Authors: Mike Read
I’d played for the School XI up until the age of eleven, but at Woking the competition was stiffer and I found myself playing in the school third XI when I achieved that exalted age. My first mention in print was as goal scorer against King Edward’s, Witley, I think it was. We were soundly beaten and I netted the only goal, but I didn’t look at the result, only the ‘Read’ after our single goal. I also played for my House, Drake, but goals there weren’t of such great importance in the great scheme of things.
One of the guys I was occasionally in the team with was Alan Hamlyn. A big, solid lad, whose house in Cobham we sometimes went to for coffee when we were of an age to consider ourselves ‘young gentlemen’ with great affectation. Some of us took to carrying brollies
and calling each other by our Christian names, which was weird after years of surnames. As I recall Hamlyn was a fair if not outstanding footballer, so it came as a surprise to find him not only playing for the USA, but also captaining them. I haven’t seen him since school, but I felt a surge of pride. It’s always great to see an Old Wokingian doing well.
If the school selectors hadn’t seen the raw talent in me, the powerful calves ready to find the net, the delicate body-swerve and the pinpoint accuracy of my inswingers, then I was unlikely to grace any First Division grounds. That’s
old
First Division, younger readers, in other words the Premiership. But I was always up for a match and when I started in the wireless game, played many times for Radio 210. There and at Radio One, as with tennis, I was so lucky to play for and against guys at the top of their profession and run out onto many famous pitches. The stuff of dreams.
I joined Radio One just too late to play in a charity match at Roker Park, to raise money for a Variety Club Sunshine Coach, but was asked to head up to the north-east to present the keys. The fiasco that ensued is covered in no small detail in
Chapter 2
, and I’m not sure I can bring myself to re-live it again.
Actually to go off piste for a moment, that did happen a few years later. I’d just collected my Mercedes from the garage, as it had been in to have the brakes fixed and tested. With the certificate verifying that my brakes were in tip-top order sitting snugly on the passenger seat I drove off. Within half a mile a car pulled out in front of me. I slammed on, with enormous confidence, my fabulous, stop-on-a-sixpence brakes. Nothing. The car sailed on. I yanked on the handbrake and went down the gears as fast as a Tom and Jerry cartoon. I stopped within inches of the driver’s door.
A pale and shaking individual got out of the passenger door and came round to my window. ‘I’m going to report you.’
‘What for?’
‘Nearly hitting me.’
I tried to explain about the brakes, waved my piece of paper with all the confidence of Neville Chamberlain at Heston Aerodrome, and flapped my arm in the direction of the garage.
He was having none of it. ‘Don’t think I don’t know who you are.’
Whoops.
‘I know exactly who you are.
Crikey.
‘You’re that Gary Davies!’
‘Game’s up.’
And off he went. Bloody Gary Davies. I wish he’d check his brakes.
However, playing at the grounds of teams like Manchester United, Norwich City, Cardiff City, Leeds United and Tranmere Rovers more than compensated for it. We also played at Meadowbank in Edinburgh, the stadium built for the 1970 Commonwealth Games.
Our opposition for one match in the ’80s, comprising celebrities and sportsmen, at Ninian Park, Cardiff featured one J. P. R. Williams in their XI. The Welsh international and triple grand slam winner made his mark on the world of sport as a rugby player and his opposite number that day (me) may have been slightly foolish to underestimate him. In retrospect, it would have made more sense to have tried to run round him, or even let him have the ball. ‘All yours, JPR. No problem. Away you go, son.’
Did I really try to run through him? Surely not. What a crass decision. He was on me before I had time to think. It was like running into a concrete wall reinforced with steel girders. I lay on the ground without any breath in my body. Not only had it been completely knocked out of me, I swear there was a vacuum there. I sucked hard, but it was still tricky. I concentrated on survival. I could check for broken bones afterwards.
‘Are you OK?’
The answer was ‘No, not really’, but I think it came out us ‘Uuuurghh’, although I’m not 100 per cent sure about the spelling. But if you’re going to break something, at least let an orthopaedic surgeon
such as JPR do it for you, then he can tell you in gleeful detail about the musculoskeletal trauma you might suffer to your left acetabulum in later life, which would be reassuring.
There were no mishaps at Old Trafford, except that we were one man short. Teddy Warwick, Radio One producer and team manager, seemed to have got his maths wrong.
‘Teddy, there are eleven in a team.’ ‘Get your boots on, Teddy.’ ‘Being reduced to ten men happens, but starting with ten men?’
He rode the stick and the banter with a knowing smile. Seconds before kick-off he came back into the dressing room. ‘I’ve got you a sub.’
‘Brilliant. Who is it, Teddy, you?’
‘No, it’s a guy who reckons he can play a bit.’
Enter Bobby Charlton, kitted up and ready to go. I think the term ‘Wow’ went for all of us. I played alongside Bobby in the forward line. Hey, it feels great just writing that.
Do I remember every word? Come on. ‘Good ball, Mike … back to me, son … that’s it.’ There he was, waiting for the return ball, Munich survivor, World Cup winner, selected for four World Cups, European Cup winner, 106 international caps and forty-nine international goals.
‘Come on, Mike, give it that extra yard … keep the pressure on.’
I gave it that extra yard. ‘Sure, Bob.’ I was on first-name terms now.
Twinkletoes makes it to Old Trafford. I still have the team photograph, with Peter Powell, Steve Wright, David Hamilton and the rest of our team-mates, including the music industry’s finest like Dave Most and Alan James, looking like real players in our United strip, thanks to the presence of one of the all-time greats.
‘Who won the match?’ I hear you ask. I was going to tell you anyway. We did. The second photograph is of triumph and jubilation, with Bobby and me holding the all-important trophy aloft in the centre of a packed stadium at Old Trafford. As one might hashtag on Twitter, #RadioOne #Theatre #Dreams #BobbyCharlton #Result.
I later took Bobby on one to one, man on man and drew 1-1 after
fifteen minutes. I can tell you’re impressed, but there is little cause to be, because we were playing Subbuteo at a toy fair. To be fair I often tell the story and leave out the table football part. Well, you would, wouldn’t you?
A few photographs linger of a lithe, long-haired specimen playing alongside such eminent sportsmen as Emlyn Hughes, Kevin Keegan and Mick Channon for England footballers in the annual six-a-side match against the England cricketers. For the life of me I have no idea why I kept being selected. Possibly for my fashionable ’80s shorts? Maybe for my dressing room bonhomie and camaraderie? Certainly not for my playing skills. My Radio One pal Kid Jensen was also lucky enough to run out on those occasions. The lovely Emlyn ruined my once modest talent as a bowler. At this annual tournament we played both football and cricket and knowing I was fairly handy with the old crimson rambler, Emlyn chucked me the ball. ‘There you go, Readie. Sort them out.’
For indoor cricket the ball was smaller and lighter than a normal ball. I should let it go earlier, then. No, later. No, earlier. No, later. Blimey, I’d psyched myself out. Earlier, definitely. The ball flew up into the rafters and the crowd howled with laughter. Later, then. The next ball smashed into the ground at my feet and the crowd howled again. Great entertainment, but it was doing nothing for my mental approach. The next four balls were a nightmare that lasted several weeks in my mind. I have never been able to bowl properly since.
As a kid I’d run for hours without stopping. It was just something I enjoyed doing. I was never a sprinter but I was a stayer. It started when staying with my grandparents, when I’d watch future Bury footballer George Jones running around the park and the golf course. I bumped into George a year or two back at a Bury match and discussed his influence on my daily long-distance jaunts.
Our family have supported Bury FC since the late 1890s and I attended my first match at the age of eight, standing in the old blue and white boys stand, and still try to get to as many games as possible
during the season. Home games can take a good three hours at least and, while I do get up to Gigg Lane (or the JD Stadium as it’s become), I’m more likely to make the closest away games. After I met Vanessa, my broadcasting pal Greg Upwards said, ‘you’ll know she likes you if she’s sitting next to you at a far-flung away match watching Bury losing 3–0 on a cold November day’. Fast forward a year and it actually happened. Having said that it wasn’t without its problems.
‘Don’t stand up and cheer.’
‘Everybody else is.’
‘That’s because they’re Colchester fans.’
‘Who are we fans of?’
‘Bury. We only stand up when
they
score.’
‘That was very sporting of the home fans to applaud our player’s shot.’
‘They were applauding their goalie’s save.’
‘Oh.’
It couldn’t have been without some rustic and physical charm as she also made it to Brentford. Mind you most of the time was spent checking the emails.
‘What’s she doing,’ someone asked, ‘It’s not a great game but it’s not that bad,’
‘Oh … just checking the goal alerts for the other games I expect.’
Anyway back on track, from running I later transferred to long distance walking because you see more, have more time to take in the history, can stop if you want to and aren’t moving against the clock. In the late ’90s I walked the South Downs Way from Winchester to Eastbourne in four days, the rough equivalent of a marathon a day. On one of the days I ate my lunch with a long-dead German pilot who had been commemorated with a small obelisk. He was 25-year-old Hauptmann Joseph Oestermann, who’d been flying a Ju 88 bomber on the first day of the Battle of Britain on 13 August 1940. The other two members of the crew had bailed out and survived. A young man,
thrust into the fray like many of our young pilots. I sat with him for half an hour and then said my goodbyes.
I’d taken a week off from the Classic FM breakfast show to do the walk and of course my colleagues were mentioning it at intervals. To my delight I found notes on gates and posts along the way: ‘We are the farmhouse in the dip, do call in for a cup of tea’, ‘Cakes await you if you deviate from your path and follow the signs to the half-timbered cottage’ and so on. Well worth the deviation. I encountered Betjeman’s grandchildren out with their nanny, walked one whole day with two teachers and met the man who pulled Virginia Woolf from the river Ouse at Rodmell in April 1941 at the behest of two small boys.
It was on that walk that I discovered the difference between wanting a cup of tea and needing a cup of tea. The rain was driving off the sea and I knew that I had at least another three hours to go before I would be anywhere remotely near finding a steaming cup of Earl Grey. OK, there are people with more serious things to pray for but nevertheless I had a word or two with the Man Upstairs about the situation. Within two minutes a shape loomed out of the mist and squalls. Unbelievably, it was a BBC mobile unit. I knocked on the door. An engineer opened it. ‘Hello Mike, what the heck are you doing up here?’ After another two minutes I had not only the tea but also biscuits. What a bonus. The unit was relaying a race meeting from ‘Glorious Goodwood’ back to London. Either God works in mysterious ways, He had a winner in the three-thirty or spiritual traffic was light that day.
I took an even longer walk in the spring of 2007. Well, a walk and ride. Two hundred and 50 miles on foot and 250 by bike. Peter Kay and Matt Lucas had re-visited the Proclaimers’ ‘(I’m Gonna Be) 500 Miles’ for Comic Relief and were sitting at number one. Out of a conversation came the idea of actually walking 500 miles for the charity. Poring over maps to see which points were around 500 miles away from Frinton (for this was during my Radio London days), I alighted on Edinburgh. If that was the start point, maybe I could persuade
Charlie and Craig Reid to walk the first mile with me. I also called the editor of
The Beano
, based not too far away in Dundee, to see if Dennis the Menace would start us off. Boxes ticked all round, Dennis, the Proclaimers and I were snapped by
The Beano
and subsequently appeared in the comic’s Summer Special. The lads duly wished me goodbye and good luck after the first mile. Only another 499 to go. I pushed east past Leith, Musselburgh and Prestonpans. I’d been warned about the ‘burn’ I’d experience as I cycled up the Scottish hills. Now I felt it. Avoiding the A-roads I cruised into Dunbar some 28 miles east of Edinburgh. Then it was south-east past Reed Point and Eyemouth and so to Berwick-upon-Tweed. At Berwick, instead of relaxing and preparing for the next day, I went to Duns Castle, at the invitation of Alexander and Aline Hay. The Laird of Duns and Drumelzier and his good lady are always terrific hosts. The following morning we walked the grounds as part of the 500 miles, around the two lakes and the past the keep, dating from 1320, before getting back on course. Further south the great trek also took in Alnwick Castle, which was used extensively in the Harry Potter movies, St James’s Park in Newcastle and Sunderland’s ground, the Stadium of Light. The 35-mile stretch of Jurassic coastline from Staithes to Flamborough is quite breathtaking but not easy on the sections where bikes are banned. Walking is fine. Cycling is fine. But pushing a bike over rough terrain is no fun. It prohibits you from breaking into a jog if you need to make up some time. There were also so many occasions when people wanted to have a chat. I’m fine with that, but that meant covering the next section at a faster speed.
I was used to seeing places like Bridlington and Skegness from the Radio One Roadshow stage with 20,000 people out there and a car to whizz you in and out, but here I was walking into town at a steady 4 to 5 miles an hour with no reception committee except for the Big L support vehicle. No decking rooms out as gardens now, no rounders on the beach, no Captain Sensible to challenge at crazy golf, no jingle being sung by a mighty crowd and no luxury hotel.