Across the pond

Off to Limani, one the Greek restaurants in Primrose Hill, for dinner. Mick and I started with the Retsina, and even before we had finished the first glass, we were deep into nostalgia. I was meeting Mick, because he has just married one of the teachers at the nursery to which my grandchildren go, who is also a close friend of one of our neighbours in Gospel Oak. By one of those coincidences, which seem to happen to me with increasing frequency, he happens to come from my home town, Wolverhampton.

So we started with chat about Billy Wright, Wolverhampton’s most famous son, who grew up in the same area of Wolverhampton as Mick, Claregate. By the time Mick was born, more than twenty years after me, Wright had moved to Arsenal and married one of the Beverley Sisters, the 1950s equivalent of the Spice Girls. It was the most famous showbiz marriage of the time. But it was long before footballers were paid fancy money. Wright earned a pittance compared with Joy Beverley. Contrast David Beckham, who probably earns more than all the Spice Girls put together.

Not that it worried Billy Wright to have a wife who earned more than him. He was totally unspoilt by fame. According to the Wikipedia article he joined Wolverhampton Wanderers as a member of the ground staff in the year that I was born, 1934. Since he was only ten years old at the time, the association was presumably very much part-time! The official Wolves web site reports that he made his debut in the reserves aged 14 and first played in the first division the following year when he was only 15.

That was just after the outbreak of the second world war. By the time Wright turned professional in 1941 the Wolves had suspended matches, because Wolverhampton with many factories vital components for aircraft, tanks and army vehicles, was thought to be a prime Nazi target. So Wright played his first professional games as a guest for Leicester City. Eight years later he scored the first major triumph of his career, by which time he was captain of the Wolves team which beat his old team mates in the Wembley cup final of 1949.

Wolverhampton Wanderers (pause) Three

Leicester City (pause) One.

I can still hear the voice of the BBC announcer reading the football results that Saturday evening. And I can still see the glint of the sun on the cup as it was carried around the Molineux ground at the match the following Saturday.

One thing that Wikipedia got right was his exemplary behaviour on the field. He played 541 games for Wolves and 105 games for England and he was never sent off or even cautioned by the referee. Both Mick and I agreed that today’s football has been tarnished by the vast amounts of money swilling around. But when we started talking about politics we found that we had wandered in opposite directions. Mick is enthusiastic about the United Kingdom Independence Party, which is even further to the right than that other famous Wulfrunian, Enoch Powell. In the battle for mayor of London he is backing Boris Johnson against Ken Livingstone.

I may yet decide to yet to join him in Boris’s camp. At least Johnson is standing up for smokers. And last night I was seething again, when I had to go and stand on the pavement to smoke a cigarette, and carefully put the fag end in my little plastic packet, in case one of the spies of the New Puritans reported me and got me fined for littering the streets. And Livingstone is not in my good books at present because he wants to make motor cyclists pay the congestion charge.