by Greg Tesser
Another club official, Bishop’s Stortford treasurer Bob Turner made the point that ‘without doubt the Sports Arena programme laid everything on a plate.’
The whole ‘Boot Money’ saga certainly ruffled a few feathers in high places, but it took a further three years before the FA decided to abolish the distinction between amateur and professional. Definitely a case of better late than never!
I ‘created’ another coup for the magazine early in 1970 by asking Peter Osgood to write an article extolling the virtues of the amateur game. Headlined ‘WELL DONE SUTTON!’ he complimented Sutton United on reaching the FA Cup fourth round, but was more interested in outlining his opinions on one of the leading amateur protagonists of the day.
‘I remember very distinctly being marked by Enfield’s experienced centre-half Alf D’Arcy,’ he wrote, ‘in a friendly fixture at Stamford Bridge against the British Olympic team. He certainly gave me a rough ride that day, and I must say that I was tremendously surprised by not only his tough tackling, but also his all-round skill. I am sure he could have made the grade if he had decided to become a professional.’
As for Sutton, Osgood was impressed with the calibre of the Surrey club’s squad: ‘They certainly have some fine players – Ted Powell, Micky Mellows and Larry Pritchard to name just three. I have always thought highly of Mellows’ ability as a striker. He is just the type of forward I admire – always there at the right time to snap up chances, similar in fact to our own Tommy Baldwin.’
Utilising Ossie’s natural use of words for a whole range of articles was proving not only successful, but also profitable. I beat magazine editors into submission with incessant phone calls and a whole raft of different ideas, attempting at all times to concentrate on the way football was transcending sport and morphing into a vital part of the entertainment – the new rock ’n’ roll, in fact.
The rock-style soccer posters were selling well, and the various photographic sessions were like an open door for me in my quest to increase my client list. The West Ham guys, Hurst, Moore and Peters, were already signed to an agent, but the likes of Chelsea’s mercurial winger Charlie Cooke and QPR talisman Rodney Marsh (what an ideal member of that Chelsea team he would have made – all flash and flounce) were available.
Charlie Cooke lived out Richmond way near the Thames. He was a friendly guy, but somewhat introverted. His wife Edith was also friendly, and as warm as toast. Charlie enjoyed being snapped, but it was obvious from the outset that as a general rule he disliked publicity for publicity’s sake.
There was, to my mind, something of the James Dean about him. Here was a man who was obviously a serious thinker. On the whole, professional sportsmen were and are very eager to embrace opportunity where money is concerned, but not Charlie – not back in 1969 anyway.
The photo session was a success, and I soon built up a rapport with the enigmatic Scotsman. I mentioned my association with Peter Osgood and how I had agreed to be his agent. He immediately indicated a real disdain for agents and all that they represented, but despite his jaundiced view, he seemed quite prepared for me to promote his name, although not without his input. For example he made it clear to me from the outset that ghosted columns and the like were a big no-no as far as he was concerned – where possible he wanted to put pen to paper himself.
I realised from the off that at all times I had to handle Charlie with kid gloves, and the fact that we got on like a house on fire made my task a great deal easier. However, Ossie was my number one priority and as the 1969-’70 season developed and his potency in front of goal increased with almost every contest, the business of ‘selling’ his name, a hard graft at first, became that much easier. What helped, of course, was the celebrity sideshow of Stamford Bridge – the film and TV stars regularly attending games, and the post-match social side in the so-called ‘Long Bar’ or ‘Tea Room’, as it was sometimes referred to.
As a boy, I had ambitions to be an actor. At the age of thirteen, living the ‘Luvvie Dream’ appealed to me so much that my father managed to fiddle me on to the books of an agency called Corona. Based in Chiswick, West London, they looked after the budding careers of such wannabes as Francesca Annis, Richard O’Sullivan and Dennis Waterman (the latter two both staunch Chelsea supporters, by the way).
I was soon on a film set at Elstree Studios working as an extra in The Young Ones, starring Cliff Richard and Robert Morley. During the filming I became matey with a young actor called Joey White, brother of Cathy Come Home star Carol, who later, like so many stars of that momentous era, gravitated to the Fulham Road and the football shrine of Stamford Bridge.
So, it seemed appropriate that some nine years later – 1969 to exact, I should be strolling towards the car park at Stamford Bridge, chatting to club vice-chairman Richard (now Lord) Attenborough.
He was somewhat shorter than I had imagined, but he was classically dapper and stylish, and I have to say I felt somewhat intimidated. For here I was, aged just twenty-three, in the presence of true greatness. Charisma is an almost impossible thing to quantify, but when you encounter it, believe me, you know it. George Best had it, in bagfuls. Many years later I was introduced to Prime Minister John Major at a football exhibition – ‘just call me John’, he said – well, he didn’t have it, yet when I interviewed Tony Blair it was apparent that here was somebody whose pores oozed it. And Richard Attenborough, despite his modest persona, was an overtly special person.
It is true that during my Soho days I had met and become close to a wide variety of rock people, but many of them were not yet the megastars they were to become. Organising a press reception for The Beatles in 1964 was an obvious high point, but my interaction with John Lennon and Paul McCartney had been very matter-of-fact – just common pleasantries and the odd ‘thank you’ or three.
Attenborough’s voice was soft in the extreme – so very English and strangely reassuring. There was also an endearing twinkle in his eye; when he smiled, his compassion and sincerity and genuine niceness really shone through like a shaft of sunlight on miserable November day. In fact his whole face appeared to generate all that was fine and good and somehow respectable.
I must say that having encountered some truly ‘dodgy geezers’ during my time as publicity manager of Georgie Fame, Zoot Money and The Yardbirds, his whole demeanour was a refreshing novelty. It highlighted the fact that to be top of your profession did not necessarily mean that it was a prerequisite that you had to trample on those around you to achieve this goal.
It was one of those autumn days when the crispness in the air coupled with a light breeze seems to act as a tonic from Mother Nature. The fact that the Blues had just prevailed 2–0 over West Bromwich Albion, with goals from Charlie Cooke and Peter Osgood, only heightened my already hyper senses (no doubt exaggerated tenfold by the popping of a white pill or two). It had not been a vintage Chelsea display, but there was still something about it that smacked of class – that special je ne sais quoi you get from seeing a Jacobi or an Olivier – or indeed an Attenborough – perform on stage and screen.
As we walked, we talked, or, more accurately, I just listened. Having explained my role as Peter Osgood’s agent and business partner – he displayed particular interest in how I intended promoting the striker, and paid me various compliments on what I had already achieved – he then proceeded to wax lyrical about the inbuilt talents of ‘the King of Stamford Bridge’ – his balance, his poise and his innate ability of being able to somehow fashion a goal out of absolutely nothing.
We must have sauntered along the tarmac leading to the car park that Saturday afternoon, and despite being in awe of such an icon of the British cinema, I simply could not resist asking him how his love for all things Blue and Chelsea had first surfaced.
He explained to me that he had first started cheering them on from the terraces during the war, in 1942. Then in 1947, when starring in the film Brighton Rock (based on Graham Greene’s acclaimed novel), he was told he must lose some weight, so he
managed to train with the team, and in so doing, got to know everyone at the club, and in particular Chelsea’s then-record signing, centre-forward Tommy Lawton, who became a great friend.
He then went on to recount how he used to go to the Bridge with those two titans of the cinema and theatre, John Mills and Laurence Olivier.
This was indeed a far cry from the days of cloth caps and roll-your-own fags and acrid Bovril in cracked white discoloured cups.
As he climbed into his car, he sketched a wave with a flourish, and then he was gone.
Richard Attenborough’s name cropped up in unlikely fashion during a conversation I had on Boxing Day 1970, when I found myself drinking what appeared to be pints, if not litres, of violently strong black coffee from soup bowls with stage and screen actor Donald Sinden, looking resplendent in silk dressing gown and pyjamas, in the kitchen of his home in Hampstead Garden Suburb. I am sure I was probably boring him rigid about Chelsea and Peter Osgood and the whole King’s Road cultural scene, for Sinden was certainly no follower of the beautiful game. But, to be fair to him, he made all the right noises when I attempted to explain to him my job as a football agent and PR guru.
‘How very interesting,’ he boomed – his voice boomed throughout our surreal conversation. ‘Please tell me more.’
So tell him I did, with all the arrogance of youth and all the sincerity and seriousness of someone in his twenties in 1970, a year in which the spirit of the 1960s continued to live on, until the reality check of the Ted Heath government and the Three-Day Week and the civil unrest hit.
And when it came to Richard Attenborough and his Chelsea addiction, Sinden stopped for a moment, laid down his huge bowl of coffee and stared at me in disbelief. You see, for the layman, actors and aristocrats and society hairdressers and other what would now be termed A-listers, supporting a particular football club in 1960s England was looked upon as quirky, if not downright odd.
‘Have another cup of coffee,’ boomed Sinden, his face now expressing genuine interest. And I did. And I lit yet another Lucky Strike. And I spieled on and on about football and fashion and, above all, Chelsea FC. I think by then the eyes of the great thespian were just beginning to glaze over, but also by then I was fully wound up like some ongoing tape machine, so I just sipped coffee and smoked and spoke until even I realised I had outstayed my welcome.
Some weeks later I apologised most profusely to Sinden about my bad manners, and I must say he was most gracious: ‘you are just young and enthusiastic, dear boy,’ he boomed.
Ossie’s goal against West Bromwich was a seed: a promise of what was to come. His goals flowed in the League: two at Ipswich in November and four on 27 December 1969 in the 5–1 demolition of Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park. He was now the most talked-about goalscorer in the country, and as Chelsea hurdled up the table, so more and more media pressure was brought to bear on England manager Alf Ramsey to include him in his England squad. Ossie had become the darling of the tabloids.
Meanwhile, as manager Dave Sexton’s men continued to captivate press and public alike with their brand of cavalier, devil-may-care football, more and more celebrities could be seen at the Bridge on match days. As Peter Osgood said to me much later: ‘nobody likes watching guys play like robots, and we certainly didn’t!’
Alan Hudson was fulsome in his praise of two of his colleagues from that pulsating period: ‘Os and Charlie Cooke were geniuses, and there was this constant buzz-thing at the club.
‘Everybody (in those days) was trying to change society. I guess it was unique, and most of us at the Bridge at the time – in other words, the players – knew something big, something special, was going to happen. A fantastic bond was built up between players and fans; as I say, it was unique.
‘Okay, so we earned good money in those days, but we still met and spoke to our supporters in pubs in and around the ground. Yes, it was a glamorous time, and in many ways our lifestyle in the 1960s and ’70’s is being aped by the Premier League boys, but in a much, much bigger way.
‘In any branch of showbiz, there are poseurs, and football is just the same. I suppose the likes of Os and me had to deal with more hangers-on than was good for us, but we never grew apart from the genuine fans, the real football people.
‘However, comparisons between different eras are not only difficult, they serve no real purpose. In 1969 and 1970 life was more easy-going; you were in many ways allowed to express yourself with more freedom – the free-thinker, free-spirit syndrome.’
The word glamour is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘alluring or exciting beauty or charm’. And a visit to the ‘Long Bar’ for a cuppa or something stronger post-match was witness to that. Without knowing it, you could strike up a conversation with, for example, that zany comedian Marty Feldman, who would later be elevated to Hollywood star status by Mel Brooks and his movie Young Frankenstein.
Now, in the mid-to-late 1960s Feldman lived above me in Wellesley Court, a late Art Deco block flats in Maida Vale. Many a night’s sleep in the block became almost impossible, as raucous sounds emanated from Marty’s apartment. ‘Did you hear the noise?’ was the question the day after. And the answer was always the same: ‘Oh, it was just one of Marty’s parties!’
His breakthrough as a scriptwriter came in collaboration with Barry Took, courtesy of such TV classics as ITV’s The Army Game and Bootsie and Snudge as well as Round the Horne for BBC Radio.
In many ways it was The Compartment, a short TV play written in 1962 by Alf Garnett creator, Johnny Speight, in which he co-starred with another Chelsea fan, Michael Caine, that brought Feldman to the fore as a consumate comedy actor.
Feldman loved Chelsea. He had the most incredible eyes. They resembled large olives, and when he was excited or trying to emphasise a particular point, it seemed they had a life of their own. ‘Would they pop out?’ I kept asking myself when I stood near him.
He was a passionate fan, and meeting him for the first time in the company of Peter Osgood, I don’t know who was more star-struck, Feldman or Osgood himself!
I always remember one short sentence he uttered in my presence. It had been another typical show from Ossie, all grace, guts and goals plus natural organic energy. ‘I wish I had Peter Osgood’s talents,’ he said wistfully. Some irony there, I thought.
In this day-and-age, ‘celebrity-spotting’ at London restaurants is a must for any readers of Tatler. Certainly a trip to Alvaro’s restaurant in 1969 would have had the most ardent celeb-watcher in ecstasies of delight.
Picture the scene: it’s match day at Stamford Bridge, and Alvaro’s is buzzing. Looking round, any diner could not fail to notice one table in particular, packed with a whole host of national and international stars, tucking in to haute cuisine, sipping fine wines and all straining at the leash to venture forth to the Holy Grail on the Fulham Road and roar on Ossie and his pals.
‘All the faces were there,’ photographer-to-the-stars and Blues diehard Terry O’Neill would later recount to me. ‘Even some people who were not natural fans such as Tommy Steele came along. As did Ian La Frenais.’
The man who organised many of these glitzy celebrity nosh-ups was Mayfair man-about-town tailor, Doug Hayward, described by Terry O’Neill as ‘the Buddha of Mount Street’.
Now, to say that Hayward dressed the great and the good would be an understatement: Sir Michael Caine; Sir Roger Moore; Sir John Gielgud; Look Back In Anger playwright John Osborne; Tony Bennett; Clint Eastwood; James Coburn, who once called him ‘The Rodin of Tweed’; Rex Harrison; Sir Michael Parkinson; World Cup-winning skipper Bobby Moore; Tommy Steele; Peter Seller; and Terence Stamp all donned his exquisite designs.
He created suits for Mick Jagger, which resulted in him designing the wedding dress for Bianca Jagger. Steve McQueen wore Doug’s suits in The Thomas Crown Affair, and Hayward was also the fashion designer responsible for Caine’s suits in The Italian Job.
His female clients included Faye Dunaway, Mia Farrow, model Jean Shrimpt
on and actress Sharon Tate, so tragically murdered by followers of the infamous Charles Manson in August 1969. She was at the time married to Rosemary’s Baby director Roman Polanski.
Producer of such TV hits as Birds of a Feather and Lovejoy, Tony Charles, looks back with extreme affection on those days.
‘We had a special deal with the owner of Alvaro’s, which was about halfway down the King’s Road, ‘he remembered. ‘The meals cost £1 a head, and the usual number at any one time was eleven. We were all Chelsea season-ticket holders, so the idea of a slap-up lunch, followed by watching Ossie and Charlie Cooke and co seemed just great. In fact it was at one of these lunches that we hatched the idea of our movie, Today Mexico, Tomorrow the World. That was, of course, in 1970, just before the World Cup.’
Audie Charles, for some quarter-of-a-century the welcoming and creative figure at Hayward’s haven for the well-dressed at No. 95 Mount Street, reeled-off a whole list of names often to be seen imbibing and masticating at these lunchtime occasions.
‘Steve McQueen used to come along,’ she said, ‘as did Clint Eastwood on occasion – he was living in London at the time. David Hemmings (star of cult movie Blow Up), Ian McShane (star of Lovejoy) and many others were regulars.’
My own excursions to Alvaro’s were rare, as by 1970 I found myself frequenting another hangout of the luvvies, the poseurs and ‘the beautiful’, the Barbarella restaurant on the Fulham Road, just a short free-kick from the gates of the Bridge itself.
Lunches at Barbarellas were long, liquid affairs in the company of television scriptwriter and northern Chelsea fan Vince Powell, his long-standing girlfriend Judi, and numerous comedian friends of Vince’s such as Billy Dainty and Bernie Winters.
My friendship with Vince was comparatively long, and it was close. His TV writing credentials were formidable. With Harry Driver, he was hired as Coronation Street’s first storyline writer, and between 1961 and 1967, the workaholic Powell penned thirty-two episodes himself, plus a further four with his partner, Driver. His Coronation Street immersion was confirmed in 1964 when, with one of the other regular writers John Finch, he wrote a successful stage play, Coronation Street on the Road.