by Alan Davies
We also went to see Grease as a family. I was confused by the scene where Rizzo is concerned she has skipped a period. It seemed important in the context of the film but why would she care about missing a period? She was the coolest, toughest chick in the school; she surely missed lessons all the time? I whispered to my dad:
‘Does that mean she’s missed a lesson?’ I could tell he didn’t like the question, even though it was dark.
‘No, that was a very rude joke indeed.’
Joke? Rude joke? What did he mean? I could see my brother on the other side of him wearing a patronizing smirk and the rage bubbled up in me a little. If he wasn’t to have one up on me I’d have to bluff:
‘Oh yes, yes. I knew that.’
‘No you didn’t,’ he muttered.
Periods. Damn. What are they? I think I worked it out on about the fifth viewing. But I never spotted the rude joke.
I liked Travolta but there was something a little squeaky-creepy about him. I was more of a Kenickie man myself. In the same way I preferred Han Solo to Luke Skywalker or the Artful Dodger to Oliver. I was never going to be the squeaky clean hero in the ‘what are we going to do with you?’ world I grew up in, so I never went for the hero, I always liked the jokey one, with a short-term view and possibly too-small underpants.
I liked Starsky and I carried on liking him even by the third series when the leading actors took a stand on reducing the violence in the show. This had some consequences when a person was shot. After shooting someone, Starsky would slump against a wall while Hutch ran up and said: ‘Are you OK?’ Starsky would mumble some kind of assent while trying to shake off his feelings and get on with The Job. Hutch would slap him comfortingly on the shoulder and check he was not in need of a proper cuddle, before leaving him to have ‘a moment’.
This emotional content would irritate my dad and my brother, as the bleeding heart, wet-blanket stars flopped around the screen when there were perfectly good anonymous victims to track down and waste (as they always said in those days, rather than the ubiquitous ‘clip’ of the new millennium).
I didn’t mind the ‘taking a moment’ scenes; after all, over on my sister’s favourite show, Charlie’s Angels, a similar outbreak of resistance to the glamourizing of violence had led to the Angels having a full sob-off every time they wasted/clipped a villain. I never liked Starsky because of his killing prowess, I liked him for his personality and that’s where I parted company with Vera Duckworth too.
Pat Jennings
Much of my early ’70s had been spent running around the garden playing football, often with my brother. The rest of the time, when not reading Enid Blyton books, I watched television, which provided most of my favourite people. Some sporting heroes, though, I had seen in the flesh since my dad was keen on sport. We used to go to White Hart Lane to see ‘The Spurs’, as he called them, because that was his team. Quite often we saw their reserve games, as there were fewer people and you could get kids in for free if you could carry them through the turnstile. Inside, the seats were wooden and didn’t flip back up after you’d sat in them so, after games, I would walk up and down the rows putting seats back in place for as long as my dad could stand to wait.
Playing in goal for Tottenham Hotspur in the ’70s was a big Northern Irishman who could leap out and take crosses one-handed. He had astonishing reflexes, an ice-cool temperament and the ability to stop goal-bound shots with any part of his anatomy, his legs as often as his hands. He was unassuming and heroic but in the main he had massive shovel-like paws, remarkable things, like an unevolved larger primate, and Spurs fans never tired of telling you he was THE BEST GOALKEEPER IN THE WORLD.
As I became more of an Arsenal fan, the pressure exerted by my brother’s campaign at school, to deny my being related to him, forced me to re-evaluate my relationship with The Spurs. The campaign was unsubtle but effective. Kids from my brother’s year would point at me and ask him: ‘Is he your brother?’ and he’d say: ‘No.’ My opinion was sought but he just told them I was lying if I said yes. I wish I’d got my own ‘no’ in first, just to throw him. The truth came out of course but he kept up the pressure by ignoring me. This was wearing and I began to take against Tottenham in response.
I decided then that Jennings wasn’t the best, that Peter Shilton was. Except he wasn’t because he let one in under his body and England didn’t qualify for the ’74 World Cup and as for Ray Clemence, he never had to make any saves since Liverpool were too good and Gordon Banks didn’t play any more because of his car crash and losing an eye and Dino Zoff was Italian and, drat, maybe Jennings was the best.
Without him Spurs would certainly have been relegated to Division Two in 1976 when he was voted the Players’ Player of the Year. The following year even he couldn’t keep them up and they, remarkably, decided he had to be moved on. For a bargain transfer fee of £40,000 he moved to Arsenal, where he played for eight more years and over 300 games. More importantly, Arsenal had the best goalie in the world and Spurs fans couldn’t deny it.
Fortunately, for me, I had already eschewed Tottenham Hotspur in favour of Arsenal before I ever went to White Hart Lane. This was the single best idea I had in the first forty years of my life. There is no single moment that could have gone so badly wrong as the moment, in 1971, when I chose Arsenal. What a terrifyingly close near-slip into a pit of bitterness and despair, of false dawns, anger and continual, second-best disappointment. To have never had the joys of Arsenal heroes like Liam Brady and David Rocastle. It was them or Glenn Hoddle. Even though he was from Essex and I knew where his house was (Harlow) and once looked over his wall (he wasn’t in) it makes me anxious to think I even considered Spurs. That was a Great Escape of mythological proportions, a turn-to-stone, don’t-look-back-or-someone’s-a-pillar-of-salt moment. For Spurs are truly, shamefully, terrible and Arsenal are the custodians of human decency in a world of lies.
I had decided on an Arsenal shirt, given the choice by my mum in 1971. I was keen to have a shirt but equally keen not to have the same one as my brother. Actually, it may have been that he wanted me in a different-coloured shirt, which is ironic given he’s a lifelong Spurs fan like my dad. Thankfully, he said: ‘Why don’t you have an Arsenal shirt? They’re top of the league.’
Not exactly recruiting for Spurs there but perhaps he had no idea of the rivalry. Arsenal were League Champions in 1971, which must have registered with him, even though he was only seven. I was shown the shirt and I liked it. I still have it. I was asked what number I wanted on the back. Did I want number 9 for John Radford because he gets all the goals? No, I wanted to know who the captain was. It was Frank McLintock, who wore number 5. My mum sewed it on to the back of the shirt and a club badge with a cannon on to the front. The badge faded to pink while the shirt itself stayed red and the number 5 fell off years ago but the shirt is something I’d consider rescuing in a fire. I remember odd little things about my mum but that shirt-choosing moment, for me, was her finest hour.
After that I’d be taken to the occasional game at Highbury, the home of Arsenal. The first being a 1–0 defeat by Stoke in August 1971. I spent much of the game kneeling on my seat facing the wrong way staring at a fat man with a large, livid purple birthmark on his face. It was a revulsion-fascination for me. I’m surprised he didn’t tell me to stop staring. I’d never seen so many people but I remember liking it, especially the smell, which I couldn’t identify (it was cigarettes, thousands of them).
After that most of my trips to Highbury came in early March as my birthday treat. I still remember a game v Sheffield United three days before my sixth birthday in 1972. Arsenal won 3–2 and it was fantastically exciting. There was even a goal as we were getting up to leave early and beat the traffic. Charlie George scored twice but I don’t remember that, I only really remember Alan Woodward of Sheffield United because he had grey hair, which made him stand out, and he was called Alan, which meant he was good, obviously.
Towards the end of the 1977–78 season
I had the urge to go more often. Arsenal had the makings of a good team, with Jennings the senior man amongst six Irishmen. I read in the match programme that the Irish boys loved to play tapes of The Dubliners on the team bus for a sing-a-long. It was only in later years that I realized what a living hell that must have been for the four Englishman and one Scot who made up the rest of the side. Terry Neill, the manager, was Irish as well, so what could they do?
I was old enough now that my dad wouldn’t have to trek in with me, provided my brother could be persuaded to go. He really hated Arsenal so it was a little surprising that he agreed but then I had been to White Hart Lane many times, so it was fair. Maybe he wanted a glimpse of the superhero in goal. I managed to get to three or four games with my unsmiling sibling. Arsenal won them all, which only made him grumpier, and they scored pots of goals. Previously, when we were going to Highbury in the ’70s, they were as likely to lose as to win but now they were on fire and they reached the FA Cup semi-final v Orient, who were the nearest club to us in Loughton, doomed to be everyone’s second-best team.
I felt part of things, having seen Arsenal’s 4–1 fifth round win over Walsall. They beat Orient 3–0 at Stamford Bridge with a goal from a budding hero, Graham Rix, and two bagged by Malcolm ‘Supermac’ Macdonald, which were both deflected into the net by Orient players with the original shots heading for Fulham Broadway rather than the goal. Supermac was as straight-faced as he had been after another goal I saw him score at Highbury, when he claimed a hat-trick in a 4–0 win v West Bromwich Albion even though their left back, Derek Statham, claimed he’d booted one of them into his own net. Admirable in a way, embarrassing in another. Supermac’s autobiography was called Never Afraid to Miss. I once saw a picture of him in an Arsenal programme, boarding the coach to go to a game, and he was wearing a pale-blue pinstripe three-piece suit. He looked the confident type. He was bandy-legged but fast, like a hog in the undergrowth, he was buccaneering, he was super!
On the day of the semi-final we were at White Hart Lane to see Spurs 1 Bolton 0 in front of 52,000 in the old second division. At the end of the 1977–78 season, Spurs won promotion narrowly in third place and the win over eventual champions Bolton Wanderers was key. There was euphoria at White Hart Lane. I remember hearing the Arsenal result and having to check that that meant they were through to Wembley. The FA Cup Final was the biggest game of the year and Arsenal were going to be there. My team, that I went to see at Highbury, what bragging rights at school. My dad was distinctly unsmiling when he confirmed the news with a hint of displeasure at Arsenal’s success, though it may have been displeasure at my grinning twelve-year-old chops twittering on about the Cup Final.
The FA Cup Final build-up was extensive, with daily articles as well as colour pull-out-and-keep supplements in the London evening papers which I pulled out and kept. A house in our road was completely decked out in Arsenal flags and banners, which was an odd sight in suburban Loughton. Television coverage on the day started around noon. I had no idea that the whole country would instinctively back any team against a London club and that most of London also wanted Arsenal to lose. They were about to make everyone very happy.
Jennings, Rice, Nelson, Price, O’Leary, Young, Brady, Sunderland, Macdonald, Stapleton, Hudson, sub Rix (sadly I didn’t have to look that up) was the Arsenal team, fifth in the first division, against Ipswich from the bottom half of the table. I imagined that the clubs all sat round tables in a long room according to who was first, second, third etc right down to the likes of Ipswich down in eighteenth or something.
It was a massacre. Ipswich poured forward. All week, Bobby Robson, their manager, had been talking up their injury problems but in the end it was Arsenal’s stars who were lame. Macdonald and Brady should not have played by their own subsequent admission. It was hard on Rix to be on the bench when he’d played all season and he was lively when he came on for Brady but the feeling was that the Irishman’s lack of fitness had slowed the heartbeat of the team to near-flatline. Bobby Robson took a lot of credit for deploying David Geddis on the right wing to peg back Sammy Nelson and take the initiative away from Arsenal’s inventive left flank. Ipswich hit the bar and then John Wark nearly broke the post twice with thumping shots.
Jennings kept them at bay as best he could, pulling off one astounding save from a header by George Burley, but eventually Roger Osbourne scored and then collapsed in shock. It was the biggest moment possible for a player in those days. The winner in the Cup Final. ‘Osbourne, one nil!’ said David Coleman on the BBC. The final whistle had me welling up. My dad looked at me: ‘It was one nil but it could have been four,’ he said. That put my bottom lip out. There followed a good stomp upstairs to my room, with my acrylic hat and nylon scarf thrown down with such force it was lucky they didn’t ignite. Then came crying face down on my bed.
I’m not sure what I was doing on any specific day in 1978 other than on that Cup Final day when Arsenal lost and I was in my room all evening. I could try to make it seem romantic: ‘He wept alone, shunning consolation, practised in solitary misery, he ached into the night, the first FA Cup Final day he hadn’t enjoyed,’ but it was more: ‘He was crying in his room and wouldn’t come out for ages.’
I didn’t go back to Highbury until after Christmas following that defeat. It’s hard to say why it hurt so much. Perhaps it was because there was no one else I knew going through this torment. My sister may have sympathized if given the chance but then again I was hard to sympathize with, and she had no interest in sport other than a devotion to Chris Evert. One year she was taken to Wimbledon and saw Little Miss Cool up close: ‘As close as I am to you!’ she said later. ‘So what?’ I said. ‘I’ve been that close to Liam Brady.’ I hadn’t but it wasn’t the lie that caused the whole family to roll their eyes. It was the entirely predictable rain-on-your-parade contrariness of Mr What-are-we-going-to-do-with-you?
I was sometimes accused of spite but not always fairly. At infants’ school soon after my mum had died, I was in a spat of some kind, waiting on the stairs to go into Mrs Baker’s class. Mrs ‘I’ve got eyes in the back of my head’ Baker claimed to have witnessed the whole thing: ‘Just because your mother’s died, Alan, there’s no need to be spiteful.’
Bit of a shock that. I didn’t think the rest of the class knew about my mum, I hadn’t yet told anyone. I didn’t want to lose friends, I was having enough difficulty making any in the first place, and now there were unaddressed bereavement issues. Perhaps the class had been forewarned about my situation. I didn’t ask anyone and no one said anything. It would have been nice to be able to say: ‘She’s not dead actually,’ but even I couldn’t manage a fib that size.
It was a lonely Saturday evening holed up in my room after the Cup Final. I was sure most of the people I knew were actually pleased Arsenal lost. Oh yes, no flies on me back in ’78. Living vicariously through a football club, even one as successful as Arsenal, will lead to many downs. It’s best not to attach emotions to the club that are actually created by something else. ‘What are you really angry about?’ is always a good question. It’s rarely the football results.
I should have gone down the road to the house decked out in Arsenal flags for my tea. They’d have taken me in and said all the right things, I’m sure. Or, they may have been totally barmy. The grass is always greener and all that.
Wolfie Smith
When you’re eleven years old, it’s possible to enjoy tales of a South London revolutionary who idolizes Che Guevara and leads the Tooting Popular Front without having any idea about who or what the following are:
a) a revolutionary b) Che Guevara c) Tooting.
Wolfie Smith wore a beret and a Che Guevara T-shirt. He and his motley friends were an inept band of would-be revolutionaries called, by Wolfie, the Tooting Popular Front. That sounded funny to me, as it was supposed to, even though the concept of a Popular Front was one more thing lost on me. The notion of a people’s struggle, of a band of comrades finding the collective
will to effect real change through a pooling of effort, ideas and resources, was something rarely discussed at home, at school, or anywhere as far as I knew.
The ever-reliable Wikipedia lists the following Popular Fronts (so it’s possible that some of them may have existed…):
Azerbaijan Popular Front Party
Belarusian People’s Front
Frente Popular (Philippines)
Popular Democratic Front (Italy, 1948)
Popular Front (Chile)
Popular Front (France)
Popular Front (Mauritania)
Popular Front (Senegal)
Popular Front (Spain)
Popular Front of India
Popular Front for the Liberation of Bahrain
Popular Front for the Liberation of Oman
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
and they’re only the ones from non-communist countries…
Citizen Smith was a sitcom written by John Sullivan for the BBC. Sullivan had worked in the props department for years but always wanted to make an unlikely leap across to scriptwriting, which he managed to do with a little help from Ronnie Barker, who took some of his sketches for The Two Ronnies. After Citizen Smith Sullivan created Only Fools and Horses, as popular a television show as there has ever been in England. He also wrote Just Good Friends and more recently the Fools and Horses spin-off, Green Green Grass of Home. He is now well past thirty years as a writer of popular comedy. I’ve loved watching his shows for all of that time.
I didn’t know about scriptwriting when I was eleven, or acting, I just liked the people and the world they lived in. I didn’t really understand what Wolfie was on about when he conducted, virtually weekly, emergency Annual General Meetings of the Tooting Popular Front in the Vigilante, the local pub run by villain Harry Fenning, who was hilarious and menacing in equal measure, much like Grouty in Porridge.