Chelsea FC in the Swinging '60s

by Greg Tesser

  There we were sitting cosily in this shabby office, throwing ideas at one another in the manner of Hollywood scriptwriters. Looking round at the décor of this Stamford Bridge inner sanctum, I thought what a contrast it made to the plush, sleek home of Vogue, and its perfectly-dressed, well-bred upper echelon ladies of high fashion.

  I don’t know why, but I always felt somewhat intimidated by Charlie’s undoubted intellect; it was said that he had the IQ of a genius – good enough for MENSA and all that. How true this was I never did find out, but what was true was that he had a way with words, albeit often very American in construction and usage. For example, he often came out with that de rigueur ‘yoof’ word of 2013, ‘awesome’. No one else I knew then – apart from some American cousins – used this American/English word with such impunity as Charlie. As I have already stated, he was Hemingway-obsessed in those days, but having said that, his turn of phrase was better than any football journalist of the period – at times his phrases were possessed of an almost poetic quality.

  Well, we differed a bit about how the article was to be formulated. I wanted something relatively simple, but Charlie thought we should go out of the norm somewhat and try to add drama to each and every line.

  A few coffees were downed, and we got to work – it was a very basic pen and ink job. Once we had decided upon the direction we were going to take, the first paragraph just happened, and Cooke’s pen wrote these words: ‘It’s different below in the dressing room before a match. There’s no cool beer or King’s Road dollies, none of the euphoria of up-top.’

  It all flowed after that; some words here from Charlie, then more words from me. ‘How are we going to end it?’ I thought. ‘What’s going to be the denouement?’

  I said to Charlie that we should utilise the first few lines, and after a few false dawns with lines that frankly were pretentious to the point of being stuff ready-made for Private Eye’s ‘Pseuds Corner’, we eventually decided upon: ‘And you? Right now you wouldn’t mind being up there, with the cool beer and the King’s Road dollies, immersed in the collective euphoria. Yet you know that when the concrete yields to turf, when your studs cease their chatter, and you start to swing the ball about in those long looping practice passes, it will start to be all right again and the game will take over.’

  It all sounds simple when told in retrospect, but the amount of crossings-out on our sheets of paper, as we attempted to get Charlie’s ideas across to a readership totally unused to the doings of a footballer as he prepares for a game, were testament to how difficult the task was. ‘We’re writing for Vogue, for God’s sake,’ I said, half under my breath. ‘This puts the whole bloody thing on another level. Some of their readers won’t know a cross from a corner-kick!’

  Mission accomplished, all I had to do was to type the thing out on my new Olivetti, show it to Terry O’Neill, and hope for the best. I thought it was good, and thankfully so did the ladies with the cut-glass accents at Vogue.

  The Blues’ league form continued to be no more than satisfactory, and at no stage did they display the kind of devil-may-care football that had marked their FA Cup-winning campaign. Following the European tie in Bulgaria, there was a 4–3 success by the seaside at Blackpool; a 2–2 home draw with Southampton, and 1–0 victory at Huddersfield Town three days after the CSKA second leg. A 1–0 reverse, in front of over 61,000 at Spurs seven days later was a setback, but faith was restored on the 21 November with a 2–1 victory against Stoke, Ossie at last finding the net again. And so it went on: more victories than defeats, but the successes more often than not by the odd goal.

  In the domestic cup competitions, Manchester United put paid to their hopes at the end of October in the fourth round of the League Cup, and they also exited the FA Cup in round four, the other half of Manchester banging in three goals without reply. So, it was Europe or bust for the Blues.

  As for Os, it was proving to be a season that never really saw him replicate the deeds of twelve months before. Apart from a dearth of goals, his cause wasn’t helped by a draconian ban he received of eight weeks, plus a fine of £160, on 20 January 1971. He had been booked six times in a year, and had already been handed a suspended sentence, so when he had his name taken at Goodison Park against Everton on 16 January in a 3–0 defeat, he knew that he was for the high jump (his misery was further compounded by a penalty miss).

  At the time the Football Association, ruled by ‘a generation of ghosts’, and apparently dismayed by the dramatic increase in bad behaviour on the pitch, set about waving the big stick. In their minds there were several players – shall we call them the characters and entertainers – who never seemed to toe the line, and as far as officialdom was concerned were just a big pain in the fundament, to quote Horace Rumpole.

  George Best was certainly one, and Os was another ‘naughty boy’. Apart from his ban – which, by the way, was given top-three billing during that evening’s BBC TV News – their dossier on Osgood was forwarded to the England Selection Committee for them to study. This undoubtedly seemed to put the kibosh on his chances of winning more England caps.

  As you can imagine, my Trim phone chirped incessantly, following Peter’s ban: ‘What is he going to do during his lay-off? How will he keep fit?’ Never-ending questions, which frankly I found difficult on occasions to give the right – or should I say – diplomatic answer. It was definitely a touch of ‘them and us’ in those final years of Swinging London. The Bests, The Marshes, The Osgoods – these were young men at odds with the shiny blazer brigade at FA headquarters. They were part of a new breed, and the FA establishment just didn’t get it; a bit like Dave Sexton, really.

  So what I said to these newspaper guys was often controversial. I knew Os wouldn’t mind a jot because it was all part of our plan. After all, if he hadn’t ruffled a few feathers, would Ray Connolly have been interested? Os was no Bowie or Hendrix or Jagger, but to Connolly he was as much a part of the whole scene as any rebellious rocker.

  But Ossie was always the supreme sporting actor and entertainer. When I say actor, I don’t mean that he ever indulged in what is referred to these days incongruously as ‘simulation’, I mean that he knew how and when to take centre stage. And what better stage than the quarter-finals of the European Cup Winners’ Cup.

  Chelsea had been drawn to face the obdurate Belgians of Bruges, with the first leg to take place on 10 March 1971 away in that delightful city – ‘the Venice of the North’.

  The Bruges players were no mugs and proved it, prevailing 2–0, thanks to goals from Raoul Lambert and Gilbert Marmenaut. It didn’t look good for the Boys in Blue for the second leg in a fortnight, but cometh the hour cometh the man, and in this case it was the irrepressible Osgood.

  Stamford Bridge, Wednesday 24 March, and Os was back in town, with 45,558 spectators cheering the Chelsea players on to the pitch. This was going to be a tall order, and the team’s talisman, Peter Osgood, was not match fit. It represented Sexton’s last grab at a trophy, so was it going to be one of those special nights?

  From the off, Chelsea attacked. The fans were raucous; it was a frenzied atmosphere cracking like thunder with emotion: tempers became frayed as the Bruges back line adopted both fair and foul methods to thwart the Blue hordes.

  Then, there he is, the understated and underrated ‘Nobby’ Houseman advancing on goal – it’s a goal! – 1–2. The curtain rises and on to the stage comes the star of the show to grab all the headlines – Peter Osgood – it’s in the net! – 2–2. Extra-time, and there he is again, Osgood, making it 3–2 to the Londoners. Baldwin added number four, as the Belgian bubble burst, and the Bridge erupted as referee Kostovski from Yugoslavia blew the final whistle – Chelsea had made it through to the semi-finals on a night to remember.

  Alan Hudson has fond memories of this titanic tussle: ‘Osgood was eight weeks short of his best because of long-term injury, and I was still looking for my best form. We took an early lead, and they (Bruges) seemed to become more leg weary. Cooke
was showing his intricate skills, and with Os struggling with his fitness and me with my ankle, we needed to dig deeper than ever before.

  ‘In extra-time Cooke was magnificent, and Sponge (Tommy Baldwin) was living up to his nickname as he soaked up so much work, and thoroughly deserved his goal. Overall, it was quite a performance, although a lot of people tend to forget the one man who kept our faint hopes alive, John Phillips (again deputising in goal for Bonetti). He had been in such incredible form in the first leg in Belgium, and but for him the second game would have proved to be the kind of mountain that had never been found, let alone climbed!’

  Believe it or not after such drama and nail-biting tension – and having grabbed a quick drink with Ossie and co. – I left the ground and made for the Paris Pullman cinema in Chelsea to see one of the most acclaimed post-war French films, Le Grande Meaulnes, based on the cult novel of the same name, written by Alain-Fournier in 1913. Talk about from the sublime to the ridiculous!

  Away from Ossie’s European exploits, I found myself busy with another player, one of a totally different hue to the King of Stamford Bridge; midfield dynamo John Hollins, whose contribution to the success of that team was in many respects as telling as the more gung-ho guys. Clean-cut, articulate and polite, here was a King’s Road hero without flower power, but possessed of a football brain and work ethic that were second-to-none.

  Hollins signed for Chelsea as a teenager and made his first-team debut in September 1963 in a League Cup-tie at Swindon. I actually witnessed his debut, but it was an evening to forget in Wiltshire for any Chelsea fan, as Docherty’s youngsters went down 3–0.

  He left Stamford Bridge in 1975 for QPR, signed by previous boss Sexton for £80,000. Four successful years at Loftus Road, and he was on his way, this time to Arsenal, where he remained for four years.

  He returned to Chelsea in 1983 for a twelve-month period, but by then he was thirty-seven-years-old, and despite his most potent days being behind him, he still proved invaluable to the team cause as the club gained promotion back to the top flight. He was immediately appointed team coach, and following John Neal’s departure, he became manager, but in 1988, following a series of poor performances, he was sacked.

  He won just the solitary England cap against Spain in May 1967, and there is no doubt that in another era, he would have donned the England shirt on many more occasions.

  I enjoyed the task of pushing the name of John Hollins. I was by this time writing regular interviews and such-like for several football magazines, and interviews and first-person features for John were starting to appear on a fairly regular basis. But I wasn’t satisfied – I wanted something different.

  Cooke’s Vogue opus was above-and-beyond, but there was still the matter of cracking the chat-show radio circuit.

  Probably the most popular show on radio in the early 1970s was Open House, presented by Pete Murray. At its height it attracted over 5.5 million listeners on BBC Radio 2. It was a two-hour magazine-style show broadcast five days a week, and it ran for some ten years. During this period, Murray was voted Radio Personality of the Year on two occasions.

  Now, Murray was an authentic celebrity; he was also a football fan – an ardent follower of Arsenal. When I use the word celebrity, I mean it in its truest sense. An actor by profession – he studied at RADA – he joined Radio Luxembourg in 1950 as one of its resident presenters. It was television in the shape of Six-Five-Special that elevated him to the national consciousness.

  To people of a certain age, the Six-Five-Special, which went out live at five past six on Saturday evening, was their first introduction to rock ’n’ roll on TV. Jack Good, later to go on to greater things with ITV’s weekly rock show, Oh Boy!, and even having hit records of his own with Lord Rockingham’s XI and their novelty rock number, ‘Hoots Mon’, was the producer. Josephine Douglas and Murray co-hosted the show, with Murray’s catchphrase ‘Time to Jive on the Old Six Five’, soon becoming one of the ‘in-phrases’ of the 1950s.

  After Six-Five, Murray’s career blossomed. He was one of the regular panellists on the hit TV show Juke Box Jury, and when Top of The Pops was launched on New Year’s Day 1964, Murray was selected as one of regular frontmen. Three years later he was one of the original DJs on BBC radio’s new youth-orientated station, Radio 1. He moved to Radio 2 in 1969, and by 1970 his stock was sky-high.

  In many ways life as a PR person back then was a doddle. Okay, so there were limited outlets for publicity and promotion, certainly in respect of footballers, but making that initial contact was so much simpler. For one thing, people were far less suspicious. So, speaking on the blower to Murray was no problem, and suggesting that a Chelsea player be a guest was met with a warm affirmative.

  Broadcasting House, Langham Place: so much history, so much that was part of the fabric of British culture. Arriving there with John and his attractive, bubbly wife Linda, I was immediately impressed by Murray’s easy-going manner, and the almost boyish pleasure that he was obviously getting from meeting and chatting to a top footballer, even one from such bitter rivals of Arsenal as Chelsea.

  John had sideburns to die for, but unlike several of his colleagues, he was never remotely associated with a rock ’n’ roll lifestyle. But as a radio guest, he made the ideal interviewee, and this one show with Pete Murray did so much to dispel the standard image of professional players – inarticulate and thick.

  I’ll always remember many years later, listening to a Somerset County Cricket Club committee lady, who mocked footballers with these words: ‘Thick as two short planks compared to cricketers.’ Blanchflower, Cooke, Pat Nevin, to name but three – more cranium activity there, I would have thought, than the likes of the celebrity cricketers of today. This lady was living in the past – in the era of Mike Brearley and David Gower, when cricketers could converse on TV with the late John Arlott on subjects ranging from Apartheid to the latest wine vintage. Those days are long gone – gone forever.

  As we bade Pete Murray adieu, he smiled broadly and said something like: ‘We must do this again sometime.’ Well, we didn’t, but we should have.

  Thirteen

  FILM STARS –

  FLIM-FLAM AND ROCK ’N’ ROLL

  The second clash with Bruges was seminal. A season that seemed at one stage to be run-of-the-mill suddenly took on a totally different complexion. A first European trophy for Chelsea was now fast emerging as more than just a pipedream. Holders of the Cup Winners’ Cup, Manchester City, who earlier in the campaign had dumped the Blues out of the Cup, made it a home-grown semi-final – revenge, as they say, is best served cold!

  Raquel Welch was sexy, and she liked Peter Osgood. Fact. Terry O’Neill knew Raquel well – he took photograph after photograph of her; often scantily clad, but always tasteful; never tacky. Our family business, Star Posters, had bought one such photo from Terry, and it was turned into a best-selling colour poster. It was a striking embodiment of feminine beauty with her hair, all luxuriant curls, discreetly covering her ample breasts. I showed the poster to Ossie and he liked it. Well, why wouldn’t he?

  Next stop, the office of Terry O’Neill’s agent, Rex Features in New Fetter Lane, off Fleet Street. How the conversation developed I cannot actually remember, but what I do remember is that Terry told me that Raquel was giving a major interview to a guy from The Times, and that, thanks to his ‘prodding’, she was going to say a few very complimentary things about Os. Wow! This was better than I expected – sensational stuff.

  Raquel Welch’s interview in The Times raised more than a few eyebrows, not because she said anything particularly outlandish or profound or even dramatically revealing, but her comments, and in particular her compliments about Peter Osgood, were unique in the sense that never before had such an international movie star – and an American one at that – raved about an English football (or should I say soccer?) star; for me it was the proverbial manna from heaven.

  Once more my phone was overdosing on a handful of black bombers. ‘Did P
eter Osgood know Raquel Welch?’ or ‘Do you think they’ll see each other at a game at Stamford Bridge?’ and so on and so on and so forth – the journalists’ questions were often banal and inane, but it was up to me to make the most of the situation. After all, hadn’t I said to Terry O’Neill that publicising life at Chelsea was much like the rock business? Or was it Hollywood in London SW6?

  The phone trills again – this time it’s Terry at the end of the wire, ‘Hi, Greg,’ he says, ‘just an idea, but why don’t you phone Dave Sexton and ask him to give his permission for Raquel to come to the ground to see a match: or maybe even training.’

  I thought it was a great idea, but Terry didn’t know what sort of man Sexton was, but I did. So, it was with a negative feeling that I phoned the Chelsea manager. The conversation was short, not so sweet and went something like this: ‘Good afternoon, Mr Sexton [I always addressed him as Mr]. This is Peter Osgood’s agent here, Gregory Tesser [the full version of my name was often used then]. You probably saw the interview that film star Raquel Welch gave to The Times, and the complimentary things she said about Ossie.’

  Initially, utter silence reigned at the other end of the line, and I held my breath.

  ‘I think so,’ was the reply, cold as ice.

  ‘Well, I was just wondering: would it be all right if Raquel Welch came to the ground, or even saw Ossie in training?’

  Dave Sexton’s manner evolved from being cold to being positively Antarctic, and his answer was both brusque and terse. He knew how young I was, and that I would never argue with him or try to influence him in an aggressive manner. As I have stated, Dave didn’t dig baby boomers, and he certainly struck me as being strait-laced.