Provided You Don’t Kiss Me: 20 Years with Brian Clough. Duncan Hamilton

burden, and began to collapse under it.

      During that bleak season, and the one before it, the atmosphere between manager and assistant had turned sulphurous. The relationship became a feud, a perpetual arm-wrestling competition over pride and principles. At the very beginning of the last nine months of the partnership, Taylor developed a curious but helpful habit of phoning me at home after matches. The call would come either as soon as Match of Day’s closing music began on Saturday night or sometime on Sunday morning. If it was Sunday morning, he would ring from a phone box – I could hear the coins jingling in his hands. Sometimes the pips went in mid-flow; he didn’t call back.