COMMENT BY GILES SMITH

The list is enormous and has clearly been assembled with an academic rigour which would shame the research departments of many of our finer universities. It's also, like the painting of the Severn Bridge, an ongoing project; with a canny eye on further expansion, the site maintains a section entitled "Maybe Gooners", a list of suspected supporters ("please let us know if you can confirm or refute their Goonerhood").

The only person on the waiting list when I looked this week was the actor Norman Lovett, and this on the grounds that his character in the science fiction comedy Red Dwarf once spoke the line "steaming pile of Hotspur". Convincing? I'm not sure a single expression of contempt for Tottenham limits the possibilities to one club. In any case, it's tricky with actors; they're forever saying things that someone else tells them to.

With the list of confirmed Arsenal supporters, we are on more certain ground. Up to a point, the long columns of names have a familiar ring, featuring the inevitable cabal of television thespians, a version of which tends to congregate (or likes to say it does) whenever any London club's at home. "Billy from London's Burning, Ray from Minder . . . Hyacinth Bucket's hubby in that sitcom," and so forth. Things get a little more unusual, however, with the listing of David Soul (the erstwhile pop balladeer and cardigan-wearing TV cop) and the Hollywood superstar Kevin Costner.

Soul improbably came out for Arsenal on GMTV and I saw with my own eyes Costner's startling confession of allegiance to the north London club when it formed part of Sky Sports' FA Cup final build-up a couple of seasons ago. The world of American showbusiness is not, I would hazard, over-populated with people who care intensely about what's happening in the Premiership. Yet Arsenal have attracted the attentions of two. However you look at it, this is impressive.

Closer to home, the list also alleges that Arsenal have the support of Her Majesty the Queen Mother. (The evidence for this is too complicatedly anecdotal to unpack fully here; I can only direct you to the site and, in particular, to the linked item: "ArseWEB presents - the Queen Mum is a Gooner.") The Queen Mother is one of a number of surprise inclusions, all neatly arranged by category. Under politics: the president of Poland, Aleksander Kwasniewski, and the former Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath. Under religion: the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey; the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks; and God. (They could be joking about God, though you never know.) Under science: Professor the Lord Robert Winston, "pioneer of IVF treatment and other microsurgical infertility procedures". (We pass no comment on what might have drawn Lord Winston to Arsenal.)

And recognising quite properly that "celebrity" in our age is a highly fluid concept, the list has a short but terrifying entry under the heading 'crime'. Criminal Gooners are Ronnie Biggs, 'Mad' Frankie Fraser and Reg Dudley, to whom the list refers, with concision if not delicacy, as "the alleged 'Torso murderer'".

But it's not here that the list produces its major shock. Nor even in the allegation that Sir Alex Ferguson's son, Darren, is an Arsenal supporter. (You'd have thought Ferguson, of all people, would have done something about that. But maybe he's a more easy-going kind of guy than we know.) No, the real jaw-dropper is the assertion that Arsenal are the favourite club of Chris Perry, Justin Edinburgh, Stephen Carr and Tim Sherwood of Tottenham Hotspur.

In the case of Carr, the site produces a witness: Trish McGarry, a former neighbour of Carr in Dublin: "Before playing for Tottenham he used to parade around proudly in an Arsenal jersey." In the case of the other three, we have only the word of ArseWEB. But if true, it's a hugely troubling revelation, suggesting that Alan Sugar's problems at Tottenham go deeper even than they appear to. If almost the entirety of a side's defence and their pivotal midfielder have been spending their days off furtively rooting for the team's oldest and bitterest rivals, then is it any wonder the club have trouble mounting a credible assault on the European qualifying places?

Incidentally, the list of Celebrity Gooners was compiled for ArseWEB by Rupert Ward and Mark King. That's not the Mark King who was the bass player in Level 42 is it? Actually, it can't be. Mark King from Level 42 supports Coventry City. Or so I hear.