The Accidental Footballer by Pat Nevin (Monoray 2021)

 

Another room was swiftly bypassed on the stairs with a flick of the wrist and a ‘You wouldn’t be interested in that one’ comment. Like hell I wouldn’t be interested, that was the one I wanted to see most, now that he had dismissed it with just a little too much disdain! I was already envisaging a picture of Dorian Gray, but with an ageing Morrissey in the frame. He changed his mind and then relented again after some gentle persuasion. He turned the key in the lock so sluggishly and opened the door to the room so slowly that it was even more obvious that he was embarrassed about its contents. I just wanted to push past him at this point, it was such a painstaking palaver.

The door finally opened to reveal the very last thing I expected to see: a fully kitted-out multigym with all the most modern equipment.

Bobby Dazzler: My Story by Bobby George (Orion 2006)

Yes, he could be arrogant at times, both on and off the oche, but I think he needed that for his game. There was never any malice there. If he had something to say, he would always say it to your face and I respected him for that. He was blunt but he was also honest and I never once heard him bad mouth anyone behind their back.

In 1977, Eric and I won the pairs at the Crayford Open and almost met each other in the final of the singles. I reached the final and Eric got to die semi-finals where he lost to Peter Chapman, a darts veteran and former News of the World champion.

Peter had a big hairy chest and used to love to show it oft by playing dart with his shirt open all the way down to just above his navel. Eric was never shy in coming forward and mentioned the chest hair to Peter, asking if he grew an extra hair every time he lost a match. When Peter asked why. Eric replied. ‘Well, you’re playing my mate in the final and you've just grown another one. Look!’ He could be a saucy bastard at times.

The two of us had some great times together, particularly in the early days, winning lots of tournaments and causing havoc all over the place with our money races. We always had a laugh too. I once played Eric in St Paul’s Way, east London. I went up to the oche and hit the wire under the treble 20 three times in a row. No score. Eric was in hysterics until he got up to the oche and did exactly the same with his three darts. No score.

Six darts hit six wires. It was incredible. I have never seen or heard of anything like that before or since. Some drunk in the crowd heckled us and told us we were rubbish. Quick as a flash. Eric went over, offered him his darts and said, ‘Go on then, you do it. Hit the wire three times.’ It was a priceless moment.

At that time, money races were the only way to earn good money from darts, and if you were a decent player, this was normally easy money, too. Eric and I were normally so confident that we carried little cash on us because normally we won. I say, normally.

One night I drove Eric to the Mother Hubbard pub in Loughton, where he took on Bob Wood in a money race for £200, which was a great deal of money back then. He lost. Eric came up to me at the bar and asked me to lend him the money to cover his debt, but I had nothing like that amount of cash on me. We were both flummoxed for a moment, until Eric went over to Bob and offered him a game of ’double or quits’ against me! Suddenly, I was the one in the firing line. If I won, we were in the clear and if I lost, we somehow had to find £400.

The match was played over seven legs of 1001 and at one stage I was in serious trouble against him. With little money in our pockets. Eric and I were about to get lynched by the locals, and we were outnumbered by about 30 to one. At the end of one leg, I walked over to Eric and handed him the keys to my Ford Cortina, parked outside. I told him that if I looked like losing, he had to get outside, start up the engine and leave the passenger door open for me. In the worst-case scenario, we would have to make a run for it. We would have no other choice. The money race would probably turn into a car chase.

I went back to the oche and no sooner had I played my first three darts of the next leg when Eric shouted out with the keys in his hand, ‘Bob, I can’t drive.’ I couldn’t believe it. Talk about waking me up! Our only chance now was for me to win the match. I pulled out several maximums and nicked it on the final leg. I was wet through with sweat at the end, and that was just to cancel out a bet that Eric lost. We left the pub without a penny between us, and never went back.

That was our apprenticeship but there is no doubt that such experiences improved our darts. My game was improving all the time. The cheques and the trophies were proof of that.

Eric and I became the game's version of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and we stuck up for each other through thick and thin. I will never forget that about him. Most of the others just looked after themselves but he wasn't like that.

Paradise And Beyond: My Autobiography by Chris Sutton (Black and White Publishing 2011)

Vialli left me out of the FA Cup Final team to play Aston Villa at Wembley in the last competitive game of the season. I went to Ray Wilkins and he marked my card the night before the game that I wouldn’t be involved, not even on the bench. I hadn’t trained as well as I should have for a few weeks prior to that, wasn’t applying myself. This probably made Vialli’s mind up. I was looking forward to the season coming to an end and leaving the club, although nothing was certain at that stage. But I was always involved when I was fit. I really lost my cool at being left out for the final. I guess the previous nine months just came to a head and I exploded.

I spoke to Vialli after breakfast on the Saturday morning. We stood in a corridor. I told him he was a coward for not telling me to my face that I wouldn’t be involved in the final. Then I repeated that insult to him. He tried to explain to me why I was left out. I called him a coward for the third time and he wouldn’t accept it anymore. He told me if I said it one more time, he would knock me out. I didn’t say it for a fourth time. I shouldn’t have said that to him at all, as, over the piece, he was more than fair to me. I regret calling him a coward. It’s not something I’m proud of. I was totally unprofessional. I regret it and it was the last conversation we had. I acted like a spoilt brat. It was my fault. My strength of character let me down, nothing else. I paid the ultimate price that day for taking my foot off the pedal in training in the build-up to the final. It was the correct decision to leave me off the bench. To compound it, I behaved selfishly towards Vialli and he certainly didn’t deserve it on the day of such a big game. I’m still totally ashamed of my actions that day and Vialli deserved much better.

El Diego by Diego Armando Maradona (Yellow Jersey Press 2005)

Brazil have sold the world this idea that they’re the only ones capable of the jogo bonito, of playing beautifully ... bollocks! We can also do the jogo bonito, we just don’t know how to sell it. Brazilians always think everything is tudo hem, tudo legal and they’re all mellow, whereas for us when it’s not tudo bem it’s not cool and fuck the lot of them. We stop people short and knock them out one by one. That’s how we are and I don’t have a problem with that. Don’t get me wrong, I like the Brazilian way of life, I like them, but in football, I want to beat them to the death. They’re My Rivals, with capital letters.

The Quiet Assassin: The Davie Hay Story by Davie Hay with Alex Gordon (Black and White Publishing 2009)

Then, inexplicably. Big Jock dropped Geordie for the final and put him on the substitutes' bench. He went with the two in midfield - Murdy and Bertie - that had worked so wonderfully well in Lisbon in 1967. This was a different game, though. Feyenoord were exceptionally strong across the middle of the park where their main man was Wim van Hanagem, who was dismissed by Jock as being a 'poor man's Jim Baxter'. It was unlike our boss to misread a situation, but on this occasion he got it wrong; very wrong. Our line-up played right into their hands. We had Jinky, Willie Wallace, John Hughes and Bobby Lennox as a four-man frontline, but with the Dutch's stranglehold in the middle of the park, they were starved of any reasonable service. Normally, I could get forward when Jinky was buzzing, but the wee man was being suffocated by their defence. They double-banked and even treble-banked on him. They tried to force him inside into an already cluttered midfield where they had players waiting to pick him off.

Feyenoord played a pressing game all over the park and we were struggling to get into any sort of rhythm. They worked our defence well and didn't give us a moment's respite. Ove Kind vail, their Swedish striker, was keeping Billy McNeill occupied while Jim Brogan had picked up an early foot injury that curtailed his movement a bit. Tommy Gemmell was getting forward, as usual, but our cavalier fullback also had his work cut out deep in his own territory.

The Rocky Road by Eamon Dunphy (Penguin Books 2013)

John F. Kennedy’s bid to become the first Catholic president of the United States was the big international story of 1960. His family links to Ireland ensured the passionate support of the Irish. He had won the Democratic nomination in July, just before I arrived in Manchester. Being firmly in the camp, I was surprised at English scepticism about Kennedy.

British reservations about Kennedy were not rooted in his religion: rather, they had to do with his father, Joe, who’d been US ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1938 to 1940. Kennedy Sr was associated with appeasement, had sought meetings with Hitler, and forcefully resisted United States involvement in the war. He had been, like many Irish, on the wrong side of history, and that caused many in England to regard his son with suspicion, in some cases contempt.

For me and tens of millions of others around the world, Kennedy represented youth, vigour and hope for a better future, in which peace and justice would prevail over the darker forces his shifty opponent, Nixon, seemed to represent. Immersed in all of this, I was struck not only by the scepticism of the English chattering class but by the indifference of the people I was mixing with. They were watching a different movie.

Barry Fry was the person I spent most time with as I settled into my new life. Together we found new digs with Mrs Scott, a widow who shared a house with her sister in Sale, one of Manchester’s more salubrious suburbs. Mrs Scott’s spacious semi-detached house, on a tree-lined road, was a world away from the narrow, terraced streets in the shadow of Old Trafford where most digs were located. Nice though she was, Mrs Cropper had spent more money on bingo than on food. I’d felt my digs money was subsidizing her bingo habit. At Mrs Scott’s, the money stayed in the project: the food was first class, the television was state-of-the-art, and Barry and I had our own rooms.

Our accommodation sorted, we could concentrate on our football and our social lives. The latter mattered more to Barry than to me. Although no movie star, Barry was a ladies’ man. With his extrovert personality, his sharp sense of humour and his Cockney accent, he cut quite a swagger on the Manchester scene. He was actually a country bumpkin from Bedford, but when quizzed about his accent he would claim to be ‘from London, dahlin”. The fact that we were Manchester United players, regardless of how low-ranked, did no harm to our chances with the girls. On this issue Barry believed in full and early disclosure.

Our initial forays onto the city’s social scene took us to the Plaza ballroom on Oxford Road. Jimmy Savile was the manager. He had yet to become a national figure but, with his colourful gear and black Rolls-Royce, Jimmy was the Main Man in Manchester’s emerging scene. He had a club, the Three Coins, on Fountain Street around the corner from the Plaza. Rumours were already swirling around him, decades before his predilections became common knowledge. One day my girlfriend was lured back to his penthouse flat, which appeared to have only a bed as furniture, but she was canny enough to escape.

Repossessed by Julian Cope (Thorsons 1999)

A Safe House of Sorts

For a few weeks there, the phone would not stop ringing. Our break up was big news and there was a lot of shit to wade through. I wouldn’t leave Tamworth because too many people needed things from me, so Dorian and I reclused out. If I went to London now they’d all be persuading me to finish the dreadful third/turd album and tie up all the loose ends. I knew that I was safe up here in Tamworth, safe from a culture which was currently buying the hated Blancmange LP in droves, the same crap that currently hung transfixed on our wall by a 6" nail, vinyl and album sleeve alike. Underneath the blistered spiral bum marks from our electric hob, cartoon kittens squirmed with horror as they all stood listening to music on headphones — from the faces they were making, it was clear they themselves were listening to the Blancmange LP. “Never mind,” said Dorian. “Americans don’t have the dessert and pronounce the name ‘Blank Man’.” Nuff Said.

The Mill Lane house was a three-storey fortress which had been part of a quiet terrace until the development of recent years. But 70s council planning had gouged out the heart of these turn-of-the-20th-century houses and left no. 1 teetering on a small and ugly ring-road through the town. Its frontage was ultra-narrow and unprepossessing, but fell back to a considerable depth, creating inside a cell structure of small dimly lit rooms.

For a while, we lived on toast and tea in the bedroom. All my records and the stereo and my atrociously-finished flight case of cassettes were piled up in there. I was so used to hotels that I couldn’t learn to spread out. We answered the door to no-one. I was so paranoid that I’d dive behind the kitchen counter if there was even a knock at the door.

Eventually, some time in early December, Paul King decided that it was time to sort out our finances. Our meagre £35 per week mysteriously rose to £100 despite our mounting debts. Dave Balfe made it clear that he had no desire to split up the group, as we were in debt. I told the bastard in no uncertain terms that the group did not exist to make money, that was a secondary inevitable part of the quest. The quest, Balfe. You remember that?

We will be remembered for our strength and foresight. We were not money-heads who insisted on releasing a shitty third album just to fulfil a contract. I’d felt like I’d already seen half of my favourite rock’n’roll groups in history fizzle out with a final album that bore no resemblance to the spirit of the original group.

A Game of Two Halves: The Autobiography by Archie Macpherson (Black & White Publishing 2009)

Argentina, 1978, was wounding and stimulating at the same time. To watch a cheerful, personable, approachable guy undergoing an ordeal of which only a Torquemada would have approved was deeply unsettling. I had felt a personal stirring of unease, many months before, when I assisted him in a brewery-sponsored tour of the country to cities and towns, as he bathed in the glow of admiration which came from his ecstatic nation. I felt that if it didn't come off for him, the fall from grace would finish him. Failure, set against optimistic hysteria, could only mean a death warrant. When I watched him cuddle a dog on a hillside in Alta Gracia, the town we were all based in, after the defeat in the first game by Peru, 3-1, and heard him tell us that the animal was probably the only friend he had left in South America, you  could tell he was slipping into self-perpetuating misery. After the game against Iran, who we assumed were the Glenbuck Cherrypickers of the tournament  but which ended in a 1-1 draw, my colleagues in BBC television in London deliberately and maliciously edited pieces together with close-ups of Ally's contorted, tortured face on the bench which were the closest television has ever got to portraying Edvard Munch's The Scream, in a sporting setting, there really was no way back.

The win against the ultimate finalists, Holland, in Mendoza, 3-2, but which meant nothing in terms of qualification, was summed up beautifully from underneath a wide-brimmed hat in an airport lounge by a pissed-off looking Alan Sharp, the Scottish novelist, who had interrupted his screenwriting business in Hollywood to travel to the game, when he pronounced, 'We didn't win, we just discovered a new way of losing.'

Seeing Red:The Chic Charnley Story by Chic Charnley (with Alex Gordon) (Black and White Publishing 2009)

BLADE RUNNER IN
 MARYHILL

I sensed danger. The guy appeared more than just a bit irate and was certainly looking for trouble. The clue, I suppose, was the Samurai sword he was wielding rather crazily above his head. I have to admit this was not a typical day at training for Partick Thistle's professional footballers.

I was in my second stint as a Firhill player and, as usual, we changed into our training gear before heading off for a session at nearby Ruchill Park. On this morning, though, a couple of yobs thought it would be a good idea to dish out some stick to the players. 'Hey, Charnley, you're fuckin' useless,' came the witty riposte from one of them. They picked on a few of my team-mates, too. We were ignoring these two wastes of oxygen and thought they would get fed up and go off and annoy someone or something else. We were wrong. These nyaffs were at full throttle and they kept up a barrage of abuse for ages. Eventually, I lost my temper. I shouted over at them, 'Why don't you come back in about an hour's time when we've finished training and we can have a wee discussion?'

To my surprise, Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber took off. I didn't think any more of it as we continued to work on our fitness levels. About an hour later I heard a voice shouting out, 'Charnley, we're ready for our discussion.' I looked round and, sure enough, our pair of hecklers had returned. This time, though, they looked as though they wanted to do more than have a natter. For a start, one of them was carrying a huge sabre. It wasn't an ordinary-looking sword you see in the Zorro movies, but one of those curved Japanese-type weapons that would terrify the life out of you. His pal was a bit more conservative, he was just carrying a carving knife. They had also acquired an angry-looking dog from somewhere. These guys were ready for business.

I had my back to them when they returned. One of my team-mates said, 'Chic, look behind you.' My first expression was, 'Oh, shit!' The two thugs looked as though they might want a few Partick Thistle scalps before they moved on. After gulping in some fresh air, I monitored the unsavoury situation. Some of my Thistle colleagues were in the same frame of mind as myself — this pair could do with a good hiding. Others decided it would be best to get back to the stadium as swiftly as possible. You just knew, though, that these halfwits would be back the following day once again noising us up and going through the same boring routine. Gerry Collins and Gordon Rae were two strapping six-footers who were afraid of no-one on the football pitch. Or off it, for that matter. I knew they could handle themselves. The three of us faced up to the sabre-carrying lout, his mate with the knife and the growling mutt.

There was nothing left for it, but to go at them. We started to run in their direction and, amazingly, the first thing to scarper was the dog! It took off down the hill as fast as its legs could take it. Smart dog. As I raced towards the moron with the Samurai I picked up a traffic cone. It didn't look like a fair fight, but there wasn't anything else handy. Sadly, no-one had left a spare machete lying around the public park that day.

Gerry and Gordon made a beeline for the guy with the knife. I kept on charging towards the other bloke and, out the corner of my eye, I saw my two mates jump on top of his pal. My adversary looked at the mess Gerry and Gordon were making of the knifeman and suddenly turned and chased after the pooch. At that point, I realise I should have stopped my pursuit of this headcase. That would have been the bright thing to do. So I kept running after him.

I was waving the traffic cone above my head and was startled when he stopped abruptly and, as I got closer, swung the sabre at me. I instinctively put out my hand and I felt the blade slash through my palm. I was raging, to say the least, and I dropped the traffic cone. I wasn't going to back out, though. I whacked him with a right-hander and down he went in a heap, thankfully releasing his weapon as he did so. We were now on a level footing, both unarmed. I won't go into the gory detail, but, suffice to say, we never saw those guys again when we were training. And God only knows where the dog went!

Going Off Alarming: The Autobiography: Vol 2 by Danny Baker (Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2014)

Yet, despite the regularity of the work, in the mid-eighties I still felt as if it was all a larky distraction before I would return to writing of some sort. Or something. Fact was, I hoped I would never have to confront this dilemma – at least not in the next hundred and fifty years. This nebulous career plan was brought into clearer focus one day when I read a description of myself in a newspaper as ‘an old person’s young person’. That’ll give you pause, I can tell you. Another phrase that seemed to routinely be tagged to any press I got was ‘professional cockney’. I genuinely never understood what that was supposed to mean. I might concede to it if I were, like so many in the media, hiding some kind of public school background or an upbringing in one of the leafier parts of Surrey, but that not being the case I recognized it for what it was: the superior sneering of a relentlessly privileged middle-class industry. It’s a form of control, pure and simple. What they meant by ‘professional cockney’ was actually just ‘cockney’, and they really didn’t like the uppity working classes anywhere in their game unless they were in the canteen, post rooms or maintenance. I’m not sure if it has changed that much today. Even the most liberal university types go on the back foot when they meet someone who has simply got by on their wits, and they tend to feel threatened if that person is actually brighter than they are. So they resort to suspicion and the curled lip, attempting to denigrate this intruder by suggesting the whole ‘working class’ thing is an act and, really, all these ‘chavs’ have to offer is an accent. Thus even now you will read that someone is a ‘professional Geordie’ or ‘professional Scouser’; back in the eighties, you’d even come across a ‘professional black person’. Nobody who has come through the correct middle-class upbringing with the benefit of a few quid in their family coffers will ever be so disparagingly described. No, you’ll find they will simply be ‘professionals’.

While we’re here, I may add that, far from being a typical working-class ‘bloke’, I could never claim to be even marginally competent in the traditionally masculine field of home improvements. Away from a typewriter, latterly the computer keyboard, I am not only a disaster at DIY, I fancy I rather stand alone as the most clueless exponent of the handyman’s skills. This is another area where I am totally my father’s son. Though Dad was a terrifically hard worker, whether in the docks, clearing railway arches of rubble, or as part of an early morning office-cleaning gang, he could not for the life of him build, repair, install or decorate anything. Despite this, during the sixties he was given little choice in the matter, being required by Mum to wallpaper the front room in our maisonette roughly once a year. The rest of the family soon learned that it was absolutely essential for us to retire to another part of the house and cower in safety until it was all over. Like me, Dad had no finesse, no patience and genuinely believed you could inflict pain on any particularly finicky inanimate object that pushed you too far. I’ve no idea how many rolls of wallpaper it took to cover our small living room. Let’s say it was six. Dad, knowing how these affairs went, would order ten. This was because when a patterned section he was holding folded in on itself or refused to match up with one already in position, he could only achieve catharsis by furiously mashing it up into a ball, screaming ‘You dirty bastard!’ at it and throwing it across the room. Sometimes Mum would hear this happen four times in as many minutes and call out from the other side of the door, ‘You all right, Fred?’ to which he would explode, ‘No, I’m fucking not!’

The Original Stan The Man by Stanley Bowles with Ralph Allen and John Iona (Paper Plane Publishing 1996)

Malcolm thought I was hanging around with the wrong type of people, and resented the company that I was keeping. He was hearing reports from all quarters that I had been seen in the seedy places in town, and there was an ongoing argument between us. Malcolm frequented night-clubs such as the Cabaret Club, and was known as Champagne Charlie. He had a bee in his bonnet about me and wherever he went the conversation would, at some point, come around to me. People would always say to me: "Oh, Malcolm's just been in, slagging you off." Wherever I went, it seemed that Malcolm had already been there.

He was an excellent coach; very creative and passionate and not afraid to take chances in a game, or use innovative tactics. But, at the same time, he was very flamboyant, bold and abrasive, and found it difficult to handle people  - unlike Joe Mercer, who everyone regarded as a sort-of uncle. You certainly wouldn't go to Malcolm with any personal problems, because he might fly into a temper at the slightest provocation. Despite this, he thought of himself as the manager of the club; and didn't like it when anyone questioned that view.

When I broke into the first team in 69/70, our outside-left, Tony Coleman, used to say: "Do you want to come out for the night?" So I would go out with Tony and we became very friendly. In the end I was staying with him a couple of nights a week. We used to go round everywhere together. Tony was a great one for the birds, but I wasn't — because I was already heavily into horse racing and was happily married. Everybody went to discotheques at the weekends, this being the heyday of soul music, but I would just be at the bar, not dancing.

One night I was drinking at the Cabaret Club with Tony, when Malcolm came to our table. A row started between the two of them. Tony was a lot older than me, and Malcolm was trying to accuse Tony of leading me astray, saying: "What are doing bringing a young player into a club like this?" Tony kept quiet, but I couldn't: "Why don't you shut up?" I said.

There was a huge silence, then Malcolm threw a punch at me. So I threw one back, and it all started again. Tony jumped up and smashed a pint glass on the table.

It could have become very nasty, because Tony was a real handful in those days, but the brawl was broken up by the guy who owned the club. That was to be my last battle with the Manchester City establishment.

Soon afterwards, I went into training one day and Dave Ewing said: "Malcolm wants to see you and, unfortunately, he's going to get rid of you." So I picked my boots up and left. I knew I was walking away from one of the biggest clubs in England, but I wasn't bothered either way. At the time I was too reckless to care. I'd half expected it anyway, so I just got on with life as usual.

The official version was that City had decided to release me.

Taking Le Tiss by Matt Le Tissier (HarperSport 2009)

That wasn’t the only time on that tour that there were a few problems after Bally had had a few to drink. I’ve said that he had something of a love-hate relationship with Lawrie McMenemy, who was Director of Football. Bally was passionate, impulsive and wore his heart on his sleeve while Lawrie was the restraining voice of reason. They needed each other and worked well together but there was some rivalry and jostling for position, and that meant they did have some blazing rows—including one over dinner on that tour.

The wine was flowing and Alan launched into a lengthy rant. The gist of it was, ‘You’ve had your effing chance, I’m in effing charge now. Why don’t you eff off back to England and let me effing get on with it?’ So Lawrie did just that and jumped on the first plane home while Bally went and slept it off, again. When he woke up and discovered Lawrie had gone, he picked up the phone and said, ‘What the effing hell do you think you are doing? Why are you back in England? I need you here.’

They were like an old married couple in many ways, often arguing but with a deep mutual affection and respect. Lawrie also curbed Bally’s impulsive excesses in the transfer market—apart from the time he made the mistake of taking a couple of days off. He got back to find Bally had signed a centre-back from Exeter by the name of Peter Whiston, a nice lad but never Premier League quality. I never quite figured out the reason for signing him, but it can’t have been a footballing one.

That 1994-95 season was probably the most enjoyable of my career. I played great football and scored a lot of goals, largely without the fear of relegation. I also won the BBC’s Goal of the Season for what was my favourite ever goal—largely because it was against my old mate Tim Flowers. We were at Ewood Park and I picked up the ball just outside the centre circle, beat a couple of players and spotted Tim just off his line. I hit the ball from 35 yards and it went exactly where I wanted it to go, straight to the top left corner. It was a wonderful moment, not least because Tim got nowhere near it and ended up floundering in the net. It was my second goal of the match but, even then, Tim had the last word because Blackburn won 3-2.

My form in the early part of the season was helped by the fact we’d signed a terrific player who was completely on my wavelength, both on and off the field. It was great piece of business, and it came about in the most bizarre way. After another 1994 pre-season tour, this time in Holland, we’d checked into a hotel with its own football pitches in the middle of nowhere. It was a popular venue with a lot of clubs, including Barcelona who were staying there when we arrived. They were managed by Johan Cruyff who knew Alan Ball well. They were both big stars in world football and had a strong mutual respect and friendship. Cruyff was a legend and we were in awe of him. I was the only one of our squad brave enough to ask him for his autograph.

That night Bally had dinner with Cruyff and half-jokingly asked if he had any players he could spare. Next morning Alan got up to find Barcelona had checked out but had left behind a young Danish lad by the name of Ronnie Ekelund with the message, ‘Take a look at him and if you like him, he’s yours.’ He trained with us that morning and it was immediately obvious he was a top-quality player. He had great vision and technique, and could pick out a pass. We clicked straight away and Bally immediately set the wheels in motion for us to take him on loan, pending a permanent deal. I detected some reluctance from Lawrie McMenemy, either because the deal had nothing to do with him or because he didn’t want another Peter Whiston. Lawrie was back in Southampton completing the transfer of Bruce Grobbelaar who flew out to Holland to join us.

The Second Half by Roy Keane (with Roddy Doyle) (Wiedenfeld & Nicolson 2014)

We brought in some players in January. Carlos Edwards, from Luton; Anthony Stokes, from Arsenal; and Jonny Evans – we got Jonny on loan from Manchester United. They were all good signings, brilliant, and just what we needed. One of the reasons they worked, I think, is because I knew a bit about them, beyond the stats – something about their personalities.

Carlos had played against us when we beat Luton earlier in the season, and I’d seen what a good player he was. He gave us a right-sided midfielder. He had pace, and he could get us up the pitch; we could counter-attack away from home.

Jonny was a centre-half. He had the qualities of a Manchester United player, and he was bringing them to Sunderland. For such a young man – he was nineteen – he was very mature, and a born leader. Jonny was unbelievable for us. He lived with his mam and dad in Sale, near my home, so I picked him up there and brought him up to see the set-up at Sunderland. I knew I was on a winner; I knew him, and I knew what he was about. I remembered an incident when I was still at United; there’d been a fight in the canteen and Jonny had looked after himself well – I think he knocked the other lad out. I knew Jonny was tough.

Stokesy got us vital goals towards the end of the season. He was a good signing for us, because there’d been a lot of competition for him. Celtic and Charlton, who were still in the Premiership then, were after him. So signing Stokesy sent out another message: we could compete with other clubs. I spoke to Stokesy’s dad and, for some reason, he thought I’d be able to keep his son on the straight and narrow – because Stokesy was a bit of a boy.

Going to Sea in a Sieve by Danny Baker (Phoenix 2012)

Good though I was with our Olympian clientele, I confess the first time Marc Bolan came in I thought I was going to go off like a rocket and sit sizzling in the rafters. As already described, the shop was a small space and people just bounced straight in off the street to be presented in front of you like the next hopeful to be auditioned on our well-lit stage. When that someone is Marc Bolan and it’s 1973, you have only a few seconds to think, ‘Okay, okay. Got it. That’s Marc Bolan. And this is me. He is looking right at me and in precisely two more footsteps’ time he is going to talk to me. I, me, will be engaging with Marc Bolan. Don’t be loopy. Don’t do what you did with Michael Caine and shout, “Whoa, Michael Caine – top customer ahoy!” ’

I didn’t. I said, ‘Ha! Marc Bolan! There’s something!’ I may have even loudly warned him to have a care as we employed several store detectives – always a favoured joke of mine to shout in a shop barely the size of most people’s front rooms.

‘Hi, darling, is John about?’ he said in a bouncy Bolan-esque style, not unlike Marc Bolan.

John appeared immediately with a playfully caustic, ‘Well. Hello, stranger. Where the fuck have you been? This is Danny. He’s in love with you, so careful he doesn’t leap on you or something.’

There was some truth in this. When first taken on and informed, ‘They all come in here, so get over it,’ I had asked, possibly breathlessly, whether Marc Bolan or David Bowie could be included in that number. Ian had answered, ‘Bowie might do – did a bit before he tarted himself up – but Marc’s in and out all the time. Call him Mary: he loves it.’

I was not going to call him Mary. As far as I know, nobody ever called Marc Bolan Mary, but I did come to know many of Elton’s crowd by their feminine handles.

Marc and John disappeared into the small back area and gossiped over tea. I had to stay out and man the counter. I didn’t mind that – in showbiz, pretending to be professional and cool is one of the most cool and professional bluffs you can master. However, by now, I was brooding over something.

How did John know everyone? Pushing the philosophy further, I wondered how, in fact, everyone seemed to know everyone. I had often watched This Is Your Life and asked myself the same question. In theatrical circles, everyone seemed to have known everyone else for ever. They were all mates. How did that happen? I can understand that you might cross paths with a couple of subsequent celebrities on the struggle upwards, but how was it possible that entire legions of the famous charged into the spotlight en masse and linking arms?

I didn’t know anyone. Nobody in my family or army of friends knew anyone either. You’d have thought that we’d know at least someone, but no. I had never once been round a mate’s house and when the phone rang somebody answered it and said, ‘Joyce! Harry Secombe on the phone for ya.’ It just didn’t happen. And that’s Harry Secombe! You can imagine the remoteness of a John Lennon or even Kiki Dee. Yes, I had pretended to be David Essex’s brother, but it was precisely because nobody had a clue how an anomaly like that could exist and behave that I got away with such flapdoodle. And remember: not David Essex. His brother.

Now here I was. I knew Elton John. I’d made Long John Baldry a cup of tea. Run after Rod Stewart when he’d left his Access card in the machine (calling him a dozy git into the bargain), and now Marc Bolan – who Bernard Sibley and I had once imagined kidnapping and making him tell us all about the real meaning of Tyrannosaurus Rex lyrics – had just called me darling. He was sitting three feet behind me – behind me. When I’d paid to see him at the Lyceum Theatre I had battled and sweated for every inch that I could get closer to him onstage. Now he was less than a guitar case away and here I was, turning my back and doing a terrific impression of a man reading the NME. What on earth was going on?

After a short while Marc emerged past me again – I confess I took a whiff of what he smelled like as he inched by (Sweet Musk) – and began sorting out a few albums from the racks that he wanted to take with him. His browsing style indicated that in terms of having a finger on the pulse, he was no Elton John; he would hold up LP sleeves and shout, ‘John – what’s this? Any good?’ To which John would reply either, ‘Yeah, you’ll like that,’ or ‘Oh, please! Fucking dreadful.’ I was on the verge of also giving my opinion to Marc, but was sadly too busy not reading the paper.

Sneaking direct looks at him, I now noticed he was wearing The Greatest Shirt Ever Made. Between the open buttons of his full-length bottle-green coat, I could see it was of the palest peach silk and had Warhol-like prints in various bold colours of Chuck Berry doing the duck walk. This was a shirt that, if taken at the flood, might lead to greatness. As he came to the counter with an armload of covers I let him know. ‘Mary,’ I said (though instead of Mary I said ‘Mr Bolan’), ‘that is the greatest shirt I have ever seen on a person. Where’s it from?’

‘Oh, this? Um . . . I got it in New York. Funky, innit? You can’t get it though, this is the only one.’

I gave a regretful response while inwardly quite giddy with the notion that Marc Bolan actually thought, had the piece not been unique, I might shoot over to the States and buy a couple. I began sorting out his purchases and bagging them up. Marc went off to talk with John.

When he returned, he had done the single most magnificent and starry thing I have ever known. He had taken the shirt off and was now handing it to me.

‘There you go, babes. I don’t wear things more than once, so knock yourself out . . . Listen, John, I’ll call you, okay. Give Ian and Jake my love, talk soon.’

And with that he tripped out of the shop on his built-up Annello & Davide heels, his green coat now worn over a bare chest. I don’t think I even said thank you. As far as I recall, I was too busy standing there open-mouthed and thunderstruck. John looked at me and laughed. ‘She is something isn’t she? That is a STAR. It’s a great shirt, by the way.’

I just stood there, holding this saintly relic still warm from the Bolan body. I tried to respond to John but could only manage a noise like the death throes of a seagull.

It’s fair to say that, whereas Marc professed to wear a thing only once, I could make no such claim. I didn’t leave the shirt off for a fortnight. Everyone in the pubs of Bermondsey asked where did I get that shirt, and I would say, ‘This shirt? Marc fucking Bolan gave it to me.’ In return, I would ask where they got their shirt, and they would say a shop like Take 6 or Lord John, and then I would ask them to ask me once more where I got my shirt and when they did I would say, ‘Marc fucking Bolan gave it to me’ again.

So where is that shirt now? Why isn’t it in the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame or currently on eBay for ONE MILLION pounds?

Because my mother washed it. In our banging, boiling Bendix washing machine. Probably along with some of my brother’s rotten pants and last week’s football socks. In short, she had taken a recklessly cavalier approach to the ‘DRY-CLEAN ONLY’ warning on the shirt label. I can hear her defence even now:

‘Well, how was I to know? A shirt! Who the pissing hell dry-cleans a shirt? If it can’t take a wash, what’s the point in having it? Blimey, we’d go skint overnight if we had to dry-clean all the shirts in this house! Now buck your ideas up, because I’m busy.’

I was crushed, sickened by this act of wanton philistinism. But, as she further pointed out, ‘If it was so bleedin’ precious, what was it doing laying all over y’bedroom floor?’ She rather had me there.

For the record, when I found it, it was in our airing cupboard, sans any silken lustre, with the remnants of Chuck’s duck walk now barely discernible and suddenly of a size that might just about fit a ventriloquist’s doll.

Whenever Marc came into the shop after this he would always say, ‘How’s the shirt, D? Still loving it?’ And I would say, ‘Had it on last night!’ I lived in mortal fear he would one day ask for it back.

But, of course, real stars don’t do that.

You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times by Howard Zinn (beacon Press 1994)

Starting college coincided with a change in our lives: moving out of our miserable basement rooms into a low-income housing project in downtown Manhattan, on the East River. Four rooms, utilities included in the rent, no rats, no cockroaches, a few trees and a playground downstairs, a park along the river. We were happy.

While going to N.Y.U. and Columbia I worked the four-to-twelve shift in the basement of a Manhattan warehouse, loading heavy cartons of clothing onto trailer trucks which would carry them to cities all over the country.

We were an odd crew, we warehouse loaders—a black man, a Honduran immigrant, two men somewhat retarded mentally, another veteran of the war (married, with children, he sold his blood to supplement his small pay check). With us for a while was a young man named Jeff Lawson whose father was John Howard Lawson, a Hollywood writer, one of the Hollywood Ten. There was another young fellow, a Columbia College student who was named after his grandfather, the socialist labor leader Daniel D eLeon. (I encountered him many years later; he was in a bad way mentally, and then I got word that he had laid down under his car in the garage and breathed in enough carbon monoxide to kill himself.)

We were all members of the union (District 65), which had a reputation of being “left-wing.” But we, the truck-loaders, were more left than the union, which seemed hesitant to interfere with the loading operation of this warehouse.

Rusholme Ruffle Bars

A hundred pages into Morrissey's autobiography and I'm enjoying it so far. It's more Tony Warren than Mick Farren at the moment but I'm sure the sex, drugs and rock n roll will eventually kick in at some point. (Maybe when Vini Reilly enters the story?) 

But that's not what this post is about. I now not only have to thank Morrissey for the pop bliss that is 'This Charming Man' but also for his mention of ruffle bars in his autobiography. Christ, I'd totally forgotten about ruffle bars. I need ruffle bars.

Bad Vibes: Britpop and My Part in Its Downfall by Luke Haines (William Heinemann Ltd 2009)

Colonel Klutz

December 1993. End-of-year round-ups in the music press. American bands still holding up – all polls feature Nirvana, Lemonheads, Belly and the Juliana Hatfield Three. Tindersticks by the Tindersticks is album of the year in Melody Maker. New Wave is at number 19. In the NME Writers' Top Fifty Albums of the Year Bjork's Debut is number one, and New Wave comes in at 18. In Select magazine New Wave is voted the seventh-best album of the year. And the best album of 1993 as voted for by the writers of Select: Giant Steps by the Boo Radleys. Suede lurk around the top three of most critics' polls, and Mr Blobby gets the Christmas number one in the singles chart.

The singer – who could now pass for an East End villain – has me pinned against the wall. After our, ahem, early-evening opening slot there had been an ominous knock on the dressing-room door.

'Can I have a word – outside?' says the singer, gesturing grimly towards me. Drunk and stoned post-gig, I follow obediently. I know what's coming. I orchestrated it so I'm looking forward to it. Quick as a flash the headline act pulls off some nifty pugilistic footwork and squares up to me. Jesus, what a knucklehead. I hadn't imagined his reaction to my onstage comments would be quite as physical. True, last night, with righteous anger and adrenalin raging through my veins I had been spoiling for a fight, but now I just wanted to be sacked – minus pasting.

'How much of a fucking prick are you gonna look when I kick the shit out of you onstage?' the singer asks unreasonably. It's a good question, and one that I assume is rhetorical. I drift off into a vision of myself being chased around the stage by a man in a gorilla suit, the gorilla's clumsy paws finally managing to grab me by the scruff of the neck before drop-kicking me high into the air to the whooping delight of the audience. Oh man, that would be entertainment.

'Well, answer me, you fucking cunt.' Not rhetorical then. I snap out of my reverie and slump back against the wall. I'm back in the playground about to take a hiding from a dim bully. There's nothing to do but let the scene play out. Shouldn't take long.

. . .

On paper it was unpromising. In real life it looked even worse. The Auteurs are booked to support Matt Johnson's band The The on a UK tour. All of this organised months in advance, before the recent setbacks, when life was a breeze and I would skip over lawns of freshly mown grass without a care in my head, laughing and doffing my hat to a cartoon bluebird as I bent down to pick a buttercup.

Tour with The The? Sure, if it keeps everyone happy and it sells some more records, why not? My levity lasts for about a day and a half. Reality dawns. The truth is, I don't care too much for Matt Johnson. He's some guy who sold a ton of records in the 80s, and now he's got some new dreck he's trying to flog. Coincidentally, some of the work on the new Auteurs album has been done at a recording studio owned by one Matt Johnson. The studio walls are covered in terrible paintings: some recognisable originals of The The album sleeves, others perhaps specially commissioned. The theme of the paintings seems to be ghastly men and ghastly women giving in to all manner of bodily functions with grim abandon. Oh, and imminent nuclear destruction. A clear indication of Johnson's faultless yet simplistic world view. Human race: awful. Never mind, will probably be extinguished in some sort of self-inflicted Armageddon. Told you so. The bastards deserved it. As I said, sold a lot of records in the 80s.

On no account attempt to tour the UK in December. Your limbs will become brittle with cold as you trundle up and down the country in a freezing tour bus and no one will come to your gigs as they are attending Christmas parties. Christmas parties in your hotel. Oh yes, the late-night bars of the Holiday Inn, Ibis and Radisson hotels – the après-gig drinking stations of the lower- to mid-level rock band. Every nook and cranny of these corporate flophouses taken over by drunken reps and violent drones from the frightening world of real honest work. Civvy Street – pissed up, embittered, trying to get over another empty year and on your fucking case.

Bash the Rich: True Life Confessions of an Anarchist in the UK by Ian Bone (Tangent Books 2006)

In fact, most anarchists kept their private lives completely divorced from their anarchist activities and would have been horrified if their neighbours had known about their hobby!

More to the point, I thought not talking to the media was missing out on major opportunities to spread our ideas. Yes of course we'd been misrepresented . . . blah blah . . . but still, however deformed, our ideas and existence would be read about by far more people in the News of the World (circulation 5,000,000) than a piece in Class War (circulation 15,000). After all, I'd first found out about anarchism in Punch. So when Andrew Tyler contacted us about doing a piece in Time Out about Class War in May 1985, me and Martin Wright decided to brave the cries of 'sell-out!' and go for it. If we were going to be exposed anyway, we might at least get a few good quotes in.

The Time Out piece was better than we could have dreamed of. Tyler had grasped the difference between us and the stultifying torpor that was British anarchism and written a coruscating piece that gave Class War an electrifying jolt. The oxygen of publicity resulted in a packed Class War conference two weeks later. The predicted criticism of our sell-out in Time Out came early in the day. 'Yes, I am sorry we appeared in Time Out,' I grovelled, 'I'm sorry it wasn't on the front page of the News of the World'. Tumultuous applause (well so it seems 20 years later). The case for talking to the press was won and has always been vindicated in my view. I was subsequently exposed in the Sunday Mirror, Today and the News of the World ('Dangerous lunatics who want to kill the entire cast of Eastenders' - don't ask!) and despite the vilification we got, our post bag was always rammed full the following week with people who'd never heard of us before but wanted o get involved now.

In particular, the quotation from the Living Legends lyric God Bless You Queen Mum appearing in the Sunday Mirror and wishing her an early death was especially popular. The key, of course, is not to believe your own publicity and the oxygen certainly went to my head in those intoxicating months in 1985. At the conference I had argued for '500 people with sledgehammers attacking the bridge at Henley.' By the time of that year's anarchist bookfair in Conway Hall, I was well away. Having sold shit loads of Class Wars with Martin I took the stage at the end of the day. Well, actually, there was already someone on the stage so I had to push him off it first. Unfortunately, that person was Donald Rooum - a veteran comrade I have a lot of respect for going back to his framing by the police for intending to throw a brick at the queen of Greece in the 1960s. However, it wasn't really Donald I was shoving off the stage but the old anarchist movement. Drunk as fuck I declared:

'You liberals and pacifists have had our movement for too long, now it's our turn. If we haven't reduced the place to ruins in five years you can have it back!'

Quite why I wanted to reduce the venerable Conway Hall to ruins was unclear. But what the fuck. I might have paraphrased Durrutti, but the point was clear. We were on a fucking roll.

That's Me in the Corner: Adventures of an ordinary boy in a celebrity world by Andrew Collins (Ebury Press 2007)

It’s 1988 and heady being back at work after such a long interval. Seven years have passed since packing in Sainsbury’s, during which time I got myself further-educated: two A-levels out of three, and one Bachelor of Arts — not that anybody here asked to see my certificates. This is rock’n’roll.

The interview was held in what I presumed to be a storeroom, with back issues of my beloved music weekly stacked all around us. James Brown, features editor, asked the questions; I felt like a band being interviewed for the paper.

‘What was the last LP you bought?’

I found myself perched upon the knife’s edge of credibility with this innocuous enquiry, selecting Surfer Rosa by the Pixies over the more truthful Raintown by Deacon Blue. It was risky — James would have known that the Pixies came out three months ago. Perhaps he’d think I hadn't bought an LP since March.

Quickly, I threw in the Full Metal Jacket soundtrack. Vietnam scores points at the NME.

‘Who are your favourite bands?’

The Fall — obviously! — The Jesus and Mary Chain, Cocteau Twins ... I also boldly confessed to a liking for the great toons of George Gershwin. (It’s a Woody Allen thing.)

James raised his eyebrows ambiguously. Good? Bad? Had I blown it?

‘How often do you go to gigs?'

I swallowed hard and considered massaging the figures, but instead recklessly gave him the truth: about once a month.

‘Good. We want someone who’s mature.’

James Brown is twenty-two. A year younger than me.

Gig: The Life and Times of a Rock-star Fantasist by Simon Armitage (Viking 2008)

On The Road 9

A reading in a cinema complex in Sheffield for the Off the Shelf Festival, followed by a Q & A session on contemporary poetics and related literary topics:

Me: OK, one last question.

Man: In a fist fight between you and Jarvis Cocker, who'd win?

Me: Er . . . I've never met him, but from the pictures I've seen I'd have to fancy my chances.

Man: He's outside.