Few Premier League sides are having as much fun as Sunderland in League One

Being bone idle, I approached the editor and asked if I could cut and paste from seven days ago. He impolitely refused, adding that people like me, who earn enormous salaries, are expected to do something productive in return.

I could name exceptions to this principle.

Oh well. There’s always plenty to write about and after five league games under Jack Ross we have a theme. In a word – fun.

We’re acutely aware that the football is not Premier League standard. But better players don’t necessarily provide better entertainment; as anyone who managed to stay awake throughout Newcastle-Chelsea on Sunday will testify.

Following a thoroughly pleasurable, but flawed victory at Gillingham, the trip to Wimbledon was another lark.

It was a full house at Kingsmeadow, although stadiums where Portakabins suffice for toilets tend not to take much filling.

Wimbledon played to their strengths but missed sitters. It was Sunderland’s worst performance so far under Ross and reiterated that improvements remain necessary.

Nevertheless, there was no resentment or panic among the visiting fans at half-time.

There was a confident murmur that if two goals were required, then Lee Cattermole was surely the man to deliver both. Never in doubt.

When he volleyed home his second, to bring his total at Sunderland to five in just nine years, the home contingent resorted to gallows humour and a stirring rendition of “What’s it like to see a crowd?”

The visitors retorted with the obligatory “My garden shed ...” before following up with a chant about the possible termination of Wimbledon’s percentage lease agreement with Chelsea.

That one didn’t really catch on.

But otherwise it was fun in the sun, heaps of picnic and lashings of ginger beer.

Players and supporters are mutually benefitting each other and the atmosphere home and away has been excellent.

The 30,000 average home attendance is unlikely to be bettered at any club subjected to such protracted awfulness on and off the pitch.

We’re talking about decades here, with last season being the most horrendous in the club’s history.

Manchester City might dispute this. They averaged 28,261 in their third tier season of 1998-99. Impressive and a fair point.

Manchester United fans revel in informing us that in the old Second Division in 1974-75, they were still England’s best supported club.

Perfectly true, but one season outside the top flight in the last 80 years, just six years after being champions of Europe, doesn’t sound like much of a test to Sunderland’s following.

Certain other clubs too seem to forget how far their attendances can descend under sufficiently bad circumstances.

But if the quantity of Sunderland’s support this season is an asset, then the quality is even more important.

There are those who will never return unless they can see Premier League football. That is their prerogative.

It is my prerogative to dismiss them as not-very-good supporters. However, the absence of the terminally dull and joyless is good news for everyone else.

Continuing the motif, I respectfully suggest that anyone who professes to love the club joins in with the ... fun: if they are able to do so. Even with the present impressive turnouts, there is room for more.

Saturday sees the visit of Oxford United. Under-16 tickets are £7.50, under-22s £12.50, over-65s £17.50 with adults from £20.

The school holidays are about to end, the weather forecast is good and, without making any promises, it should be entertaining. Well?

Surely fun should be grabbed whenever possible; especially if you’ve followed Sunderland in recent times.

There’s an odd paradox here. Most SAFC supporters would swap places with their counterparts at any current Premier League club at the drop of a shin pad.

Yet fans of at least half of PL sides aren’t enjoying themselves as much as the Sunderland faithful right now.

For the time being at least, this includes fans of Manchester United. They had much more fun in 1975.

Quest to bag the puns achieved in Saturday night’s highlights show

Highlights of the EFL are shown each Saturday on Quest.

Under the zany title of EFL on Quest, it does what it can for 72 clubs in the same number of minutes (once adverts are taken into account). The upshot is that fans of all 72 think their team is not given enough attention.

Quest is a channel which many supporters hadn’t heard of before this season. So the show’s budget is understandably limited and it can’t offer a dozen different camera angles of every incident.

But considering the financial and time constraints, it isn’t a bad little show; even if the host Colin Murray tends to divide opinion.

Many years ago, it became common procedure for footy shows to cram as many puns into their goals roundups as humanly achievable. You may recall Roger Tames as an early and enthusiastic exponent of the practice.

But EFL on Quest goes way beyond minimum punning requirements. It has a reflexive compulsion to pun – and the more dreadful the better.

The tedium of Charlton and Fleetwood’s 0-0 draw on Saturday was alleviated, when “events” were interrupted by home supporters lobbing packets of crisps onto the pitch in protest against the club’s owner.

Quest’s roundup bloke, one Dan Mason, was audibly exhilarated by the punning opportunities this provided.

To wit: “Bags of fun at the Valley.”

“It was the tastiest action we saw all afternoon.”

“They looked a little Frazzled.”

And most shocking of all: “Goalkeepers, of course, love a bit of saver-y.”

I’m not sure if that last one was even legal. Not that Dan was concerned and he pinged eight crisp-related puns into the allotted 45 seconds. That’s one every 5.6 seconds. You have to admire the man’s stamina.

Maybe I’m becoming more easily pleased the older I get, but I quite enjoy this sort of nonsense; and it will be interesting punning when laxatives are thrown from the stands.