Brian Reade - 44 Years With the Same Bird

BRIAN READE

A LIVERPUDLIAN LOVE AFFAIR

PAN BOOKS

To the 96 and the 39,

Shanks and Sheila,

Vic and Billy.

Always on my mind.

Bill Shanklys bare manhood stood three feet away from me. OK, stood is an exaggeration. We were getting on well, but not that well.

Slacks with a crease that could shave a werewolfs four-day shadow had been removed with military precision and were being placed on a dressing-room hook with his left hand. In his right was a pair of black crumpled shorts so old you could smell the Boot Room on them. In between hung a question:

What school are you from again, son?

De La Salle.

And the shorts, which had made their way to the expectant toes of his left foot, were abruptly pulled away.

A rugby school?

No. Football.

Relief. Then animation.

Thank Christ for that. I hate rugby. I remember in the air force, turning up at a new post in Wales and asking for a football.

This officer says to me: We dont play football here, only rugby. So I says right, give me a rugby ball and Ill squeeze it intee a fitball.

He burst into a raucous laugh and began to squeeze an imaginary oval ball into a round shape.

Gi me it, and Ill squeeze it intee a fitball.

I join in the laughter and he knocks me on the arm and says for a third time: Ill squeeze it intee a fitball. Christ, its funny what things come back to you. Id forgotten all about that.

Lets get this straight here. I should be at school, battling to stay awake through double economics. Instead Im joshing away with Bill Shankly at Melwood, like a groom and his best man preparing to rip up the town on a stag night. Goolies on parade and everything. Ive been in his company less than five minutes and hes already told me a story nobody has ever heard before. Granted, in the league table of Shankly anecdotes its six points behind Stenhousemuir. But its mine and mine alone to drop casually into conversations for eternity. As this dawns on me a shiver jolts the blood.

Fearing the joshing will stop, I tap-dance through the silence like a rhino in Air-Wear.

And did you?

What?

Squeeze it into a football.

He tugs on the shorts, stands bolt upright, hands, hips and eyes snapping into Cagney mode, the wrinkles on his forehead contorting into a map of the Alps.

This De La Salle, son. Did you say it was a special school?

There is no laugh, just a brisk turn and a march towards a big wicker hamper from which he grabs a pair of red socks, then keeps on walking. The shiver turns to sweat as an abyss slides into view below my three-inch platform heels.

Any second now he will turn and unleash a volley of insults aimed at cutting me to the size of an ant, call off the interview, and boot me out of Melwood, back to the sixth-form block and rank humiliation.

He stops, does an about-turn, and unleashes a bark: Im making a pot of tea. Do you want one to set you up for all them questions youve got?

Theres a sigh of relief which I have to emit in short bursts for fear of being sucked inside out. The hands stop shaking but a stitch gnaws away at the high waistband on my Birmingham Bags and fear drifts slowly from my brain, spreading right down to feet doing epileptic taps. Its a feeling I would experience in varying degrees over the next thirty-odd years of professional life before doing an interview.

But I would never feel the pure rush of pride I felt that hot June morning, not even watching Muhammad Ali stumble from a car and limp towards the door of his Michigan ranch. Because I knew when that kettle went on, that whatever miserable hand life might deal, my self-esteem would never scrape a barrels bottom.

I would always be able to look a boss, a foe or a put-down merchant in the eye, and tell them that Bill Shankly, the man who instilled the most achingly beautiful of obsessions into thousands of souls, once shared a unique anecdote with me.

With his cock dangling in my eye-line.

At seventeen, life could only go downhill.

P.S. Huge. Obviously.

20 FEBRUARY 1965 BURNDEN PARK, BOLTON

I was perched on my dads shoulders at the back of a sprawling, uncovered terrace, with Our Vic parked on the crash barrier in front, snarling at every banality that left my seven-year-old mouth.

Through the big hole in my red balaclava, down past the bare knees which stuck out either side of my dads neck, I surveyed a sea of heads: flat-capped, bald, plastered with grease, flowing for what seemed like miles down to a bright green carpet, where tiny red-and-white figures moved in clusters, stopping regularly amid loud roars or deep grunts.

Smoke was everywhere. Behind the roof of a dirty corrugated stand smog belched out from mills and factories, and rising from the sea of heads was a pungent cloud of tobacco which clung to the back of my throat, while the nostrils were filled with a fug of nicotine, sulphur, Brylcreem, beer and sweat.

A decade earlier L. S. Lowry had captured this exact slab of northern working-class life on canvas in his painting Going To The Match , and whenever I see his bleak, emaciated figures, I am dragged back to Bolton on that cold, distant afternoon. I can feel my dad shuffling uncomfortably below, telling me to stop fidgeting and no, it wasnt half-time yet. I can hear the embarrassed, indignant eleven-year-old voice of Our Vic, telling me it wasnt Gerry Byrne whod had that shot but Willie Stevenson.

I spent most of the time looking away from the pitch, entranced by the white brilliance of the floodlights, counting their bulbs, staring at the pigeons chasing each other across the stand roof, looking around at the mass of humanity, wondering if that tall one with the long hair and thin black tie was a Beatle. But mainly wondering if everyone was as bored as me.

Id feigned euphoria ever since my dad, Reg, threw the tickets on the kitchen table and told Vic it was his eleventh birthday present, a sight which sent him sprinting into the back garden to run around in circles, with clenched fists, repeating the word yes. I followed him out, because, well, it would have looked like I was ungrateful if I hadnt, and because when he ran out of puff Id have a chance to ask him what the big deal was.

Its the FA Cup fifth round, you dick.

Will they get the cup if they win?

A look of pure disgust was followed with a swift kick to the shins and threat to steal my ticket and give it to his mate Kenny Quayle. Someone who wasnt a ponce. Someone who knew about football.

He had a point. In the early months of 1965 football was about as appealing as Winston Churchills funeral. Actually, not quite as appealing. When that long, dirgeful parade of black unfolded on my nanas little telly she made me howl with laughter by yelling Good riddance, you feckin whore-master, as his coffin came into shot. I didnt have a clue what a feckin whore-master was but the joyful manner in which she spat it out contrasted magnificently with the pious Dimbleby tones coming from the box.

Football moved me about as much as one of my little sisters dolls (less when you factored in how much damage you could do to Tiny Tears eyes with a dart). I didnt get why Vic took the scissors to Charles Buchans Football Monthly and covered his wall with pictures of men in shorts. What was cool about that? Why hadnt he butchered Fab 208 , like me, and taped up The Beatles, The Searchers and Sandie Shaw?

For a start, you rarely saw it. Match Of The Day had begun that season on BBC2, but nobody had the channel, and all the radio gave you was the shipping forecast and Sing Something Simple .

What made Our Vic squat with pained concentration before the Grandstand teleprinter every Saturday? Especially when any display of emotion was met with a slap off my grandad whose horses had gone down, soon to be followed by his Littlewoods coupon, meaning that three-mile hike to the docks on Monday morning was still a reality.