Brian of the Reds come up with a cracking Reade

Jul 2 2008 by Mike Chapple, Liverpool Daily Post

FORMER Liverpool Daily Post journalist Brian Reade’s book 43 Years With The Same Bird: A Liverpudlian Love Affair is already top of the Amazon mail order bestsellers list – and it is not even published until this Friday, July 4. Here, however, Daily Post readers can have a preview of what they can expect.

I was taught a lesson by old master Shankly’s wit

BILL SHANKLY’S bare manhood stood three feet away from me. OK, stood is an exaggeration.

We were getting on well but not that well.

Slacks with a crease that could shave a werewolf’s four-day shadow had been removed with military precision and were being placed on a dressing room hook with his left hand. In his right was a pair of black crumpled shorts so old you could smell the boot room on them.

In between hung a question.

“What school are you from again son?”

“De La Salle”

And the shorts, which made their way to the expectant toes of his left foot were abruptly pulled away.

“A rugby school?”

“No football.”

Relief. Then animation.

“Thank Christ for that. I hate rugby, I remember in the air force turning up at a new post in Wales and asking for a football. This officer says to me we don’t play football here only rugby. So I says right give us a rugby ball and I’ll squeeze intee a fitball.”

I join in the laughter and he knocks me on the arm and says for a third time: “I’ll squeeze it intee a fitball. Christ, it’s funny what things come back to you. I’d forgotten all about that.”

Let’s get this straight here. I should be at school battling to stay awake through double economics. Instead I’m joshing away with Bill Shankly at Melwood like a groom and his best man preparing to rip up the town on a stag night. Goolies on parade and everything. I’ve been in his company for five minutes and he’s already told me a story nobody has ever head before. Granted, in the league table of Shankly anecdotes it’s six points behind Stenhousemuir. But it’s mine, and mine alone, to drop casually into conversations for eternity As this dawns on me a shiver jolts the blood.

Fearing the joshing will stop, I tap dance through the silence like a rhino in AirWair.

“And did you?”

“What?”

“Squeeze it into a football?”

He tugs on the shorts, stands bolt upright, hands, hips and eyes snapping into Cagney mode, the wrinkles on his forehead contorting into a map of the Alps.

“This De La Salle, son, did you say it was special school?”

Confronting ‘The Truth’

THE reality is that every national newspaper had that story fed to it but only MacKenzie chose to run it in the manner he did.

A couple of others carried the claims as part of a report and immediately retracted them when it was clear how false and offensive they were. But MacKenzie revelled in it. He had a tale that fitted neatly with his prejudices.

It was his patriotic duty to back Our Boys in Blue regardless of The Truth. For years afterwards the hurt caused, not simply to the Sun’s circulation, was incalculable.

Back then almost four million people were buying the Sun meaning 12 million people were reading it, the majority of whom were believing all what they read. Despite Lord Justice Taylor’s report denouncing the report as lies, Liverpool fans have literally had to fight against the slur over the years. I’ve had at least three brawls with people who have argued that there was clearly no smoke without fire.

All down to the owner of one twisted mind, one gargantuan ego who to this day is convinced tanked-up ticketless Liverpool fans caused the deaths and is proud to admit, “I was not sorry then and I’m not sorry now.”

Big shock for a red dad

NOTHING can prepare you for that conversation with your son about the pivotal facts of life.

No booklet, no film, no friend, no shrink, no wise uncle or problem page aunt. You just have to take it in your stride and flounder.

“Dad,” said seven-year-old Phil, pulling back the duvet cover and interrupting a mind locked deep into slumber. “I’ve got something to tell you.

“What is it son?” my eyes still glued with sleep.

“I’m an Everton fan!”

My head froze.

“And I want the kit.”

My heart stopped.

“Can we go to the Everton shop today?”

There was a deathly silence that lasted long enough for my entire miserable future to flash before me. I’d played it cool. Assumed his love for Liverpool would find him as it found me. Such arrogance. Such stupidity. Such rampant neglect.

I should have been hauled away by social services with a coat over my head.

As Shankly said to Paisley after ordering John McLoughlin to eat steak every day, only to discover he’d got his girlfriend pregnant: “I’ve created a monster.”

Day one covering Liverpool at the Post

THE Derby County steward approached me for the third time and, as his puce face hinted, diplomacy and manners were off the agenda.

“Listen pal, I’ve told you. You can’t stand up. And you definitely can’t stand up and start a fight. Last warning or I’m throwing you out.”

To be fair I was on dodgy ground.

The piece of lard with the Noddy Holder head sitting two seats away kept bellowing abuse at John Barnes. Our ding-dong had lasted for a good hour during which time Liverpool had put three past Derby without reply including a typically clinical penalty from Barnes. He’d tried all the “get back to your Scouse slums to eat a dead rat” slurs to little effect. So he played his ace. “Will someone cripple that useless black ----!”.

That was it. I was over the side of the Press box trying to drag him out of the seat being pushed back by Derby fans. Two stewards grabbed me and frogmarched me out. The one who’d been trying to keep me in check all afternoon told me he had never seen such reprehensible behaviour for a journalist in 20 years of stewarding.

I told him he should visit the Cross Keys pub at the back of the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo every Friday night but he didn’t get it and Baseball Ground gate was slammed in my face.