Wearing his work overalls, he responded to a job advertised in the Ashton Reporter. It wanted a representative to sell advertising space in the newspaper. He told them he would be the most successful rep they had ever employed, and was true to his word. ‘I took to it like a duck to water. I’d walk up one side of the street and get all the shops to advertise, then walk up the other side and do the same all over again.’ He was on a wage of £75 per week without any commission. The job did not include a company car, just a bus pass to all points in Ashton-under-Lyne.
His next move was into local radio, where he again sold advertising. It was the consummate job for his relentless personality. ‘I suppose I am aggressive at times. I do not suffer fools. I cannot abide people who do not give everything. I think I am fair, but I can be cut-throat at times. If someone doesn’t give it their best, boy do I let them know about it.’ Within two years he had risen to the position of sales controller at Piccadilly Radio. He flourished in local radio, a famously hierarchical environment where the naïve or gullible were habitually put to the sword. Bird routinely dealt with media power-brokers like Owen Oyston and, evidently, knew how to connect with leadership and wrestle his own kind of influence. He was a hard-worker, someone who could see a project through. He was sometimes bullish, but he phoned everyone back, got the job done.
In 1990, he left Piccadilly Radio. ‘I wasn’t happy any more at the radio station. I wasn’t sure whether people were buying into Chris Bird or Piccadilly.’ He needed a broader stage, and set up the PR company, Bird and Wood, with the former Piccadilly DJ, Phil Wood. After seven years, Bird bought out Wood’s share, and changed the company name to The Bird Consultancy, in a 90/10 per cent partnership with his brother, Peter Bird, nine years his senior. It boasted several notable clients, including the G-Mex Centre and Diadora.
Initially, City was merely another addition to the company’s roster but Bird was soon perceived as their PR man. While he was sometimes criticised in the City fanzines for his attempts to stage-manage fans’ forums, the wider issue of his sudden rise to eminence was barely addressed. Regardless of his enthusiasm and love of City, he was in a peculiar situation, seemingly without mandate from either shareholders or supporters. There were mutterings that he was in place solely through his friendship with Tueart and Bernstein, though, it had to be said, such arrangements proliferated in football.
While Bird’s route into the heart of City drew some scepticism, few doubted the qualities he tendered. He did not have the subtlety and chicanery of a Sidney Rose, the club’s life-president, or indeed a Peter Swales, but he was linear, determined, confident, dogged, a supreme foot-soldier for the Bernstein administration.
Saturday, 28 November 1998
Luton Town 1 Manchester City 1
Andy Morrison, captaining City for the first time, gave them the lead after 29 minutes with a header from a Craig Russell corner. Luton equalised when teenage substitute Gary Doherty, left unmarked at a corner, headed in at the near-post.
Monday, 30 November 1998
Michael Branch returned to Everton after completing his month-long loan period at Maine Road. The two clubs could not agree a fee.
Five
The Winter of Our Discontent
Tuesday, 1 December 1998
Letters appeared in the Manchester Evening News which were critical of City ‘We can see how far City’s standards have dropped’ – T. Knott, Droylsden; ‘What is going on at the Moss Side Academy? It’s football, but not as we know it!’ – A. Menzies, Gorton; ‘The team is poor, probably the worst City side ever’ – A. Holland, Lytham.
Wednesday, 2 December 1998
Millwall were fined and warned by the Football Association after being found guilty of failing to control their spectators when City visited the New Den in September.
City were quoted as 1000–1 to win the FA Cup by Manchester bookmaker Fred Done. The odds were the longest in the club’s history.
Friday, 4 December 1998
Darlington 1 Manchester City 1 (FA Cup Second Round)
Gary Bennett, Darlington’s 37-year-old player–coach and an ex-City player, scored his first goal of the season. City were rescued from another FA Cup embarrassment by substitute Paul Dickov’s late volley. Darlington’s Steve Gaughan was dismissed for manhandling referee Barry Knight.
Willie Donachie complained that City supporters had shouted abuse at the team throughout the match. ‘It left me feeling sick . . . I can honestly say it left me wondering why I bother,’ he said.
ANGRY SURFERS MAKE WAVES AT CITY FORUM
(The Times, Saturday, 5 December 1998)
The geeks are in town, better lock up your railway timetables and acrylic, star-patterned cardigans. Think again, for these are geeks with attitude, boffins with bite to match the bytes.
Manchester City have just held their second tribal gathering, a weekend of City-tinged frivolity for supporters who communicate via the Internet. From across the globe they trekked to Moss Side, Manchester, to press the flesh and share the pain with the similarly afflicted. It is a pilgrimage of grotesque proportions, akin to an assignment undertaken by the American writer P.J. O’Rourke, famed for his droll bulletins from various war zones around the world.
Through the cold, damp, rain-lashed streets, visitors from as far away as Hong Kong and Kenya, Pakistan and Moscow, travelled to a part of Manchester that is a no-go area for many of its own citizens. After their Friday night (anti-)social, their itinerary took in a trip along Rusholme’s famous curry mile, a tour of Maine Road, a five-a-side tournament and, of course, a Manchester City match.
Since most Internet users have codenames, the introductions were more complex than usual. ‘Hmm, are you Stan the Man or Son of Stan the Man?’ asked one. ‘Neither, actually, I’m Stockholm Blue; I think that’s Stan the Man over there.’ Similar conversations could be heard throughout the over-lit Oasis Suite which, appropriately, has the same decor as an airport departure lounge.
The guests of honour were five ex-City players boasting between them more than 1,100 games and 150 goals for the blues. Dennis Tueart, the former City striker famous for extravagant overhead kicks, was spotted first, standing by an extravagant Welsh dresser. A chant struck up immediately: ‘There’s only one Dennis Tueart, one Dennis Tueart.’ He carried on his conversation, breaking off occasionally to acknowledge the noisy approval of a group in the corner of the room. ‘They’ve been drinking all day, that lot,’ he was told.
On the table by Tueart’s side was a framed collection of his medals and an England international cap. It might have been a goodhearted gesture on his behalf, a compulsion to share his moments of glory with others. Alternatively, it might have been evidence of a monstrous ego. One supporter had no doubts: ‘Look at that, he’s only been here five minutes and he’s got his bloody medals out. Talk about full of himself!’ Ridiculed and deified simultaneously in the same room: only football can stir such a miscellany of opinions.
The other guests from City’s glorious recent past were Willie Donachie, Gary Owen, Peter Barnes and Harry Dowd, their goalkeeper from 1958 to 1970. The club is currently on a mission of openness and similar forums are being held throughout the country. The procedure at each is identical. Fans submit written questions and a panel supplied by the club provide the answers and the anecdotes.
Within minutes, the irritable Interneters were expressing their discontent. They objected to the formulaic approach and wanted to fire from the hip, to ask questions as they thought of them. Chris Bird remained steadfast. ‘We’re lucky that these gentlemen have given up their time tonight . . .’ he began, pointing towards the panel. He sounded disconcertingly patronising, and someone duly said it in unequivocal terms. ‘You patronising bastard,’ muttered the man on his feet at the corner table. ‘Now then,’ chorused the people around him, much in the manner of the midnight chip-shop queue trying to restrain a young buck determined to pick a fight with the middle-aged man next to him.
More agitati
on ensued when talk turned to the naming of City’s new stadium. Several were disappointed to learn that the Joe Mercer Stadium was not among the early favourites from the various supporters’ polls. Inevitably, there were suggestions of rigged voting. More shouting, a grimace from Bird. The cups on the dresser were starting to shake. The call for calm was heeded eventually, and the tension further assuaged by the first Monica Lewinsky joke of the evening. ‘Let’s call it the Monica Lewinsky Stadium, that way we can make sure we never go down again!’
Harry Dowd, a snowy-haired gentleman with a permanent smile, hardly inspired the throng with the admission, part-way through, that he no longer watched football, or cared much about it. ‘What’s he come for then? A chicken wing at the end of the night?’ came the stage whisper. City know how to treat their heroes!
The question-answer session over, more humour, this time from a professional comedian, would surely unite these troubled blues. The evening was to provide one more shock. ‘Right then,’ said the comedian. ‘I was really pleased to see that a bloke from Lancashire won £7 million on the lottery the other week. Until I realised it was a Paki . . .’ He was challenged immediately by several members of the multi-cultural audience. ‘I’m only saying what you’re all thinking,’ was his bizarre response. Some left, some stayed and heckled. A bad time was had by all.
• The column was an attempt to relate the irritation and mistrust that City’s poor form had engendered in supporters. Many had become cynical and humourless. The evening was awful – an argumentative party of people at one table, everyone else too shy to bridge the distance between one another. Beer was on sale, but the room was flushed with bright light as if we were specimens in a museum. It felt like something organised by the Parent–Teacher Association to raise money for a pony-trekking holiday.
Of course, I only attended one event, so perhaps should not have used it as an indicator for the entire Tribal Gathering which spanned the weekend. As I learned later, supporters rallied and the frigid opening evening was superseded by a renewal of the camaraderie and warmth of old. In effect, the supporters had regenerated themselves.
I was telephoned afterwards by Chris Bird, upset that I had accused him of patronising the fans. He had assembled the panel of ex-players as a favour to the Gathering. I didn’t see that this had any correlation to his attitude on the night, but conceded that it was probably unfair to portray him as supercilious when the event would not have taken place without his assistance.
After the article, I became a figure of disdain on the various web-postings. It seemed supporters were desperate for scapegoats, their frustration and spleen needed to be discharged. City, briefly, had started to feel like a different club. The famous good humour had become sarcastic rather than heartfelt; the losing was turning dissatisfaction to bitterness.
Peter Brophy’s broadside, ‘TG2 – Hack Just Behind The Times’ was included on MCIVTA (Manchester City Information Via The Alps), the bulletin board visited by hundreds of City fans around the world. It was typical of the criticism that came my way. It was a little over-cooked, but he had a point . . .
TG2 – HACK JUST BEHIND THE TIMES
It occurred to me when I was flying home for TG2 that I must be mad. On the face of it, there seems little sense in making a 4,000-mile round trip for an event centred round a match against unglamorous opponents at a level to which, until a few short months previously, I never thought City would sink. Especially when you can’t even rely on the team to go out, do a solid professional job and win. Sure enough, we didn’t win, we couldn’t even bloody score. And yet I flew back to Russia knowing I hadn’t been mad at all. I’d do it all again – indeed I will do it all again. There’s so much more to it than the football, you see.
As a non-attending Blue Viewer [another site devoted to City] remarked, those who’ve only seen the account which appeared in The Times newspaper probably picture an event which failed, marked by sniping at the panel of ex-players and uproar during the stand-up’s act. Mark Hodkinson, author of the piece, focuses largely on the controversies of the Friday night event, which have already been aired in MCIVTA and on Blue View – a classic case of accentuating the negative.
Maybe there’s just cause to criticise the club’s consultation with fans over the new stadium, though I disagreed whether it was the right time and setting to question the process. It was certainly more than unfortunate that the comedian pandered to the worst prejudices of his stereotype of a group of football fans, ignoring that he had a rather more sophisticated, cosmopolitan audience to entertain. However, to claim that even the Friday night was ruined by these incidents would be inaccurate. I was in the Oasis Suite for six hours, and for more than five, Blues were sitting and talking, eating and drinking, singing and dancing or laughing and joking together.
That’s to say nothing of the article’s comments about the panel. Personally, I enjoyed the chance to meet and chat to the ex-players whom I, like many others, remember with great reverence; and they stayed round for photos with good grace. I was actually interested to see international caps and trophies brought along by Donachie and Tueart, not offended by the egotism of the display. Maybe a few people voiced the odd cynical aside – as if that’s a surprise in a room filled with more than a hundred – but I’m pretty confident that this paragraph reflects the general mood better than the quotations produced in Hodkinson’s piece.
Even for those who departed from the function in the Oasis Suite (and though I didn’t, I understand why people walked out) I don’t think it was more than a small blight on the weekend as a whole. Hodkinson lists the other events, but not in full – some played golf on the Friday or went out for a meal on the Sunday, for instance. How can he ignore the fact that these events and the ‘trip along Rusholme’s famous curry mile, tour of Maine Road, five-a-side tournament and, of course, Manchester City match’ he mentions were all attended by many and by all accounts I’ve seen (more than he has, I’d wager), thoroughly enjoyed.
Or at least, all were enjoyed apart from the game. Of course, I’m used to seeing City struggle to break their opponents down, spurn a couple of chances, grow uninspired and achieve a disappointing result. I’m used to seeing some of the players appear possessed of a first touch which would have embarrassed any of the lads playing in the five-a-side on the Sunday. But it’s worse now than it ever has been, because at least for most of our history we’ve been spurning chances and playing uninspired football and achieving disappointing results and showing poor first touch against top-flight opposition.
Yet I think the fact we follow a club with these characteristics brings us all closer together – we’re all people who love what most football fans would regard as unlovable. I wouldn’t be so trite as to say we’re all a brotherhood. In most respects, we form a pretty disparate group. Maybe without City to bind it together, many of the component parts might not have much in common and one or two may even not like each other all that much. But this is irrelevant, because we do have City to bind us together, and that means we can gather and do what we did for most of the Friday night and for all the rest of TG2. And at the end of it, ask any one of us and we’ll tell you we had a bloody great weekend.
In the light of this, when I read the piece from The Times, I was a little surprised. Indeed, if it hadn’t cited a couple of events I’d witnessed I might have wondered if Hodkinson had attended a parallel TG2. As it was, I felt that the author had given a disproportionate focus to a couple of brief episodes to fit what he wanted to say irrespective of the truth. I live in Russia, and am old enough to have spent a fair amount of time here when it was still the Soviet Union, so I can recall how this approach was a journalistic staple here in those days. I really think Hodkinson was born out of time – he’d have made a fantastic pre-glasnost Pravda hack.
So next year, come November, I’ll already have bought my ticket back to Maine Road for the next one, probably centred around a game against Wigan or Northampton or equally alluring opponents. I
can understand why an onlooker might think it a crazy P.J. O’Rourke-style pilgrimage, but as for some smart-arse telling me I’ve not had a good time? Sod him! Roll on TG3.
Saturday, 5 December 1998
Television celebrity Paul Merton made himself unpopular with City fans after a joke on the comedy programme, Have I Got News For You. One of the guests, George Melly, commented on a recent Turner Prize-winner famous for making art from elephant droppings. ‘There isn’t much elephant shit to be found in Manchester,’ he said. Merton butted in: ‘Haven’t you seen Man City lately?’
Tuesday, 8 December 1998
Manchester City 1 Mansfield Town 2 (Auto Windscreen Shield)
Since the club expected a low turn-out just one stand was opened, the Kippax, and in an eerie atmosphere supporters saw City put in a dire performance. Lee Peacock scored twice for Mansfield and Danny Allsopp pulled one back for City who left the field to boos and jeers. ‘We were worse than poor,’ said Joe Royle.
The attendance was 3,007, the lowest for a competitive game in the club’s history. The previous lowest had been 4,029 for a Full Members’ Cup match against Leeds United in 1985. ‘We have always maintained our main priorities lie in the league,’ said Jamie Pollock afterwards.
Wednesday, 9 December 1998
A match report of the Mansfield Town game in the Daily Mirror caused a great deal of ill-feeling at Maine Road. Underneath a colour photograph of a near-empty ground, ran the headline: ‘Manchester United will play in front of 55,000 screaming fans at Old Trafford tonight. Meanwhile, at Maine Road . . .’
United were about to play a European Champions League match against Bayern Munich and the paper could not resist comparing the differing fortunes of the two clubs. The day before, the Mirror had carried a similar story under the headline, ‘City Face New Low’. The club, and many supporters, maintained that the Mirror’s coverage was unnecessarily vindictive.
Blue Moon: Down Among The Dead Men With Manchester City Page 9