by Paul Rowson
At best local radio is a low budget operation, which made the coverage of the 1982 Rugby League Cup final replay at Elland Road both an opportunity to cover a genuinely big event on the doorstep, but also an additional stretch on expenditure. I was deputed to be outside the ground standing by the radio car interviewing fans to get the pre match atmosphere. NBC of America were covering the game for their ‘Wide World of Sports’ programme and they arrived in a limo wearing bright yellow monogrammed sports jackets and had with them more support staff than you could shake a stick at.
They looked disdainfully at our little operation as they swept past us and disembarked from the limo displaying the confident aura of the big timers that they undoubtedly were. I later learned that their commentary team included Lyn Swann, one of the greats of American Football, whose elegant performances as a wide receiver were matched later by his ease and articulate nature as a TV sports anchor and latter day republican politician.
Meanwhile our one overweight, disinterested and frankly lazy ‘techie’ had eventually grabbed what he confidently assured me was a player for me to interview. What followed may well have been the first attempt to interview a non English speaking Moroccan Rugby League player on air and produced monosyllabic responses that must have had listeners switching off in droves. It wasn’t helped by the fact that I could see our ‘techie’ doubled up with laughter as I blundered on.
D-list ‘stars’ were wheeled into the studio for in depth interviews. Presenters with little talent interviewed ‘celebrities’ on the decline with even less. Predictably this produced car crash results. There were a few really interesting moments and my one encounter with then cricketer Geoff Boycott was one of them. I had managed to blag my way into the Yorkshire dressing room after a game and button holed Boycott who looked suspiciously at me, probably with some justification.
I have no recollection of the interview that followed because my eyes were drawn to his appalling hair transplant. It was as though someone had got an old pop rivet gun and run it along his forehead inserting a few strands of hair along the way. What was even worse was that these hairs were now there in splendid isolation as his baldness had increased to the back of his head after the first effort to conceal it. As I fan I had always admired Boycott but up close in conversation he represented everything that was wrong with Yorkshire cricket at the time - that is to say stubborn, introspective, out of touch, and self important. A suggestion to the sports editor that we should cover the demonstrable racism in the Yorkshire County Cricket Club hierarchy at the time was swiftly rebuffed.
What was required by the sports editor was bland hyped up and often falsely created excitement which was almost inevitably more that the occasion merited. I took consolation in the fact that I was watching, and being fascinated by, low grade northern professional sport and being paid for it. This was sport in the raw and, with a few sporadic exceptions, was far removed from the glitz of European Cups and World titles.
It was guts over glamour at places like Castleford. It was graft over gold on freezing winter afternoons at Hull where I once saw a rugby league player stretchered off during a February blizzard and later diagnosed as suffering from exposure. It was grind over glory when I could feel the pain, while simultaneously being spattered with sweat from my ringside seat, at professional boxing bouts in smoke filled halls.
Oldham used to play their Rugby League at the quaintly named ‘Watersheddings’ and I had been sent to cover a junior international between Great Britain and France. I had the usual press pass and an additional gold embossed one from the Rugby League which said ‘VIP reception – Admit One’. On arrival at the ground I asked the Commissionaire where this might be. Without any sense of irony he scrutinised the pass and then pointed to a wooden hut with disconnected guttering hanging limply down one side of a wall. “You’ll get a cup of tea in there”.
The Old Showground was where Scunthorpe United used to play and a less glamorous venue in a less glamorous town would be hard to imagine. On the few occasions I visited I could not help but be reminded of the very crude graffiti which used to adorn one of the rickety old grandstand walls. There was a long running and well known television advert for Typhoo Tea that had the tag line ‘Typhoo puts the T in BriTain. An away fan, I presume, had scrawled ‘If Typhoo puts the T in BriTain who put the CUNT in Scunthorpe?’.
One my third and final visit there I noticed that Ian Botham had slipped into the ground just after kick off and was sitting in the press box behind me. I tried to get him to come on air but he had just been castigated for making derogatory remarks about Pakistan and wanted to lie low. He did however give me the juicy mini scoop that he would be playing soccer for Scunthorpe United the following week, which he did.
One of the last big fight nights held in Leeds was at the now defunct Astoria Ballroom. Yorkshire favourite and journeyman heavyweight Neil Malpass had won on a technical knockout in the eighth round of brutal and bruising encounter. Both fighters were warmly applauded at the end and both had bloody cuts as they left the ring. I followed to get an interview with the winner.
After battering each other relentlessly for eight rounds they were now chatting amicably in the makeshift changing room that they shared. Their trainers joined in the banter but I noticed Neil looking very nervous. Having displayed the utmost courage during a fight that took him to the edge in terms of pain and endurance he was, it transpired, ‘shitting it’ as he so eloquently put it at the thought of having to have a couple of stitches on his cut eyebrow. “I bloody hate needles” he opined miserably and then visibly shook as the doctor stitched him up with minimal foreplay.
Just before leaving I heard an incredibly poignant story told in typically self effacing fashion by the man who was at the centre of it. The late Arthur Keegan was an extremely talented rugby League player who went on to represent Great Britain. In his early retirement he did some commentary work for local radio. He rarely mentioned the fact that he was a former international even though he was held in universally high regarded within the game. When talking to him after a game at Headingley, where we had shared commentary, Arthur mentioned in passing that he had made his debut for Hull against Leeds there in 1958.
I asked Arthur how the debut had gone and he said that he had only been selected at the last minute, and dashing to the ground could not find the players entrance, didn’t want to make a fuss, so PAID to get in. At nineteen he was already a player of immense skill and bravery in the toughest of games, yet so shy and lacking in ego that he thought nothing of paying through the turnstiles before eventually being directed to the changing rooms, from which he emerged later to play a blinder.
The end in radio came rather more suddenly than I had planned and Mr Boycott was, unwittingly part it. I had erroneously wiped part of another interview with the great man and his ‘bon mots’ were lost forever. While quite rightly being berated for said error I resigned on the spot. This was a pathetically futile gesture and one which went completely unnoticed. It was not my last contact with the station as, the tiff conveniently forgotten, I was asked to do a piece for them a couple of years later when I was Birmingham based. The result of this was their generous sending of two tickets for the last game of the season at St Andrews where, if Leeds United were to beat Birmingham and four other teams lost, Leeds could have been promoted back into the then first division.
I took my seven year old son to his first big game. The opening act of the massive Leeds following was to burn down a chip van which was positioned on top of one of the terraces at the decrepit stadium. After kick off results filtered through from other grounds and it became obvious, as Birmingham took a quick lead, that promotion was out of the question for Leeds. As a result their fans rioted at half time. It was a serious and brutal encounter which lasted forty five minutes. Police horses were deployed onto the pitch and the hand to hand fighting spilled into the grandstand where we were. I was concerned first of all with regard to our safety, not a little scared myself
and secondly really worried about the potential trauma my son would suffer as one injured Birmingham fan passed within inches of us with blood gushing from a deep head wound.
Eventually the police restored an uneasy order and the teams came back onto the pitch. Seeking to reassure my son and affecting a forced tone of calmness I said, “That was terrible. ..don’t get too upset…what do you think?” I thought that if he externalised his angst it would help in the healing process. Without missing a beat he replied “I think Leeds could equalise in the second half”. All things considered it was the most interesting dialogue I’ve had at a sports ground.
During this stint in radio I had never quite left teaching and had been working at an inner city high school. Radio assignments took up a couple of evenings a week and usually two days at the weekend. With generous blind eyes being turned by my head of department about my occasional absences I just about held down a full time post, but was not spending enough time with family or progressing in either ‘career’. When the head teacher caustically remarked that she had enjoyed my commentary from St James Park on the midweek cup replay between Leeds and Newcastle and added that I must have had a remarkable journey up the A1 to get there on time for the kick off, I knew that I had been rumbled.
Both our kids were happy at school but I managed to first convince myself and then my wife that our future lay in inner city Birmingham and so that’s where we headed. There was however one earlier ‘brush’ with a major sport that was to have life altering ramifications, and a postscript to this one.
Although the head’s comment had effectively signalled the end of my radio ‘career’ there remained one very useful benefit which I cheerfully abused for the next five years. Over the course of countless visits to Headingley for the cricket and rugby league and Elland Road for the soccer I had got to know the commissionaires, who were all employed by the same company on a contract arrangement for match days at both venues. As a result, after my first few months, they never asked to see my press credentials. I carelessly omitted to inform them of my media demise and so, took advantages of free entry and the occasional bit of press hospitality whenever I was in Leeds.
“Haven’t seen you for a while” one remarked to which I truthfully replied that I had been doing some work in the Midlands. In the summer I enjoyed test matches and the lovely lunch in the press box courtesy of the sponsors. I sipped wine while watching Michael Holding imperiously set about the England batsmen, safe in the knowledge that I had no report to file. This all came to an ignominious end when next I arrived at Elland Road and was met by a security cordon that would have been more appropriate for the US Embassy.
The genial former commissionaires had been replaced by a different company and I was curtly asked to show my press credentials. I of course produced them while confidently engaging the man in carefree small talk. This came to an abrupt end when it was pointed out that my press card was five years out of date and I was ushered out with instructions as to the whereabouts of the nearest turnstile.
5.
BUILDING UP TO BRIGADIER GERARD 1971-1972
The Brook House was a large rambling boozer near Sefton Park in Liverpool and as I no prospect of work my frequent visits to it were lessening as funds were running low. Overhearing the lilting Welsh accent of the man at the next table I got the distinct impression of job possibilities.
Inviting myself over, I soon found that Elwyn Hughes was the proprietor of Langdale Contractors. He proudly showed me his new publicity leaflet which had, “Please note we only employ skilled tradesman” in large letters on the front page. Given that I’d just been listening to his tale of recruiting two men from the dole queue on a no questions asked basis I noted the contradiction but said nothing. When I explained that I too was ‘signing on’ he seemed delighted, told me to keep doing this and recruited me for thirty pounds a week as a general labourer.
Tarmac was where the money was and Elwyn employed a washed up alcoholic ex army captain, whose saving grace was a posh accent, to go door to door in affluent suburbs with the aim of drumming up business. He was known to the six employees of Langdale Contractors as ‘Rubber Gob’ and to add to his other challenges he was a gambling addict who bet on the horses every day.
I never did find out his real name and he left within weeks of me starting. Rubber Gob went on a horrendous bender as a result of another bad day at the bookies, phoned to say that he was sleeping it off, and was never heard of again. The resultant gap in the sales department (!) of the company was filled by me on the basis that I had somehow qualified as a teacher and must therefore be articulate. For those readers who have never attempted to sell anything door to door, my experiences should persuade you never to contemplate such a shallow and soul destroying enterprise.
Armed with some of the publicity pamphlets I was dropped off by Elwyn on the corner of a street in a well heeled district in South Liverpool. It was a dark November morning with the rain teeming down. His succinct advice and my only training for the new role was, “Just get them to agree to me calling and giving them an estimate for tarmac on the drive, or slates on the roof”. As a chance to observe the human condition this was to prove the best practical opportunity a person could have had, but it required a robust spirit, verbal dexterity and the ability to absorb rejection, abuse and tirades of invective on a fairly regular basis.
The first three houses produced no replies and the fourth quite clearly had both a roof and a drive that were in pristine condition. Eventually some doors opened and I was in turn mistaken for a Mormon missionary, a carpet salesman and a representative from the Gas Board. The misidentifications were followed by well articulated dismissals and, on two occasions, before I could utter a word. Pity got me the first result as, soaking and by now shivering, a kindly Jewish gentleman said he would be delighted to get a quote for his drive as it was looking quite shabby.
When we later won this job I remembered his kindness and got the tarmac crew to put the word’ Shalom’ which is the Hebrew word for peace, in white pebbles in the newly laid tarmac at the head of his drive. The kindness of the act was slightly mitigated by the fact that they had run out of decorative stones and therefore missed the letters S and M out, those being the ones that required most pebbles. We did eventually rectify this but for weeks visitors to a house in south Liverpool were greeted with the enigmatic word ‘HALO’ in large letters on the new tarmac.
Without getting into too much technical detail the profit margin in this business was self evidently dependant on ordering the correct amount of tarmac or, in the case of Langdale Contractors, the minimal amount that would create the impression of a covering. An estimate has to be made as to how long a job would take and if it was, say four hours, the tarmac is ordered to be ‘cut back’ to that time. That meant that it is delivered at such a temperature as to be easily unloaded and workable for four hours, after which it begins to set. Thus tarmac crews on small domestic jobs do a lot of hanging around to be certain they are there for delivery, followed by frantic and exhausting work to get the tarmac down in the allotted time. Once we had a couple of jobs in an area, more often followed and this meant that I reverted to labouring.
After an exhausting week’s hard physical graft we, without fail, went straight to the pub on a Friday evening. Two things happened with certainty at this point. One was that Elwyn paid us individually in cash after asking us to follow him to the gents toilets. None of us knew what the other was getting paid and, as all of us were illegally signing on as well, no one asked too many questions. The second was that most stayed all evening, got thoroughly pissed and tragically spent a good proportion, if not all, of the money they had worked so hard to earn. I had not read Robert Tressell’s epic tome ‘The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists’ at this point but the workforce of Langdale Contractors would have empathised with the plot and characters.
We had a breakthrough of sorts when, again trading on my genuine Catholic connections and conveniently ignoring my conspi
cuous lack of faith, I managed to persuade a religious order near Warrington to have their car park resurfaced. This was by far and away the biggest job ever undertaken by Langdale Contractors and greed had added a sparkle to Elwyn’s usual alcohol induced bloodshot eyes when I gave him the news. I had invented an initial estimate which was naively accepted without negotiation and so large profits were assured. However, Elwyn was so unused to this scale of work that he vastly overestimated the amount of tarmac required. This meant that there is a car park outside a seminary in the North West of England with a tarmac layer of such depth that it will be there long after the building collapses and will, in the future, provide a puzzle for both historians and archaeologists alike.
Monitoring my alcohol intake on the payday after the great tarmac debacle so as to be alert when the moment for payment arrived, I had already refused Elwyn’s attempts to buy me drinks and upset my critical faculties. He eventually had paid everyone else and summonsed me to the gents. This had become such an accepted practice that no one ever remarked on how bizarre it was. He dramatically counted out notes and stopped at ninety pounds, which was quite a tidy sum in those days. However I knew the profit margin on the car park job and flounced off in a huff feeling this was scant reward for my selling efforts. The huff lasted just about as long as it took me to get to the bar and recall that I was signing on illegally and had zero bargaining powers.
The day for signing on the dole was, in my case, a Monday at 11am. Inevitably when I got to the dole office, there were huge queues of men several shuffling toward the grilled signing on counter. Whatever the external show of bravado and humour this was a deeply de-humanising experience, not to mention an embarrassing one. Some of the men had clothing covered in paint, building dust and other industrial stains. Such were the numbers of unemployed on Merseyside at this point that there was very rarely a challenge to the ones who had clearly come from a place of work to reaffirm their unemployed status. If a challenge was made by the bored looking drones behind the grill, as it once was to me, the standard answer was ‘decorating at home’.