by Greg Tesser
A period of run-of-the-mill engagements followed for Peter, mainly opening sports’ shops and supermarkets and shaking hands in the manner of a prime minister or president seeking re-election – all that was missing was kissing a few squealing babies!
But our prime concern – forcing him into the England team – hadn’t been forgotten, and when the team to face Belgium in Brussels on 25 February 1970 was revealed, Osgood’s name was there.
His selection had the press boys buzzing round us like bees round a honey pot. Some of the more enthusiastic of their number were becoming a nuisance to Ossie’s long-suffering wife, Rosemary. So much so, that in the early hours following the team selection, she phoned me.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said – her voice all of a quiver. ‘BBC Radio 4 want to interview me on the Today programme.’
I told her not to worry, and a little later I received a call from the Today presenter John Timpson, outlining to me the sort of questions that would be thrown Rose’s way.
It was all fairly straightforward; and when I got back to her I explained what was going to happen, and essentially just told her to be herself.
The upshot was that the interview proceeded better than expected, with Rosemary’s modest character shining through. In 1970s terms, she came across as just a typical British housewife. ‘How refreshing,’ I said to myself. ‘She is the total antithesis of the whole playboy Chelsea image and reputation.’
The match itself, played at the Parc Astrid in Brussels, was a successful one for Ramsey’s side. England, with two goals from Alan Ball and one from Geoff Hurst, came through with an impressive 3–1 in front of over 20,000 fans. Ossie didn’t manage to find the net, but he played well and from the off built up a positive understanding with the industrious Hurst. ‘This was just the beginning of a long England career,’ I shouted out loud to all and sundry in a Fleet Street hostelry on the day after the game. That was what I thought, anyway.
So, thanks to the efforts of the Daily Mail and Charlie Wilson in particular, my persistence, Ossie’s form on the park, and Chelsea’s all-round image as the swinging soccer club, he had made it into Ramsey’s eleven. With the Mexico World Cup just round the corner, the chances of him developing into an authentic world star had increased dramatically.
It was about this time that my association with photographer Terry O’Neill eventually blossomed into something more than just a conventional business relationship.
Throughout 1968 and 1969, I had had numerous meetings with him, mainly in connection with photos of stars such as Tom Jones and Elvis Presley and Robert Redford, likely to be used as full-colour images by our family business, Star Posters. But, early on I discovered that Terry was a committed Chelsea supporter, and an admirer of the likes of Osgood and Cooke and Hudson. He was forever coming up with ideas for photos and publicity stunts, many of which bore positive fruit. There were so many, but probably my favourite – and I know that Ossie had a particular fondness for this photo shoot – were the Borsalino pictures.
Borsalino was a cult movie, released in 1970, starring those icons of the French cinema, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon. It was a French-Italian production, and well received by the critics on both sides of the Channel.
Set in that hotbed of dealers and drifters and grafters and gangsters, Marseilles, during the Great Depression years of the 1930s, it cleverly mixed comedy, drama and violence, without at any stage making the audience feel awkward. Down on the King’s Road they loved it – in fact anything with subtitles was regarded as elitist, which was of course just what the doctor ordered as far as the Chelsea cognoscenti were concerned.
The word ‘Borsalino’ essentially translates as fedora. It is the name of the hat company established in Italy in 1857 by Guiseppe Borsalino, which popularised the style of titfer so closely associated with gangsters (and controversial football coach Malcolm Allison during the 1970s).
Terry had once compared Ossie’s looks to one of his most famous ‘subjects’, Steve McQueen, and he felt that wearing one of the Borsalino suits would only enhance the striker’s reputation as an authentic model. It would also fit in perfectly with the whole King’s Road mystique, which had been created and nurtured by so many of the upmarket glossies.
Unsurprisingly, the PR gurus for the movie gave the seal of approval to the idea, combining as it did all that was chic in France with the unique style of this new breed of English footballer, still regarded as eccentric elsewhere in the world, but fast developing into the norm in what were now, sadly, the dying embers of Swinging London.
We managed to acquire a Borsalino suit in pure silk from Simpsons in Piccadilly, plus a beautiful fedora hat, purple silk shirt and matching purple silk tie, topped off with gleaming white loafers. The suit was a double-breasted job with vibrant blue vertical stripes and turn-ups. When I say I acquired one suit, I should in fact say two, as I was mad keen on getting such an ensemble myself. You see, I wanted the two of us to be seen out-and-about dressed liked Belmondo and Delon, for we were ever the exhibitionists!
Terry O’Neill’s photos were sensational, and the Sun newspaper turned them into a major feature. Terry had this way about him of making his subject so relaxed that once the lights were turned on and the shooting started, any signs of tautness and tension in the muscles evaporated away. What you got were, despite all the trappings, some very natural photographs; striking images that raised the character of the face to new heights.
As for me, I once wore the Borsalino outfit to a meeting I had with a small-time crook at a drinking den in Soho. This guy, Ron, was a rather dubious contact man I had ‘befriended’ because despite his unsavoury image, he was a dab hand at outlandish ideas. I once played pool against him, dressed in the suit, with several West End Central detectives looking on! I think they thought I was more disreputable than my crook friend. However, once I told them about Chelsea and Ossie, they succumbed to my charm (or to put it more accurately, they were just mad about Chelsea).
Ron was youngish – it was difficult to put an age to him – and he had black curly hair, which was naturally oily. He looked somewhat like a malnourished Sylvester Stallone. He owned a large Alsatian dog, of which he was overtly fond. He had a brother, who was not blessed with good looks, and despite being on the whole as friendly as a cocker spaniel, was not someone whose nose you would want to put out of joint.
Someone who was also mad about Chelsea was actor Michael Crawford. He was also mad about Alexander’s restaurant in Chelsea, frequented by several of the Blues top stars as well as a whole galaxy of showbiz and society icons.
As Terry O’Neill once said: ‘The girls loved the footballers. They loved a bit of rough, I suppose, or whatever. So, it was a whole mix – lords, ladies and the working-class heroes who took it over. That’s the sort of crowds you got down regularly at Stamford Bridge.’
Certainly Ossie enjoyed the ambience of ‘Alexander’s’ enormously.
Owned by the late husband of fashion innovator supreme Mary Quant, Alexander Plunket-Greene, it opened its doors in the 1950s. In fact, Quant’s first shop, Bazaar, which first saw the light of day in 1955, was above the restaurant. However, it was during the ’60s that Alexander’s, in Quant’s own words, ‘had become the most fashionable in Chelsea, with a chic clientele’. Quant said that she remembered Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier being there with two friends. ‘Once, I was invited to join Brigitte Bardot and her second husband, the French actor Jacques Charrier. Bardot was preening herself deliciously as the entire staff fell into disarray with excitement. Playing up to all this, she had no idea they were actually fans of Charrier!’
The reason they were fans of his, as opposed to sex kitten BB, was simply because, in Ossie’s words, ‘the waiters were all gay, but we really liked them. Everyone used to go to the place – Michael Crawford, actress Jane Seymour – everyone.’
Unlike the culture of the twenty-first century, which would without question frown sanctimoniously on any behaviou
r that reeked of late nights, over indulgence and hedonistic pleasures, the fact that Chelsea’s star names adopted the personas of Hollywood celebrities and rock idols rather than sportsmen only increased the ongoing infatuation of the general public with these eccentric young footballers. What helped, of course, was also the pervading attitude of the media. Nowadays, it is enough for a photo to appear of a Premier League footballer taking a drag on a cigarette to cause all kinds of pompous preaching and condemnatory ructions.
Also, these guys had opinions, which they aired. They were not yet slaves to the robotic post-match ‘1984’-style ‘newspeak’ favoured by the majority of the leading managers and players of today – talk about boring!
The likes of Cooke, Hudson and Osgood, and indeed Best and Marsh, possessed such innate talents with a football that any rumours of carousing were never on the public agenda because they continued to enthral supporters up and down the country with their sublime artistry and improvised brilliance.
Having despatched QPR so thrillingly in their quarter-final, the Blues were given another favourable pairing in the semi-final at White Hart Lane on 14 March 1970, in the shape of Second Division Watford.
This Cup-tie was the cheese and tomato between the two slices of bread of two vital league games – vital, if Sexton’s men were ever to have more than just a smell of title glory. The first was ‘a-bit-of-a-let-down’ 1–1 home draw with Nottingham Forest, watched by over 55,000 vociferous fans. The second, three days after the semi, saw Charlie Cooke fire in the only goal against Stoke City. Just four shy of 29,000 saw this game – another example of the erratic nature of Stamford Bridge attendances in those days. Probably the reason was that there were more genuine lovers of the game during that era, and they, as neutrals, would decide to turn up for a game often as a last-minute thing on the day itself.
The 14 March 1970 was cold. In fact it was bitter. Earlier in the month, a band of heavy snow had hit Southern England, and combined with strengthening north-to-north-west winds, it felt more like New Year’s Day than the cusp of spring. By the 14th, despite it remaining raw, the snow had turned to rain, and the White Hart Lane pitch resembled a beach that had had clay poured over it.
Watford were the underdogs, and once the pugnacious Dave Webb had put Chelsea ahead, they eventually sauntered their way into the final with a 5–1 success, Peter Houseman helping himself to two goals, with one from Ian Hutchinson plus the obligatory Osgood net-finder.
However, during the first period, Watford gave the favourites the odd shock or two, and soon after Webb’s opener, the Hornets conjured an equaliser through Terry Garbett, whose spinning effort completely deceived Peter Bonetti. But despite looking a shade jaded, the favourites upped the ante and in the end it was all a bit of a formality.
The other semi-final, involving Leeds United and Manchester United was one of those long drawn-out affairs so prevalent in the days before TV schedules determined kick-off times, and the police were content for Cup replays to take place just a matter of days after the first contest. Eventually Revie’s Leeds prevailed: 1–0 in the second replay at Bolton’s old ground of Burnden Park.
So, the two old enemies; the two football teams that summed up in so many ways the North-South divide, were to meet in the FA Cup final at Wembley Stadium on Saturday 11 April. It is fair to say, without displaying a semblance of bias, that much of the nation was sitting with baited-breath waiting for this final of all finals.
The perceived animosity between South-West London’s club of cavaliers and Yorkshire’s grittier roundheads had its roots in the mid-1960s after successive promotions by the two clubs from the old Second Division.
The whole saga, which was to come to a dramatic head in 1970, all started back in 1966 when a Bobby Tambling goal saw Docherty’s Diamonds squeak through 1–0 in an FA Cup fourth round clash at Stamford Bridge. Leeds laid siege to the home goal for much of the game, but a combination of extreme obduracy from the home defence and more than a slice of Lady Luck saw Chelsea prevail.
Then, of course, there was the semi-final twelve months later: once more, luck played its hand in Chelsea’s favour when Peter Lorimer’s ‘goal’ via a dynamic free-kick was controversially ruled out.
The two league meetings during the season of 1969–1970 went the way of Leeds, and in both encounters there was this continuing undercurrent of repressed violence – it was all edgy and flaky and almost neurotic – it was Alfred Hitchcock without the love interest.
Recently, Norman ‘Bite-yer-Legs’ Hunter, that cornerstone of Leeds’ line-up, stated that there was no real dislike of the Chelsea players. However, Norman’s rose-tinted summation of those epic contests of forty-odd years ago is not borne out by some of the comments made by the likes of Ian Hutchinson and company, most notably in the definitive history of football shown on BBC TV in 1995, Kicking and Screaming.
This series, which debuted in October, received praise aplenty from the critics, and personally I felt extremely flattered when the programme makers asked me to be part of the whole project, in particular one episode dedicated to the whole Chelsea/Leeds relationship and its cultural and social significance during a period of seismic change in Britain.
I developed a really good rapport with Hutchinson. I was never actually his agent, but did manage to arrange a few mini-deals for him. And, in fact, much, much later in the 1990s I was more than pleased to be in a position to make him a few bob with several television appearances as a pundit during Chelsea’s European Cup Winners’ Cup run of 1994–95.
Hutch was always candid, and certainly didn’t suffer fools, but I always found him friendly and generous to people he respected. During several interviews for this episode of the documentary, he summed up his attitude to Revie’s Leeds with these no-punches-pulled words: ‘They hated us and we hated them.’ Later he said: ‘There was no love whatsoever. The only person I really got on with was Norman Hunter.’
As for Alan Hudson, he once said to several of the Yorkshire club’s number during a particularly boisterous battle: ‘You’re just robots.’
Football writer John King summed up the whole Chelsea v. Leeds soap opera with these words: ‘Leeds were portrayed as dour Yorkshiremen with a reputation for playing dirty. Chelsea, on the other hand, were the wide boys of London, dedicated followers of fashion. While Leeds were drinking tea and playing cards, Chelsea were out boozing and chasing girls, but when it came to games between the two, however, war was declared.’
Then, of course, there was the famous – or infamous – Jack Charlton ‘little black book’. In it were supposedly two names; two players that Charlton would punish for on-field misdemeanours, or as he so succinctly expressed it: ‘If I get the chance to do them, I will. I will make them suffer before I pack this game in.’
Charlton came out with these quotes during a Tyne Tees TV interview with broadcaster Fred Dinenage on 3 October 1970. Dinenage asked him the following question: ‘You have had your fair share of cuts and bruises. What is the worst thing that has happened to you?’
Big Jack replied: ‘I cannot remember names, but I have a little book with two names in it, and if I get the chance to do them I will. I do not do what I consider to be the bad fouls in the game, such as going over the top. That is about the worst foul in the game, but I will tackle as hard as I can to win the ball, but I will not do the dirty things, the really nasty things. When people do it to me, I do it back to them. Because I am not noted for doing so, people don’t do it to me, but there are two or three people who have done it to me, and I will make them suffer before I give this game up.’
He refused to divulge who these players were, but stated in no uncertain terms that ‘they know who they are’.
This frank and hard-hitting interview was given a nationwide airing seven days later, and soon the flak started to fly. Those dark-suited grey gentlemen of the Football Association must have choked over their port or mild and bitter or Newcastle Brown or whatever it was, as Charlton’s words became – i
n their eyes – more and more inflammatory. On top of all this, some of our national newspaper sports’ columnists climbed on their high horses of morality and spouted words of righteous indignation.
The Daily Mirror’s Peter Wilson, for example – never a man to turn down the odd snifter – wrote: ‘Have these petulant, primping, overpaid, under-principled gladiators no responsibility?’
Wilson, an authentic eccentric, resembled that archetypal breed of upper-middle-class Englishman that in many ways almost became parodies of their real selves during the immediate post-war years.
Red-faced with luxuriant moustaches, they could undoubtedly hold their liquor. In fact talking about that word of Wilson’s, ‘responsibility’, I remember sitting near the great scribe at the Lord’s Tavern. It was during a Test match, and he was consuming his lunch, which comprised one rather sad-looking cheese sandwich on white bread with a bottle of something much more expensive and very red on the high-class claret list.
Wilson was there in his role as correspondent for the Mirror. I liked his style – vintage wine with a sandwich – but as his eyes became more and more glassy, I could have posed the same sort of question as he had done in print: ‘As a highly-paid professional, was he behaving responsibly drinking so much booze whilst on duty?’ But I didn’t. I have never been sanctimonious.
FA secretary Denis Follows and his colleagues felt Charlton’s words were likely to bring the game into disrepute, and that ‘the committee has further decided that until the matter has been resolved, the England team manager should be informed that Charlton won’t be eligible for any FA representative teams’.
Later, Charlton consumed a portion of humble pie, saying: ‘Looking back, I realise I was wrong to say the things I said, the way I said them. It’s not because of the fact that Jack Charlton was hurt. That’s nothing. But it gave people the opportunity to hurt through me the game I love. I regret that very much.’ And later, he said: ‘The truth is there was never any little black book. It was just my way of saying there are a couple of players who have had an unfair go at me at one time or another.’
