The JPS

James Hunt. Jacques Laffite. Jody Sheckter. Nikki Lauder. Patrick Depaillet. Jochen Mass. Gilles Villenueuve. Clay Regazzoni. Carlos Reutermann. Riccardo Pattrese.

Watkins Glen. Monte Carlo. Brands Hatch. Monza. Interlagos. Paul Ricard. Nurburgring. Spa.

Being a racing driver in the 70's was surely the best job ever known to man. You just had to have a name that matched the glamour of your occupation.

Imagine - as much booze as you could drink, as many women as you could possibly shag (most of them on variations of The Barcelona Shirt's Roxy Music album cover - see that post) as many fags as you could smoke - and to be able to drive the fastest, most death-defying machine known to man.

My dad and I were in thrall.

For my part, I had to have a Scalextric. I'd had one earlier as a child. Eight pieces of black plastic, an overheating transformer and two cars: Graham Hill's Brabham and, er, a red one. Driven by the mundane John Surtees. I still remember that smell of burning electrical circuits.

But Scalextric was the coolest game - apart from Subbuteo - a young boy could have. I just needed to move to the next level of involvement in this adrenaline sport.

The answer lay in the JPS.

It was the most impossibly beautiful car I had ever seen. Black, slick and slim, dripping with gold bling - like a Harlem pimp. And it was driven by the cool, hard New Yorker Mario Andretti.

Andretti cleaned up.

I remember as a child watching Steve McQueen and James Garner battling it out in Grand Prix. This car seemed to take up where that film left off. It was sponsored by John Player - the cigarette company. Yes, there was absolutely no shame or debate in that. Fuck, everyone was sponsored by the fags - Marlboro sponsored McLaren, Gitanes sponsored the French teams such as Ligier. Camel another team.

The single reason I wanted to smoke as a kid.

Of course, I grew out of wanting to smoke - even grew out of Formula 1. It's shit nowadays with its anodyne drivers, endless regulations.

In the 70's there was no such thing as health and safety, downforce, computer-aided suspension, wet or dry tyres. You just got in this big petrol bomb and drove. In those days, people died in large numbers - like Ronnie Pieterson. Or were horribly disfigured - like Lauda.

Occupational hazard.

But worth it.

Every time I go through a speed camera, or get a ticket - as I tend to do nowadays more and more (one day I won't have a car to drive anymore -or I'll be dead) I dream that I am in the JPS.
I never did get that new Scalextric.

But Andretti got a new competitor - the youthful and highly talented Jochen Rindt.

My dad ended up with a Ford Cortina GT, suburban man's version of a sports car. Modeled on a US-style Mustang, but somehow more carpet slippers - like this:












For his part, Jochen Rindt ended up like this:

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Where's World Cup Willie When You Need Him?

My dad tells me that my love of football began at the age of 3, when in an act which would nowadays be construed as child cruelty, he plonked me down in front of the old bakelite telly to watch the 1966 cup final between Sheffield Wednesday and Everton. (Don't need to identify it as the FA Cup - the cup final's the cup final, innit?)

Anyway, apparently, the Owls got off to a flying start and were 1-0 up inside the first four minutes. Jim McCalliog had a pot-shot at goal and it took a wicked deflection off the England left back, Ray Wilson. For Everton, Mike Trebilcock had replaced then-folk-hero Fred Pickering in the line up. Mike had his greatest game ever, justifying his astronomical £20,000 transfer fee from Plymouth by scoring two goals as the Toffees romped home to a win. Sam Ellis, David Ford and Ron Springett were all also heavily involved in what was described as one of the most dramatic finals ever to be staged at Wembley.

I probably just sat there and dribbled saliva. But experiences like this across the country undoubtedly created a love of the game in most of the 40-somethings who are the main demographic for live matches nowadays.

I heard a skit on the radio this week: one of those crass 'this is what was happenning today in the 1960s' (probably made by a 20-year-old producer who assumes dinosaurs roamed the earth at that time) in which it was announced with incredulity that the most popular boys' and girls' names were David and Susan respectively.

Imagine that.

And of course it made me think:

Where are all the players with names like that nowadays? They probably aren't allowed anywhere near football clubs. Picture the scenario where a failed triallist is called in to be released: 'Sorry son, you're a great player but we can't have anyone whose name is not derived from Creole Patois in the team now.'

Although the Brazilian Fred is a notable exception to this rule, it does seem nowadays that you are only likely to get a place in the starting 11 if your name is Delorian or Chlyamidia or something. You can hardly imagine Mike Trebilcock selling loads of replica shirts, can you?

And what about team names themselves? Imagine calling one of the newer sporting franchises The Owls or The Toffees!? Right now, some executive somewhere is probably dreaming up a rebranding of Portsmouth that involves them being called Portsmouth Pirates or something. Look at what a ponced-up mess they've made of rugby league. Catalan Dragons my arse, as Jim Royle would no doubt opine.

The world has officially gone mad.

And this madness has now extended to the way in which we are marketing ourselves for the upcoming World Cup and Olympics. I mean, look at the figures above. It's no surprise that someone has started a mock-Twitter page designed to take the mick out of these pathetic characters. Who could possibly conceive that calling such a mascot Wenlock was going to enable it to be down-with-the-homies in the fashion presumably intended? You really do comb your own tongue at the crassness of it.

Unless of course, I've somehow missed a post-millenium baby-boom of people called Wenlock.

In my youth, we had World Cup Willie.

A lion - representing the values of courage and strength that the national team were to so-aptly demonstrate in the pulsating World Cup Final of 66. A lion with a real, honest-to-goodness-name, representing an honest-to-goodness working class ideology.

Wouldn't last 5 minutes now would he, before someone objected to the phallic imagery suggested by the name, or complained that there was somehow cruelty to lions implied by his presence. Either that, or anyone wearing Willie merchandise would be the subject of playground beatings and religious fatwahs.

Somewhere in heaven, Mike Trebilcock is laughing his head off.
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Rotherham 1 Aldershot 0

This evening, in a miasma of boredom, I find myself watching the above match on the telly.

It's a critical game, and victory will result in the winner going to Wembley for the Division 2 Play Off Final (Division 4 in pre-Sky TV old money.)

The winner will get the chance, Quixote-style, to play Dagenham and tilt at the windmill that is promotion to Division 1 (Division 3 really - but only men over 35 will understand this detail.)

There are about 400 TV channels to watch and still I choose this.

Here are the highlights, which I've helpfully also posted on Facebook.

45 mins: Rotherham are leading 1-0 in a tight game.
51 mins: 2-0! Kevin Allison's 50th career goal. It's quality according to the commentator.
53 mins: Aldershot miss a 'glorious' chance. Kirk Henderson is looking lively.
62 mins: Don Goodman is concerned that the Rotherham fans may be celebrating too early. Rotherham are playing on adrenalin, and certain players are 'flying close to the wind.'
70 mins: Ryan Taylor's got the 'hook.'
84 mins: Ronnie Moore is concerned about the 'needless afters' that may lead to a yellow card and rob someone of their Wembley chance.

Rotherham hang on for the win and they're dancing in the streets of the Don Valley...

...Rewind 35 years to Steven Herrington's house on a midsummer morning. The 6 week holiday stretches endlessly before us and we are in the middle of what promises to be the definitive Subbuteo competition of our lives.

For the uninitiated - girls and anyone from any gender under 40 - Subbuteo was to my day what FIFA2010World/Euro/Manager/Championship/NintendoWii/PS3blahblahblah is nowadays. The basic premise was that you each had a team of 11 little men on tiny plinths, whom you would flick or nudge to 'kick' the ball - which you can see was scalewise about the size of a London bus compared to the players (they hadn't invented perspective then.)

I would imagine my sons would find it just about the dullest thing ever invented, but to us it was reality. We re-enacted entire cup competitions, game-by-game, round by round. It took weeks. Each game could be played at its full 90 mins length, so we're talking about serious commitment here on the part of a young boy. From the age of about 8 to about 14, when I didn't play Subbuteo I played football, and when I didn't play football I played Subbuteo.

You had a green beize sheet in the shape of a football pitch, which you smoothed out to billiard-table levels on the living room carpet. No dog, mother or small child's toy could come within feet of the hallowed arena. Some of the more enterprising hammered their pitches to a large bit of chipboard to keep them flat. Then you just slid it under your bed to put away until game on the following morning. Of course, Nicky Pond and any of the nouveau riche in my area were able to afford some of the accessories it was possible to buy - referees, World Cup 74 footballs with black panels (see above - the normal balls were orange) corner flags, floodlights and even stands. I believe there was even a record you could buy that made crowd noises.

But we didn't need them.

Because we could provide our own crowd noises.

In my area, there were some talented crowd-noise merchants, at least 3 of whom could do a surround-sound-dolby-stereo-bang-and-olufsen quality impression of a live game. By now, Sportsnight With Coleman had popularised football on TV (still at that time a very rare occurrence) but also the art of commentating. So now we didn't just play Subbuteo we commentated on it, to give it the excitement of the games on the telly we'd been allowed to stay up to see.

Steven Herrington did a very passable impression of ITV's Hugh Johns, whose catch phrase 'One- Nothing' was stock-in-trade to all 12 year-old boys. I preferred the effortless authority of the BBC's David Coleman (catchphrase 'One-Nil') but I couldn't cut it with my impression of him, so I ended up not making much noise at all during a game.

But the Crown-Prince of the commentators was Mark 'Sledge' Liversidge. Mark had perfected a way of manoevring spittle in his cheeks and keeping it inside his throat for minutes at a time which was an absolutely perfect copy of the crowd noise in the 1974 West Germany World Cup.

The stadiums in that competition were so large, and the fans so intent on a constant barrage of claxon blowing, plus the sound on tellies had evolved so much, that the overall impression was like a kind of Eno-esque white noise. This, Sledge did to perfection. He had even perfected the art of running with a football and doing it, shouting 'Rivelino.. to Cubillas.. to Beckenbauer' as he went along, with each touch pretending to be a different player. It was impressive.

To this day, given half a chance to play football with my kids in any park, I still do this. My kids look at me as if I am daft. But they know, for a moment, as I run with the ball, mimicking Gerson for Brazil in the 74 quarter final from Gelsenkirchen, I am exactly the same age as them.

I am also The Most Talented Footballer On The Planet And Certainly Way Better Than Them. I roll and cuss, fake and faint, Cruyff turn and generally ponce around like any Dad worth his salt would do in this situation.

I am 'Dad'alinho.

And you have the nerve to wonder why I watched the Rotherham game.

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Two Bobby Charltons For A Ralph Coates

Today, I received a wonderful present.

My friend Craig surprised and delighted me when he delivered impromptu a whole set of Manchester City football cards, which his son had collected. They were surplus to his requirements, but I didn’t care – the very feel and smell of them transported me back in time.

Marsden's sweet shop, somewhere in industrial northern England, 1970. The same shop in which Melanie Brown told the lie on me and Shorey that led to us being caned for the alleged and never-proven theft of a packet of Fruitgums – but also the central meeting place for any eight year olds worth their salt ‘n’ shake crisps.

Normally, the experience of going into Marsdens was a highly-charged one. Every lunchtime, me and Peter Scott would go home for our dinners. As I left, my mum would give me a sixpence and also one for Pete; whom I would then call for and we would in turn extort a similar sum from his mum.

Replete with our booty, we would head for Marsden’s. There was lot you could get for sixpence in those days. As beady-eyed old Mr Marsden watched my every move from over the ice-cream fridge, my sixpence would almost melt from the trauma of having to choose between the following:

6 Bazooka Joes
A quarter of Cough Candy
A Curly Wurly
A bottle of Cresta
3 giant gobstoppers
2 packets of Chipmunk crisps

...or a packet of Pannini football cards. Actually, stickers then, and certainly not as flash as the one here. Photos were often taken by amateurs - or so it seemed, due to the very poor quality of many of the images. Poses fell into two categories: tight-lipped-arms-folded-stare, and 'action shot' - usually not of the player kicking the ball because they hadn't invented electronic shutters on cameras back then.

So what you got was Franny Lee or Mick Jones running, with the ball long gone. It was a bit like Spot The Ball, the football gambling game which my dad used to let me do (just like the Bread Man and the Pop Man and the Fish Man there was the Pools Man - he'd bring the Littlewoods coupons, and also a picture with the ball somehow erased from it - way before Photoshop. You had to look at where the players' eyes were drawn to, and place an 'X' where you thought the ball was. Of course I assumed that the players would be actually looking at the ball when I did my 'X' - but it never seemed to be in the place I thought it would be.)

Anyway, the idea with the cards was that you would bring them to school, see what the other boys had, then swap yours with theirs to fill in the missing gaps in your album (at least I think there were albums then - that might have come in with stickers - it's more likely that you just kept them in a tin.)

My grandad had millions of them, being a lifetime smoker. In the 60s, as Swinging London grooved, Northern England collected coupons. It must have been a hangover from the days of rationing (I remember my mum and nannan would sing songs about rationing in the car when we'd go on journeys, as if they were actually nostalgic for it. I never did get the whole nostalgia thing - until I actually started becoming nostalgic myself. I wonder what today's cynical youth will be nostalgic for - 'Ah, Taneesha, remember the good old days of Chlamydia and Methadrone' they'll probably say as they laugh whimsically.)

Anyway, my grandad had sets of birds, cars, stately homes, scenes of rural England, biblical stories etc. The entire cohort of graphic designers which existed in the country at the time must have been kept busy by fag-smoking miners. As well as the ciggie cards, there were the Co-op stamps (Green Shield stamps) an early forerunner of the loyalty card system we have now in supermarkets. He had books and books of them, although as far as I could work out they seemed to have no value whatsoever - you could collect whole shelffulls and still only have enough to buy an egg cup.

So anyway, there I am, at school, bartering with Vaughny and Pondy et al over these football cards. It seemed as though most of the male population of the school had a collection - perhaps again, this is where the male fascination with collecting things comes from - we're all little boys at heart.

'I'll swap your Bobby Charlton for my Ralph Coates' was the playtime mantra. But what was really interesting was how, slowly over time, as more and more people bought them, the cards acquired a kind of intrinsic value - like money. The more people who played, the rarer the rare cards became. Imagine the primordial psychology among the Chro-magnon hunter-gatherer swamp dwellers which enabled the cunning to survive and prolong the existence of the human race; cunning that created money from bones or scraps of flint; money which enabled them to barter with the tribe in the next field for a leg off a Sabretooth Tiger or something - it's right there in our fights over the value of Cyril Knowles. Watch the opening scene from Kubrick's 2001:A Space Odyssey and you'll se what I mean.

So, down to the primordial swamp we duly descended. Fights broke out, satchels were looted, noses were bloodied and teeth forcibly removed over these cards. The natural order was preserved as Vaughny and his clan mugged the 'puffs' for having the sheer luck to acquire Gordon Banks from Marsdens.

And in the same spirit, did I not today receive my cards, wave them about in front of every bloke I could find (100% of whom were genuinely excited for me) to the utter bemusement of those females within hailing distance.

Then, when no-one was looking, I locked them in my drawer so no-one could nick them.

I'm buying an album tomorrow.
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The Barcelona Shirt

1974. How was a pubescent boy from the north of England going to discover romance in life?

Answer: Miss McDermott.

Miss McDermott was one of the 3 most beautiful women on the planet in 1974. All my mates had a crush. Pondy wanted her. Shorey wanted her. Vaughny wanted her. But they were all too thick and too proletarian. Miss McDermott was mine.

She taught Art and had a yellow Triumph Stag. She had long dark hair and a sultry pout. She was my heart's desire. When I think of her I think of the woman in The Lamb's Navy Rum ad, above.

Or the models on the cover of Country Life, below:

I loved Art. Mr Mellard, the Head of Art, had studied under Frank Auerbach at The Slade (no mean feat for a guy from Rotherham. By the way - Luddites - look up Frankie-boy and learn.)

But he wasn't Miss McD. Obviously.

My other main squeeze was Miss Hunt: blonde bob, and resplendent in a chain of figure hugging woolens. She had the best tits ever known to human science. I literally could not concentrate in History lessons, and put my failure to pass O Level History entirely down to drooling over her. Me and Pondy were obsessed by her.

The third most beautiful woman in the world was my Spanish teacher, Miss Henderson. In our first lesson she gave me a Spanish name, which she always called me: Pablo. All the class had names, but mine seemed somehow more authentic. I began to love Spanish life and culture, as we learned about (what was then) life under General Franco. And of course I fancied the arse off her.

I think a study should be done into the educational attainment of 14-16 year old boys. It would clearly reveal that exam success rates show a direct relationship to how much they fancy their teacher; and failure rate would likewise depend on how much they were trying to wank off in class because they also fancied their teacher.

I suppose Miss Henderson must have had a love of Catalunya, because I don't recall ever being told anything good about the Franquistas. Barcelona, was, however, the home of la revolucion, and seemed to me to represent all that was good, modern and progressive about a Spain which was still mired in manana, omerta and bureaucratic crap.

And so it was that we were given the chance to go on a school trip to Barcelona.

I've been once, and it has become my favourite city ever since. Something about it - La Sagrada Familia, the Gaudi park, Las Ramblas - seduced me and stuck with me ever since.

It was in Barcelona that I first snogged Hazel Spotswood. It was in Barcelona that I ordered my first ever cerveza.

It was in Barcelona that Johann Cruyff played football.

In Sugg's sports shop there were 4 football boots of choice to the truly discerning young player: Adidas Beckenbauer, Puma Pele Rio, Stylo Matchmakers (more of which in another chapter) ...

...and Puma Cruyff.

These were the most gorgeous boots known to man. Because Cruyff was the most gorgeous man known to woman. He was like a Dutch Georgie best - only better. His skills were outrageous: the Cruyff turn is still something today's footballers struggle to master. You wanted to be him. He had 14 on his shirt. I only thought football shirts went up to 11. It was incredible.

And Cruyff had transferred that year from the impossibly glamorous Ajax of Amsterdam, to the utterly-unimpeachably glamorous FC Barcelona.

I'm reminded of this at present, because this weekend is the weekend of El Gran Clasico - Barca v Real Madrid. The republic and the people v the preening royalists. A club still owned by its fans versus one mired in debt, debauchery and scandal. A club which did not take sponsorship on its shirt (until latterly it became sponsored by UNICEF) versus Corporate Mammon Whore. Wonderful Messi v cheating bighead, ex-Man U Ronaldo.

There is and can only be one team to support. This is what happened the same year when Barca met Real in el clasico.



And so it was, in 1974, that I saved up my entire spending money for the school trip, and went to El Corte Ingles to buy a Johann Cruyff Barcelona shirt. The very one below.

My mum saves everything. So a year or so ago I asked her if she still had it. The answer she gave me broke my heart.

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The Rec'

The Rec' was a muddy football pitch, replete with cowpats and broken bottles; later to have the addition of a swing, that was where we hung out as kids.

It was the place I learned to french kiss with Julie Garton; the scene of my first proper appearance in a football team (managed, unfeasibly, by Neil Warnock) - in short, legendary. But legendary maybe for one particular reason.

All the good fights happened at the Rec'.

To explain why, you need to know a little more about the politics of living where I lived in the 70s.

You may have read about school bully Vaughny and his dynasty in other posts. But before Vaughny there were other contenders.

Neil Beever for one.

Bee - and later his neanderthal brother Ian - were part of a triad of loosely-related fiefdoms that ruled where we lived in the 70s.

It was like South Central Los Angeles in industrial England: to the south was Barber Close, in which Vaughny and his brother Dave lived. To the east, in 60s regeneration 2up2downland, was Beever territory. But to the north, in the old houses by the church, was the even more imposing hegemony of the Rattenburys, Neil and Alan.

For me the great fights of the 70s - Rumble In The Jungle Ali vs Forman; Ali vs Frazier in the Thrilla In Manilla - were matched, nay surpassed, by the battles taking place in my own home town.

Because when there was a fight, everything stopped. Word would go round in advance, like social networking nowadays, and any kid worth his salt would arrive at the 'Rec to see the latest spectacle.

I remember one particular battle between Vaughny and Bee. We were playing football - as we did every day after school, until it got dark, day in, day out - and often there would be some niggle between one person and another that would lead to fisticuffs.

But this was different.

Bee vs Vaughny was a grudge match trailed in advance. Vaughny's hegemony was in full swing - he was smart, attractive, hard, and clever. And Bee wasn't. He was barely able to express himself in the English language. And Vaughny had humiliated him with some taunt or other about how thick he (actually) was. And he was Einstein compared to his brother.

It was like Ali vs Frazier. Don King was probably there to promote it.

So we probably played football for 3 or 4 hours that night, and only at the end of the game did the real action start. There was no spontanaeity to it - everyone knew there was going to be a fight - but at the end of the game, so it seemed, the number of kids on the 'Rec grew by about a million percent.

I think the fight lasted about an hour. It was a truly spectacular event, in which each man fought the other to a standstill: cheered on, so it seemed, by hundreds of thousands of people.

Try as he may, Vaughny could never quite break Bee down. He tried everything - gauging, kicks to the bollocks, hitting him with tree branches - and still Bee would not go down. People came and went; bought ice creams and drinks; went home and had their teas and watched Magpie on telly; did their homework - yet Vaughny and Bee fought on.

Eventually, everyone got bored and it got dark and the fight just stopped. But Vaughny and Bee had gained a new respect for each other. From that point, two tribes melted into one, and the Vaughan/Beever alliance briefly threatened total domination. Hoppy (see Hoppy and Vincey) hitched a ride at this point.

But they still could not compete with the Rattenburys.

The Rattenburys were royalty: Vaughan and Beever merely new money. The Rattenburys' right to the title of hardest in the town went back to the days of the Domesday Book.

And it too had its defining moment.

The fight of all fights had happened a few weeks before, by the tree-swing from which you could enter the 'Rec across a small stream by the main road:

Neil Rattenbury vs his own brother Alan.

I had befriended Alan, who was at least 4 years older than me and in the 5th year (Year 11 to you modern people) at school when I was in the first year - year 7 nowadays. (By the way, what exactly IS year 7 or 11? You went to juniors until year 4 and then you started again in year 1 at secondary. Bollocks to all the rest. New age shit.)

Anyway, I think Alan indulged me because I was younger and so I became his second in the fight against Neil. We walked down together to the fight, and I remember an immense sense of pride that I was in Alan's corner. I felt good. Vaughny, Bee et al were metaphorically in the front row, checking out the opposition.

The fight was short and brutal. Alan won, memorably, by ripping his own brother's eyebrow off.

The 'Rec's reputation as a legendary venue was secure; and I was, briefly, the centre of the universe.

Alan Rattenbury went on to a life of being a butcher or something.

Somewhere in a womb, Mike Tyson was watching and taking notes.
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The Day I Grew Up

June 1973. I am 11 years old and about to leave primary school for secondary school: a whole new world of violence, Shangalang and kung fu stars.

Ian Vaughan - Vaughny - is in his omnipotent pomp: soon to graduate to the position of King of secondary school reserved for him by his brother Dave (see other blog entries).

Below him in the hierarchy: Grant Hopkinson (see earlier chapters again); Martin Mitchell; even the dreaded 'Drac' - Neil Boulton, the first child I ever saw with black teeth. Six foot of spittle and venom.

Most of the girls at primary school were anonymous in gingham and pigtails. Julie Garton however though actually only 11 herself at the time, was sex on legs. There was only one Julie, and she knew it, and she had us all dragging our tongues on the floor.

But how to win Julie...

It was impossible. Vaughny had it stitched up, and anyway she was going to a different school to the rest of us - in only a few weeks' time.

It seemed that only the most dramatic gesture would work.

And so the day came of the school sports day.

Sports days for most normal people were not the anodyne affairs those of us with our own children know so well in the modern era. Imagine the mentality of creating non-competitive sports days - as nowadays - in which everyone wins and no-one loses. I cannot think of a worse lesson in life to teach anyone. Sport teaches children how to take knocks in life, to lose with dignity and to win with sportmanship and good grace. So let's throw beanbags around in a circle to make sure no middle class Jemima or Noah cries - thus saving the school from their irate, equally middle class, equally useless-at-sport parents who themselves had suffered cruel humiliation in their own childish sports days and determined thereafter to create a legal framework where no-one actually ever wins anything in case anyone else gets upset.

Political correctness gone mad.

I'm convinced the world is actually run by people who were crap at sport as children.

So to the day. The usual egg and spoon races come and go. The scores are neck and neck. The last race is the hundred metre sprint. Peter Vince is in it (German, chocolate box house etc); so is Ian Goldthorpe (the only thing about whom I remember is he had a budgie and a clarinet - so loser from he outset)....

...me...

...and Vaughny.

He was a stick-on. Had to be. He was the best at pulling girls, the best at football, the fastest, the hardest and the most glamorous. And he was Born To Be King.

I suppose you can only imagine the events that followed if you are mentally playing the theme from Chariots of Fire in your head.

Ok... that's better...'Dum da da da dum dum...'

A photographer took a picture of it (which I have sadly lost, but which made the papers and everything) and which explains the whole thing. I have borrowed a pair of rubbish spikes from I know not who. I've trained, dieted, prepared my best and am pumped up. I've even made my own gum-shield out of toilet paper.

The gun goes.

I get off to a flyer. Streak past Vincey. Streak past Goldie. I can see my mum at the sidelines cheering me on. I can see Julie Garton watching, willing me to win, I know.

Fifty yards. No Vaughny. Sixty yards. No Vaughny. Eighty yards. No Vaughny.

By this time the crowd (seemingly millions) is in a frenzy. The shock of a lifetime is on the cards. I seem to see Julie's face at all points on the journey, as if she is following me down the track. She is saying to me 'win it for me Paul and I will be your prize', like a kind of Greek goddess in the sky. They say some religions are promised 70 virgins in heaven as a reward for a righteous life. I just wanted this one.

Ninety yards. Still no Vaughny. Julie's panties were a whisker away.

As I breasted the tape, years before Colin Welland ever had the idea in his head, the photograph was to reveal all.

We had been separated out into teams - each given a colour - Goldie yellow, Vincey green, Vaughny red and me blue. There were actually only 4 colours in the 70s anyway. We had to wear these sashes over our shoulders signifying our allegeance (Julie was also a blue, natch).

Vaughny's had become caught up as he faffed around with it at the start, and had held him back.

Of course he never forgave me. But that day I won Julie's heart - over him - and took my first step towards being a man. I felt like bloody Lancelot.

Julie left soon afterwards and went to a nearby secondary school. The only times I ever saw her after that was when we played them at football. I captained our team, and she would come and watch me after her own netball match had finished.

It is now 35 years since I last saw her.

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