Do That Again Son, and I'll Break Your Legs: Football's Hard Men by Phil Thompson (Virgin Books 1996)

 

Only once did I deliberately set out to try and hurt someone and that was years later in a charity game for a little amateur club in Belfast. The manager told me: ‘There’s a lad playing on the other side who says he’s going to kick you.'

I replied: ‘If he wants to kick me he will.'

It didn’t worry me. I’d spent my professional career playing against players like Smith, Harris, Reaney, and Dave Mackay of Spurs, who was unquestionably the hardest man I ever played against and certainly the bravest. This time it was just a cocky kid with ideas above his station. He was as good as his word, however. He followed me everywhere. He kicked me and he kicked me again. I told him: ‘This is ridiculous, this is an exhibition game. It should be fun.'

He kept on kicking and he started insulting me. All the usual stuff like, 'You’re past it, you’re a has-been, you won’t finish the game.’

I said, 'If you kick me again, you won't finish the game.’ He did. So about ten minutes later I deliberately knocked the ball a little too far forward, or so he would think, knowing he was going to come for it. And when he did I turned him and hit him above the knee. As they carried him off, he was crying like a kid. While he was lying on the ground the captain of our team went over to him and said, ‘Kittens don't fuck cats.’

I felt very upset about it afterwards. I went to see him after the game to apologise. His manager said, ‘Don’t worry, George, it’s taught him a lesson - don't fuck with a truck.’

George Best, taken from The Good, the Bad and the Bubbly

The Dart League King by Keith Lee Morris (Tin House Books 2008)

 

Because there was something about Vince Thompson that Brice Habersham had almost started to like. He had conducted several casual conversations with Vince Thompson at the convenience store, where Vince often came to buy beer, and had found him an animated and knowledgeable (if somewhat angry) commentator on local history, events, and trends, including the growing problem of meth addiction, interestingly enough. Partly, this was no doubt the result of Vince Thompson’s “business” interests—with homemade meth labs popping up all over the county, there was little demand for his commodity anymore—but he also seemed to feel a genuine moral repugnance at the thought of parents using volatile chemicals to cook up drugs while their babies crawled around on the floor, and at the droves of burnouts now winding up in the jails and prisons, costing the taxpayers money with their rotten teeth. Was it possible to be a virtuous drug dealer? Was there such a thing as a “classic” pusher, a throwback to some nostalgic past of the illegal drug trade? If so, Vince Thompson was established in Brice Habersham’s mind as the prime example. He kept regular hours, going to his job at the apartment complex on Cedar Street five days a week at the same time every morning. He was a regular at several local bars, but never stayed out past midnight. He sold his cocaine almost exclusively to a fairly consistent group of customers who came to his apartment during daylight hours. He was very likely crazy, Brice Habersham knew, but even his craziness had a sort of consistency to it—a constant pent-up bitterness, a dam that could be burst open by the employment of any number of simple phrases such as “How are you, Vince?” or “Are you enjoying this nice weather?” And the flood of expletives would ensue. Vince Thompson’s volatility was so predictable, in fact, that he could almost be Brice Habersham’s alter ego, the yin to his yang, both of them rigidly self-defined in completely opposite fashion.

Thinking along these lines while the current singles match dragged out interminably, Brice Habersham found himself even more puzzled by Vince Thompson this evening. There sat Vince—beerless, bleeding, alone, and (perhaps most alarmingly) silent. What did it mean?

Gavin & Stacey (2007)

 

Dial M for Middlesbrough (2019)

 

Guilt (2019)

 

Brothers Keepers by Donald E. Westlake (M. Evans and Company, Inc 1975)

“Have I kept you waiting? I’m so sorry,” Brother Oliver said. “I was painting, in the courtyard. This winter light is so perfect for—”

Dwarfmann gestured that away with an impatient flick of his numerical wrist; I couldn’t see the numbers. “My days,” he said, “are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle. Let’s get down to business.”

I’m sure Brother Oliver was as taken aback as I was. The imagery, in Dwarfmann’s rattly style of speech, seemed wildly inappropriate. Then Brother Oliver said, in distinct astonishment, “Was that from Job?”

“Chapter seven, verse six,” Dwarfmann snapped. “Come, come, if you have something to say to me, say it. Our time is a very shadow that passeth away.”

“I don’t know the Apocrypha,” Brother Oliver said.

Dwarfmann gave him a thin smile. “You know it well enough to recognize it. Wisdom of Solomon, chapter two, verse five.”

“Then I can only cite One Thessalonians,” Brother Oliver said. “Chapter five, verse fourteen. Be patient toward all men.”

“Let us run with patience,” Dwarfmann or somebody said, “the race that is set before us.”

“I don’t believe,” Brother Oliver told him, “that was quite the implication of that verse in its original context.”

“Hebrews, twelve, one.” Dwarfmann shrugged. “Then how about Paul to Timothy, with its meaning intact? Be instant in season, out of season.” Again he tapped those little red numbers, and now I saw them: 2:51. I don’t know why I felt so relieved to know the exact time— something about Dwarfmann’s presence, I suppose. And he was saying, “I’m a busy man.” That couldn’t be Biblical. “My man Snopes told you all you needed to know, we’ll give you every assistance in relocation, given the circumstances we’ll go farther than the law requires. Much farther. But that wasn’t enough for you, you have to hear it from me direct. All right, you’re hearing it from me direct. We’re building on this site.”

“There is a building on this site,” Brother Oliver said.

“Not for long.”

“Why not look at it?” Brother Oliver made hospitable gestures, urging our guest to come look the place over. “Now that you’re here, why not see the place you intend to destroy?”

“Beauty is vain,” Dwarfmann said. “Proverbs, thirty-one, thirty.”

Brother Oliver began to look somewhat put out. He said, “Wot ye not what the Scripture saith? Romans, eleven.”

With that sudden thin smile again, Dwarfmann answered, “What saith the Scripture? Galatians,  four.”

“Pride goeth before destruction,” Brother Oliver told him, “and an haughty spirit before a fall. Proverbs, sixteen.”

Dwarfmann shrugged, saying, “Let us do evil, that good may come. Romans, three.”

“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil. Isaiah, five.”

“Sin is not imputed when there is no law,” Dwarfmann insisted. “Romans, five.”

Brother Oliver shook his head. “He that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent.”

“Money answereth all things,” Dwarfmann said, with a great deal of assurance.

“He heapeth up riches,” Brother Oliver said scornfully, “and knoweth not who shall gather them.”

“Unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance.” Dwarfmann permitted his own scornful expression to roam around our room, then finished, “But from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” Another quick look at his watch. “I think we’ve played enough,” he said, and turned toward the door.

Brother Oliver had two pink circles on his cheeks, and his pudgy hands were more or less closed into ineffective fists. “The devil is come down unto you,” he announced, “having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.”

Dwarfmann’s hand was on our doorknob. He looked back at Brother Oliver, flashed that thin smile again as though to say he was glad we all understood one another now, and with another quick glance around the room said, “He shall return no more to his house, neither shall his place know him any more. Job, chapter seven, verse ten.” And he left.

Brother Oliver expelled held-in breath with a sudden long whoosh. Shaking my head, I said, “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.”

Brother Oliver gave me a puzzled look. “Is that New Testament? I don’t recognize that.”

“Uhh, no,” I said. “It’s Shakespeare. Merchant of Venice.” I cleared my throat. “Sorry,” I said.

Slab Boys (1979)

 

Free Fire (2016)

 

Dog Day Afternoon by Patrick Mann (Dell Publishing 1974)

 

"If I felt that way about law officers, I’d—”

“Shut up, Boyle,” Joe interrupted, trying not to sound unpleasant. “You just don’t know your ass from your elbow about life. Take the Chase. What do they owe you, man? For fifteen years you been dumb enough to give them loyalty and honesty. That’s so much gravy to them.

“They’re laughing up their sleeve at you, man,” he went on. “They had your ass for fifteen years and they don’t owe you a fart. Not a fart in the wind. To Chase you’re just meat. Buy it, sell it. What did they buy you for all these years? Are you even making fourteen grand a year now? Sixteen? I don’t think so. And for a chickenshit salary you put out something that money can’t even buy, loyalty. What a sucker play, Boyle.

“The first time Chase profits dip below a certain point they won’t hesitate to chop you off like any other bad investment. Cut losses. It isn’t even something another human being decides, Boyle. They feed the problem into their computer and, clickety-click, out comes a name. Your name. Get rid of Boyle at fourteen thousand a year. Let some young black or Puerto Rican run the joint at half Boyle’s salary.”

Littlejoe paused. He saw that Marge was listening to him so intently that she hadn’t puffed even once on her lighted cigarette.

“Sure he’ll steal you blind, because he isn’t a dumdum like Boyle. But what he steals is a business cost that’s already been passed on to the poor, stupid customer anyway. So who cares? Insurance covers it, and the insurance costs are part of what the customer pays for. Fuck everybody, but start with the poor, loyal Boyles of the world.”

Smoothies by Richard Allen (New English Library 1973)

 

Weller’s clubbed fist ached to smash into his target’s gut. He came forward as the Smoothies and Sorts separated in silent agreement. This wasn’t - for them – the time to pick a fight. None of them had come armed for aggro.

Bright headlights coned into the parking lot as an ancient banger chugged up the slight slope from street to pub.

Acting on instinct, Weller held back. What was on his mind did not require witnesses.

The car turned in a wide circle, weaving through the remaining vehicles on the lot. Like a gigantic insect crawling across an ocean of concrete it finally came to a halt, twin beams spotlighting the frozen tableau of youths and fuzz.

‘Put those damned lights out,’ Ford shouted.

The lights snapped off.

Weller closed his eyes tight. In the obscure gloom he had lost his sight. Cursing mentally he assumed they were all suffering from the same dilemma.

He was wrong!

Nero had not stared directly into the brilliance. He could see. And a tremor of anticipation raced through him.

There were five of them. Climbing from the ancient car they formed a formidable line in front of their transport.

Brass!

The word screamed from Nero’s brain. He’d heard of them but never actually seen one. And he didn’t mean brass as applied to Soho tramps and stripclub tarts.

These were the Brass - an exclusive formation of ex-skins dedicated to violence, terror and everything touching on the televised portrayal of IRA and UDA thuggery in Ireland.

Weller’s eyes opened. He could see now.

‘Wot’s the scene, man?’ a Brass ‘captain’ asked.

Nero’s lips were dry. ‘Frisk,’ he said with a croak.

‘Fuzz !.. ’ The word spat from the ‘captain’ as he lit a cigarette. In the match flame his insignia showed briefly crossed legs crudely cut from a brass fender.

‘What the blazes,’ Ford said. This was something he had not been geared to expect. The para-military ‘uniforms’ looked familiar - right down to the woollen caps covering skinhead features. Even the pick-axe handles bore a striking resemblance to those yobbos over in Belfast and Derry.

‘This,’ the ‘captain’ said and waved.

Like a swarm of irate wasps the other four Brass attacked. Ford fell to a savage blow. Weller knocked aside when he attempted to grab an axe handle from a flank man.

‘Don’t kill ’em,’ Easy Eileen yelled.

Weller heard her plea, faintly. He saw the brutal blow scream down at his head - and the lights all went out.

‘Kick the bastards,’ the ‘captain’ called.

Boots went in.

‘Youse lucky we came along,’ the Brass ‘captain’ told Nero. ‘Christ, we been lookin’ fer fuzz fer an hour. 

What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael (2018)

 

The Dark Remains by William McIlvanney and Ian Rankin (Canongate 2021)

 

Lighting another cigarette, Laidlaw became aware of a stooped old-timer with rheumy eyes who had joined the bus queue behind him.

‘You should enjoy life more, son. Your face is tripping you.’

The man’s breath was like a blowtorch, and Laidlaw wondered why it was that after a drink so many Glaswegians turned into the Ancient Mariner, eager to share their stories and wisdom with complete strangers. This particular example boasted a rolled-up newspaper, which he wielded like a baton, as if he could conduct the world.

‘At least it’s only my face that’s tripping me,’ Laidlaw responded. ‘Your whole life seems to be one long bout of falling over.’ He gestured towards the rips in the man’s trousers and the elbows of his worn-out jacket.

The man studied him, taking a step back as if to help him focus. ‘You look like an actor, son. Have I seen you in anything?’

‘We’re all actors in this town, haven’t you noticed? You’re acting right now.’

‘Am I?'

'Badly – but even bad acting deserves the occasional round of applause.’ Laidlaw dug a few coins from his pocket and placed them in the man’s hand. ‘Should cover your bus fare. Either that or a paper from this week rather than last.’

There was a double-decker drawing towards them at that moment. Laidlaw gestured for the old man to precede him aboard, but then stood his ground and told the clippie he’d wait for the next one. The new passenger stared in bemusement from the window as the bell rang and the bus pulled away, depriving him of his audience. Laidlaw didn’t doubt he would soon find another.

Cruise of the Gods (2002)

 

The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith by Thomas Keneally (Angus & Robertson Publishers 1972)

 

In June of 1900 Jimmie Blacksmith’s maternal uncle Tabidgi – Jackie Smolders to the white world – was disturbed to get news that Jimmie had married a white girl in the Methodist church at Wallah.

Therefore he set out with Jimmie’s initiation tooth to walk a hundred miles to Wallah. The tooth would be a remonstration and lay a tribal claim on Jimmie. For Tabidgi Jackie Smolders was full-blooded and of the Tullam section of the Mungindi tribe. To his mind people should continue to wed according to the tribal pattern.

Which was: that Tullam should marry Mungara, Mungara should wed Garri, Garri should wed Wibbera, Wibbera take Tullam’s women. But here was Jimmie, a Tullam, married in church to a white girl.

Jackie felt distressed, a spiritual unease over Jimmie Blacksmith’s wedding. These tribal arrangements should still be made, Tabidgi Jackie Smolders thought. The elders kept the tribal pattern in their heads and could arrange a tribal wedding even if the Tullam buck was on a mission station eighty miles, two hundred miles, from Mungara woman.

Jackie Smolders was therefore dispirited – so too even his flippant sister, a full-blooded lady called Dulcie Blacksmith. Half-breed Jimmie had resulted from a visit some white man had made to Brentwood blacks’ camp in 1878. The missionaries – who had never been told the higher things of Wibbera – had made it clear that if you had pale children it was because you’d been rolled by white men. They had not been told that it was Emu-Wren, the tribal totem, who quickened the womb.

Mrs Dulcie Blacksmith believed the missionaries more or less. They took such a low view of lying in other people that they were unlikely to lie themselves. And certainly, Mrs Blacksmith had been rolled by white men. For warmth in winter, she once said. For warmth in winter and for comfort in summer. But the deep truth was that Emu-Wren had quickened Jimmie Blacksmith (pale or not) in the womb and that Mungara owed him a woman.

Yet here he was marrying a white girl off a farm.

The Trip to Spain (2017)

 

The Glass Cage by Georges Simenon (Helen and Kurt Wolff Books 1971)

 

He did not answer.  No answer was required. He was still thinking of Fernand Lamark and that light oak coffin. One day, when he was feeling calm and clearheaded, he would make his will. In it he would give orders that he was to be cremated, for he did not want to be shut up in a box. Neither did he want people to come and see him on his deathbed or to accompany him into a church and then to the cemetery.

He would like to die without anyone's knowing. He did not want people to talk about him. He did not want them to pity him, only to forget him as soon as they left the house where his corpse lay.

"Mártires de Chicago"

 Via Twitter

Maradona. Argentinos Juniors. 1979

Death on the Tyne (2018)

 

Trapped (2015)

 

Murder on the Blackpool Express (2017)

 

I Love Me (Who Do You Love?) by Gordon Legge (Polygon 1994)

The red-headed winger just laughed and placed the ball in the quarter-circle. He wiped his hands on the arse of his shorts before setting up to take the kick. He wasn't happy, though, and removed three blades of grass from in front of the ball and two from behind it.

'YOU WATCHING HIM. YA USELESS BASTARD EVER HEARD OF TIME-WASTING?'

The linesman, though, wasn't listening to Andy, he was too busy concentrating on the jostling in the box. Should anyone fall down clutching their face, the linesman would be able to describe the incident and point out the guilty party. That was what got you mentioned. 'The linesman spotted an elbow ... After consultation with his linesman ...' Cause if you get mentioned folk got to hear of you, and if they heard of you they might just remember you when it came round to deciding who would be going over to officiate at the World Cup, the World Cup in the good old US of A. Yeah, spotting one of those was worth a million times more than whether or not you seen all those stupid wee deflections the crowd seemed to get so worked up about.

The red-headed winger was wiping his hands again. This time, though, he finished by pulling his shorts right up two reveal two fleshy, freckled buttocks.

And then:

i) Andy went spare.

ii) The red-headed winger swung over a head-high bullet which was met on the six yard line by his centre-half.

iii) In this, his 792nd appearance for the club, a club record, the centre-half scored his first ever competitive goal.

iv) The linesman, displaying a turn of pace somewhat at odds with his previous ability to keep up with the game, pelted back to the half-line.

v) The red-headed winger turned and made an ugly face and a rude gesture at the support.

vi) Andy, bawling and shouting, raced after the linesman but was prevented from entering the enclosure by the skinheaded steward, the one who had 'I kill' tattooed on his forehead.

McDonald & Dodds (2020)

 

50 for 49 . . .

 Hurricane Henri's in the neighborhood and my first three darts of the day:

The Crafty Cockney : the autobiography by Eric Bristow (Arrow Books 2008)

 

Streetwise

‘You play like a poof!’

These were, the words my dad George said to me when he first watched me play darts. I was eleven years old and he'd just bought me a board for my birthday. I was playing in my bedroom.

‘I can't take you down the pub if you play like that,' he said.

I’d never played darts before, but three weeks later I was getting regular three-dart scores of a hundred plus. The trouble was 1 had a unique style of throwing that in my dad's eyes looked suspect. It involved standing to the side and holding the dart lower down the barrel so my little finger rested on the tip of it. This hindered my throwing action. To overcome this I raised my little finger in the air so there was no contact with the point.

‘You look like a little posh boy holding a china teacup,’ he said.

‘Give it a rest, Dad,' I said to him. This is the way I play, and this is the way I'll always play.’

He didn’t like it, but it was a style that gave me five World Championships, five World Masters, two News of the World titles, four British Opens, three Butlins Grand Masters and numerous Open wins in Sweden, Denmark and North America, plus a host of other tides — and pretty soon everybody was copying my throwing style. As soon as I got good there were thousands of other players in pubs and clubs up and down the country all playing with raised pinkies. They thought they could be great darts players just by lifting up their little finger. What a bunch of wallies!

Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (2013)

 

The Owl and the Pussycat (1970)

 

Close but no cigar

 Getting closer? No idea.

Happy/Sad

  . . . and I had so much of the bullseye to aim at with that third dart.

The Death of Stalin (2017)

 

Bad/Bad

 Downside: Not one treble 20 . . . not one

Upside: . . . nope, I got nothing.

Mona Lisa (1986)

 

The 51st State (2001)

 

Wisting (2019)

 

McSweary

You absolute fucking dancer.

It has been too long . . . 32 days to be exact.

49/50

I Give It a Year (2013)

 

That Sinking Feeling (1979)

 

Northmen: A Viking Saga (2014)

 

The Unrepentant Marxist by Harvey Pekar and Louis Proyect (2009)

I really was tempted to post four or five pages from this political graphic novel detailing the self-delusionary bullshit of the American Socialist Workers Party's 'Turn to industry' line from the '70s but I stopped myself. Instead, I've just confined myself to the front and back pages.

The graphic novel itself, and the background to it being penned, is available from Louis Proyect's website. Sadly, it appears it was made available because Louis was at the end of a terminal illness, and the same website carries a notice of his death and a few tributes from friends and colleagues.

Like Punk Never Happened: Culture Club and the New Pop by Dave Rimmer (Faber and Faber 1985)

This is the story of Culture Club, but it’s also the story of pop music since punk. It’s the story of how a generation of New Pop stars, a generation that had come of age during punk, absorbed its methods, learnt its lessons, but ditched its ideals — setting charts ablaze and fans screaming all over the world. It’s the story of a whole new star system, of Adam Ant, Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, Wham! and many others as well as Culture Club. It’s also the story of a magazine called Smash Hits.

I’ve chosen to base this story round Culture Club because in many ways they were the perfect New Pop group. Only Michael Jackson was more famous than Boy George. Colour By Numbers was the nearest thing to a perfect pop album the decade has produced. ‘Karma Chameleon’ was the nearest thing to a perfect pop single: pretty and sickly, complex and singalong, meaningless and meaningful all at the same time, rising to number one in Britain, the USA and just about everywhere else where pop records arc bought.

The only other group I could have written this story around would have been Duran Duran. Then there would maybe have been more about video, less about the press and dressing-up, but the essential details would have remained the same. In 1983, at the height of the New Pop period, Duran Duran and Culture Club were deadly rivals, but only different sides of the same coin.

As a writer for Smash Hits over this period — one which saw its circulation soar with the rise of the New Pop to become the world’s biggest-selling pop magazine I was allowed unusually close access. Unlike Fleet Street or the old music weeklies, Smash Hits was generally trusted not to ‘slag people off without good reason. I talked to, interviewed, travelled with, got to know and usually liked most of the New Pop stars. In writing this book, I’m not attempting to pass judgement on them, just to make some sense out of it all. And, I hope, make some money too.

In that sense, I’m as much a part of the New Pop which is really the Old Pop now as any of them.

Get Carter (1971)

 

The April Dead by Alan Parks (Canongate Books 2021)

They turned into Old Shettleston Road, forge on the left, and Shettleston was revealed in all its glory. McCoy didn’t know if it was because of the forge but this bit of Glasgow always seemed dirty, tenements black with smoke and soot. Even the pavements looked grimy. They were firmly in the East End now, not McCoy’s normal stomping ground. Knew it a bit from his beat days. Walking up and down Shettleston Road on a Friday night wasn’t an experience he ever wanted to repeat. Could get wild here. Gangs, pubs on every second corner, gangsters defending their turf. Maybe he was just getting too soft in his old age. This was the Glasgow he started in, should be able to take what it threw at them.

Sixteen years ago today . . .

 Wow, that's a long time to go without a decent Cornish Pastie. 

Edited to add:

Just noticed I'd previously mentioned Cornish Pasties in relation to July 20th years before on the blog. I think I've got a theme going . . . 

Kick-Ass (2010)

 

Who Are Ya?: 92 Football Clubs – and Why You Shouldn’t Support Them by Kevin Day (Bloomsbury Sport 2020)

 

Chelsea

A friend of mine once became convinced his dad was having an affair after many happy years of marriage. There was no logic to this. His dad just wasn’t the type, for a start, and he was never an energetic man, but there was no shaking my mate and he went full on, with private detectives, the lot. His dad wasn’t having an affair but did see a psychiatrist because of an increasing paranoia that he was being followed.

I now know how my mate felt, because I’m beginning to suspect that my dad may, for years, have been a secret Chelsea fan. As you’ll discover, I don’t support Palace because of him, he supports them because of me. Actually, when I was a very young kid he was never that interested in football, although he quite liked QPR (which is still a fairly accurate description of a lot of QPR fans now).

He definitely wants Palace to win. One of my greatest pleasures in life is phoning him from Selhurst to tell him we’ve just won; and if we haven’t won, he will sigh and say what he always says: ‘We just can’t score a bloody goal.’ He said that after I’d told him we’d just drawn 3-3 with Liverpool.

But there are just these little signs. If we’re playing Chelsea he will say ‘let’s hope it’s a draw’, but not in a way that suggests a draw would be a good result. If Palace are on telly he will look up from his Daily Mirror if he thinks something is happening, but when he watches Chelsea he kicks every ball.

I can’t get a private detective to follow him because he lives with me, but I need to do something to reassure myself he’s still a Palace fan. I don’t want to have to kick him out. A few days ago, I was in the kitchen cooking and listening to football on the radio, when he came positively galloping in from the front room to tell me Chelsea had scored. I said, ‘I know Dad, I heard it, I’m delighted for you.’ That led to two discussions: one about whether I was being sarcastic (yep) and then one about how come I heard it on the radio before he saw it on the telly and whether there was enough of a gap to put a bet on.

I genuinely worry about how enthusiastic he is for a team from an area that he has always dismissed as posh. And the area may be posh, Dad, but that is not a word you would ever have associated with the football club when I was growing up. Even now, awash with Russian billions though they are, there are still enough old-school ‘Chels’ fans to remind me of what a thoroughly well-planned exercise a trip to Stamford Bridge had to be back in the day.

About a Boy (2002)

 

Slim Jim Baxter: The Definitive Biography by Ken Gallacher (Virgin Books 2002)

 

The day following Jim Baxter's death a Scottish Cup semi-final took place at the new-look Hampden Park, now known more formally as the National Stadium, where Celtic were meeting Dundee United. At the Celtic end of the ground a banner had been draped from the stand by the Parkhead fans as they remembered, with respect, their old tormentor. It read 'Slim Jim. Simply The Best’ as the supporters even went out of their way to acknowledge the unofficial Ibrox anthem. It was a straightforward, sincere and moving message and one that Baxter — who, of course, had had little time for the sectarian divides in his adopted city of Glasgow — would have appreciated. The tribute at the semi-final, which Celtic won 3-1 on their way to a domestic 'treble', was a public recognition of his standing on that issue and an indication that his Old Firm rivals respected and honoured his views

It was also a genuine salute to one of the greatest footballers the country had produced. He was, after all, a man whose skills crossed all boundaries and whose talents were savoured by soccer connoisseurs around the world He may never have lost that distinctive singsong Fife accent even though he had been away from the coalfields which spawned him for more than forty years, but the language he spoke on the football field needed no translation.

His tragic death at the age of 61 came after years of illness and followed a shorter spell of less than three months' suffering after he had been warned by doctors that he had only a little time left to live. As a footballer his career had been one of near-constant controversy, and that was something that dogged him even when he had long stopped playing and had had an earlier brush with death seven years before.

Deadlock (1970)

 

Midnight Run (1988)

 

Jack Reacher (2012)

 

Afternoon Delight (2013)