It was September 1991. In the back of a London black cab, we were heading north through the city, destination Wembley.
England were playing newly re-unified Germany for the first time and Lothar Matthaus would be on view, so too Stefan Effenberg. England had Gary Lineker. There were reasons to be excited.
But it was the man in the cab I remember more. Then again, Hugh McIlvanney was unforgettable.
As a junior in The Observer’s Battersea office, travelling by black cab did not happen often. Nor did sharing it with a man who seemed as large as Jupiter and with a voice that was definitively Scottish, yet which sounded like it came from another galaxy.
Hugh McIlvanney exuded experience and knowledge, his voice elegiac and certain. He was an intellectual force and, on occasions when angered he looked as if he could be a pretty mean physical force too.
There was one Observer ‘do’ – possibly Christmas – when a karaoke machine was hired. Various characters flopped their way through various tunes, then came McIlvanney. “Turn that machine off,” he ordered, before launching into Carrickfergus (all of it). He could sing – in a John McCormack kind of way.
And he was generous, which just happened to be the name of the Derby winner in 1991. We touched on racing a few times but inevitably these were short-lived chats, involving as they did a 50p win treble merchant and someone who knew Lester Piggott.
He was always Hugh to me
Some who knew him very well called him Hughie, but he was strictly Hugh to me and would remain so. It was a measure of his generosity that he offered a lift that night to Wembley and that a quarter of a century later he would agree to contribute to a book called Green Shoots: Irish Football Histories.
A motivation for the book was to revisit some of those players in danger of slipping off the pages as time passed, true Irish greats such as Peter Doherty. Another was Charlie Tully. When Hugh had retired from the Sunday Times I’d asked if we could do a farewell piece with him for the Irish Times about the Irish players he’d seen and reported on. Bearing in mind he had been a character witness in court for George Best, this would have been entertainment.
He said he’d been inundated; could we do it later? Of course we could. Time faded and the moment passed. But Charlie Tully’s significance had not changed and about 18 months ago I got back in touch. And, yes, Hugh had seen Charlie Tully, understood him in the context of post-war Scottish football and post-war Celtic.
Perhaps the greatest sportswriter of them all, Hugh McIlvanney, in Lisbon in 1967. His prose was elegant and at times poetic. If you'd like a taste of his genius then read this… https://t.co/dbHR1IYLNL pic.twitter.com/UnYdyShnV2
— Lisbon Lion (@tirnaog_09) March 13, 2022
McIlvanney had been at the notorious Rangers-Celtic match of 1949 at Ibrox when Sammy Cox had felled Tully and sparked a surge of trouble in the Celtic end. He was a 15-year-old boy from Kilmarnock, who would come to cherish his local team as an emigrant. But on this day he was taken to Ibrox by a neighbour on a Rangers bus.
Here was a direct line to history and McIlvanney’s affection for Tully – and Celtic in general – was unmistakable. He also praised Cox as “one of the best Scottish footballers I’ve seen” – a proper compliment to a member of Rangers’ Iron Curtain defence.
One of the most accurate comments after Hugh’s death was that he was often surrounded by laughter, so much of which stemmed from his own wit. It was an accolade he gave to Tully. “As was true much later of Jimmy Johnstone,” Hugh wrote, “sometimes Tully’s bewildering of opponents was so audaciously brilliant that the natural reaction was to smile or even laugh out loud.”
Hugh was guffawing down the phone as he spoke of Tully, of watching him and throwing hands in the air at the sheer cheek of the Falls Road genie.
When Hugh saw his words in print, though, they weren’t good enough. He sat down and re-wrote the piece. He referred to Tully’s “taunting impertinence”, the sort of rhythmic, drumbeat phrase for which Hugh became known, revered and loved.
McIlvanney the reporter
And he was loved. The perfectionist in him which saw the Tully piece re-written was an example of the dedicated professional. Others have recalled him getting off trains to phone in minor alterations to copy that had been handwritten and called in down a phone line, often with deafening crowds in the background. That was McIlvanney the reporter; he did not like the term journalist.
The shoe leather reporter in him saw him knock on a door on Blossoms Lane in Bramhall, Cheshire in October 1971 to meet George Best a few days after a death threat to the great player. Hugh wrote about the “lungfuls of country air” that greeted him and contrasted it with “the lunacy of Ulster”.
Then came the line: “It was like finding a piece of shrapnel in your cornflakes.”
Two of the elements there were the ability and effort to get to know Best and earn his respect – when every reporter in the world wanted to do so – and then to write such glorious sentences about the experience.
Hugh McIlvanney wrote better sentences than anyone. Even when he was being serious, he was as funny as Tommy Cooper.
His interview with Bob Paisley in 1982 is another example of McIlvanney’s brilliance – and contacts and respect. Of Paisley he said: “His own authority about the game has grown like a tree during more than 40 years at Anfield.”
He then mentioned Paisley’s “acquired wisdom”. On and on. Hugh’s brilliance, his acquired wisdom, was unceasing.
Even intermittently, it really was an honour to have known him.
Hugh McIlvanney: born on February 2, 1934; died on January 24, 2019.