a day has gone by without someone with a loose connection to Middlesbrough demanding that the club be restored to the Play Off's and even given a place in the Champions League as compensation, but now it has been alleged the area has previous form in this sort of thing.

Chris Rea was a legend in his home town of Middlesbrough, the son of a local Ice Cream factory owner, he found fame in the mid 1980's after a decade of paying his dues as they say in the music industry, sadly dying in December last year.

In Middlesbrough he was and indeed remains a legend, you have Rea square, Rea Road, Middlesbrough Chris Rea Railway station and a massive statue.

Indeed the direct road from Middlesbrough to Hull is the A169(Via Whitby) and is officially titled the Chris Rea Road To Hull, a kind of North East Route 66.

Now in the wake of Spygate, allegations have emerged that some of Rea's greatest songs may have been the result of the singer/songwriter soft blues legend, spying.

The first has come out of Australia where upon reading the details of the Spygate story, rock band AC/DC suddenly realised it sounded familiar.

They remember playing Middlesbrough Town hall in 1979 and before the show sound checking, as anyone with an interest in music will know, the soundcheck is sacrosanct, it is behind locked doors and is where the band will iron out things for the evening, work out their set and sometimes play around with a new song or two.

On that evening as they worked on a new song, they became aware of a shadowy figure hidden behind a seat at the back of the hall, they sent a roadie to investigate and as he approached the man ran away out in the street.

The band and road crew scanned the empty street and could only see a man dressed in golfing gear, whom the door man at the venue pointed out as local musician Chris Rea.

The man bought a Coffee at the venue's cafe using a pound note which had a picture of the Queen on it, with Her Majesty possibly being implicated in the plot, MI5 quickly got involved and therefore the incident was embargoed, and the Middlesbrough Gazette was unable to cover that week's big story.

So AC/DC thought nothing of it, they were unaware of the location of golf courses nearby, and unsure of whether UK law had changed in terms of deporting people back to Australia, although that would have saved them their air fare home, they kept quiet and didn't suspect anything too untoward.

However Rea (If it was indeed him)hidden behind his seat he would clearly have been able to hear the name of the song and the words and as a respected local guitarist pick out some chords.

The song AC/DC were working on emerged a few months later as a single and an album called Highway To Hell and as it both stormed up the charts, the single a smash hit at number 47 and the album a respectable 8th placing they were laughing all the way to the bank.

However they were not laughing shortly after in 1989 when Rea had a smash hit with the song Road To Hell, there was no disguising where the title came from, Rea had changed the word "Highway" to a more familiar English "Road" but it was clearly copied and the lyrics contained several words that appeared in AC/DC 's original song and I daresay the odd chord or two.

Ironically if someone released another version of the AC/DC song but titled it Highway To Hull, it might well sell a lot of copies in Middlesbrough.

Since then several other band's have remarked that they feel that might have been spied upon and had their work stolen, Slade played the same venue and allege a similar experience, later that year they had released Merry Xmas Everyone which contained many similarities to Rea's Driving Home For Xmas released a decade later, again it used some of the same words and chords.

Another hit Fool (If You Think It's Over) has it's title share the same words that appear in the title of several Beatles songs and it was in the early 1960's that the first sightings of the Phantom of Middlesbrough Town Hall were reported, after the Fab Four played the venue.

Indeed John Lennon later had a solo hit with Woman, a word that later appeared in the Rea hit The Lady In Red, cunningly changed by Rea to Lady to disguise it's origins. One can only imagine whether Lennon's first version of the song could have been hummed in the dressing room of Middlesbrough Town Hall, but with the allegations now coming to light, it has to be considered.

Swedish Boro manager Kim Hellberg has had a lot to say about cheating of late, but he has to ask himself what gave the founders of Teesside cheap flat pack furnishing superstore IKREA their inspiration.

Perhaps Chris Rea's earlier tour of Scandinavia might have had a more covert plan behind it than belting out a few fan favourites.

Of course this is a light hearted view of a situation that has escalated in recent days as Middlesbrough attempt to influence not only the the verdict of the Independent panel, but also the penalty handed down by the EFL should Southampton be found guilty.

It is a case of Middlesbrough demanding a penalty that does not fit the severity of the crime.

Southampton might not come out of this situation smelling of roses, but neither will Middlesbrough, no one is complaining about their allegations, they have every right to make the.

But having presented their evidence to the EFL they should sit back and let justice take it's course based on the actual facts of the situation.

Instead they have continued to wage a war of words in the media and let us be clear here from the very start the Teesside Media were briefed and the allegations they put out bear little resemblance to what actually happened, which initially suggested someone hiding in bushes with binoculars and sophisticated surveillance equipment and turned out to be a former club intern with an i phone in clear view 200 metres away.

Whatever the verdict on the case, Middlesbrough Football Club will be seen as the equivalent of a petulant child telling tales on their classmates and let's face it no one likes a sneak.

Via Reuters or Authors Own