I should start off by saying I don’t know either of them but I did have a couple of interactions with Dennis Tueart, one of which, in particular, made a big impression on me.
I had a series in the City programme in the early 1980s where I would do an illustration of a player and the fan who wrote in with the best poem or verse about that player would win the original artwork. The club invited me to training one day so that the players could each sign a print copy of the art for me. A few of the players liked the art and asked if I would recreate an original for them and we agreed a price. A couple of weeks later, I took the new originals in to training and the players all paid up and seemed pleased with their pieces … with one exception. A Scottish international wanted the art but didn’t want to pay me. It was pretty uncomfortable because he was well known and was trying it on in front of a few of the other players and basically trying to embarrass or bully me into giving it him fo free. I was trying to be polite and keep it light but I was really uncomfortable … until Dennis Tueart stepped in and told him not to be a ****, that I had obviously spent hours working on this commission and didn’t deserve to be fucked about. The player shut up and grudgingly paid up.
I’d briefly met Tueart once before when I presented him with a piece I did for my series in Match Weekly and the magazine set up a photo op, but other than a minute or two of pleasantries, that was the sum total of my previous interaction with him … so there was no reason for him to go to bat for me in the dressing room that day.
I saw him a handful of times after that, sometimes in the Blue Room after a game and once or twice at a wine bar in St Annes Square. I was always amazed that he even remembered me … but he would always make the first move, come over and offer a handshake and ask how work was going, etc. He even remembered my name.
So I have no insight other than, in the few interactions I had with him, he always came across as a really friendly and pretty decent bloke.
Having said that, the story about Marsh and Alf Ramsey and the half-time ritual still makes me laugh out loud!
