Jimmy Greaves , livre ebook

Pitch Publishing Ltd - Norman Giller

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209 pages

English

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Jimmy Greaves: The One and Only is the sensational and official biography of arguably the greatest British goalscorer of all time, authorised by Jimmy's widow, Irene, and told by his friend of 64 years, Norman Giller. This brutally honest 'warts 'n' all' account covers the many highs and lows of Jimmy's extraordinary triple career as great footballer, master TV raconteur and then stage comedian, interrupted by six years of alcoholism. Jimmy and Irene lost their four-month-old son to pneumonia when they were barely out of their teens, and Norman examines how this tragedy set the tone for Jimmy's life. A parade of legends - Sir Geoff Hurst, Sir Bobby Charlton, Denis Law and Harry Redknapp among them - give personal glimpses of Greaves, and Norman, who delivered the eulogy at Jimmy's funeral, reveals stories of him that will surprise and shock his army of admirers. How did missing the 1966 World Cup Final really affect him? Was he ever drunk on the pitch? Who were his favourite players, and what did he consider his greatest goal?

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Publié par	Pitch Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	02 mai 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781801503662
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2022
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Norman Giller, 2022
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright.
Any oversight will be rectified in future editions at the earliest opportunity by the publisher.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781801503655
eBook ISBN 9781801503662
---
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Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction by Irene Greaves
Kick Off: Starting at the end
1. A rare diamond of a goal
2. Getting sober out of our minds
3. Bombs, footballs, schools and scouts
4. Chelsea, the All the Best club
5. England and the Haynes partnership
6. Tragedy and then the Italian Job
7. The Glory Glory Years
8. Drinking for England
9. Bobby Moore on tape
10. The G-Men on the road to Wembley
11. The 1970 World Cup Rally adventure
12. Reminiscing with the Real Mackay
13. Hammered with the Hammers
14. Rising with the Sun
15. The TV-am Soap Opera
16. Saint and Greavsie
17. Safe as the Banks of England
18. The Cloughie connection
19. Stand and Deliver
20. Best of the Best
21. The 50-year milestone
22. The final years
23. Quote, unquote The tributes
24. The Great Entertainer
Extra-time: The Jimmy Greaves Facts and Stats File
Photos
In loving memory of the one and only Jimmy Greaves

Acknowledgements
MY HEARTFELT thanks to Irene Greaves for encouraging me to write this authorised biography of her late husband, national treasure and best friend Jimmy, on the understanding that it s not treacle and tells the truth about a wonderful but complex man.
Irene has generously lent her name to a book for the first time because she wants to help paint an accurate picture of a legend of a man, warts n all. As I knew Jim as long as Irene, over 64 years, I feel justified in claiming the book as the definitive biography of The Great Entertainer.
We have chosen for our publication date the 60th anniversary of Jimmy s memorable, magical goal in the 1962 FA Cup final for Tottenham against Burnley at Wembley on 5 May 1962, and hope it s a worthy Diamond Jubilee tribute to The Master.
As with any book of mine with a Spurs theme, I give a share of any profits to the Tottenham Tribute Trust, who quietly do a great job in helping our old heroes as they pay the price for the efforts they made entertaining us in the summertime of their lives and now suffering in the winter of their discontent.
The Trust and Tottenham Hotspur were among many that did their best to help Jim in his difficult final years, says Irene, and I would like to thank them and all the hundreds of people who contacted me and our family with sympathetic messages. In particular I would like you to mention family friends Doc Doherty and Jimmy s faithful van driver, Big Andy Keen and our relay of carers and hospital staff who did their best to make Jim s last years as comfortable and pain-free as possible. Jim was always surrounded with love.
Running through the book are exclusive head-to-head interviews I organised for Jimmy with his good friends Johnny Haynes, Dave Mackay, Gordon Banks, George Best, Brian Clough and Bobby Moore, and I remember each of them with reverence, respect and affection. I acknowledge The Sun, Sunday Express , Robson Books, Arthur Barker and Weidenfeld Nicolson, who originally published the words.
There are repeat articles from previous publications of mine, because I cannot rewrite history and in each case Jimmy and I jointly held the copyright. Tottenham Hotspur claim that all historical facts are their intellectual property, and I (begrudgingly) accept that assertion.
I nod gratefully in the direction of the queue of writers who followed in my ghostly footsteps as Jimmy s Boswell, including skilled wordsmiths Martin Samuel, Neil Custis, Dave Kidd, Mark Irwin, Joe Steeples, Bob Patience, Les Scott, and his 2018 biographer David Tossell. I also called on the wisdom of brilliant young film-maker Thomas Boswell - yes, a modern-day Boswell - who kindly included my recollections in his stunning Greavsie documentary for BTSport. Highly recommended.
Terry Baker, his agent, manager and friend at the back end of his career, was also a mine of information and worked tirelessly to raise funds to help ease the pressure on Jim and the Greaves family.
Thanks to omniscient Tottenham disciple David Guthrie for his fact-checking, to No 1 son, Michael, for his in-depth knowledge, and gratitude - for their support and encouragement - to Spurs Odyssey webmaster Paul H. Smith and Michael Berry, founder of the leading football retro magazine BackPass .
For club information I have over the years dipped into the archives of statisticians Albert Sewell (Chelsea), Les Yates, Andy Porter, John Fennelly (Tottenham), Jack and John Helliar (West Ham), all of them far more knowledgeable than me, and I m glad to say the two Johns are still with us.
Thanks to the Ford Motor Company for permission to reprint passages from the article from their 1970s World Cup Rally magazine and to Central TV, TVam and LWT for allowing me to use photos of Jim while involved in their programmes.
Bowing the knee, relatively speaking, to brother and sister Paul and Jane Camillin of Pitch Publishing for their positive and productive work in surreal times, Duncan Olner for making me suitably jacketed, Alex Daley for the promotion push; also diligent editor Richard Fletcher and skilled lay-out artist Graham Hales.
Across the years Irene and I have been furnished with photographs by late, great Fleet Street cameramen Monty Fresco, his nephew Monte Fresco, Norman Speedy Quicke and Bob Stiggins, and it is mainly their work that features in the picture sections. Best efforts have been made to clear all copyrights and Irene and I claim rights to those photographs given to us as gifts.
Thanks to all Jimmy s former team-mates and television colleagues, who willingly shared their memories. I just hope I have done the great man justice.
Thanks most of all to YOU for buying the book and keeping alive the memory of the one and only Jimmy Greaves.
It s a funny old game
Irene and her Jim during good times, 1990
Mr and Mrs Greaves the second time around, two years after Jim s violent stroke in 2015
INTRODUCTION By Irene Greaves
Jim would want this to be warts n all
THIS IS the one and only time I have put my name to a book on my Jim, and I have only agreed to it because I want this to be the story everybody reads about my best mate knowing they are reading the truth. I have trusted Jimmy s close friend Norman Giller to describe his great adventure, warts n all. There has rarely been a life to match it.
So many things written about Jim came from people who did not really know him. He was a wonderful yet complex man, and he would have hated anybody giving him the treacle treatment. We were together for 63 years, the love of each other s lives, and it was a rollercoaster like no other.
For every mountain climbed and bridge crossed, there was a fall waiting at the other side. Jim knew the highs, but there were plenty of lows to balance and often wreck the good times. Only Jim and I know what he went through in those last torturous six years after his violent stroke. It was agonising to see him reduced to an almost mute invalid, confined to a wheelchair and unable to show off what was an incredible, matchless wit. This was the man who during our 63 years of on-off-on marriage often had me crying with either laughter or exasperation and, finally, heartbreak. One thing s for sure: life with Jim was never, ever dull.
Older readers will remember there used to be a popular series on the wireless called Mrs Dale s Diary , in which she was constantly saying, I m worried about Jim [her husband]. It became a catchphrase in the Greaves household, sometimes for a laugh but too often for real.
In those dark days following the stroke, he often asked me to help him end it all and, to be honest, it was a relief and a release when he finally passed in 2021, thankfully in his own bed and not in a hospital surrounded by strangers. He was a loving dad, grandad, great grandad, brother, uncle and my best pal, but after that savage stroke he gradually lost the will to live.
There were - years earlier - other horrible days when he lost himself in the bottle. He became a stranger to everybody, nothing resembling the Jim I had loved since we were teenage sweethearts, both with an East London background and devoted to each other. I divorced him to try to bring him to his senses, and within a few months of fearing he was losing the family he loved so much, he started a remarkable recovery and won his way back into our lives.
Somehow, he picked himself up when all who knew him had written him off as a washed-up former football player, and the way he reinvented himself as a major television and stage performer was beyond belief. Norman Giller was very close to him during that amazing transition period, and when describing it in this book kindly gives me most of the credit for pulling Jim through his crisis.
I was certainly there to encourage and praise him and, when necessary, be his honest critic, but Jim did it all on his own, teaching himself the art of broadcasting and how to turn the camera into a friend. I know from