'We're so proud of my dad and the football anthem he wrote'

Go to any Ipswich Town match and you will hear a song about a fan called Edward Ebenezer Jeremiah Brown – who everybody calls Ted.

It is played over the PA system at the start of every home match and sung spontaneously by fans in the stands.

The song, called Come on the Town, describes a fictional Ipswich fan who has a scarf, a rattle and a big rosette, and has not missed a game since he was three.

Supporters have been proudly belting out the song for decades, but its origins have slowly been forgotten.

So how did it come about, who was Ted, and what is the legacy of this fan hit? The BBC tracked down the son of the song's creator to find out.

The song was written in the late 1960s by Gerald Hicks, known as Gerry.

Born in 1933 in Wickhambrook, near Newmarket, he had been musically gifted from a young age.

His son, Daniel Hicks, 66, who lives near Beccles on the Suffolk/Norfolk border, explained how his dad learned to play the piano as a child before teaching himself the saxophone as a teenager.

As an adult, Gerry led dance and jazz bands and played the piano in pubs.

He began to take more of an interest in composing music, specifically for musicals, and in 1967 joined a local amateur dramatic group, the Cavendish Players.

It was with this group that Gerry wrote his first musical called Ring Around Rosy, which featured 18 songs, including Come on the Town.

It premiered at Cavendish Memorial Hall in 1971 and during that song, the actors would wave Ipswich Town scarves, rosettes and rattles.

"That song was then noticed by one of his friends called Geoffrey Hunter from Newmarket who was another musician, and they thought about it as a possible anthem for Ipswich Town Football Club," explained Daniel.

"The Ipswich Supporters Club liked the song and so Mr Hunter wrote a B-side, Ipswich Football Calypso, and they produced the single."

In order to make it an authentic supporters' song, Gerry and his brother, both Town fans, attended the recording session as backing singers.

The song was released just before Christmas 1972 and quickly sold 1,000 copies in a month.

Daniel, who was 13 then, said his father wanted to ensure the character of Ted reflected what it was to be a Town fan.

"He grew up in Suffolk and he was a proud Suffolk person," he said of his father.

"He knew what people were like in Suffolk and their pride in Ipswich. He put that into the no-nonsense Suffolk people in the musical.

"That was a significant part of it."

Over the decades, Gerry continued to write musicals, but at some point Come on the Town disappeared.

However, about 20 years ago it was revived by several fans and even re-recorded by another Ipswich band.

Since then, fans old and young have come to know its joyful lyrics once again.

Most recently, a rendition was given by supporters during the Premier League promotion parade.

But what of Gerry?

In 1991, he retired from his job as an office manager at brewer Greene King in Bury St Edmunds, and moved to Spain in 1999.

He developed dementia and was later moved into a Spanish care home where Daniel last saw him during a visit in October 2014.

"Because he'd lost the ability to communicate very effectively, in order to get him to think about and recognise what was going on, I actually sang him Edward Ebenezer," he said.

"That was the last time that we saw him alive and he smiled when he heard the song.

"I must admit that I had struggled not to get teary, but that was one of the last things that he heard from us... the song."

Gerry died on Christmas Day that year.

The family brought his ashes back to Wickhambrook so they could be scattered over the recreation ground where Gerry had enjoyed playing various sports.

Gerry's brother Ray, who had sung on the original song with him, also developed dementia and died in January 2025.

"He was such an incredibly talented man... it's such pride that we have in him and all of his successes," said Daniel of his father.

"The fact that he took these musicals on to the Theatre Royal in Bury St Edmunds; he always treated all of these things in a professional manner, even though they were amateur dramatics.

"He would be quite ruthless about making sure that everybody treated it seriously and the performances were brilliant."

And of the song his dad is best remembered for?

"We're incredibly proud of him and it's lovely to hear Ipswich Town still singing it."

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