One of the most consistently enjoyable YT channels for me over the past three or four years has been The Critical Drinker. This consists of author Will Jordan adopting the persona of a moderately inebriated Scotsman narrating subjective movie reviews and amusingly incisive dissections of the way in which Hollywood works these days; his series, ‘Why Modern Movies Suck’ is amongst the most thorough – and thoroughly entertaining – studies of the contemporary film industry and its cultural corrosion as any you’ll find on any medium today. His videos are often very funny, but nine times out of ten he nails it with intelligent and enlightening logic. Although he never appears on camera on his own channel, the Drinker’s reputation has grown to the point whereby he’s now beginning to routinely turn up on other YT channels to discuss his specialist subject; one such appearance was in a new Triggernometry video, during which Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster quizzed him on the death of the movie star – that larger-than-life personality who could put bums on cinema seats on the strength of his name alone. His demise was attributed to several factors, though an anecdote referencing Richard Burton, who disappeared for a week when making ‘Where Eagles Dare’ simply to go on a bender (without informing anyone else involved in the film where he was) was used as an example of the kind of characters that used to inhabit the movie business and no longer do. But this isn’t something exclusive to acting; one could similarly apply that to the music biz and sport.
All the revered rock stars who continue to provide source material for endless books, biopics, articles and documentaries are either dead or in their 80s; likewise, where be the Ian Botham or the James Hunt or the John McEnro of 2024? It’s hard to imagine the dullard sportsmen or women of today still being talked (and written) about 30 or 40 years from now, just as it is our current authors, artists or actors. This either suggests society no longer produces such figures or that such figures just don’t go into these fields anymore because they’ve become so sterile and corporate they’re no longer open to them. Another factor which came up during the Critical Drinker’s Triggernometry interview in relation to movie stars is the loss of mystique that has come with social media; at one time, we’d have to wait till movie stars were past retirement age to get an insight into what they were like as people via an appearance on ‘Parkinson’. Today, we’re now exposed to every dim thought that enters their unscripted heads via Twitter; it’s almost as though it’s written into their contracts that they have to issue opinions on everything from climate change to LGBTXYZ matters – and it has to be the ‘right’ opinion, of course; in the case of football, that’s no problem if you’re Gary Lineker, less so if you’re Joey Barton.
Perhaps the timing is sadly apt, then, to bid farewell to the kind of character whose undoubted talent would certainly still be craved by any football team today, but whose considerable baggage most likely wouldn’t. I’m talking about Stan Bowles, the former footballer whose glory years came at Queens Park Rangers in the 1970s and who passed away over the weekend. Like several players of his generation, he’d been struggling with Alzheimer’s for the last decade and the debilitating disease finally claimed him at the age of 75. The generation Bowles belonged to contained several footballers routinely referred to as ‘mavericks’ – hugely gifted individuals who nonetheless combined their talents with personality traits that managers found hard to rein-in, meaning the bigger and more successful clubs largely avoided signing them. Naturally, they all followed in the footsteps of George Best, the original footballing rock star; and when Best’s drinking and love of the bright lights curtailed his career at the highest level, there were numerous flair players emboldened by Best’s example who quickly filled the void; Frank Worthington was one, and Stan Bowles was another.
Hailing from Manchester, Bowles was signed by the blue half of the city as a teenage apprentice but made only a handful of appearances before a bust-up with Man City coach Malcolm Allison led to him being dispatched to lowly Bury; Bowles then dropped into the Fourth Division, joining Crewe Alexandra, and his nascent career was already beginning to take on the shape of a journeyman when he moved to Second Division Carlisle Utd in 1971. However, it was his year at Carlisle – where he scored 18 goals in 51 games – that helped him catch the eye of fellow Division 2 club Queens Park Rangers, who were eager to find a replacement for star man Rodney Marsh, recently lost to Manchester City. Bowles wasn’t intimidated at the prospect of filling Marsh’s No.10 shirt and his skills as well as his humorous, devil-may-care approach to the game quickly won the fans over. QPR, like many of the capital’s clubs, languished in the all-conquering shadows of Arsenal, Spurs and Chelsea, and it wasn’t until the club achieved promotion in 1973 that the First Division got to see what Stan Bowles could really do. The arrival of ex-Chelsea boss Dave Sexton in 1974 galvanised QPR into an unprecedented period of success, with Bowles at the centre of it.
Something of a ‘London All-Stars’ team at the time, QPR also included former Arsenal captain Frank McLintock in their ranks as well as ex-Chelsea teammates David Webb and John Hollins. Bowles gelled best with club captain Gerry Francis, forming a close bond on and off the pitch; however, whilst Francis was something of a model professional whose natural leadership qualities made him a first choice for England, Bowles was what one might call a ‘wild card’, and he consequently only played for his country on five occasions. Bowles could – and should – have earned far more international caps, but he was regarded as a bit of liability due to his antics, and stories of Stan Bowles are the stuff of laddish legend. Fond of placing a bet, Bowles would often sneak round the corner to a nearby bookie’s on a match day at QPR’S Loftus Road ground shortly before kick-off, usually wearing his full kit; Gerry Francis recalled visiting Stan at home for dinner and the meal being interrupted by the bailiffs, who proceeded to cart away the furniture, leaving dinner to be completed sitting on the floor; and there was the famous occasion when Bowles appeared alongside a group of dedicated athletes on the BBC’s popular ‘Superstars’ TV series whilst nursing a hangover; he ended up with the programme’s all-time record low score. Never a dull moment with Stan.
Whilst it might have seemed winning was secondary to entertaining for Bowles, QPR nevertheless came within a whisker of being League Champions in 1976, only just pipped at the post on the last day of the season by Liverpool. The club has never come so close to winning the title ever again, and most likely never will. They did qualify for Europe due to their runner-up status, though, and Bowles dazzled in QPR’s UEFA Cup campaign the following season, scoring a record eleven goals as the club reached the Quarter Finals of the competition, only to lose a penalty shoot-out to AEK Athens. QPR never reached the heights of the mid-70s again, and Bowles left the club in 1979, briefly signed by Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest before resuming journeyman status at Leyton Orient and Brentford, where he hung up his boots in 1984 – not exactly retiring with the kind of nest-egg today’s players can look forward to, though his gambling didn’t really help.
Stan Bowles never lost any sleep over the opposition. He wasn’t a thinker when it came to the game; he just let his natural talent get on with it. A shrug of the shoulders if he lost, and then it was off down the boozer, or the bookie’s, or the boudoir. Probably not abundant in the qualities that make an ideal husband, the happiest marriage Stan Bowles ever had was with the fans at Loftus Road, who could forgive him anything for bringing them such joy every Saturday afternoon. A man very much of his era, then – an era that (like the man himself) is out of time and out of step with where we are now; more’s the pity.
© The Editor
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As the famous example of Ken Loach’s landmark (and traumatic) BBC play, ‘Cathy Come Home’ proved in 1966, it seems that sometimes drama can do what real life often fails to achieve, to actually raise awareness of a pressing issue; it shouldn’t do, but it apparently does. The Post Office IT scandal, in which over 700 sub-postmasters and Post Office branch-owners were wrongly accused, prosecuted and imprisoned on charges of false accounting, fraud and theft over a period of 16 years, has been largely overlooked by the MSM until relatively recently. What is one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British legal history spans the majority of this century, yet only readers of Private Eye and viewers of ‘Panorama’ appear to have received regular updates on this shocking story as it has unfolded over the past couple of decades. An ITV dramatisation of the affair, ‘Mr Bates Vs the Post Office’, which aired over the Christmas/New Year period, belatedly alerted the wider public as to just what had been going on under their noses. A faulty IT system by the name of Horizon was imposed upon Post Office workers when the 21st century was still in nappies, and it was pretty evident early on to those entrusted to deal with it that the system wasn’t working properly. Not that the Post Office itself acknowledged this, assuring any worker who contacted it to raise concerns that nobody else had done likewise; yet when cash shortfalls began to be detected, the Post Office wasted little time in bringing criminal proceedings against those who had raised these concerns in the first place.
‘Beckenbauer was known in the game for running referees…he started having words with Kitabdjian, the referee, and to our total disbelief, the goal was ruled out.’ So said Peter Lorimer, the Scotsman with the thunderbolt in his foot, who scored more goals for Leeds United than any other player in the club’s history; he was speaking 40 years on from the infamous 1975 European Cup Final, recalling how his goal for Leeds against German cup-holders Bayern Munich was abruptly disallowed following an intervention by Bayern captain Franz Beckenbauer. ‘Der Kaiser’ had strolled over to the ref when Lorimer had put the ball in the back of the net and suggested he have a word with the linesman, who hadn’t raised his flag and had already returned to the halfway line; despite having initially pointed to the centre circle – indicating a goal – the ref suddenly changed his mind and decided Billy Bremner had been offside; no goal. This incident played its part in enabling Bayern to end up winning the game 2-0 and retaining the trophy they went on to win again a year later, ensuring a hat-trick of victories and putting them on a par with past record-breakers in the competition like Real Madrid and Ajax.
Since the official resignation date of Boris Johnson as Prime Minister on 6 September last year, there have been nine by-elections in the UK and the Conservative Party has triumphed in only one of them – Boris’s old seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip back in July; and of the nine, five had been constituencies held by Tories. The roll-call of other winners reads seven to Labour and one to the Lib Dems – and one of those Labour victories was stolen from the SNP, at Rutherglen and Hamilton West earlier this month. All of the Labour wins are as much reflective of the state of the parties that lost their seats as they are of any sudden upsurge of faith in Keir Starmer’s collective, with the SNP’s own crumbling condition north of the border as perilous as that of the Conservative Party south of it. Three of the Labour wins, after all, were in safe Labour seats they already held, with the trio of by-elections prompted by resignations. The two triumphs Labour enjoyed last Thursday night, including the record-breaking win in Mid Bedfordshire (which turned out to be the largest numerical majority ever overturned in British by-election history), were provoked by the resignations of a pair of discredited Tory MPs who were discredited for very different reasons.
Hard to believe, but sadly true now. Of the eleven men who won the World Cup for England in 1966, only one of the team is still with us – Sir Geoff Hurst. That other remaining knight who had clung on for so long despite his evident frailty in recent years has passed away at the age of 86, Sir Bobby Charlton. Unlike many of his team-mates that day, however, his achievement 57 years ago didn’t completely overshadow his other considerable achievements on the pitch. As a teenage prodigy breaking into the celebrated ‘Busby Babes’ in the mid-50s, Charlton swiftly became an integral member of that legendary side and one of the lucky few to survive the devastating Munich air crash that wiped out half the team in 1958. Older brother Jack, who would eventually join Bobby in the England line-up, often claimed his kid brother was never quite the same person after Munich, which is understandable, but Bobby went on to form the core of a second great Man U side in the 60s, playing in a peerless midfield alongside Denis Law and George Best. After the emotional capture of the European Cup in 1968, that team – which had twice won the League during the decade – embarked on a slow decline and Charlton played his last game at Old Trafford in 1973. After a brief spell in management at Preston, Charlton spent many years as a TV pundit and global ambassador for the game. He was only the second man to gain a century of caps for England, played at three World Cups for his country, and held the record as England’s leading goal-scorer for 45 years; he was probably the most gifted player of his generation and certainly one of the finest ever to pull on an England shirt. And, lest we forget, he more or less gave his name to an unforgettable haircut.
Approximately 45 years and the best part of a million miles away from the aggressive product-endorsement industry of the here and now, an ad appeared in the 1970s and 80s boy’s Bible of the beautiful game, ‘Shoot!’ magazine; the tagline was ‘A Close Shave for Trevor’ and featured Nottingham Forest and England forward Trevor Francis promoting a brand of razorblade lost to the mists of memory. Bearing a closer resemblance to the kind of ads non-smoker Stanley Matthews fronted for Craven ‘A’ cigarettes in the 1950s, the ad in question inexplicably re-entered my consciousness yesterday when I heard Francis had died of a heart attack at the criminally-premature age of 69. Yes, footballers were promoting consumer goods long before the present day wrote it into their contracts, but they did so back then with a refreshingly amateurish cheesiness that feels curiously charming in retrospect; they looked almost embarrassed to do so, as though endorsing a product unrelated to their profession was somehow ‘selling out’. Francis may have been British football’s first million-pound signing, but I should imagine his wages were no higher than those of his team-mates at Notts Forest; subject to the often-petty eccentricities of the man who signed him in 1979, Brian Clough, Francis reluctantly plugged products as a means of embellishing his income. He may have been a European Cup winner, but that didn’t necessarily project him into the jet-set at the turn of the 80s.
In the early months of 1984, Big Brother took the shape of Mike Read; at the time, the bespectacled, mullet-haired DJ was the host of the Radio 1 breakfast show as well as BBC1’s ‘Saturday Superstore’, and a regular presenter on ‘Top of the Pops’; he seemed to be the heir to Edmonds and bore all the egotistical hallmarks of a B-list celebrity fortunate to be operating in an arena boasting huge audience figures. When a record entered the charts by an unknown band with the odd name of Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Mike was offended by the sleeve’s blatant gay iconography as well as some of the suggestive slang phrases peppered throughout the song, which was called ‘Relax’; back then, it was possible to be offended by such things and not be sacked on the spot for homophobia. Anyway, Mike declared on air that he would not be playing ‘Relax’, and such was his moral clout at the Beeb, the rest of Radio 1 followed suit; despite being played regularly until Mike intervened, the record was no longer to be heard on Radio 1. Of course, thanks to the publicity, ‘Relax’ climbed all the way to No.1, reducing TOTP to a farce when the show couldn’t even climax with the best-selling record of the moment. In 1984, however, I wasn’t aware this had happened before – albeit 15 years before (which was a virtual lifetime ago to the 16-year-old I was then).
THE KING IS DEAD, LONG LIVE THE KING
Whether a hangover from the ‘let it all hang out’ mantra in evidence at numerous outdoor pop festivals in the early 70s or simply a symptom of bored narcissists acting the clown, when streaking became a craze in 1974 it was…erm…stripped of any ‘radical’ hippie associations and was instead regarded as the latest gimmick of the attention-seeking prankster. After all, by the mid-70s, most gestures that had possessed a politically radical edge in the late 60s had well and truly had those edges smoothed out; and deciding to run onto the field naked at a packed stadium was seen as more Benny Hill than Woodstock, something to laugh at rather than be viewed as symbolic of the decline and fall of Western civilization. Ray Stevens’ chart-topping 1974 hit, ‘The Streak’ was very much in this vein, being the archetypal 70s comedy record and not exactly a ‘protest song’. After a bearded streaker was captured on camera being escorted from the pitch at Twickenham in April of that year – and a conscientious policeman had famously invented a novel new use for his helmet – many top sporting events covered on television suddenly appeared to attract chaps prone to getting their kit off in public. And it was primarily chaps who were into this streaking lark; Erika Roe’s 15 minute-stint in the spotlight at Twickenham in 1982 was something of an anomaly.
I visited Aintree last year – well, I had a brief stop-off waiting for a train to Liverpool. Across the road from the station is a certain sporting temple most people associate with a specific annual event. The racecourse has been there for almost 200 years, which goes to show how horseracing predates most popular sports in this country, the majority of which were codified and turned professional much later, during the Victorian period. As with the sole occasion in which I attended a football match at the old Wembley stadium around 40 years ago, whenever setting eyes upon a venue one has been aware of via TV coverage all of one’s life, it’s hard not to be a tad awestruck for a moment. Seeing Aintree Racecourse merely from the outside was enough to summon up all those childhood memories of watching Red Rum’s trio of Grand National victories; catch the wind a certain way and no doubt it’d be possible to hear the rapid fire of Peter O’Sullevan’s breathless commentary again, a style which performance poet John Cooper Clarke once admitted to be an influence on his own machine gun delivery.
For those not in the know, the BBC Singers are the UK’s sole professional chamber choir; perhaps lack of competition has enabled this ensemble to remain a revered fixture of the country’s Classical furniture for the best part of a century, but it also means people take notice when such unique BBC employees feel the brunt of their employer’s diminishing commitment to the highbrow. A couple of years ago, it was announced that the BBC Concert Orchestra would be dispatched to the wilds of the provinces as yet another token gesture in the ongoing (and increasingly tedious) operation to make the Beeb less ‘London-centric’; but this week an even more dispiriting sign of these BBC times came with the announcement that the BBC Singers are to be disbanded before the start of this year’s Proms, just a year before reaching their landmark 100th birthday; another penny-pinching body blow to the declining morale of these unsung old retainers was the announcement that salaries for members of the English BBC orchestras will be slashed by 20%.
For a generation, Dickie Davies was the face of sport on television, whilst for more than one generation John Motson was the voice of one specific sport on the same medium; that both should pass away within a week of each other is one of those timely coincidences that often occur and make my job easier. A rather heartless admission, true, but the number of times a paucity for inspiration re a Winegum post is salvaged at the eleventh hour by the death of a famous face is remarkable; even the recent post covering the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon was eased by the passing of Raquel Welch being announced as I was writing it. On the eve of taking a week’s break and busy cursing Wee Nicola for intruding upon my preparations, hearing a celluloid sex symbol of old had shuffled off this mortal coil meant a post I hadn’t intended to write could be completed with a tad more haste than if I’d had to delve even further into the Krankie career to pad it out. So, yet again the Grim Reaper came to my rescue. And, as the march of time proceeds on its relentless pace, the collective childhood furniture is reshuffled once more and continues to become more threadbare as another pair bites the dust.
One strange tradition that never fails to deliver is that of a year entering its final days and the Grim Reaper embarking upon a frenzied period of visiting famous names; for Death, the climax of the twelve-month calendar usually consists of breakneck house-to-house calls as though he’s required to fulfil a specific celebrity quota before 31 December and always leaves it till the last minute. Indeed, he left it so late this year that he ended up calling on two exemplary figures in their chosen fields on the same day, fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and Brazilian football legend Pelé. The latter’s battle with cancer had been publicised and his hospitalisation routinely referenced during the recent World Cup, when Lionel Messi became the latest player to wear the crown that the man born Edson Arantes do Nacimento had copyrighted from the age of 17; in contrast with an anticipated passing that had felt inevitable for several weeks, news that Vivienne Westwood has also died came as more of a surprise, with few beyond her inner circle aware she was fatally ill. Born within six months of each other, one was a king and one was a dame, and both left an indelible mark on 20th century pop culture that will long outlast their mortal remains.
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