For 25 years I just blanked mum’s death from my mind. I broke down terribly at her funeral. She is buried in Elstow and, even though I think about her a lot, I don’t go to her grave. I can’t explain the reason. People deal with the loss of somebody close in different ways and I have my own way. Dad, Frank, still lives in Bedford. He comes to all the games, with my son-in-law, Steve, taking him along. Though I live in Bedford I don’t see him as much as I’d like to. He’s a great father like that because where a lot of old people moan that you should go and see them, he never makes reference to it. He knows that I’m very busy both at work and with my family.
I’m afraid that I do not possess any of his qualities and I wish I did. He is a lot better a man than I will ever be. He has got principles, I have none. He has respect, I have none. He is disciplined, I am not. And, talking of discipline, he is responsible for having made me such a good runner. Whenever I crossed him as a youngster he would take off his belt and threaten me with it. He never used it. The threat was always enough and I would be off like greased lightning.
I heard him swear only once, and that was when I had the audacity to laugh when those dreadful glasses of his fell off when he went up for a header one time. I got a clip round the ear for that for good measure.
It will be a source of some amusement to those who know me that I grew up never once hearing a swear word in the house. I have no other vocabulary and I cannot offer an explanation for this. When I was at school everybody thought I was a cockney. The teachers used to tell me that I was uncouth, whatever that means. I didn’t even know what a cockney was. Now that I do, I am happy to issue an invitation to those of that breed who wish to learn from the Fry Academy of Blasphemy.
During that 12-month spell when I was playing for England Schoolboys I could have signed for any club in the country except, perversely, Wolverhampton Wanderers. The Molineux management was just about the only one not to make an approach of any kind, and had they done so I would have found myself in something of a dilemma.
I trained with Bedford Town and their manager Ronnie Rook, the old Arsenal centre-forward, wanted me to sign for them, though I soon had reason to fix my sights much higher. During the holidays, as a 14-year-old about to leave school in the summer, Manchester United’s chief scout Joe Armstrong invited mum, dad and me up to Old Trafford for four days. They wanted to sign me as an apprentice professional and took me up there to show me the kind of digs in which I would be resident. At this stage in life I had, of course, never been away from home and it was important that my parents were happy with the projected arrangements.
On the particular day of our arrival United had a youth game. Joe introduced us to the assistant manager, Jimmy Murphy, and the boss, Matt Busby. They looked after my parents while Joe took me along to Davyhulme Park Golf Club, where the lads were having a pre-match meal before the game. Such meals in those days consisted of a steak with an egg on top and I duly sat down to enjoy the fare. You dare not have a steak these days – it’s pasta now, but back then the menu was different. I sat next to Nobby Stiles, who was captain of the youth team, and in less time than it took to eat the meal he had sold Manchester United to me. He had so much enthusiasm for the club, with dedication and loyalty gift-wrapping his every word in praise of Joe, Jimmy and Matt. I joined the lads on the coach back to Old Trafford, was introduced to everybody and just wished that I was playing that night. I could not have been looked after any better. I was in the dressing room and then behind the dugout and was made to feel part of the set-up from the word go. I was to discover that this was the way they always did things at Old Trafford. The following night we were taken to the top show in town in Manchester and in the middle of the third day my parents took one look at their starry-eyed son and asked what I wanted to do. I was due at Chelsea and West Ham the following week just to have a look around, but I said: ‘I don’t want to do anything else. I want to come here.’
Mum broke down in tears. My parents were brilliant. They never offered unwanted advice like taking some time to think about it, nor cajoled me into joining a London club much closer to home. They made me feel that the decision was mine and mine alone but, in fact, Manchester United had made my mind up for me. Their public-relations exercise was first class. I had watched that youth team match among a crowd of 35,000 and a three-quarters full Old Trafford was more than enough to impress any aspiring youngster. I had Jimmy Murphy telling me that I would be out there playing the following year and the package was sold lock, stock and barrel without me even having kicked a ball during our stay. When Joe Armstrong came to our house with the invitation to Manchester, he might as well have issued the same invitation to Mars. I didn’t know where Manchester was – I was never very good at geography at school. It may have been a foreign land as far as I was concerned. Joe had watched me playing for England Schoolboys and, after the games, would always come over and shake hands and tell me that I had played well. But he was just one of many influential people who used to hang around and I was offered many things. My family had never been used to having money and it was something I didn’t care much for at that stage. That was a good thing because it meant that a purely footballing decision was to be made.
Afterwards the lads would ask how much you had got for going there, saying they had received this, that and the other, but I literally did it for nothing other than the privilege. Dad later told me that after I had agreed to sign they sent down railway tickets so that he could watch me in whichever match I played.
My last few months at school felt interminable as I savoured the prospect of going to Old Trafford. What I have never understood is the ‘local boy done good’ factor didn’t register with the Bedford newspapers. I’d lived there all my life and yet there was never a mention of a move which had to reflect well on the town. I have since been involved a lot with the press and so I know the way it works. For instance when I was at non-league Hillingdon, I was God. I could walk on water. I saved them from relegation and we beat Torquay in the FA Cup and hardly a day went by without there being some mention of me in the paper there. But for some reason, the locals in Bedford missed out on the good news.
Anyway, northbound I went. My first digs were with Mrs Scott at Sale Moor, a lovely district of Manchester. She lived there with her sister and both were absolutely nuts about Manchester United. A lad who had played for Scotland Schoolboys called Mike Lorimer also resided there. We would get the bus in to training every day and the whole thing was the complete opposite of what I had expected. We would arrive at the ground at nine o’clock having had a breakfast of a raw egg in milk. This would come up more often than it stayed down, but the club insisted on starting the day with this concoction and to make sure the rule was adhered to the landlady would stand over you while you drank it. I thought we would be playing football morning, afternoon and night. But the first task of the day was to help the groundsman sweep the terracing. Then you would clean all the baths and toilets before moving on to clean the boots. You did everything, it seemed, except play football. We moved on to training in the afternoons but I hated those morning chores. Of course it was all part of the education process, but in those days I never cleaned my own shoes, never mind someone else’s boots. It was something of a disappointment. You leave school and think ‘Great, I’m going to be a professional footballer with Manchester United’ but the reality is that you’re like some old cleaning lady with mops, buckets and brushes. Any small consolation I was able to take from this unexpected facet of the occupation was that I was at least cleaning the boots of two immortals in Nobby Stiles and Johnny Giles. For the first couple of years they looked after me wonderfully. The routine was that the new kid on the block would have two more senior players assigned to him and I was fortunate to have this pair.
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