CHAPTER TEN RAY BAILEY

Chapter Ten -

Ray Bailey

I think it was my grandmother or an aunt that said to me when I was a youngster that you should ‘never a borrower or a lender be’. How right was she and how even more magnificently happy would I be today if I had followed that advice.

Yet, I’m still mega happy because I generally don’t look backwards but I would now be comfortably off.

It’s her fault for telling me when I was too young to take it in and as we all know males don’t mature until they are well into their mid-50s and some much later than that (see chapters 1 to 14).

I mention this at the start of this particular chapter (which loosely centres on Ray Bailey and I know you know what I mean by now) because one evening during a dinner table conversation in Oswestry he added something very valuable to my elderly relatives’ sentiments. We were talking at that dinner about the people throughout your life that take advantage of you, almost always involving the borrowing of money from you in the process.

As I mentioned, it has happened to me a lot and I think I was whinging about the latest sagas going on in my stupidly hectic existence. Ray interjected at this point, politely but very firmly shouting the whole table down as he spoke to tell us that it’s not the money that is important:

‘It…… is……. not…… the……. money’. He laboured.

“The money is largely irrelevant, you’ll make that back” , he mused as we quietened down to listen.

“What these people take away from you is something else.”, he said, while waving his arms in the air. ”Do you know what it is?”

No one wanted to hazard a guess in case they got it completely wrong.

100

“It’s your TIME boys.”

‘YOUR TIME’.

“These people……these bastards…… (I sensed I wasn’t alone here) take your TIME away from you.”

I went off into a little bit of a reverie at this point to think about all the people that have done this to me and it dawned on me that he was absolutely right. I had literally wasted actual years of my life chasing ‘people’ that are happy to look you in the eye and lie to you and I believe they enjoy it.

No one had actually spelt it out like this before and as I realised how right he was, I was actually a little sad at that point in the evening.

They had taken a big chunk of my life off me and while it was taking up my thoughts and my time, it wasn’t bothering them one jot. They are not my type of person, but I constantly seem to get tied up with them. I guess they spot me, and they use me.

What a mug.

Sorry, this is supposed to be a fun book but if I owe anyone money or even something things like a bike or a drill or whatever, it prays on my mind. If it was money, I would prioritise its repayment over pretty much everything else. Some of the people I have encountered have a totally reverse attitude to that.

I had written a big piece about just one of those examples, but I took it out in the end. They would probably bring some lawsuit and get damages, as that seems to be the way things work out these days.

Anyway, it was only one example so why should I only mention one. I have the seed of a plan to link them all up in a WhatsApp group one day suggesting they all get together and set up something together, some massive scam, as they could do really well.

So, keep away from them, trust your instinct and never deal with people you don’t trust, or they will take your life off you.

They will definitely look you in the face and lie to you and if you’re not them, it’s all the harder for you to imagine at the time that that is what they might be doing!

They definitely get some sort of perverse pleasure from it.

101

That’s better.

Got that partly off my chest but I wish I could write it all down and name names. Perhaps that’s my fourth book, when I’m rich and even more famous, and I can defend and win those libel cases.

Let’s just hope the people that have done this to me, read this book and recognise themselves even though they are not being named.

When they ring me up bleating their defence yet again to me, I will get the satisfaction that they also paid for a copy of the book, so I have at least got a few pennies back for the charity to have benefitted from anyway!

Actually they probably nicked it: just like the ‘mates’ that stole my signed copy of John Timpson‘s autobiography.

I hope their bookshelves collapse.

Sorry, I’m really on my soap box now. Did I say earlier that I don’t look backwards? Well maybe I was wrong, and I am harbouring some demons. These things must be bugging me.

Anyway, we started this chapter talking about Ray Bailey. When the above encounter about the world’s business and life vermin took place we were at the Wynnstay Hotel in Oswestry and there’s more about that in chapter 11 on the Woodwards, but now I am meeting Ray at Andy Ps house in Knutsford.

We are off to Manchester Airport to jump on a flight to Iceland! We are so bloody lucky.

What am I expecting in my first decent face to face meeting with Ray?

Well, I know he dominates get togethers with his stories and his wit, and I know he calls everyone ‘Love’ which is quite endearing for a man in his seventies but the most remarkable thing about him is that he actually knows everything.

He is a walking talking Wikipedia. Ali found him overpowering when she first met him as she thought she knew everything. Fishing, shooting, horses, football…his brain must simply be a sponge for everything he has ever come across. I love listening to him, I’m not jealous and it’s not boring.

You might recall though that I am a ‘buffoon’ .

102

I had been trying to devise a way of getting to meet up with Ray but he lives quite a long way away, his social calendar is manic and I too am very busy with work. Months fly by and then this opportunity looms.

Another fishing trip to the Grimsa river in Iceland and because of the ‘Big Fish’ I am obliged to go.

Right, I hear you say, what’s the BIG FISH?

I didn’t want to talk about it but as you bought it up….

It’s because of Andy Pritchard again that this happened. It was exactly one year earlier, and Andy P is dragging me on my first ever fishing trip to Iceland (the country, not the store).

Many fishermen reading this will ask why I had to be dragged to such a famous fishing place but at the time I actually didn’t want to go. Sorry Andy, I did say but you weren’t listening!

I was chuffing busy at work, I’m not a fisherman as such (having last cast a fly about 46 years before that) and I miss the kids when I go away. I was also very nervous of making a total fool of myself on the river.

If you met my kids you would wonder how on earth I could miss them but somehow you get attached, it is really weird.

The conversation that previous year went:

Andy P: ‘you and I are going fishing.’

‘Not me Andy, I haven’t done it for years, wouldn’t have a clue’

‘Don’t worry, I’ve got you a coach, a Ghillie’.

‘I’ve got no equipment at all mate.’

‘I’ ve rented it’

‘My feet are huge and I’ve no waders’.

‘They are lending you some size 13s, Sasquatch’.

‘I just can’t Andy, I’m really busy’.

‘You’ve got to, I’ve booked it, I had a copy of your passport from the last trip away.’

103

So, I thought I had good reasons not to go and I thought I had put them well, but I was persuaded out of all of them by the world’ s most singularly persuasive man.

Another ‘once is a lifetime’ opportunity.

Although I am so very glad that I went in many, many ways, I do have one big regret and that is that I caught The Big Fish.

I know I really shouldn’t regret that, but I was surrounded by men who had striven all their lives to do what I had just done and unfortunately I had done it almost by bloody accident.

It became a great talking point as you would expect, but I so genuinely wish that Andy himself or even one of the other lifelong fishing devotees on that trip had had the experience that I had that day. It would have lasted them a lifetime, as indeed it will me, but for slightly different reasons.

Maybe Jim Davies or Ray Bailey should have caught it. Any of the guys that went, to be honest, except that ruffian John Powell of course but then he shouldn’t have been on such a refined and sophisticated fishing trip in the first place.

So, I caught the fish of their dreams.

Ironically it had occurred to me before we went that this might happen, but I had dismissed my obscure thoughts as just nervous flights of fancy.

As a brief aside and to sum up the fishing type, I have a good example of what such a fish as mine might mean to a real fisherman.

I have a pal that used to work with me in Dolgellau. He’s a head teacher in a school for young people with serious behavioural problems and autistic spectrum disorders. He’s not only the head teacher but also an academic who has had his writings published about his field of work.

However, he spends an inordinate amount of his waking time thinking about fish.

You’re stood in a river now Duncan aren’t you!

A good weekend away for him is heading off somewhere remote and inhospitable with a few lads and sitting by or in water for hours on end and in all weathers waiting to catch a fish.

Actually, I’m not sure whether catching one even matters a lot of the time. The catching of the fish might even be a side issue. After those many hours, and quite often with no success, they head back to a damp hut, eat ready meals washed down with a few tins of warm beer, sleep a little bit in soggy sleeping bags only to

104

get up early the following morning to do the whole thing again in all the same clothes.

That is his idea of heaven. It’s extraordinary that this normally OCD man can endure such conditions, but he actually revels in it.

So one night I sent him the one photo I have of the big fish, on the night I caught it.

Yup that’s a big fish.

It’s not the type of photo I usually send but the fish I am holding is game changing. It’s 20lb in weight, is nearly a metre long and its genus is sea trout. It would be big for a salmon, I’m told.

When Duncan’ s phone pinged to indicate there was a message it probably made him jump. The signal isn’t too hot in the hills above Rhydymain anyway and, to be fair, he doesn’t get that many texts, as most of his pals are being tucked up in bed with this month’s Trout & Salmon magazine stuck on their beardy weatherbeaten faces.

At the time, by an extraordinary coincidence, he was reading one of the books he had piled up on the arm of his chair next to him on that very subject: Sea Trout and all the exciting aspects of them. He had been endeavouring for months to try

The Big Fish with his BIG FISH

105

and catch one of the wee beasties in the Mawddach estuary and it was on his mind constantly.

Up comes that picture on his phone.

Someone he hasn’t seen for ages and someone he had never once heard mention fishing ever, holding a truly enormous sea trout.

Confused and angry, he must have uttered a raft of expletives. His girlfriend may have rushed in from the kitchen, Welsh cakes in hand, to see if her prayers had been answered and he was to be found sitting in the chair clutching his chest and reaching up towards that great salmon river in the sky.

But no, when she got in the room, he was already by the lounge window peering out.

‘What’s up?’ she quizzed.

‘I think Wainwright is in our garden!’

‘Why on earth would you think that, as he lives miles away and its 9.30 at night!’

‘Because I think he has been looking in through our window and has seen what I am reading and is playing some cruel practical photo shopped joke on me, that’s for why!’

He spoke as if this should make some sense to her, but it obviously wouldn’t.

After probably searching the garden, he texted me back and we later laughed at what had unfolded. I could still hear the ill feeling in his voice though. A tone I was going to get very familiar with.

When I caught the fish my Norwegian ghillie was amazing. I have to tell you he also said that I was too. I followed every single instruction he gave me to the letter for 40 minutes. Once the fish was in the net he was ecstatic and it was only then that I realised that this was a big one. It was so big that my great pals Trevor Reece and the aforementioned John Powell, who had watched the whole thing unfold, felt I shouldn’t tell Andy P until the evening when he had had a shower and was relaxed with a drink in his hand.

Tell him at any other time and I might ruin his holiday.

Bloody hell, I didn’t realise the ramifications of catching this oversized bloody trout.

I agreed but when we broke for lunch, Andy immediately came up to me to show me a photo of him with a sea trout of about 8 pounds.

106

‘Cute’ I said.

‘What!’, he exclaimed ‘Cute?’

‘Sorry, no,’ I stammered, ‘it’s great, what is it?’

At this point I can see in my peripheral vision, that Trevor and John like two enormous schoolboys are furiously jumping up and down and gesticulating that I should tell him my story now instead of waiting, and they are suggesting a big change of plan.

Oh lord, I thought, and with butterflies but without pause I produce my picture.

‘Is it like this one?’ I enquired offering the phone to him.

He took it off me.

‘What the f*** is that?’, he gasped.

‘Well, I believe it’s the same species as your one, but I guess mine has been going to the gym a lot more.’

He didn’t see the funny side of that wise crack and continued his questioning to try and explain away what he thought he saw in this photo.

‘Have you photo-shopped this?’

‘I don’t know how to photo-shop things….no, I caught it’

At this point Andy looked around the room for help and immediate saw the two excitable school kids Trevor and John. The truth dawned on him.

‘For f**** sake, why you?’ he muttered.

Good question, I thought.

Anyway, here we are again a year later and off on another Iceland trip.

I haven’t even argued about going this time as I have been summoned to show that it was all a fluke!

Unlike last year, no private jet from Manchester. There will be queues, exhausting security checks and all the normal things that come with normal flying. No glass of bubbly this time but we are soon installed on the plane on our way to the magical land of Iceland, comparing fishing stories, of which I now have, er, one.

Here’s a photo taken in Reykjavik on that second trip.

107

The author with his Magnificent 7

This trip had a fine bunch of gentlemen gathered together. Some of them you have already encountered in their own chapters whilst some others will cameo here.

As well as Ray second in from the left we have from the left:

Nigel Weatherill on Ray’s left Ray Bailey (this chapter) himself Andy P (chapter 6) Mark Stuart John Taylor Jim Davies (chapter 8) Me, nice red trousers, the mustard ones were in the wash. Mark Bowie

Fascinating bunch.

For a start, I can’t believe I haven’t met John Taylor before. Another rugby man (rugby league but you know he’s still OK) and he’s been in property and also in many scrapes for all his life.

His face bears testament to that.

108

He can’t believe we haven’t met either and at the end of the four days he texts me:

‘Jim Davies had warned me about you, but you were actually worse than even he had said’.

Someone else likes me.

I’ll introduce you to the characters as we go along but we set off from Manchester airport on a Friday morning.

As I said, in the past Andy P had rented a charter jet but even he felt it was too expensive this time. I couldn’t afford the napkins on a private jet, to be honest, but this time we were using Iceland Air and it was really fine. Actually, it was propellers so I found it really exciting, like going back in time in some ways.

Once in Reykjavik we were staying at the Hotel Borg for one night and I hoped that the guys, mostly a little older than me on average, would head straight to their rooms for a nap before we went for a meal later on.

Wrong.

Jim Davies barked the orders around in the Hotel Foyer. As he is trifle deaf this was readily audible throughout most of the capital and maybe beyond.

‘Bags dropped in room and back down in reception in ten minutes sharp, chaps.’

I almost expected him to finish with ‘synchronise watches.’

There goes my little trip to the gym and the spa I thought. We went straight out to the bar next to the hotel and had a few beers (three).

At the point where it was only three hours until our table was booked at a restaurant and we might as well have stayed on the beers, most of the party then agreed that they were ‘starving’.

Really? Starving?

It was a strange use of such a word here. Had we been deprived of food for a week, I don’t think many of us would have got close to the BMI targets our medical advisors would recommend.

Copious burgers and so on were ordered. I was able to avoid this and when the group had finished their ‘snack’ they decided, just when I fancied more beers, to retire for some ’shuteye’ before the main event of the evening (another meal!).

Hence, I was able after all to set off to the gym where I did some chest and triceps exercises accompanied by some pretty impressive belching.

109

I hasten to add that there was no one else there.

We had a lovely meal that night and the following morning after a huge breakfast (still ‘starving’ I guess!) we were in a minibus heading from Reykjavik towards the amazing Grimsa river.

I thought appetites were meant to diminish as you get older but there was very little evidence of that in this group. The only one to show anything close to restraint so far was Mark Stuart, the biggest of the group. At 6 foot three and about 200 pound he is not in bad shape at all for 65 years old.

He seems to have made money in property and other ventures and every year runs shooting parties over in Portugal. As a result of which he is a very deep dark brown and ready to step onto the set of an ‘It aint half hot mum’ remake at the drop of a hat.

His mate Mark Bowie is also a very pleasant chap. Very quiet, polite and understated. When Jim and Ray are in full flight, he observes. We all do to be fair, but if he could get a word in, it would no doubt be funny. There isn’t much of a chance, so he enjoys the role of listener instead. He’s got few bob too but I’m too refined to ask him his life story, unless he offers the information.

John Taylor is as hinted at before: bonkers: I don’t believe there’ s a better word in this case. The tales of his medical history are simply unbelievable, and he is very lucky indeed to still be on the planet. As a result, he is now permanently in a hurry and no moment of fun can be missed. I can see that there are some late nights looming.

Throughout the three days Ray Bailey pretty much holds court. He has a tale and an anecdote for everything. His memory is bottomless. As I listen myself, silent and transfixed, I wonder if they were to arrange a talk-off between him and Jim Davies, who would win? It would make great TV.

The only other person who touches those two as a raconteur is Richard Kirk who I met while at Iceland and who at one time owned Peacocks after he moved on. He can tell a mean shaggy dog story, and in our last chapter we glean a small flavour of that!

Anyway, at this stage I need to apologise yet again to any readers for all this endless wandering off course.

That massive trout was talked about a lot on this second trip and as the days went by and as I didn’t catch a single fish, I could see the group relaxing and I could almost feel their communal contentment growing.

I remembered what Ray had said to me the year before. His words were: ‘Well done you really deserve it’ but his tone said something quite opposite to that. 110

Wainwright was getting his come-uppence. Last year was a flash in the pan. Brilliant.

To be honest I was glad too. I also had finally proved to myself that not catching a fish doesn’t diminish the enjoyment of fishing as much as you might think, and I was very happy just getting better at the techniques on a daily basis. The surroundings no doubt helped, of course.

It must be a lovely moment for anyone in the fishing business when they realise that their clients are not going to be all that miffed if there’s been no fish caught. The clients either blame their own technique or the weather or the temperature and the host seldom gets targeted. That must be a relief as you would want your customers to catch fish to an extent.

It is a truly amazing sport. Time does not drag, and you think about nothing but your fly (technical term), the direction of the wind, the riverbanks, the trees…. indeed, all the many things to do with the task in hand but NOT your work or your worries. As a result, I have concluded that it must be very good for you indeed.

Why is it that if asked to follow the wife or partner around shops, a typical male will feel he weighs a tonne within literally minutes. You just have to sit down, the immediate and draining exhaustion is debilitating.

However, I stood in or near that free-flowing icy cold river for three days and never, not once, did I feel the urge to sit down and all that after carousing until the small hours with Taylor and all.

Had I been in Debenhams or the like, I would have been looking everywhere desperately for a chair or just anything to sit on or lean against. When you see the shoe department at times like that your heart quickens with excitement as you know there surely must be seats!

While fishing I never felt weary and yet the night we had had before each day should have put us in an all-day coma.

Yes, it is an extraordinary sport and it was a unique trip.

Sadly, however, I don’t have the time for fishing…not YET anyway. On the other hand, if I ever get to retire and am healthy enough, it will surely get my attention.

I’ve done it again, got distracted from the subject matter. I know for a fact that Ray won’t mind because I am talking about fishing and when he talks he also goes around the houses for hours on end.

So, what has Ray Bailey done all his life?

111

I finally have a good excuse to give him a call. Shrewsbury Town have held Liverpool FC to a draw in the FA Cup at home and Ray was chairman of Shrewsbury from 1992 to 1996. We need to talk.

Did you go Ray?

“Oh yes indeed, what a marvellous occasion and I will be going to Liverpool for the replay this time.”

I’ve arranged to meet him at the Costa inside the Grosvenor shopping centre in Chester. I’m pretty hot and bothered by the time I get there as it’s a lot further on foot from the train station than I thought. He tells me I am looking very trim, have I lost weight? That’s very nice of him.

He also immediately tells me about the Macallan distillery roof that he and his son Stuart have just provided the substrate for the extraordinary roof there.

Now it is amazing and its actually so good I’ve included a photo of it but he’s told me about it quite a few times now and I think to myself

Is he actually showing signs of aging finally?

No chance.

This is the only indication in the next hour and a half that he is apparently 77.

112

Here’s that roof – amazing!

I am repeating myself all the time and I’m, er, much younger.

He’s in great nick.

And so, for every other moment of that meeting he demonstrates that he is still as sharp as a knife and, as he himself says, he can remember very clearly right back to when he was two.

This is extraordinary and pretty unique in my experience. Ray is the youngest of 11 children. By the time he was six he had got involved in the passion of his life: fishing. He had brothers Terry and Bob that were still around the family home and their Dad used to take them by bike to the river Roden near Wem. The bike had a stirrup seat on the front where Ray sat and Terry would run behind them for the 4 miles. By this stage Rob was not so interested in fishing any more.

Ray recalls going to Hawkstone Lake just near the golf club. When he looked across that lake and saw people playing golf his father told him:

‘You don’t go over there, Ray, that’s for the gentlemen’.

That seems such a comment from a bygone era but then Ray’ s Dad was born in 1900 still in Victoria’s reign and things were very different back then.

In fact, Ray actually became one of those gentlemen and eventually had golf lessons with Alex Lyle (Sandy Lyle’s dad). At his best he played off an impressive

113

four handicap and, in those lessons, Alex Lyle’s broad Scottish accent meant that he would finish up many of his sentences by asking the young Ray if he understood.

‘Junderstand?’

He would say that as one word.

This stuck with Ray all his life until one day he called one of his racehorses by that same name.

When it came to the question of how much the lesson was, it was not cash but a brace of sea trout for Alex’s wife Agnes. Back in those days the family lived in a three-bed semi-detached council house with an outside toilet, not one at the end of the garden but one outside of the house but attached.

Here we pause for a joke about the well to do lady from the city that visits relatives in the countryside.

When she requires the toilet she is directed to the exterior of the building but then storms back into the house indignant to tell the family that there is no lock on the door.

The man of the house puts her right:

‘Don’t worry luv, we haven’t had a bucket pinched yet’.

Talking about his beginnings, it is clear that Ray has worked very hard all his life ever since he was a very young boy.

The area of Shropshire where he lives has always been famous for sweet peas. I didn’t know you can grow them on the floor as he tells me now, I thought they had to be ‘trained’ up sticks.

The famous name in the region for sweet peas is Eckfords of Tilly and Ray used to deliver groceries on a bicycle for them a bit like Granville in Open all Hours. He probably covered a lot more miles than the made-up character Granville.

From the age of 10 to 13, Ray worked every hour conceivable, six days a week for the princely sum of seven shillings and sixpence. When he wasn’t delivering, he sometimes worked in the shop and he recalls one of his jobs was grinding the coffee.

He was always amazed when the owner would take the ground coffee that Ray had completed and place it centrally on a square of paper. He would then fold it into a package in such a way that the name of the business always came out neatly on the top of the finished item when all the folding was finished.

114

Years later when Ray had been fishing the Sprouston beat on the Tweed, and he noticed a huge banner right by the church. When he asked what the story was behind the bunch of sweet peas competition with the enormous prize of £1,000, he was informed that it was begun many years back.

Then the person pointed out Ray’s car number plate WEM 1 and knowledgably informed him that Shropshire was a great place for the sweet pea. Ray said he knew that -, he used to deliver them!

I know now that Ray is also a great shot and when requested he coaches many folks in the art of shooting with a shotgun. When did he get into that? Well not early in life as it was the richer man’s sport, but he remembers fondly Les Edwards who kindly let him use a 12 bore to shoot the scavenging pigeons on the allotment. His Dad had two plots there which isn’t surprising with eleven kids.

Ray shot for England from 1982 to 1986 in the four-man team.

Suddenly, Ray remembers another tale related to those outside loos, it was about their neighbour who had terrible piles (haemorrhoids). His father Arthur could talk to this guy when they were both on the toilet as there was only a single skin of bricks between the two back-to-back conveniences. The poor chap made a pained noise as he sat there.

Ray also knew some other chap with the same affliction whose doctor had told him that if all else fails take the remains of the tea leaves from the teapot and spread them all over the affected area. When he went back the doctor, he asked if they looked any better.

‘Not really’ said the doctor ‘but you are going to meet a tall dark stranger and go on a very long journey’.

Ray recalls his son asking him a question about his homework. I know immediately that this is not a true story.

‘Dad’ he asked ‘What’s the difference between theory and reality.

Ray thought for a while and then told his son to go upstairs and ask his mum if she’d sleep with the next-door neighbour for a million quid. This his son did and came back down with a simple ‘ yes’.

‘Now go and ask your sister the same question’ Ray suggested.

The boy came back with another ‘yes ’ .

Ray was hence able to explain to his boy the difference between theory and reality.

115

‘In theory son’ he said, ‘we are sitting on a couple of million quid but in reality, we are probably living with a couple of slappers’.

Do you know, I would pay good money and travel quite far to see a Ray Bailey one man show, with him sitting in an armchair rambling on like Ronnie Corbett.

Early in his career Ray landed an interview at the vets. He is also still selling corn as well. He was interviewed by Bill Minton, the father of David Minton. Bill was a very fine blood stock agent and has ridden in the Queen’s carriage at major horse racing events.

Within two years of working at that job Ray was poached by the MD of the petroleum division, Bert Hughes. Petrol was 1 shilling and ten pence a gallon back then. Anyway, there he was, area sales manager at 26.

Then some corporate shenanigans kicked off and Bates & Hunt were taken over by RHM who then were bought out by Dalgety.

I’ll be testing you lot on all this later.

And at the age of 33 Ray became Managing Director of that division and eventually they sold that business to him. At the time he borrowed £3.8 million to enable him to carry out that buyout.

We digress for a short time into how deals were done back then, on a handshake and so on. We agree, like most of the protagonists in this book, that those days are well and truly over and that honesty is out of the window. (Malcolm Walker wasn’t sure though was he, but I feel we were talking about something slightly different there.)

We don’t talk about that for too long because we soon move on to football and to Shrewsbury Town again. Ray became chairman of the club between 1992 and 1996 back in the days where there were about 4,000 spectators at every home game.

During his tenure of that role they made a trip to Wembley for the first time in their history and got into the second division after, obviously, winning the third.

While away at Barnsley with Shrewsbury town he met now lifelong friend Jack Charlton. Yes, that one, England star of the 1966 World Cup. As they were sitting next to each other they started talking about fishing. When Jack mentioned that he hadn’t yet caught a sea trout, Ray told him that he had had a great offer to fish on the Eachieg and would Jack like to come along.

Like most of us, Ray often gave his number to people but very few followed it up the following day. You’ve done it yourself, and you don’t like to ring do you?

116

Jack did ring, however.

As their friendship flourished and they travelled and fished, they saw some new houses being built near the Ridgepool there in Ireland. It was called Moy Heights and Ray suggested that they should get one between them. The next day Jack’ s wife Pat rang Ray up and asked him what this was about a house and hence they subsequently cracked on and bought it. It’s been the best investment they ever made, and they often go there.

I probably should have mentioned this earlier on in the chapter, but while talking to Ray in Chester it became clear very quickly that he should write his own book.

He admitted that quite a few people have suggested that and he is considering it. So, as a result, I have only recorded a small handful of the stories he regaled me with that afternoon, otherwise I would spoil the real thing when he writes it. I have offered to help get him started. I plan to send him a draft structure to put all his life into to get his book started.

‘Now that would be a book,’ he said.

I really want to record so many of the tales that Ray tells me, but I would feel guilty. There are so many tales from his travels with Jack, many of which came about just when and just after he became Republic of Ireland coach. He got them into their first World Cup in 1990. The man became a national hero. In 1996, he was awarded honorary Irish citizenship. The honour amounts to full Irish citizenship, and it is the highest honour the Irish state gives out and it does so very rarely indeed.

The tales all have one common theme, that Jack takes the time to sign every autograph and is a thoroughly decent man. I would have loved to have met him.

Ray, its been a blast. I will get a draft knocked out soon of your book and we will have another coffee.

Footnote: Jack Charlton sadly passed away on the 10th July 2020. Months later, when I am talking to Ray to sort out some of my spelling mistakes, he muses on what a great book he has in his memory about the great man.

117