Tina Moore - Bobby Moore - By the Person Who Knew Him Best

By the time we got engaged, Bobby was experiencing his first full season in the first team. For this he was paid £8 a week, which these days wouldn’t buy a cheap Alice band for David Beckham. At the time, players were still paid according to the Football League’s notorious maximum wage limit of £20 a week during the season and £17 a week in the summer lay-off. That didn’t change until 1961, when Jimmy Hill, then a Fulham player and chairman of the Professional Footballers Association, forced through its abolition after threatening a players’ strike.

To give an example of how comparatively low footballers’ wages were, Bobby’s £8 a week was £3 less than I was earning at the Pru, so you could say that I was the breadwinner. Most of our money went into saving like mad for our first home, but life was still a lot of fun. We’d go round in a crowd with the other young West Ham players, like Alan Sealey and Tony Scott, and their girlfriends - Janice, who went out with Alan, was that year’s Miss Dagenham and very glamorous. After games we’d go to a private club, Harlene, in Forest Gate, where we girls drank Bristol Cream sherry because we thought it was genteel. Then we’d move on to Room At The Top. Another local hotspot was the Dick Turpin, the place to be on Thursday nights. There we’d bump into other young players like Terry Venables and Brian Dear. We used to keep the bar open, but the owners loved us because we were such good customers.

By then, Bobby had bought his first car, a red Ford Zephyr. It was such a momentous occasion that I can still remember its registration number: 2394 PU. A friend of my mother’s sold it to him and he paid for it in cash. The transaction took place in Lyons Tea Shop in Ilford, where we had our usual fruit bun with two pats of butter, a bowl of tomato soup and a cup of tea. Bobby arrived with the money in a paper bag. Naturally he had sorted the bills out into denominations first, from pound notes to fifties. They were all in piles facing the right way up and secured with elastic bands. I think he fell short in one way, though - they weren’t arranged in numbered sequence.

Bobby loved that Ford Zephyr. It shone, it was immaculate. It was the beginning of his love affair with cars, especially red ones. He was determined to get a Jaguar as soon as he could afford one.

As Bobby became a bit more established in the West Ham team, older players besides Malcolm Allison began to accept him. Chief among them were Johnny Bond and Noel Cantwell. Johnny was known as ‘Muffin’ after a puppet who featured on a children’s TV programme, Muffin the Mule. Johnny was alleged to have a kick like the said creature. Noel was nicknamed ‘Sausage’, which was short for sausage roll and thus meant to rhyme with Noel. Oh, but he was gorgeous. I loved Noel.

Bobby was ravenous for football knowledge and worldly wisdom, so he loved it when the older men included him. He almost sat at their feet. In the first flush of his romance with me, he looked up to them. They represented what he wanted to be.

Malcolm Allison lived a social whirl and during this time he was friendly with a fishmonger’s daughter. Bobby and I were invited round to the fishmonger’s house one New Year’s Eve and after sampling it for the first time in his life, Bobby devoured an entire side of smoked salmon on his own.

It was, after all, the start of the Sixties, when the more luxurious kinds of food were just becoming available after the dreary diet and relative deprivation of the postwar period. We were getting a taste of melon, avocado, French cheese and Italian wine at last. Even broccoli was an exotic luxury to Bobby, as it was to most people in that era. Up to the time I met him, his mum never dished up any vegetables other than the standard staples of those days: peas, cabbage and potatoes.

My mother was very indulgent to me in all sorts of ways, but one thing she was almost draconian about was table manners, as I knew to my cost. When I was young, should I offend, I was despatched from the table. Bobby, who was dazzled by her, set enthusiastically about brushing up his style. He so wanted to be correct in everything he did. He also began to be aware of formal etiquette that he hadn’t experienced before, but he really watched and learnt. He was naturally polite and courteous, but now he was adding polish to his manner.

Soon we graduated from the Spaghetti House in Soho. Our next discovery was the 21 Club. Johnny Haynes, Bobby’s old childhood hero, introduced us to that. Not only was Johnny very attractive, he had a great personality. He was set to become part of football history - the first player to earn £100. He was captain of England from 1960 to August 1962, when a car accident put him out of the game for a year. It would have made a poignant twist in the tale if Bobby had been his direct replacement as captain, but Jimmy Armfield had a short spell in the job first.

Johnny was also the prototype one-club man. He went on to stay with Fulham for all eighteen years of his career, even though he could have made fortunes more if he had accepted all the opportunities offered to him by other, higher-placed clubs. He was commercially shrewd, though, taking advantage of his brooding, Italianate, Forties film star looks to become an early icon for Brylcreem - with his trademark dark, slicked back hair, he obviously believed in the product he endorsed.

He was a regular at the 21 Club. This was really elegant and exclusive, although the diners sometimes fell short of expectations. Johnny ordered an amazing starter for the three of us - a large silver bowl lined with ice and so full of prawns that they hung over the edge. The prawns were so utterly delicious that as soon as I started eating them, I just got carried away. The next thing I knew, I was looking down at a mountain of empty shells. I couldn’t believe I’d eaten so many. I was overcome with remorse. ‘Were they very expensive?’ I stammered to Johnny.

‘Enormously,’ said Johnny. ‘They’re so expensive they have to charge by the prawn.’

‘Oh no,’ I gasped. ‘How do they know how many you’ve eaten?’

‘They count the shells and tails,’ said Johnny.

Quickly, I emptied the shells and tails into my handbag. Bobby and Johnny kept straight faces. I had no idea they were winding me up - and did they pull my leg afterwards!

1962 was a big year for us. Bobby turned 21 in April, made his England debut in May and married me in June.

Getting his first full England cap wasn’t completely unexpected. He had been doing well in the England Under-23s, which was managed by Ron Greenwood, now his manager at West Ham. Ron was also a good friend of Walter Winterbottom, England team manager at the time, and had been singing Bobby’s praises.

In those days it was traditional to have an England v Young England fixture the night before the Cup Final, and Bobby was pleased with how he’d played because there was still a chance of him making the squad for the 1962 World Cup in Chile. But he’d heard nothing and was resigning himself to go with the rest of the West Ham squad on their close season trip to Africa. Then Ron called him into his office at Upton Park. ‘You won’t be going on the Africa trip,’ he said.

Bobby was startled. He thought he’d done something to offend Ron. Then he saw that Ron was smiling broadly. ‘You’re off to Chile instead,’ he added.

I was absolutely delighted for Bobby. I knew how much it meant to him just to be selected. He warned me not to get my hopes up on his behalf. ‘The chances are I’m only there to make up the numbers in training,’ he said, ‘but at least it’ll be good experience for the future.’ In fact, he became a fixture in the team from the first match, making his England debut against Peru on 20 May. He was bowled over and so was I. It’s every young footballer’s dream, and here he was, the man I was about to marry, fulfilling that dream.