Books: Review - Superfan. By Morris Keston

Published: 12 August, 2010
by DAN CARRIER

BRIAN Clough was vocal in his belief that football club directors know nothing about the game and harbour a bitter disdain for fans and players alike. He said directors could never be true fans.

Yet back in 1991, for one brief afternoon on the eve of the FA Cup Final, Morris Keston, the man who styles himself as Tottenham’s Number One Fan was very nearly installed in a fat leather chair behind the chairman’s desk of the White Hart Lane club. Quite how the son of an East End tailor nearly took control of Spurs makes fascinating reading.

This, and a lifetime of tales about following the Lilywhites and meeting with some of the game’s greats, is the basis for a book that – on the eve of the 2010/11 season – not only cranks up the excitement before Saturday’s kick off, but is a timely reminder of how the game has changed since League Division One became the Premiership.

Morris was once a “regular” fan, but started befriending players as a teenager by waiting for them to leave the ground after a game and sitting next to them on the bus home. By the 1966 season, Jimmy Greaves and Bobby Moore were his mates, and would pop round for tea after training. 

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, his lavish parties would be the haunt of pros, and his infamy was such that Dartmouth Park based writer Hunter Davies wrote a chapter about Morris in his seminal Spurs biography, The Glory Game, in 1970. 

As a young lad growing up off Commercial Road, football did not exercise too strong a grip: up to the age of 12 he would have been happier passing his Saturday afternoons in a cinema. In 1943, having been begged by two school chums to head to a game, he did so. 

He had the choice of seeing Spurs or Arsenal that day – but because Spurs were home to Crystal Palace and Arsenal were away at Chelsea, he opted to head to White Hart Lane. He reckoned it was easier to get to the Clapton flicks in time for the early evening film from the Lane. 

Such small things create a lifetime of football fanaticism. 

“It was six pence to get in,” he recalls. “We stood in the enclosure, which was in front of what is now the West Stand. My friends insisted we arrive two hours before kick off to make sure we got a good spot. 

“I loved every second of those 90 minutes. I returned to White Hart Lane the following week, this time to see Arsenal, who shared Tottenham’s ground during the war while their Highbury home was used as an air raid precautions stronghold. 

“I enjoyed watching the Arsenal team just as  much, but it was one week too late for me – my allegiance was already with Spurs.

“I went to every home match, and apart from an 18-month period from 1950 to 1951 when I was stationed in Egypt during my National Service, I’ve watched all but two of Spurs home matches since 1952,” he says.

A triple heart bypass operation forced him to miss a match against West Ham in 1994. He also missed a home game with Manchester United in 2004, after a fall. “Spurs lost both games,” recalls Morris. “At least I can say I have seen every Spurs victory at the Lane since 1952.”

Morris says two moments stand out in the hundreds of hours spent following Spurs. Unsurprisingly for Spurs fans, the first happened in 1961.

“It was exactly 4.30pm on May 6, 1961. Time stood still, as I watched diminutive Spurs winger Terry Dyson, the son of a jockey, leap into the air and plant a header past goalkeeper Gordon Banks.” 

It sealed the Double.

The second is not so obvious: this time it was a Friday afternoon, the day before the FA Cup final against Nottingham Forest in 1991. He got a call from clothing mogul Philip Green, an old friend, and was told to meet him immediately at his Baker Street offices. 

At the office was Spurs manager Terry Venables, club director Tony Berry and the chairman’s solicitor, Peter Robinson. 

“Morris, I have in my hand a cheque which I am about to make payable to Irving Scholar for his shares in Tottenham [...] As Tottenham’s most loyal fan, I’ve asked you to come along and witness this momentous event in the club’s history, as well as inform you that if Scholar accepts the deal you will be immediately installed as the club’s acting chairman.”

The club was in a financial mess and this was a chance it save it. But Morris never did get to become chairman – instead the deal fell though as Midland Bank couldn’t give the financial information Green needed that night to seal the deal. 

Still, Spurs went to win the cup the following day, making Morris just as happy. And, as Clough would say, chairmen don’t make good football fans anyway.

• Superfan. By Morris Keston. Vision Sports Publishing, £12.99