Back in the spring of 1996 the Double was within our reach again for the second time in three years, and our collective nerves were frayed. We were off to meet Liverpool in the FA Cup Final at Wembley on May 11, and I spent the week beforehand making security arrangements with Ken Ramsden, the assistant secretary.
“There’s something else, Ned. A very delicate matter that I need to discuss with you,” Ken said, unusually secretively. “At the after-match party, please keep an eye on Martin Edwards. His visits to the ladies’ are becoming more frequent.”
I stifled the urge to laugh. Both Ken and I knew the press would have a field day if they discovered that Martin had been caught in the women’s toilet at a Manchester United function.
“No problem, Ken,” I assured the worried-looking director. “I’ll keep steering him towards the Gents’.”
The meeting over, I chuckled all the way back to my office. Looking back, it seems unbelievable that, in the days leading up to the game that would make history for United as the first club to do the “double Double”, we were preoccupied with the disturbing fetish of our chairman.
I had been aware of it since my SAS days, of course, when the United party had visited to present some medals at the end of the Hereford Amateur Premier League season. It had been a constant source of amusement to the players and ground staff, but it was undeniably embarrassing. He just seemed to have a compulsion to invade the space of women in their most private moments.
Some months later, Danny McGregor, the affable commercial manager, asked me into his office and told me that one of his female staff had been followed into the toilet at Old Trafford by a male, whom she was able to identify positively as Martin Edwards. Danny assured me that the young lady in question was not going to the police, but he was at a loss as to how to deal with this intolerable situation.
I assured Danny that I would take up the matter with the other directors, one of whom sat in front of me visibly wilting when I recounted Danny’s tale and added some other anecdotal evidence of my own, gained from various hotel and nightclub owners within the Greater Manchester area.
I felt this sat very uneasily with the family image of Manchester United, which they tried so desperately hard to convey and protect.
Alex Ferguson and I once got on to the subject of
Martin Edwards’s rather unusual habit of visiting the ladies’ toilets, hot on the heels of any attractive woman intent on using the facilities.
“It’s unbelievable, Ned. The press would have a field day with this. Mark my words,” said Fergie.
“I know, boss. I must be the only security chief in football who has to keep an eye on the chairman and stop him going into women’s toilets.”
