I looked around the dressing room and all I could see were legends. There were jokes and shared banter between people who had won European Cups, FA Cups, League titles, international caps: men who were known to be part of the football elite.
The home dressing room at Anfield Football Stadium is smaller and more basic than you would imagine; it could easily pass for a changing room in any sports hall across the country. Yet few dressing rooms have been the birthplace of so many hopes and dreams; few dressing rooms have felt the vibration of the home crowd roaring ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ in order to inspire those within to prepare for battle; and few dressing rooms have ever held the mystique of this one, and been the place where millions of people would want to be a fly on the wall.
I was one of those millions of people, but I was not a fly on the wall. I was a member of a squad who was about to find out if he had been selected to play. Kenny Dalglish stood, about to read out the team sheet. So this was what it felt like sitting in the home dressing room at Anfield waiting to hear if you’d been selected. All of my dreams rested on the next few moments as King Kenny read out the team.
I was substitute. I had expected to be substitute. Surrounded by such legends as Alan Hansen, Gary McAllister, Jamie Redknapp, Steve McManaman, Ian Rush, Ronnie Whelan, Jan Mølby, John Aldridge, Peter Beardsley, Ray Houghton and Kenny Dalglish himself, I had never expected to be in the starting line-up. But at least I was putting a kit on. The magical Liverpool red. I was going to walk down the famous tunnel and touch the sacred sign that declares to all the players before they walk onto the pitch: ‘This Is Anfield’. It had been placed there by the legendary manager, Bill Shankly, as a way of gaining a psychological advantage over the opposition, a way of letting them know there is no turning back.
Having first been brought to the ground by my dad as a small boy, I had always fixated that, one day, I would make that famous walk. As a child, a football stadium was a place where men shared their passions, their ambitions and their dreams with those who played for them on the pitch. You could tell that within the confines of a football ground the stoicism that reflected how most working-class men approached their lives was left at the turnstile. Football was a place where you could scream, jump for joy, sing along with strangers, slump in frustration and hold back tears of joy or pain. Anfield to me was the cathedral through which I could pass to heaven because I knew if I could be successful there, then nothing on this earth could beat it. Within a few minutes, I was going to touch that sign as home players do for good luck and warm up in front of the famous Kop. And there was a chance, a very real chance, that I was going get to play in the game itself. This would be my début at Anfield, something I had dreamed about since I was a boy.
I was 42 years of age. The match was a charity game between ex-players of Liverpool and UK celebrities versus a rest-of-the-world team that included ex-professionals and international celebrities. The game was in aid of the Marina Dalglish Appeal and the Hillsborough Family Support Group. Sitting in that dressing room, where only a few people knew who I was, I realised things had changed for me, but little did I know I was about to embark on the craziest four years of my life.
After hearing my name being read out by the legendary Kenny Dalglish, and putting my boots on in the Liverpool dressing room, I said to myself something I often say these days: ‘How did all this happen?’
I entered the world at Mill Road Hospital in Liverpool on 30 November 1966. I was the fourth child to Ernie and Kathleen Bishop, with my siblings – in order of appearance – being Eddie, five years older than me, Kathy, four years older than me, and Carol, who was one year older than me. She had spent most of that year in hospital, having developed problems eating, which was eventually diagnosed as coeliac disease. In fact, on the night that I was born my dad had been in the hospital visiting my sister. I’m sure my dad would have been in the hospital anyway to welcome my arrival into the world, although in 1966 men did not participate in the birth, as is now the fashion.
Having attended the birth of my own three sons, I realise how ineffectual I was, despite spending months in antenatal classes being taught that whilst in the throes of labour my wife would really appreciate having me in her face telling her to breathe. I am not suggesting men should not participate in some way, and I am not belittling the wonderfully emotional experience, but, really, has any woman ever forgotten to breathe during childbirth? I can’t imagine there are any maternity wards around the world where expectant fathers are being handed babies by a sad-looking nurse and finding their joy of fatherhood tarnished by the nurse saying, ‘You have a beautiful new child, but I’m afraid we lost your wife. She simply forgot to breathe and because we were all busy at the other end we never noticed. If only you had been there to remind her.’
Anyway, in the 1960s men didn’t have to put themselves through all that. They just waited until mother and baby were prepared and presented.
The man to whom I was presented, my father, Edward Ernest Bishop, at the time worked on the tugs in the Liverpool docks, guiding the numerous ships that arrived in one of Europe’s busiest ports. Liverpool in the 1960s was said to be the place where it was all happening, but for my mum and dad the swinging sixties basically involved getting married and having kids.
My parents had grown up around the corner from each other on a council estate in Huyton and had not bothered with anyone else from the moment they became childhood sweethearts. My mum still has a birthday card that my dad gave her for her fifteenth birthday, which I think is a beautiful thing and something I know won’t happen in the future, as the practice of writing in cards is coming to an end. I can’t imagine young girls of today keeping text messages or Facebook posts sent to them by their boyfriend. Having said that, for the sake of the planet, the giant padded cards with teddy bears and love hearts on the front bought by the teenage boys of my generation in an attempt to get a grope on Valentine’s Day are probably best left as things of the past in order to conserve the rainforests – although the quilted fronts could always be recycled as very comfortable beds.
My parents were married as teenagers and, shortly afterwards, started having children. That seemed to be the way with everybody when I was a child – I didn’t know anybody whose parents hadn’t done the same thing. I remember being at school when I was 13 years of age and my mate, Mark, telling me that his dad was having his 60th birthday party. I fell off my chair laughing at the image of his father being the age of what I considered a granddad. My dad was young enough for me to play in the same Sunday league side as him when I was 16, although I was under strict instructions to call him Ernie. Apparently shouting, ‘Dad, pass!’ was not considered cool in the Sunday league circles of the early eighties.
Having young parents had a massive impact on the way I saw the world, and perhaps was the driving force behind me wanting to have children myself very shortly after I got married. Or, to be fair, that may well be the result of me being a better shot than I anticipated.
When I entered the world, my dad was 24 and my mum was 23. They had four children, all born in the month of November. All my life I thought the fact that we were born in November was a coincidence; it wasn’t until I was married myself and I became aware of the rhythms of marriage that I realised the month of November comes nine months after Valentine’s Day. If you’re married, you’ll know what I mean; if you’re not, you will do one day.
The first eight months of my life were spent living a few doors away from the hospital on Mill Road in a house that my dad had bought from a man in a pub for £50. You could do that sort of thing in the 1960s. The house was about a mile from the city centre and proved to be perfectly placed, as it allowed my parents