by Greg Tesser
My twenty-first birthday – 11 May 1967: I had a party in my father’s luxury flat in Maida Vale. It doesn’t sound much, but with Kaftans and cannabis the norm, champagne on tap and a load of folk groups including the legendary Bert Jansch and John Renbourn – later to achieve worldwide plaudits with their group Pentangle – the night was just like one long everlasting drink-fuelled gig. It woke the neighbours, however, and the police turned up in force to bark at us and order us to be quiet and even threaten us with arrest.
There was even more din when Scottish Communist and legendary drinker Bruce Dunnett, the man responsible for headlining the two musicians at The Horseshoe pub in Tottenham Court Road, reached that stage of inebriation in which every visible thing in life resembles a work in oils by an iconic French impressionist. He was noisy, and in the manner of a Scottish Giorgio Gomelsky he was classically crazy and delightfully demented.
He was, in most respects, Jansch and Renbourn’s manager. He also looked after some archetypal folk groups, one of which was fronted by this unbelievably attractive Scottish girl – a sort of hip Moira Anderson. They were a real hit at my birthday bash, complete with bagpipes that would wake the dead from their everlasting slumbers.
She and I soon built up a definite rapport (it was more than just a dash of flirting) and only a few minutes after I had inadvertently hit Enfield footballer Laurie Churchill just under the right eye with an errant champagne cork, we were indulging in what Carry On films describe as ‘a bit of the other’.
Churchill was an interesting character. He had just the one lung, and despite his gangly build and gauche movements, he was a winger of natural flair. At the time he was an integral member of the Enfield side that had just captured the FA Amateur Cup in a replay at Maine Road Manchester. Later he was to sign for Chelsea.
That Enfield Cup success was achieved with a team of ‘professional’ performers playing to their full potential in a game for amateurs. Managed by the articulate and highly intelligent former Hendon goal-snatcher Tommy Lawrence, they were odds-on favourites to overcome little Skelmersdale United in the final at Wembley on 22 April, but failed to live up to their lofty reputation and were lucky to get away with a 0–0 draw; 75,000 highly vocal fans were in attendance.
Skelmersdale probably deserved to win, thanks to winger Steve Heighway. He was unique, having put a full-time professional football career on hold in order to obtain a degree in economics and politics at Warwick University (he went on to sign for Liverpool in 1970). If it hadn’t been for Enfield ’keeper Ian Wolstenholme’s penalty save in the dying embers of extra time, the Cup would have gone north.
The replay, seven days later, was a totally different affair. Played at Manchester City’s ground Maine Road in front of 55,000 spectators, Enfield upped their game, and with two goals from Ray Hill and one from John Connell, outplayed their opponents in every department.
These two games were, of course, given extensive coverage in my The Amateur Footballer magazine, and as the circulation continued to improve apace, I found that my biggest headache was getting club officials to cough up the money they owed me from bigger and bigger sales. Talk about blood out of a stone time!
FA Cup Final Day – 20 May 1967: It was cool and gave no hint of the summer to come. It was not yet the Summer of Love, but embryonic hippies were abroad on the King’s Road, and the youth of Great Britain were already into peace protests and the like. ‘Legalise Pot’ was soon to become the mantra of this new intellectual young man and woman. Jack Kerouac sowed the seed, and Bob Dylan was transplanting the seedlings.
I had somehow managed to obtain a ticket, but the day itself began badly for me. Overindulgence on the booze had given me the most excruciating stomach pains on the Friday, and by Saturday morning I was struggling. Unwisely I chose an alcohol-based medicine, namely Moët et Chandon champers. Initially this made me feel somewhat better, although by the time I climbed into Stanley Moore’s car, I was feeling like death warmed up.
From a Chelsea perspective, the final itself was a non-event. Spurs went 2–0 up thanks to Jimmy Robertson and Frank Saul, and all Docherty’s troops could muster was a late consolation from Bobby Tambling. How the Blues missed the precocious talents of Peter Osgood!
My day reached a real nadir when, after leaving Wembley, I could not locate Stanley’s motor. After what seemed like hours of torment – by this time I was in pain and feeling thoroughly depressed – I found it. Stanley wasn’t happy, but we made it up and he drove me home. Little did I know then that three years later I would be witnessing Chelsea’s first-ever FA Cup final triumph, when as Peter Osgood’s agent and business partner, we would be riding the crest of a very lucrative wave. But on 20 May 1967 I was just a walking zombie of out-and-out misery.
Having sold loads of copies of The The Amateur Footballer at Wembley Stadium both before and after the Amateur Cup Final, I now thought it was time that I treated myself to a short holiday, as the magazine would not be published again until August.
However, my association with Enfield FC was strong, so strong that when I was invited to join them on their end-of-season trip to Sweden, I jumped at the chance.
We travelled to Gothenburg by boat – or is it ship, I’ve never really discovered the correct terminology – from Tilbury. I shared a cabin with the Enfield reserve goalkeeper, and the few days spent on this travelling hotel in many ways resembled a surreal dream, with various indiscreet liaisons with young Scandinavian women and copious amounts of alcohol being consumed.
The Enfield FC committee on the trip, grey middle-aged men with ill-fitting suits, sat together most of the time talking in hushed tones as they downed their whiskies. You could see from their expressions that they were envious. Their lives as young men had been spent in wartime London. Their youth was all about survival and confronting head-on death and destruction. We baby boomers, all born during or in the weeks immediately after the War, had money in our pockets and new sexual freedoms that were barred to our elders and betters.
Arriving in Gothenburg, we were transported to a magnificent complex a few miles outside the city, home to the Soviet Union squad for the 1958 World Cup in Sweden, the World Cup that transformed a young teenager nicknamed Pelé into a household name.
We spent the first night glued to the box, cheering on Celtic (‘The Lisbon Lions’) as they became the first British team, and indeed the first non-Latin outfit to lift the European Cup. It was a great night for football, as the ultra-defensive tactics of the Italians – the ‘Catenaccio’ system – was brought to book by a Celtic eleven intent upon attacking. As manager Jock Stein so aptly put it: ‘we did it by playing football; pure, beautiful, inventive football. There was not a negative thought in our heads.’
Apart from lazy hazy days spent in rooms occupied by the legendary Soviet goalie Lev Yashin and his mates, we also had a prestigious game organised at the world-famous Ullevi Stadium, the venue of several World Cup contests in ’58, including Sweden’s semi-final win over West Germany, against a Swedish League XI.
Many of the Enfield players were, shall we say, a wee bit the worse for wear come kick-off, and manager Tommy Lawrence approached me to enquire how I felt about being, if necessary, a substitute. I can see it now, me waving a fag in his face, hands shaking from too much beer and whisky and schnapps, nodding as I tentatively agreed to his request.
The game was played in just the right spirit, and I did manage to get on for a few seconds – whether I touched the ball or not was certainly open to debate. Enfield lost the match, but simply putting a foot on the famous Ullevi turf was enough to make any football-obsessed twenty-one-year-old as euphoric as a hippy on magic mushrooms.
I later sold a story of the trip to Soccer Star magazine, Britain’s biggest-selling football weekly, edited by the legendary Jack Rollin. My fee was half-a-guinea, 10/6 (about 53p in today’s monetary values).
Tommy Docherty was a character. Like all ‘characters’, he could be loveable and unpredictable at the sam
e time. He took over at Stamford Bridge when the club was in dire straits. About to be relegated to the second tier, life looked bleak for London’s quirkiest football club, but his foresight quickly turned doom into delight, thanks to a policy of encouraging young talent plus shrewd bargain basement buys.
Unfortunately Docherty’s erratic behaviour often alienated the likes of George Graham and Terry Venables, and when he began a major work of surgery on the spine of the squad, the atmosphere at the club noticeably changed – and not for the better.
The player who was his pride and joy was undoubtedly Peter Osgood. Docherty turned down various bids from the likes of Roma and Real Madrid – the latter making a formal offer of £100,000 – proclaiming, ‘We wouldn’t dream of selling Osgood any more than Brazil would sell Pelé!’
Ossie himself later told me more than once that Docherty was ‘a real mentor’ and that he loved the man.
However, events during an end-of-season tour to Bermuda, which remain shadowy even to this day, resulted in an FA suspension for the ‘Doc’ plus a fine of £700. Add to this a record of a measly 2 victories from 13 matches, during which they conceded 29 goals, and it was obvious that Tommy’s days were numbered. Some have compared the André Villas-Boas situation in 2012 to that of Docherty during the autumn of ’67: The leading lights at the Bridge – Cole, Lampard and Terry, to name a few – seemingly wanted AVB out, and forty-six years ago, many experts maintained and continue to maintain that some of Chelsea’s young bucks, seeing the writing on the wall, craved a change at the top. The man they wanted was Dave Sexton, and within hours of Docherty’s departure, the quietly spoken East Ender took charge.
It was 7 October 1967 and a Chelsea squad low on confidence following a series of defeats, most notably 5–1 at Newcastle and 6–2 at Southampton, took on Leeds at Elland Road. It was an embarrassing afternoon for all those wearing blue as 40,000-plus fans witnessed a slaughter with a rampant Leeds finding the net on no less than seven occasions without reply.
The Fulham Road had become a forlorn place, and despite Osgood’s return to regular first-team action following his broken leg, he was patently not the dynamic performer he had been prior to his clash with Emlyn Hughes. He told me later that it was essentially psychological, which was understandable considering the seriousness of his injury.
Under new boss Sexton, Chelsea’s form improved markedly, and a final league placing of 6th was a more than satisfactory outcome, qualifying them for the Fairs Cup. Even though Osgood’s prowess as a finisher of flair and finesse did not as yet match the sublime years pre-broken leg, he still managed to top the Blues’ scoring charts with 17 goals.
The season of 1968–69 was another curate’s egg of a campaign. Sexton had moved Peter Osgood permanently into midfield. The No. 4 shirt didn’t somehow seem right for the elegant ex-striker, and it would be fair to say that his career had lurched into a kind of limbo. As he told me later it was all about confidence, and his had reached such a low ebb that the club doctor prescribed him tranquillisers to help him cope with this ongoing anxiety.
A final First Division placing of 5th was not a bad return, but just like the previous campaign, Chelsea choked in the FA Cup quarter-finals. Their Fairs Cup adventure was short-lived. Greenock Morton in round one were easy foe, but at the next stage DWS Amsterdam proved a surprisingly tough nut to crack, and following two 0–0 stalemates, Sexton’s men were eliminated on that most undemocratic of rules – the toss of a coin!
Now, while Chelsea were going through this period of consolidation and then improvement – albeit not of the headline-making variety – I was finding myself once more embroiled in the world of rock.
The Amateur Footballer was continuing to thrive, but the whole ’60s scene (what Time magazine referred to in 1966 as ‘Swinging London’) was fast taking over my life again, this time in the shape of full-colour posters of current stars, marketed by our family company Star Posters Ltd.
Breaking away from the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa and Mick Jagger – by this time Andrew Oldham had ceased being The Stones’ manager, with the shrewd Jagger having bought out his contract – our company changed direction.
And as the 1960s were ever so slowly beginning to turn from idealism and hope into unfulfilled dreams and despair, Oldham became mired in a culture of drugs, and with it, mental and physical degradation. Only much later was he able to resurrect his career and life, thanks in part to his dedication to the much-maligned Church of Scientology. It was then that I decided, on the back of England’s World Cup success-story and the new pop-style adulation of footballers that we should diverge from our previous approach and ‘go into footballers’. What I meant by this was actually one player in particular – and his name was George Best.
There were literally loads of pictures and posters and other more outlandish knick-knacks available of Best on the market – most if not all published on a ‘pirate’ basis by companies that never came to an agreement with the player or his agent. As such, the player received zilch in terms of royalties, which led to obvious discontent. I believed our product should be an official George Best enterprise, so my first port of call was Besty’s agent, the Huddersfield-based Ken Stanley.
Stanley had been a table tennis player of some distinction, and as a football agent he had already made a name for himself with his astute and honest representation of ‘The King’ of Old Trafford, Denis Law.
Our concept was totally different to the standard posed posters of the day – footballers with forced cheesy smiles looking uncomfortable in their football togs with boot-clad foot over ball. What I had in mind was a ‘rock-style’ product. Gone would be the football shirt and shorts, and in would come a King’s Road shirt, designer-stubble and a James Dean-style moody glance at the camera.
Negotiations with Stanley were short, sweet and to the point – 6d (under 3p) for every poster sold, royalty cheques to be submitted on a monthly basis. Ken was happy; George was happy; we were happy.
Taking a photo of George presented no problem, as so many trendy 1960s snappers were queuing up to shoot his photogenic fizzog. Terry O’Neill, with whom we had had several dealings, was an option, but instead we chose a couple of guys working out of an Art Deco block of flats in West Hampstead.
Mission accomplished, but would the public take to this unique concept? The answer was a massive yes, as the posters literally flew off the shelves of shops and stores all over the country. Then there was the mail-order side, helped considerably by advertising in not only that must-have of every teenaged football fan, Shoot magazine, but also via our burgeoning mail-order operation, which was boosted enormously by the co-operation we received from the Manchester United Supporters’ Club.
Thousands were sold in double-quick time. 10,000 became 20,000. Soon it was 40,000 – would it never stop? Rubbing our hands together at this undoubted coup some months later, I said to my father: ‘Do you realise we’ve now topped 50,000?’
Having shouted this figure to the rooftops, I then said to Tesser senior: ‘How about doing a whole series of pop-style football posters?’ Without seeming to consider my proposition, he agreed. And it was this decision that led me to meet the King of Stamford Bridge, Peter Osgood, and embark on a wildly exciting journey of success and failure, coupled with more than a tinge of irresponsibility and madness.
EIGHT
I TELL OSSIE ABOUT
ERIC CLAPTON
I made a list – I love making lists – of the nine most likely players to match Best in terms of teenage fan worship. Number one was obviously England’s ‘Golden Boy’, World Cup-winning captain Bobby Moore. Not far behind, in my estimation, was the Stamford Bridge embryonic superstar, Peter Osgood.
Meeting Moore and his lovely wife, Tina, elegantly draped and with hair of burnished gold, at their spacious house in Chigwell, Essex was a pleasure. Despite all the trappings of comparative wealth, I found Moore to be an easy-going, unassuming man. In fact, a little later I interviewed him for World
Soccer magazine, and found him both articulate and honest. But like most of us, Bobby was flattered by praise. I don’t mean by this that he was in any way inward-looking or on an ego-trip, but when my shrewd – some would say cynical – father suggested to him that sales of his poster would easily emulate those of Best’s, he readily agreed.
The photo used for the poster was a head-and-shoulders job that had an almost ethereal quality about it. He looked impressive – just like a Hollywood star.
Now you have to understand that my father, who was the senior partner in our Star Posters operation, was a salesman of almost frightening expertise and out-and-out guile, plus a smooth velvety voice that seduced even the most sceptical of potential customers to part with his or her hard-earned lolly.
Bobby Moore was not a vain man, but he was human. So, having convinced Bobby that sales of his poster would match those of Best’s, it was then comparatively easy to soft-tongue the England captain with the words: ‘With your contacts you could sell loads – how about your buying 25,000?’
At that time, Moore owned Bobby Moore Sportswear Ltd, a retail and souvenir emporium outside West Ham United’s ground at Upton Park. He also had a partnership in Harrison-Moore, an upmarket purveyor of suede and leather coats based in the East End. Using these outlets would, my father maintained, shift the posters in double-quick time. Bobby was easily sold on the idea, and before you could say ‘World Cup Winners’, the deal was done.
I was unhappy with this deal. I felt my father had taken advantage of Moore’s gullibility, and had used flattery for his own personal gain. I tried to disassociate myself from the whole episode, but unfortunately in the closed world of professional football, matters can easily become distorted or misreported. The fact that the name ‘Tesser’ was an unusual one didn’t help either, so later when I was in the throes of adding Chelsea whiz-kid Alan Hudson to my stable, ‘Huddy’ decided to sign a contract with Ken Adam, the former editor of Jimmy Hill’s Football Weekly who had morphed into a wheeler-dealer agent. The reason given to me was that ‘I had conned Bobby Moore!’