Stuart Hall - A Citeh fan on Liverpool

IN the Sky age, when journalists can seemingly only describe a key moment in a football match as ‘massive,’ Stuart Hall’s witty, idiosyncratic musings for 5 Live every Saturday afternoon are unsullied and original.
 A commentator on Match of the Day during the late Sixties, he was the first host of the BBC’s A Question of Sport when it was a northern, regional gameshow. But it was in the Seventies and Eighties when he enjoyed a nationwide regard as the presenter of the curious, It’s a Knockout. He also later fronted the European equivalent, Jeux Sans Frontières.

 Football, though, has remained Hall’s passion. A radio listener can tell by the pleasure in his voice during a match. He is a natural raconteur, capable of the unexpected.

 Last season, before interviewing Mick McCarthy after a draw against Everton, he introduced the Wolves boss as a ‘Proud Yorkist…strong in th’arm: weak in th’head.’ Also at Goodison Park, he once referred to Yakubu as ‘the bludgeon.’

 “I bumped into Mick last week and he told me in that unmistakable Yorkshire accent, ‘Errr I ‘ad last laugh,’” Hall says wheezing with a contagious laughter. “I’d asked him in that interview who his tailor was because he looked surprisingly smart. ‘’Harvey Nicks,’ he told me. Apparently they sent him a case of champagne for mentioning their name on air. I was delighted for him because I meant my observation with pure affection.

 “I like to have a certain spice and humour in my interviews. When I first met Senor Benitez at Anfield in 2004, I started speaking to him in Spanish. ‘Éste es su hogar,’ I said (this is your home). Then I tried to fool him with Italian…but his Italian is very good.”

 A Manchester City fan, Hall used to refer to Maine Road as the Theatre of Base Comedy. Yet through work, he formed a deep affection for Liverpool and naturally, Bill Shankly.

 “He was a great friend and I was always made welcome in the bootroom,” Hall insists. “They were magnificent days of Ronnie Moran, Tom Saunders, Reuben Bennett and Joe Fagan. I remember Joe as a player as well as Bob and Ronnie– what a tough tackling hairy arsed full back he was. They all had this great philosophy of understanding the people they were working with.

 “Liverpool was a family club yet the bootroom was open to VIP’s like me and closed off to Don Revie and Brian Clough. It was simply a wonderful time when the fans were directly associated with the club – they were the lifeblood and the desire to maintain their happiness kept Bill going. He used to regale me with great stories about his nieces and nephews – family. He was a beautiful man.”

 Hall reported for the BBC when Liverpool won the FA Cup for the first time in 1965 against Leeds.

 “We came back to St Georges Hall and a multitude of people were there. There must have been a million milling around – the noise was deafening. Then Bill appeared on the balcony and instantly there was silence. There wasn’t a sound. Crying children shut up and invalids who were moaning kept quiet because everybody wanted to listen to the great man.

 “Bill walked up to the edge of the balcony, raised his arms slightly and said, ‘It’s great to ’ave won the cup.’  He looked at me. I looked at him. And that was it. That was his speech. The words of a leader.”

 Hall was also there at Melwood on the day Kevin Keegan signed for the club.

 “I was sitting, talking to Bill and I looked over his shoulder. I said to him, ‘Bill…there’s a young man over there with wavy black hair…to me he looks like a player but I don’t recognise him. Who is he?’

 “Bill leans over and whispers to me in that distinctive Ayrshire accent, ‘I’ve just signed the boy…name’s Keegan. Cost me £30,000 from Scunthorpe. He’s fast and fleet…could catch pigeons. But he has no brains.’

 “That was Keegan’s inaugural training session as a Liverpool player. He was doing marvelous things with the ball.”

 When Shankly surprised everyone by resigning as Liverpool manager in 1973, he was replaced by Bob Paisley – another friend of Hall’s.

 “Bob was just a lad from the north east and in my opinion, his management style was just the best that has ever been. He could admonish players or put his arm around them. It was legendary that Shankly never used to talk to people who were injured…you were excommunicated if you were ill. One season, he only used 13 players. Bob was different – he was a very warm man and had great qualities and I loved him for that.”

 Hall’s relationship with Liverpool meant that in the 1977 European Cup Final, he was invited onto the bench in Rome to watch the game against Borussia Moenchengladbach.

 “It was one of the greatest moments of my life – an escapade never to be forgotten,” he remembers. “Nobody has filmed in a European Cup final dressing room before or since. It was a one off and entirely down to Bob Paisley and Peter Robinson. We were denied access to the Olympic Stadium by the local broadcaster, they wouldn't even give us tickets, so Bob chucked me a No 14 shirt and told me to sit beside him on the bench as a substitute. Can you imagine the privilege? It was the greatest match I've ever seen. The excitement was incredible. Before the game, the players were drumming their boots on the dressing-room floor. It was like the climax to Tristan and Isolde."

 Hall says that the Liverpool players made his job easy.

  “They were all completely approachable. The spirit of ’77 sums it up. They carried all of my gear into the Olympic Stadium. It wasn’t an imposition. They were all happy that we were beating the Italians. So Phil Neal, Crazy Horse, Kevin Keegan and Steve Heighway were all lovely human beings.

 “Footballers at that time weren’t earning as much money as they are now. There was no real big money then. Today, if you put a guy on £150k a week, you’ve elevated him into something entirely different from the animal he would have been 30 years ago.”

 Graeme Souness was a player Hall deeply admired.

 “Ah, the mighty Caesar. I always held up my right hand when I met Graeme. For the glory and the people of Rome.” Hall says, clearly in his element. “He was the master of the Coliseum – which Anfield was. A lovely chap as well but I loved to see him play. He ruled the pitch with those billiard table legs and chest like an oak barrel.

 “Even today, when he speaks on television, whatever he says – I’m very attentive. He knows the game. He feels like I do. He loves the game of football and knows the way it should be played.

 “I have formulated the view that Jose Mourinho has taken football back into the dark ages. Amongst all those sycophants who appeared on Sky during the Champions League Final, Souness stood out and said, ‘If everybody plays like Mourinho, the game would be dead.’ You’ve got to have flair - you’ve got to have style. But in that game between Internazionale and Bayern Munich, I got very depressed. To have Samuel Eto’o – the finest African centre forward of all time – playing as right back, it saddened me. He only entered the Munich half on two occasions. The average fan doesn’t care how the team wins. But the do at Real Madrid. Mourinho will find that out quickly.”

 Hall thinks the art of sports reporting has changed immeasurably over the last 20 years.

 “The spoken word isn’t very important anymore,” he says. “People have television and usually, they just want to know the score and the attendance and that’s just about it. Then you get the analysis, which bores me, stiff. I prefer somebody telling you exactly what he thinks of the match.

 “In days gone by, there were some wonderful reporters who practically ran football. They’d attend the match and give you their opinion and it carried a lot of weight because football wasn’t as accessible as it is now. There was Henry Rose of the Express – like a theatre critic of New York. He would judge the destiny of a player, a manager or a club like a critic in the Big Apple would with a play or a musical. If Henry Rose said a team was rubbish, then the people would believe it.”
 Hall, clearly a one off, celebrated his 80^th birthday on Christmas Day last year.

 “I’ve always done my own thing,” he reflects. “If I copy somebody else’s style, what’s the point in me having a go in the first place? I am an individual with my own ideas about the game and life, so why shouldn’t I express them? I say the same to every young person who comes to me today. ‘How do I set about it?’ I say, ‘Just be yourself – don’t write for any audience – form the words in your own brain.

 “Say everything with conviction.”