Читать книгу Jack and Bobby: A story of brothers in conflict - Leo McKinstry - Страница 6

‘If ever I’m feeling a bit uppity, whenever I get on my high horse, I go and take another look at my dear mam’s mangle that has pride of place in the dining room of my home. The mangle has the greatest significance. It is the symbol of my beginnings. It serves as the reminder of the days when I learned what life was all about.’ These are the words with which Brian Clough, another footballer from a north-eastern family, begins his autobiography, emphasizing how much his mother meant to him.

The mother of the Charlton brothers was an equally dominant figure in their upbringing. Born Cissie (a shortening of Elizabeth) Milburn, she was the classic matriarch: strong, passionate, sociable, and outspoken, as protective of her brood as she was ambitious for them. Her husband, Bob, could hardly have been more different. A coalminer who spent his whole working life underground, he was quiet, dry, undemonstrative, but strong-willed. Indeed, it is striking how, in their personalities, Jack seems to have taken after his mother, and Bobby after his father, though, like Jack, old Bob could be quick-tempered if the mood took him. Walter Lavery, who grew up with Bobby and Jack, recalls: ‘You would go round to their house after playing in the park, and old Bob would be sitting by the fire, in his braces, just reading the paper. Cissie would be talking away, asking you all about football and school, while Bob made no contribution at all. It was not that he didn’t like his children, but just that he didn’t like the fuss.’

What made the influence of Cissie all the more powerful was the fact that football was in her blood. Her great-grandfather and grandfather, both called Jack, had played for top-class local sides in Northumberland, while her own father – yet another Jack but known universally as ‘Tanner’ Milburn – played in goal for Ashington FC when the club was in the old Third Division North in the 1920s. All four of her brothers played League football as full-backs: Jack, George and Jimmy for Leeds and Stan, the youngest of the quartet, for Chesterfield, then Leicester and Rochdale. Her cousin, ‘Wor’ Jackie Milburn, the greatest of all the family soccer stars before the arrival of her sons, won 13 England caps and three FA Cup winners’ medals as a striker with Newcastle. It is hardly a surprise, then, that Cissie herself should have become a serious football enthusiast, with an understanding of the game that surpassed most male fans. She often said that she wished she had been born a boy. ‘For years, I kicked footballs around the parks and back streets of Ashington with a bunch of lads, usually with my skirt tucked into my knickers,’ she said in her autobiography. Bobby Whitehead, who played for Newcastle and was another contemporary of Jack and Bobby’s, remembers, ‘When we played at school or in the park, there would usually be a few dads around. But there was nearly always one woman there, Cissie Charlton, who would be able to shout more loudly than most fathers. And she would travel with the school team on the bus to away games. She was so wrapped up in the game and was very knowledgeable about it.’

Cissie Charlton’s fixation with soccer might have been rare in a woman in that era, but just as odd was her husband’s total indifference to the sport, given its grip on masculine working-class culture in the north-east. Bob Charlton had absolutely no interest in football. He never went to games with his wife, never played and, in 1966, did not even watch the World Cup semi-final between England and Portugal – regarded by many as his son Bobby’s greatest-ever match – preferring to work his shift down the mine. The two sports he enjoyed were boxing and pigeon fancying. Like many miners used to back-breaking manual labour, he was a good fighter, sometimes holding his own against travelling professionals who earned their living by touring the country and setting up challenges with local men. In fact, Bob won the money to buy Cissie a wedding ring in just such a bout. Later, he would help train boxers in the area, earning the nickname ‘Boxer’. Pigeons were his other great interest. ‘I remember old Bob sitting, very quiet and still, by his loft on his allotment, where he kept his pigeons. His conversation was always limited. And he had a catapult with him. Suddenly he fired it, straight up the arse of a cat. Pigeon fanciers hate cats,’ recalls Ron Routledge, an Ashington local who went on to play League football for Sunderland. But it should not be thought that Bob had any streak of cruelty. He was actually a soft-hearted man, who felt so sorry for the pit ponies that he would regularly bring them treats. Once he even purchased one of them because he could not bear the thought of her being taken to the knacker’s yard. He was so devoted to the animal, going out at all hours of the night to see her, that Cissie thought he was having an affair.

Bob’s lack of enthusiasm for football was particularly striking in Ashington, because soccer and coalmining were the twin forces that shaped the town. By 1930, it boasted that it was ‘the biggest mining village in the world, with more than a third of its 30,000 population employed in the coal industry. And coal had a direct influence on soccer, the chief recreation of the town. The Ashington Colliery Welfare ground had no less than seven pitches, catering for three separate leagues and more than 20 local sides, many of them playing to a high standard. The upkeep of these excellent facilities was maintained by a penny a week off the miners’ pay. In addition, all the working men’s clubs had their own sides. No wonder, in view of such enthusiasm, Ashington was able to produce a stream of League football professionals, such as Joe Bell of Middlesbrough, Jim Potts, the Leeds goalkeeper, and George Prior of Sheffield Wednesday. Perhaps the most interesting case is that of the great Jimmy Adamson, captain of the Burnley championship-winning side of 1959/60 who, like both Bobby and Jack, was awarded the title of Footballer of the Year. Coincidentally, Adamson grew up in Beatrice Street, where the Charlton brothers also lived – I doubt there is any other terrace in Britain that has produced three Footballers of the Year. The eagerness for football rubbed off on the boys of Ashington, who spent most of their free time kicking a ball around in Hirst Park and then, when darkness descended, continued in the streets, their play illuminated by the overhead lamps. Such games were illegal and could result in heavy fines if the participants were caught, so lookouts were posted at each end of the street to warn of the approach of a police officer. ‘Everything in our lives was football-orientated. That’s all we were interested in,’ says Walter Lavery. ‘We were so fanatical that even when the football season was over in the summer, and the council was trying to allow the grass to grow long in Hirst Park, we would still take out a ball, flatten down a patch of grass in one corner of the ground and get a game going.’

Despite the attractions of football, pigeons, boxing and a few pints with mates, it was still a very tough life for the miners of Ashington. The pay was poor, the job insecure, the conditions dangerous. Bob Charlton worked through the 1966 World Cup semi-final not just because of his indifference towards football but also because he was worried about losing a day’s pay. In the same way, he never missed a day’s work even when seriously injured. Mike Kirkup, an Ashington local historian, a contemporary of Bobby’s and himself a former miner, gives this glimpse into the precarious existence faced by miners. ‘A miner’s cottage was tied to work at the pit. So the colliery owners could always use that as a threat. On one notorious occasion, when 13 men were killed at the Woodhorn colliery in 1916, the notices of eviction went out to the widows within just three months of this disaster. It was a pretty harsh regime.’

The actual work for the miners could hardly have been more unpleasant. Forced to toil in a dirty, dark environment more than 800 feet underground, they were so cramped that they had permanent scabs on their backs from crawling along the tunnels. Little wonder that old Bob Charlton, who started work in the mines the day after he left school at the age of just 14, once took his second son, Bobby, to the colliery and told him, ‘I don’t want you ever going down there, doing what I’ve had to do all my life to earn a living.’ But Bobby never had any intention of joining his father in the pit. ‘I was determined about that, even if I had to travel and seek my fortune elsewhere,’ he once said. What had particularly struck Bobby was the physical legacy of the job. ‘You can always tell a miner just by looking at his hands. At first glance, you might just think they were dirty, but when you looked more closely, you saw that they were full of scars, the accumulation of hundreds and hundreds of cuts made over the years.’ Similarly, Jack Charlton spent just one day underground as a 16-year-old trainee miner before handing in his notice. ‘I’ve seen it, I’ve done it, I’ve had enough. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the rest of my life, but it won’t be that,’ he told his colliery manager when he resigned his post.

Nor were there many financial rewards for a miner’s family. Bobby recalls his father going out to work every morning and checking the contents of his satchel: ‘Bait (sandwiches), bottle (water), lamp, carbide, tabs (cigarettes),’ and adding with a grin and a tap of his pockets, ‘but nae money.’ In contrast to their wealthy status today, Jack and Bobby grew up in a small house without an inside toilet or running water. The brothers, now so distant, had, as small children, to share the same bed because of the lack of space. Though Cissie provided a warm home, there were precious few luxuries. Food that we take for granted today, such as pork and chicken, was a rarity then, as Bobby once recalled. ‘It was a great celebration in the street when a pig was killed. Everyone came from all over the place and got their little share of it. I used to ask, “Why can’t we just eat it straight away?” But I was told that it had to be hung and salted, otherwise it would not keep.’

In the hardened circumstances of the time, the values of family solidarity were a vital source of support. But that is not to say that the Charltons or the Milburns were paragons of domestic virtue. One of Cissie’s grandfathers was a heavy drinker who suffered from mental instability after taking a blow from a policeman’s truncheon. When he was in one of his more savage, drunken moods, his wife was forced to flee the family home. Her own father, Tanner Milburn, was a selfish, mean, scheming rogue who would rather spend his money on gambling and alcohol than on his own family. A fly-by-night bookmaker, he also trained athletes, who were used as a means of enhancing his illegal profits. His disloyalty to his family was graphically exposed by his cynical behaviour over a major 110-yard sprint in which his own son Stan, a fine local runner, was one of the two favourites. Instead of backing his son, for whom he acted as a trainer, he struck a deal with the manager of the other favourite, whereby they agreed to share equally the £20 prize money – a vast sum in pre-war Ashington – whichever boy won. After the race, in which Stan came second, Tanner refused to give his son a penny and instead attacked him for his failure to win. Stan was so furious with his father that he threw his sprint shoes in the fire, vowing never to run again.

Cissie and Bob had their own problems. They had married just six months after they first met, at a dance in the Princess Ballroom of Ashington, and had four sons, Jack the oldest, followed by Bobby, Gordon and Tommy. There was a time when they came close to splitting up, since Cissie could find her husband intensely aggravating. ‘He embarrassed me, he annoyed me, he argued just for the sake of an argument,’ she once wrote, while Bob disliked her boasting and all the attention that she encouraged over her sons. Alan Lavelle, who went to school with the Charltons, recalls that when he was secretary of the Newbiggin working men’s club, ‘Old Bob used to come in, looking a bit down. I would say, “Bob, what’s the matter?” And he’d reply, “I just get sick of everyone asking about wor Bobby. Why can’t I just have a drink in peace?”’ In an interview with local historian Mike Kirkup, Cissie revealed how close she came to separation: ‘There was no such thing as divorce for the likes of us. If you made a mistake in your choice of man, you just stuck it out for the sake of the bairns. Me and Bob were going through a rough patch and I said to him, “I’m leaving you the minute wor Tommy is 15.” Come the day of his 15th birthday, Bob says to me, “Well, are you not leaving then?” “No,” I told him, “You’ve mellowed since then.” ‘

Bob and Cissie’s first child, Jack, was born on 8 May 1935. Reflecting her obsession with football, one of her first comments to a neighbour about her new son was, ‘Eee, the bairn’s lovely. And his feet are fine too.’ But, as a child, Jack did not just use his feet for football; he also used them to wander endlessly in the countryside around Ashington. The fields, woods and streams of Northumberland became almost a second home to him as he would walk for miles, studying wildlife, trapping small animals with his makeshift snares, and even attempting to catch fish with his bare hands before he bought his first rod. His deep attachment to rural life was formed in those long, childhood journeys. ‘I loved that landscape and I love it to this day. I have to go into cities and crowds as part of my job, but I loathe it,’ he said in 1994. Bill Merryweather, a childhood friend of Jack’s, gave me this memory: ‘He always had to be outdoors, picking up anything from mushrooms to fish. Sometimes the two of us would go out poaching at five in the morning. If it went well, we would end up with two or three rabbits. And he’s never changed from when he was a little lad. He’s still at his happiest when he’s out shooting and fishing.’

Jack developed his favourite haunts, such as a local swamp called the Sandy Desert. In winter this was a vast, festering bog. But in summer, when it had dried out, it became a large, dusty hollow, riven with cracks. Used as a rubbish dump, it always attracted a large number of rats and Jack would spend hours shooting at them with his catapult. When he was older and had acquired the right equipment, Jack would regularly spend his nights fishing off the coast at Newbiggin, a seaside village just three miles from Ashington. Jackie Lothian remembers an incident which illustrates both Jack’s bravery and his devotion to fishing. ‘When we were about 13, Jack would often cycle over to my home at Newbiggin, have a game of cards and some supper, and then go out fishing. One night Jack cast his line, and somehow the hook went right into his thumb. Another lad and I tried to get it out but couldn’t, because the sky was pitch black. Then Jack breezily said, “I’ll have to go off to hospital, so look after my things.” Off he cycled over to Ashington hospital, with the hook still in his thumb. He got it out, had the wound stitched up, and then, that very night, he cycled back and carried on fishing with us.’ Jackie Lothian says that they could be far more reckless as children than would be tolerated today. ‘I cannot believe the things we used to get up to. As a dare, for instance, we would get on the swings at Hirst Park, and push as hard as we could until we could complete a full circle, right over the top through 360 degrees. We also used to try and catch minnows in Bothal Woods, where there was a big waterfall. I suppose, looking back, it was very dangerous but we just never used to think about it.’

In such a climate, it was inevitable that accidents did happen. Once Jack and his friends were playing a chasing game at the top of an old disused windmill, when one of the boys fell out of a window on the third floor and broke his arm. Another boy broke his leg in a race through a field with Jack, when he tripped over a wire fence and was thrown through the air before landing heavily on his back. Far more serious, though, was the horrific night when Jack returned home covered in blood. Jack explained to his mother that he and his friends had been playing in a railway cutting, placing coins on the line. Tragically one of them had been hit by a train and killed. The rest of the gang had dragged the body to the nearest roadway, where they had just left it. Nothing more happened and the event gradually faded from Jack’s memory. Today, such an incident would almost certainly involve the police and social services.

Jack Charlton has always been known as a rebel, an individualist, no great respecter of either authority or convention. And so it was in his childhood. At the age of just two, he caused some embarrassment to his family by wandering out of the house, dressed only in his nappy, to join a passing funeral procession. The sight of Jack, without any trousers, toddling proudly behind the Salvation Army band, has become part of Ashington legend. ‘I was forever getting into scrapes,’ Jack admits. Once a baker drove from Ashington to Gosforth and, when he arrived, he was surprised to find young Jack stowed away in the back of his van. On another occasion, he stole a cauliflower from a neighbour’s back garden. Then he had the cheek to walk round to the front and try and sell it back to him. ‘As a schoolboy, like most of us, he was a bit of a rascal, stealing from orchards, pinching vegetables. He was a real Jack the lad,’ says Bobby Whitehead.

‘From the time he could walk, Jack was full of devilment. I would often say to myself, “God give me strength.” He was a livewire,’ wrote Cissie in her autobiography. The spirit of rebellion applied in the classroom as well as the countryside. Jackie Lothian recalls: ‘He was certainly not frightened of anyone at school. The teachers were on top of you all the time and there was no answering back – except from Jack, of course. He was a likeable lad, but he would put you in your place if he didn’t like what you said. He could have been more successful at school if he had put his mind to it, and I remember he was interested in history, especially the local history of the area. But he did not really care about bookwork; he wanted to be away in the fields all the time.’ One of Jack’s school reports stated: ‘Jack would do better at school if he kept his mind on his work instead of looking out the window all the time.’

Jack was in trouble for much more than daydreaming one day, after he shot another pupil, Bernadette Reed. With typical impetuosity, Jack had taken it into his mind to bring his father’s rifle – used for game shooting – into school. Having fired the gun towards a nearby church, he then watched as the bullet hit a fence and ricocheted into the face of the unfortunate young Bernadette, who suffered a grazed eye. Jack was given a severe reprimand by his headmaster and was then frogmarched by Cissie to apologize to Bernadette’s father. Yet there was a surprising response at the Reed household.

‘This is the lad who shot your daughter,’ said Cissie when she and Jack turned up on the Reeds’ doorstep.

‘So you’re interested in guns, son?’

‘Well, er, yes,’ said Jack.

‘So am I. Come inside and I’ll show you what I’ve got.’

Predictably, the man who became a tough defender with Leeds was also a good boxer in his youth, winning both official bouts in the school gym and unofficial ones in the schoolyard. In a Daily Telegraph interview in 1994, he recalled: ‘I was the best fighter in the street for my age and there was a lad from the next street who was the best fighter in his. We called him “Skinny” Harmer. When I went to school at five, he was in the same class as me and I thought a fight was imminent. But we never, ever fought. We avoided each other in case we got beat.’ In another echo of the adult Jack Charlton, who made a fortune in his shrewd handling of money, particularly during his spell as Ireland manager, the young Jack had a host of money-making schemes. These included: a paper round organized like a military operation; deliveries for a nearby grocery store; and the collection – from local collieries – of unused timber, which he then chopped up and sold for firewood.

But perhaps the most interesting parallel with today is that, as young brothers, Bobby and Jack did not get on with each other. Some of their contemporaries claim that this was because of the age difference between them. Bobby Charlton was born on 10 October 1937, two-and-a-half years after Jack’s arrival. ‘When you’re young, the gap in years tends to count much more,’ says Walter Lavery, ‘so Bobby and Jack did not really mix much. They had different pursuits and different friends.’ Bobby also takes this view. ‘Though it appears now we are the same age, he’s actually a good deal older than me, so we just did not spend a lot of time together when we were growing up,’ he said in 1968.

The reality, however, was down more to a clash of temperaments. Jack was the adventurer, ever eager to plough his own furrow, while Bobby was far keener to stay at home reading or playing football. Jack knew that his younger brother never shared his interest in the countryside, so he hated to bring Bobby along on his wanderings – and he only did so at the instruction of his mother. What particularly annoyed him was when the infant Bobby messed himself or demanded to be taken home when he grew bored or tired. As Cissie wrote, ‘Jack wanted to be off on his own, not nurse-maiding someone who was regarded as the family’s fair-haired favourite. If I still insisted and made Jack take Bobby with him, he often gave Bobby a swift clout before they got very far and that usually sent him running home in tears, while Jack went on his own sweet way himself.’

With his usual diplomacy, Bobby has claimed that he enjoyed these trips, speaking fondly of his bike rides into the woods to go bird-nesting with Jack or the times they went to the ‘lovely coast’ of Newbiggin to pick up coal that had been washed ashore from the mines which ran under the sea. But he has also admitted: ‘Like most elder brothers, Jack regarded me as a pest when we were kids, especially when I’d plead to go with him to pick potatoes or on fishing trips. “He’s not coming,” Jack would say defiantly. “You take him,” my mother would reply. From then on it would be nothing but moans, and there are people who will suggest that he’s never stopped moaning. He never tried to conceal his darker moods and once his mind was made up, nothing would alter it.’ Jack’s memory is similar: ‘Bobby was more of a mother’s boy. He was never a bloke to get out into the country and he still isn’t. I took him fishing a couple of times but he was no good. I had to keep changing worms for him. He’d wave to me from 100 yards down the river, and I’d have to trudge all the way back and change the bait, because he just hadn’t got a clue.’ On another occasion, Bobby and Jack were playing in separate matches at the Hirst Miners’ Welfare ground. Towards the final whistle of his game, Jack was penalized for committing a foul in his own box. Bobby got to hear of the incident, and when Jack arrived home, Bobby teased him about it. ‘Fancy giving away a penalty like that,’ said Bobby, sitting on the edge of a chair in the living room. Without breaking his stride, Jack gave Bobby an almighty smack on the back of his head, sending his younger brother crashing to the ground. ‘Jack got thumped for that, but it wasn’t about to change him,’ recalled Bobby.

For all his sense of independence, there is no doubt that Jack deeply resented the apparent bias of his mother towards Bobby. ‘She never said she was proud of me,’ admitted Jack in 1996. ‘I was driven to try and please her. Sometimes, I would go down to the dog track and spend hours hunting through mountains of rubbish, searching for old glasses they’d thrown out. When I found some that were not too badly chipped, I’d clean them and take them home as presents for her. She would always thank me, but I suspect she then threw them away. I always knew that I was not her favourite.’

Unlike the outgoing, noisy Jack, Bobby was very shy as a child, so shy that when strangers came to the house he would hide behind his mother or run upstairs to the bedroom. Rob Storey, who grew up with them both, told me: ‘Jack wouldn’t stand for anything. You couldn’t put much on him. I don’t mean that he had an aggressive nature but if someone confronted him, he could certainly look after himself. On the other hand Bobby was much more serious, more withdrawn than Jack. He would keep himself to himself, whereas Jack would just say what he thought. In that respect, they were total opposites. Jack always seemed to be striving for what he wanted, whereas things seemed to come more easily for Bobby. Jack was a determined lad, much more determined than Bobby seemed to be.’ They were also physically very different, even when they were children. In a BBC radio interview in 1989, Cissie Charlton said: ‘When Jack was born, his granny would take him around the town to let everyone see how long he was. He was tall even when he was born. Bobby was stumpy, thickset, different altogether. They were two different people.’

Bobby was more concerned about his appearance than Jack, sometimes even wearing a tie at home, something Jack would never willingly have done. Jackie Lothian recalls: ‘Bobby was smart, polite, diplomatic; he knew how to address people properly. He was always very tidy, unlike Jack who was a scruffy bairn.’ Bobby hated being in trouble whether at school or with his parents. When he called his brothers for tea, they thought it amusing to run away, which prompted him to anger. ‘Why do you always have to be so stubborn?’ he would ask of them. He was never in playground fights with other boys, though, like both Jack and his father, he was an excellent boxer, once winning a youth competition staged in his neighbourhood.

Yet Bobby did have his playful side. He could do good impersonations, and sometimes surprised his brothers by covering himself in a sheet and pretending to be a ghost, a spectacle that became known in the Charlton household as ‘wor kid’s mad half-hour’. Using a pair of his father’s rolled up socks, he played football in the sitting room with his brother. With his greater height, Jack would usually win the aerial contest, though Bobby was almost unbeatable on the floor. Once he’d put it on the ground he’d murder me. Murder me! That’s why I like to see the ball in the air to this day,’ says Jack. Bobby was never bashful at these moments. While he was kicking the socks around, he would take his mother’s iron and use the plug as a fake microphone to provide a running commentary on the match, putting himself in the role of the great soccer stars of the time: ‘Mortensen knocks it out to Stanley Matthews. Matthews goes down the line, crosses and it’s there by Lawton. A magnificent goal,’ would be a typical passage of play in the Charlton home.

Like many reserved boys, Bobby loved to retreat into his own fantasy world of cartoon heroes and exotic fables. He adored films such as Ali Baba and Robin Hood, while he explained in a radio interview in 2001 that his favourite comic character was ‘Morgan the Mighty, a great big, strong, blond Englishman trapped on an island. The real baddies used to send in opponents for him to fight. And the theme of the story was how he ended up being the greatest fighter in the world.’ It does not take a great leap of imagination to see how Bobby, a strong, fair-haired young Englishman, might aspire to such a role.

Football was undoubtedly the greatest form of escape for Bobby, not just from the smoky drabness of Ashington, but also from a future life trapped underground. To a much greater extent than his elder brother, he fell in love with the game in his childhood. ‘From his earliest age, he was football mad,’ said his mother. When his uncles visited Ashington on a Sunday, they took Bobby out in the street or down to the beach at Newbiggin to show off his skills. Then they came home and discussed League football. ‘I listened to them talking about the matches they had played on Saturday and I heard with awe names like Frank Swift and Wilf Mannion. Particularly at that age – and I was only six – there was an unforgettable magic about it. I suppose it was then that the seed was sown in my mind that I would never be anything else but a footballer, if I was good enough,’ Bobby wrote in 1967 in his book Forward for England.

Bobby loved everything about football. He spent hours reading his soccer books, his favourite being Stanley Matthews’ Football Album. He pored over results in the back of newspapers, developing such an affection for the sports pages that he decided, if he did not make it as a footballer, he would become a football journalist, ‘that would be the next best thing, because journalists got into matches for free,’ he said. He always had some sort of ball at his feet. If he went to the cinema, he would bring a ball with him and kick it along the gutter. Similarly, he would take one if his mother sent him on an errand to the shops. Through his fascination with soccer, he formed a powerful bond with his grandfather, old ‘Tanner’ Milburn. Though Tanner was a hard, stubborn man, distrusted by many within the family, he doted on Bobby, recognizing the boy’s exceptional ability. In return, young Bobby idolized Tanner.

On many evenings during the war, the two of them went down to the local park, where Tanner still held training sessions for sprinters. Bobby got a rubdown just like the adults, his grandfather telling him, ‘You’ll never be fast unless your muscles are loose.’ Bobby then raced against the professionals in the 110 yards, having been given a 70-yard start. If Bobby won, his grandfather would be delighted, saying ‘Well done, Bobby lad, you’ll be running against a whippet yet.’ During his career, Bobby’s electric pace was one of his greatest assets – George Best, a lightning-quick player himself, says that Bobby was the only man who could beat him in sprints during training at Manchester United.

Towards the end of his life, Tanner’s eyesight was failing, so on Saturday evenings he would send Bobby to buy the local football paper and then get him to read out all the scores. ‘Even though he was dying, the most important thing was the football results,’ remembers Bobby. It was an attitude that the grandson inherited. ‘Football is my life. I eat, sleep and drink the game. When I wake up every day, I think of who we’re playing in the next match. I think of nothing else, apart from my family. I wish I could play until I was 70,’ said Bobby in an ITV documentary made when he was 30. The death of his grandfather hit him hard, for Bobby was a sensitive man who could be deeply affected by loss – as he was to show over Munich. ‘When he died, I felt as though I’d lost my best friend and there was a gap in my life which was not filled for a long time, even though I was young,’ wrote Bobby later.

Bobby was also a keen spectator. When he and Jack were babies, Cissie took them along in the pram to Ashington FC, and they would leap up at the roar of the crowd after a goal was scored. Later, they were sometimes allowed to work as ball boys at the club. Historian Mike Kirkup recalls: ‘Their uncle Stan was playing for Ashington and he let them visit him in the dressing room or bring out the water magic sponge for the trainer. During the play, they sat behind the goals, which they thought was absolutely marvellous,’ In the Charltons’ youth, though Ashington FC had dropped down from the Third Division North into the North-Eastern League, there were still some big matches at the club. Stan Mortensen, the Blackpool and England striker, played at Ashington during the war, while in an FA Cup tie in 1950 against Rochdale, 12,000 people crammed into the ground, with some of them having to sit on the roof.

It has been claimed that Bobby, as a child, was a Sunderland supporter. In her autobiography Cissie said that Bobby’s ambition was to play for the club, writing, ‘He was a great admirer of Len Shackleton’s team and would have jumped at the chance to join it.’ But this view is disputed by those who grew up with Bobby. Ron Routledge, the schoolmate who went on to play for Sunderland, told me, ‘I don’t know where all this business about Bobby and Sunderland comes from. It’s just not true. Never once was he involved with Sunderland. We all followed Newcastle and I went with Bobby to most of the home games at St James’ Park. I suppose some people might have thought that Bobby modelled himself on Len Shackleton, the Sunderland striker – for they had the same body swerve – but he didn’t. Bobby was always just Bobby.’

Jack also remembers going to Newcastle with Bobby. ‘Me and our kid would go to Newcastle to see Jackie Milburn. My father put us on the bus, and we’d get off at the Haymarket and go for something to eat at the British Home restaurant. Then we’d go and queue at St James’ Park. We’d always leave it to the last minute so that we could get passed over everybody’s heads in the crowd, ending up right at the front.’ As usual, the difference surfaced between the brothers, for Jack was far more partisan in his support of Newcastle. He once told Mike Kirkup, ‘I’ve always followed Newcastle United. To this day I’m a Newcastle fan and I was brought up black and white eyed. I don’t think you ever change. Even when I was a player, the first results I looked for were those of Newcastle. When you’re a Newcastle fan as a boy, you’re a fan for life.’ Indeed, one writer told me that he was recently in Jack’s home during a Newcastle game which was being shown live on Sky TV. Just before the kick-off, Jack went down on his knees in front of the television screen in a mock act of worship to his beloved Magpies. Yet Bobby never felt the same attraction to Newcastle. ‘I don’t remember him ever being a great Newcastle supporter,’ says Bobby’s schoolfriend Evan Martin, who went with him a few times to St James’. Bobby himself says that after Manchester United won the FA Cup Final in 1948, they became his favourite team, though he always liked to watch good football wherever it was played.

And no-one played it better than Bobby Charlton. His natural talent was so enormous that anyone who saw him, even as a child, knew that he was destined to become a professional footballer. Ashington locals still speak with awe about the sight of the young Bobby, sailing past opponents twice his age and then producing a deadly shot from outside the box. Walter Lavery remembers: ‘He stood out like a beacon. He was different, far above the rest of the young players, believe me. He was as near a genius as you could get. He was a great dribbler, with a real sense of style, even when he was young. He could run fast with the ball. He had techniques that the rest of us lads did not even realize existed until we went to professional clubs six years later. That gave him this special aura. Now don’t get me wrong, he was a good mixer with the other lads. But, for all that he was in your company, you always had a sense that his mind was elsewhere, thinking about football. He knew that, with his talent, he was going to get away. And he was so passionate, competitive. I remember going to watch a school game one Saturday morning, and I caught sight of Bobby arguing with the referee.

“What’s the matter over there?” I asked a spectator.

“It’s young Chuckie. His team is winning seven-nowt and yet he’s been arguing with the ref for the last five minutes that they should have been granted another goal.”

That was so like Bobby. He wanted to win all the time.’

Rob Storey agrees. ‘Bobby was always small for his age and went by the name of “Little Bobby”. Maybe it was because of the low centre of gravity that he could control the ball so well. When we were playing in Hirst Park, everyone always wanted him in their team, because he was so much better than the rest of us, even though he was younger than most.’ Evan Martin, who later went to grammar school with Bobby, recalls seeing him in a junior match: ‘Bobby was only seven years old then, but already he was running rings round lads who were 11. He had terrific speed, one-touch skills and lovely balance. My father, who was a football fanatic and was also watching, turned to me and said, “Watch that kid Charlton. He’ll make a name for himself.’”

Bobby’s talent was in direct contrast to Jack, who failed to shine amongst his contemporaries, as Rob Storey remembers: ‘In all honesty, he was little better than me. Physically, he stood out a mile because of his height and long neck, but, when it came to football skills, though he was a solid full-back, he was so inferior to Bobby that it was an embarrassment.’ Jackie Lothian says their destinies could not have looked more different. ‘We all knew that Bobby would be a footballer, but we never thought Jack would be one. He was no better than anyone else. You see, he had no motivation. The thought of a career in the game had never entered his mind.’

Jack had the same character on the field as he was to show at Leeds, aggressive, uncompromising. But rather than playing centre-half, he was generally a full-back in his early games. And Bobby Whitehead says that this was his biggest problem. ‘Being tall, he was good in the air but, at left-back, I think he was out of position. I kept him out of our school team for a few games when I was 14 and he was 15. But when we had a Cup match, our usual centre-half was off sick, so Jack moved in there. My father, who was watching, said afterwards, “That’s the lad’s position. He had a brilliant game.’”

Perhaps the greatest myth about the Charlton upbringing in football is that Cissie taught Bobby how to play football. Folklore has it that, to quote Bobby, ‘Being a Milburn with football coursing deep in her veins, she took me out on the slag heaps of Ashington and showed me everything from selling a dummy to scoring from 50 yards.’ But this tale is untrue. For Bobby was a totally instinctive footballer, with a natural sense of how to play. Moreover, though Cissie provided exactly the right environment for her football-crazy son, she only once gave him direct, personal coaching. This happened when he was already 15, was at Manchester United and had played for the England Schoolboys. After one of these schoolboy internationals, Cissie had been talking to the chairman of the selectors, who said that Bobby’s slowness on the turn was a serious weakness. When she returned to Ashington with Bobby, she decided to give him some specialized training. Adopting the methods that her own father, Tanner, had used when coaching sprinters, she took Bobby to Hirst Park early in the morning and had him running backwards and forwards until his speed on the turn gradually increased. ‘I suppose that to a stranger it may have looked odd to see a 15 year old training like that with his mother, but this was Ashington and everyone knew I was football mad,’ she said.

Cissie’s own brothers were a bigger influence on Bobby, particularly his Uncle George, who was at Chesterfield. In his summer holidays, Bobby went down to the club and joined in the training with the professionals. The hardened footballers were kind to him, allowing him to run all over the field and even to take penalties against goalkeeper Ray Middleton. After training, they took him to lunch or to the dog track or the golf club. If they went to the pub, Bobby sat outside with a tonic water. What really struck Bobby was the amount of swearing amongst the players. One incident particularly stood out in his memory, when a player who had been dropped had a ferocious, expletive-filled row with the manager. It brought home to Bobby, sitting quietly in the corner of the dressing room, the realities of life as a professional footballer.

In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph in 1973, Bobby spoke about the influence of Cissie’s family and his youthful approach as footballer. ‘My uncles made a big impression on me. They used to tell me I had a terrific backheel. That probably does not sound much now, but then, there was no-one doing it much, not even in the League. The game just came naturally to me. It surprised me when other boys couldn’t kick or fell over. Why hadn’t they the same balance? I thought they were unusual, rather than me. From watching as a kid and kicking around in the street, my philosophy of the game was always as an out-and-out forward. I never put my foot in – getting the ball was other players’ work.’

It was an outlook that in later years would delight millions of fans – and enrage some of his closest colleagues.