Nearly Reach the Sky (7 page)

There was, however, to be no television coverage of the first half of the new domestic season when it got under way in August.
Football League chairmen, ignoring the falling attendances concerning everyone else, demanded more money from the TV companies to show games that fewer and fewer people could be bothered to watch. They finally had to climb down in December, by which time West Ham had snuck up on the usual suspects and joined the likes of Man Utd and Liverpool in the title race.

November had been a particularly good month. We had won all five games, including a victory over defending champions Everton. Frank McAvennie’s goal in a 1–0 win at Coventry took his tally for the season to seventeen – the highest in the entire Football League.

December and January brought mixed fortunes, then in February – just before the weather turned nasty and put a temporary halt to proceedings – a 2–1 win over Man Utd at the Boleyn Ground made the more optimistic among the West Ham congregation start to wonder if this really, finally, could be our year.

After the snow cleared we played Man Utd again in early March – this time in the fifth round of the FA Cup. The first game, at Upton Park, was a 1–1 draw; then the following week we went to Old Trafford and won the replay 2–0. Forget the League title – now we wanted the double!

That little dream went up in smoke three days later when we crashed out of the Cup at Sheffield Wednesday. Hopes of becoming champions seemed to be fading fast too as we lost at Arsenal and Villa. However, revenge against Wednesday at home, followed by a thumping 4–0 win at Chelsea and a 2–1 victory against Spurs at Upton Park, meant the bandwagon was well and truly rolling once more.

Phil Parkes was brilliant in goal. Ray Stewart, at right back, never put a foot wrong. Alvin Martin and Tony Gale, in the centre
of defence, were imperious. The tireless Alan Devonshire and an assured Alan Dickens were running the midfield. Mark Ward was causing havoc on the flank. And, up front, McAvennie and Tony Cottee were simply too hot to handle.

At the start of April we were fifth. What a month that turned out to be. It began badly, with defeat at Nottingham Forest. Then came a run of eight games in twenty-two days, which was to prove almost as exhausting for the supporters as it must have been for the players. Di and I were living in west London back then. But if we’d spent any more time in East Ham they would have made us pay the poll tax there.

It was obvious that we weren’t the only ones going straight from work to midweek games. Guys sitting near us in the West Stand, who would turn up in jeans and a sweater on a Saturday (replica shirts had yet to become the garment of choice for dedicated followers of football fashion), took their seats on a Wednesday wearing the sharp suits and loud ties that were de rigueur for their loadsamoney jobs in the City. It’s funny how a volley of foul-mouthed abuse directed at a referee seems strangely incongruous when it comes from someone who is suited and booted.

After the Forest game there were two home wins, against Southampton and Oxford. Next up was Chelsea and 29,360 of us packed Upton Park … only to watch us lose 2–1. There has never been much love lost between the supporters of West Ham and those of Chelsea, and after the game the police had their work cut out keeping the rival thugs from kicking the crap out of one another in Green Street. My God, the atmosphere was ugly. Nights such as that can make you question why you go to football matches.

On the Saturday we won at Watford, then, two days later, came
a game that will forever stick in the memories of the West Ham fans who were lucky enough to be there. The scoreline will give you a clue as to why: West Ham 8 Newcastle 1. Or, as it used to say on the teleprinter when
Grandstand
broadcast the results as they came in: West Ham 8 (eight) Newcastle 1.

Not only was it a remarkable goal-fest, this game also produced one of the best pub quiz questions of all time:

Q: Who scored a hat-trick against three different goalkeepers?

A: Alvin Martin.

The comings and goings of the Newcastle keepers that night read like a plotline from
Casualty
, so I’ll spare you the gory details. But I will just mention Glenn Roeder, who was to go on to manage West Ham and somehow contrived to get possibly the most talented set of players we’ve ever had at the same time on the books relegated. That night he scored an own goal and conceded the penalty Martin converted to take his improbable place in the record books. To be honest, Glenn, you and West Ham were clearly never meant to be an item.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to tip my hat in the direction of the Newcastle fans who were there that night. As the goals rained in they never stopped singing. It was a fantastic show of support, and I’ve had a soft spot for the Geordies ever since.

Next up was Coventry, then Manchester City. Both were nervy affairs, and both ended with 1–0 victories that really did put us in with a serious chance of winning the League. Then came Ipswich, our final home game of the season. A capacity crowd in excess of 31,000 was there to see it – blimey, it must have been cosy on the
terraces. As ever that season we were seated in the West Stand – at least we were at the start of the match. By the end of it we were standing on the seats, celebrating a 2–1 victory that put us up into second and left the title within touching distance. The bemused, beaming face of my future father-in-law as ecstatic fans poured on to the pitch summed up how we were all feeling better than words ever could. Sid had supported West Ham since time began. This was the first occasion he had stood on a seat at Upton Park.

In the end it all turned out to be a bit of a damp squib. In the penultimate game of the season we did what we had to do at West Brom, but Liverpool beat Chelsea at Stamford Bridge to squeeze us out of contention for the greatest prize in English football. Ah well, you can’t win ’em all.

Fast forward a couple of years and it was a very different story. While my wife and I were enjoying our honeymoon, West Ham were in the process of signing two of the worst players who have ever turned out for the club. Striker David Kelly was awful; goalkeeper Allen McKnight was worse. The rest of the team were either past their best or not very good in the first place. The 1988/89 season started badly. And by Christmas it was obvious to most people that we were in serious trouble.

It was certainly crystal clear to the old boy sitting behind Di and me in the West Stand. He came up with the finest piece of analysis I have heard before or since as we watched a Spurs side inspired by Paul Gascoigne tear us to shreds.

It was half time in a game we were clearly destined to lose when Waldorf turned to Statler and announced that he was far from impressed with what he was watching. In fact, he had some quite trenchant views about the capabilities of our brave lads.

In front of me now I have the programme listing the players who represented my beloved West Ham United that day. Before I give you Mr Waldorf ’s opinions of those warriors (which I can remember word for word), let me give you a flavour of
Hammer
as it was back then.

This particular copy cost me £1.25 and has brought back a legion of memories. The cover features Alan Devonshire, complete with a very questionable moustache and an Avco shirt, doing his best to avoid having lumps kicked out of him by Sheffield Wednesday, who we’d played the previous week. Hmmm, I can see that has whetted your appetite. So make yourself comfortable and we’ll flick through the pages of history together.

Inside we are told that this will be the eighty-third meeting between West Ham and Tottenham in the Football League, and Spurs have thirty wins to our twenty-nine.

John Lyall concedes that we could have done with the extra two points in the 0–0 draw against Wednesday, but remains optimistic even though we are second from bottom – and even that is because of goal difference rather than a greater number of points than Newcastle. Norwich are top of the table. Coventry are third. And The Hated Millwall are fifth. Millwall! How shocking is that?

However, there is good news on the south London front. Two weeks previously we had beaten the Lions of Lewisham 1–0 at the Den to record our 1,000th League win – and there is a selection of very iffy pictures in the programme to supposedly prove it.

There are much nicer photographs of a very young Gazza and a very old Phil Parkes, too. Big Phil, in fact, is profiled as Hammer of the Week, even though he wasn’t actually playing that Saturday. At thirty-eight, his knees weren’t all they should be – but that didn’t
stop him turning out for the Guinness Soccer Sixes in Manchester, at which we did rather well. Six-a-side soccer, it seems, was about to become all the rage. Wonder what happened to that?

Parkes wasn’t the only one in the treatment room according to the programme. Stewart Robson, Ray Stewart and Stuart Slater were all in there with him. There’s no mention of Rod Stewart, though.

Page 7 is a particularly good read; in addition to a couple of very upbeat letters predicting an imminent improvement in our fortunes and the Crocker’s Corner segment, which records that West Ham’s contribution to Children in Need that year was £800, there is also an extremely useful guide to the misinformation surrounding drink-driving. Excuses such as ‘the pub only sold alcohol so there was nothing else to drink’, ‘there was no other way to get home’, and ‘booze improves the way you handle a car’ are all – it turns out – ‘drivel’! I can’t believe I didn’t cut out that panel and stick it on the fridge years ago.

A few pages on, you find details of ticket prices for the forthcoming third-round FA Cup tie against Arsenal (which we would draw 2–2, with the Gooners’ goals coming from Paul Merson). Season ticket-holders are asked to apply using Voucher F; paying punters can get in for as little as a fiver.

There are season tickets to be had in the programme as well. The best seats in the house could be purchased for £63. And if you wanted to see out the rest of that miserable season standing on the East Terrace – aka the Chicken Run – you could do so for just £35. And if this offer wasn’t tempting enough, they were prepared to throw in a free bottle of wine as well. I think that’s a nice touch, although admittedly it wouldn’t have gone far if your dinner guests had included Gazza and Merse.

Fascinating though all this is, the real story lies on the back page. No, it’s not the fact that the match ball sponsor was TUA of Islington Green (suppliers of quality office furniture), nor that the referee was Daryll Reeves from Uxbridge, who would officiate with the help of linesmen G. H. Bargery (red trim) and A. C. Williams (yellow trim).

It is on the back page where we find the two teams who were being discussed in the row behind me that day. Specifically the team in claret and blue.

‘Bloody West Ham – nothing but has-beens and wankers,’ was Waldorf ’s verdict.

‘How d’you mean?’ asked Statler. It was a question I was keen to hear answered myself. Waldorf then went through the team, one by one, and made his case.

McKnight – wanker. Potts – wanker. Parris – wanker. Gale – has-been. Martin – has-been. Devonshire – has-been. Brady – has-been. Kelly – wanker. Rosenior – wanker. Dickens – wanker. And all this in a calm, measured tone that brooked no argument. The only one to escape his forensic analysis was a certain Paul Ince, who our resident expert conceded was a decent player and therefore wouldn’t be at the club much longer. How right he turned out to be.

Try as I might, I couldn’t fault his assessment (although Steve Potts, who hadn’t yet played thirty games for us, did go on to be a club legend). The professional pundits are paid handsomely to come up with more drivel than a drunk driver facing a breathalyser test – the bloke in the row behind nailed it in a few, short, Anglo-Saxon words. And not a single mention of ‘stardust’.

The football we were playing was rubbish, and the man at the helm had lost the plot. Hard on the heels of masterminding
the club’s highest ever League finish, the dignified and thoughtful John Lyall was facing relegation and, soon after, the sack. It was a remarkable decline in anybody’s book, but a roller-coaster ride is part of the deal at Upton Park. It may not be the West Ham Way, but it’s certainly the West Ham way.

T
HERE CAN’T BE
a football supporter in the country who isn’t familiar with ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’, my club’s singular anthem, which suggests fortune is always hiding and dreams are destined for a premature death. Most opposition fans, at one time or another, have twisted the words and sung them back at us as: ‘And like West Ham they fade and die.’ Those who taunt us may be sadly lacking in imagination, but unfortunately they sometimes have a point.

There is an alternative version of ‘Bubbles’, sung to the tune of ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’, which is invariably saved for away games. However, why we sing the song at all has a good deal less to do with a Hollywood film about Caractacus Potts than it does with a soap opera featuring a man with the equally splendid name
of Cornelius Beal. And, being an epic saga, this one doesn’t appear to be reaching a conclusion any time soon.

The basic storyline involves a music-hall song, a curly haired kid and an advert for soap. The sub-plot is that some eminent historians aren’t convinced it’s accurate.

Let’s start with what we do know to be true. ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’ was copyrighted in 1919 in the US and, after crossing the Atlantic, became a hit here in the early 1920s.

This was the time a young lad called Will Murray was making a name for himself at West Ham. Murray had been nicknamed ‘Bubbles’ by his headmaster, Cornelius Beal. He got the name because, in Beal’s eyes at least, he looked like the child whose angelic face had featured in advertising hoardings on a poster known as
Bubbles
. The Pears soap company, which was based in Canning Town, had acquired the rights to a nineteenth-century painting by Sir John Everett Millais of his five-year-old grandson watching a soap bubble float in the air and had added a bar of their own product. This was the
Bubbles
poster that was the centrepiece of a nationwide ad campaign.

What could be more natural than for a football crowd to adopt a popular song with obvious links to the club, first to hail one of its favourite sons, then to salute the team itself? A fascinating booklet,
The ‘Bubbles’ Legend,
is in no doubt that this is what happened. And its author is certainly well placed to make a judgement – he is Graham Murray, son of Will.

Historian John Simkin, who has been following West Ham for even longer than I have, is not convinced. He says:

However, Graham Murray’s booklet contains a hand-written reference from Beal that talks of ‘W. Murray, the famous Bubbles, who is as good at his work as at his play.’ In fact, there are a number of photos of Will Murray in 1921, including one with his teammates of the triumphant Park School side – coached by their headmaster. ‘It was Corney Beal, as he was affectionately known, who linked members of his team to popular songs,’ says Murray Jnr, adding that Bubbles had acquired his nickname because of his supposed resemblance to the boy in the Pears posters.

But did the West Ham supporters make the same connection? ‘Will Murray never played for the West Ham first team,’ Simkin points out. ‘Is it really credible that the Upton Park fans would sing a song about a player who never made it into the first team?’

Bubbles Murray was certainly a promising youngster and could well have gone on to make a career as a professional if he hadn’t opted for the security of a job as a shipping clerk instead. He was a regular on the West Ham Boys sides of 1919–23 and huge crowds turned up at Upton Park to watch them play. ‘Perhaps the greatest occasion was in 1921 when they lost to Liverpool Boys 2–3 in the final of the English Schools Championship in the presence of the Duke of York, the future king George VI, in front of 30,000 spectators,’ says his son.

So William Murray was clearly a star at the Boleyn Ground when ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’ was being popularised in Britain by
variety artist Dorothy Ward. When was the song first heard there, though? It is possible to confirm that the Beckton Gas Works Band played it at Upton Park before matches on occasions, although no one knows quite when. But Simkin makes the point that, contrary to popular myth, West Ham fans did not sing ‘Bubbles’ at the 1923 Cup final, which they surely would have if it had been adopted as the terrace anthem.

He thinks the answer to why we sing ‘Bubbles’ has been unearthed by fellow historian Brian Belton, who says the song became a morale-boosting favourite with the poor devils who were forced to take shelter in the air raid shelters and Underground stations as the East End took cover from Hitler’s Luftwaffe during the Blitz. Simkin says:

I wish the legend were true. Will Murray had a famous cousin, Syd Puddefoot, who was unquestionably West Ham’s most glamorous star in the ’20s. In turn, Puddefoot had a nephew called Den, who became close friends with my father when they served together in the RAF during the Second World War. It was Den who introduced my dad to my mum, which eventually resulted in me. So, by an admittedly roundabout way, I would have family ties with my club’s anthem if young Will really had prompted it all.

But it’s hard to argue with John Simkin, founder of the Tressell
publishing corporation, the brains behind the Spartacus Educational website and a man with three university degrees. The clincher for me is his point that there appear to be no newspaper reports of supporters singing it at all before the Second World War. And that’s why I’m kicking myself now. I spent years in the company of a man who could have answered the simple question – did you sing ‘Bubbles’ at Upton Park between the wars? Because Sid, my fabulous father-in-law, was there. I just never thought to ask him.

‘Bubbles’ has been heard in some unlikely places. Sheffield Wednesday supporters have taunted their city rivals with it. Apparently, Arsenal fans sang it at Highbury at the end of the 2005/06 season as we were paving the Gooners’ way into Europe at Tottenham’s expense by beating Spurs 2–1 in the ‘lasagne-gate’ encounter. (Always happy to help when we can!) And Tony Gale was the choirmaster when it was heard coming from the Blackburn dressing room as they celebrated winning the Premier League title in 1995 after we had denied Man Utd the win they needed at Upton Park. ‘I had to teach all those northern blokes the words,’ Gale told me. I could have asked Sid about ‘Bubbles’ then: I was sitting next to him in the Bobby Moore Upper.

The game produced a strange little incident that still makes me smile whenever it comes to mind. News of a Liverpool goal against Rovers, which was all part of the equation if United were to secure the title, sparked a wild celebration among the Manchester fans in what is now the Sir Trevor Brooking Stand just as the ball rolled out harmlessly on the halfway line. From where we were sitting, unaware of – and uninterested in – what has happening at Anfield, it appeared the entire opposition support was ecstatic at being awarded a throw-in. My father-in-law thought it was hilarious.

Sid never did lose his childlike sense of fun. Once, when clambering around in the loft, he put his foot through the ceiling and actually saw the funny side.

Sid was the sort of man who, when required to decorate a room, would paint a giant elephant on one of the walls before getting down to the real job he had been sent in there to do. He’d let his pachyderm dry before emulsioning over it, but even when he covered the wall in the same colour you could always make it out in relief after he finished – much to my mother-in-law’s annoyance. What do I mean he was ‘the sort of man’? He was the
only
man who ever left the image of an elephant in every room of his house. I can’t tell you how much I liked that bloke.

It’s a fair bet ‘Bubbles’ has never been sung anywhere less like a football stadium than St Bride’s Church in Fleet Street. The choir’s rendition is quite easily the most moving I’ve ever heard, although – as you’ll see if you bear with me for a while longer – I wish above all else that I’d heard them sing it in very different circumstances…

There are a number of West Ham fans who don’t like ‘Bubbles’ because of what they consider to be the defeatist lyrics. Geoff Ellen was one of them. I first met Geoff in 1989 – the year the Berlin Wall came down. Not that our meeting had anything to do with the momentous event that revolutionised Europe – I merely throw it in for a bit of historical context. While the Trabbies were heading west for the Brandenburg Gate in search of a better and brighter future, I had decided to do the same thing by going north across the River Thames – from the
Daily Express’
s building on the south side of Blackfriars Bridge to
The Guardian’
s offices in Farringdon Road.

When I started my new job I thought I had made the biggest mistake of my working life. Unbeknown to me, one of my mates
who had made the same transition the previous year had told my new, refined, broadsheet colleagues they were about to be joined by a bruiser from the tabloids who would seemingly be appointed to a fairly junior position but was actually there to sit among them for a month or so, observing their drunken ways, before taking up a senior managerial post and kicking their idle arses into shape.

He had done this a few days before I was due to arrive. Apparently the idea was to allow my new workmates to suffer for a bit, then let them in on the joke before I got there. Unfortunately for me, my ‘mate’ forgot all about his off-the-cuff prank almost as quickly as he had dreamt it up and failed to tell anyone that this was all just a hilarious gag.

When I turned up to start my new job, the reception I got was a good deal less than friendly. For the first couple of weeks I toiled away knowing there was a big black cloud over my head, but not understanding why it was there. Geoff was on holiday for those two weeks. When he got back he took one look at me and decided that the cuckoo-in-the-nest story was nonsense. Maybe he was an excellent judge of character. Perhaps it was the fact we were both lifelong Hammers. Whatever the reason, we became firm friends right from the off.

Geoff had a heart the size of a house – but he refused to listen to it when it came to having a punt. Bet with your head, not your heart, was Geoff’s maxim. While his preferred way of enriching the bookies was via the horses, he wasn’t averse to gambling on football matches either. And the fact he was actually prepared to back West Ham to lose really annoyed me.

Not that you could stay annoyed with Geoff for long. He was just too likeable. They say some people can start a fight in an empty
room. Geoff was just the opposite. On a trip to Fratton Park one bitterly cold day he insisted that, rather than risk hypothermia by loitering outside for a couple of hours before kickoff, we should find ourselves a nice warm pub. The problem was the only pub we could find was rammed with Portsmouth supporters, who do not enjoy a reputation for being among the most hospitable. Geoff was talking to a group of them straight away, making no bones about the fact that we were there to support West Ham (with that Dagenham accent it would have been difficult to have done much else), but doing it in such a way that no one could take offence. By the time we left I swear he could have got the Pompey lads to have sung ‘Bubbles’ if he had chosen to do so.

His habit of calling everyone ‘mate’ helped. Even complete strangers were ‘mate’ to Geoff. What only a few people knew was he could never remember people’s names, so, by addressing friend and foe alike, no one cottoned on when he’d had a temporary lapse of memory. I have to admit, it’s a trick I have found myself using more frequently as the years roll on.

Come the start of the 1990/91 season, I was starting to feel quite optimistic about West Ham’s chances of securing promotion. The previous year in the second division had been one of turmoil at Upton Park (nothing new there, I hear the cynics at the back of the class say) and we had failed to even make the play-offs. Lou Macari had come and gone as manager; Paul Ince had left too – but not before being inducted into the Hall of Infamy by being pictured wearing a Man Utd shirt while still earning his money as a West Ham player. And the hopes of another Wembley appearance had been washed away in the pouring rain with a 6–0 drubbing at Oldham in the first leg of a League Cup semi-final.

But, as ever, a new season brings new hope and, as Geoff and I discussed the fixture list, I became increasingly bullish about our prospects. There was no one in the division to fear as far as I could see. Charlton, Sheffield Wednesday and The Hated Millwall had been relegated from the division above us, while the two Bristol clubs and Notts County had joined us from the one below. More to the point, Billy Bonds was about to start his first full season in charge as manager – and with Bonzo at the helm nothing could possibly go wrong.

‘We’ll go unbeaten until Christmas,’ I predicted confidently. Geoff looked at me scornfully over his pint of beer (he always wanted to know if I fancied going for ‘a pint of beer’, rather than just ‘a pint’) and shook his head. ‘I’ll give you odds of 100–1 that we don’t,’ he replied.

His lack of enthusiasm really got my hackles up. ‘Go on, then – I’ll have a tenner with you,’ I said, thinking he would have to back down in the face of that sort of risk. Geoff was a serious gambler and I didn’t have to tell him that my £10 would become £1,000 in the unlikely – but not impossible – event of West Ham justifying my faith in them. ‘You’re on,’ he said with a smile. ‘What’s more, I’ll give you League only – it doesn’t count if we get beaten in Cup games. Still fancy it?’