Letter: New website for Navy

A few years ago we were cruising through the South Island in New Zealand when we stumbled across a lovely little village with a Walker Place and Habershon Street and a quaint pub with a picture of the 1976 Millers Team on the wall, Wow. Another Rotherham.

A bit of  “Googling” when we got home proved that despite there being several places named the same as (and possibly after) a small city to our south west, or possibly even more annoyingly a village to our south with a wonky church, there seems to be only two Rotherhams in the world. So, our fame runs to an industrial town in South Yorkshire, a quaint village in New Zealand and I think there is a professional footballer with the same name but with the ‘h’ missing. Pretty exclusive.

Just recently a group of us were in Cape Town to watch Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow et al play cricket when we found ourselves pretty hungry one evening. On checking out the menus of the local takeaways at our digs, imagine our surprise when we discovered that Butlers Pizza featured THE ROTHERHAM pizza. What could this be? An ex pat missing his home so much that he named a pizza after it? A South African so impressed by a visit to our part of South Yorkshire that he named a pizza after it to capture his memories for ever?

We immediately ordered three THE ROTHERHAM pizzas (12”, thin base) on the condition that they explained the reasoning behind the naming of this presumably delicious gastronomical treat. The girl who answered the phone didn’t know but promised to investigate and let us know via the delivery boy.

Twenty minutes later, the doorbell rang and there were three pizzas, one with a note in the box. With bated breath we opened the note to read “the topping combo of bacon, feta, salami and mozzarella was the favourite of Mr Seth Rotherham, a retired employee of ours”.

Oh well. They were very nice and we have a pizza named after us. Who needs a wonky church?

Dave Kennedy, Wickersley