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

Bobby’s absence on England duty also gave me the space I needed to organize our wedding with the help of my mother. I’d managed to save around £100 and ended up spending the lot on my wedding dress and accessories. Before the wedding, I had a perm. According to dear mama, it wasn’t curly enough, so I was despatched back to the hairdresser to have it re-done. My hair was fine on the day, although later, on honeymoon, Bobby and I had an argument that he won by ducking me in the sea. When I surfaced, I had an Afro.

We were married on 30 June 1962 at St Clement’s, Ilford. Noel Cantwell was best man and the Dreaded Eddie gave me away. I wish my mother had given me away herself. After all, she had been mother and father to me, she had always been there for me and it was a shame that a man who had come into my life relatively late ended up taking the limelight.

When we arrived at the church after the customary slight delay, I was amazed at the crowd of well-wishers, as well as all the reporters and photographers waiting to preserve the bridegroom in his navy mohair suit, white shirt and silk tie for posterity. If I’m honest, I suppose I was rather excited to see them there. All the West Ham team were there and after the ceremony we walked out of the church under an arch of football boots. People plied us with England and West Ham banners along with the more traditional blue garters and black cats. The reception was at the Valentine’s public house in Gants Hill. We opened the dancing with ‘Blue Moon’ - what else?

Afterwards, we were chauffeured to the airport by Budgie Byrne, one of the West Ham lads Bobby used to go gambolling through the night with. It was a wild drive and after being thrown around in the back all the way from Ilford to Heathrow, I staggered into the Skyline Hotel battered and bruised. Bobby and I were starving, so we had beef sandwiches and a pot of tea. I had a white nylon nightie and negligee trimmed with blue daises - looking back, they were revolting. The next day, I changed into my going away outfit, a red Polly Peck suit with a pleated skirt that I’d bought in a sale. Eat your heart out, Victoria Beckham.

We’d booked our honeymoon in Majorca, the Isle of Love. Coincidentally, Malcolm Allison and Noel Cantwell were due to be in Majorca at the same time as us, as my mother was horrified to find out at our wedding reception. ‘Look, Tina’s only young,’ she said, taking Malcolm’s arm and drawing him to one side. ‘I really do think it would be better if you didn’t make any contact with her and Bobby on their honeymoon.’

Malcolm nodded solemnly. A few minutes later, I overheard him telling Bobby, ‘I’ve booked the Astor Club for later.’

It was like a knife through my heart, until I realized he was only joking! Malcolm was a tease.

But my mother was one hundred per cent right about the honeymoon. She knew it would be a disaster if Malcolm and Noel showed their faces in Majorca, because they always led Bobby astray. True to form, they showed up within a week. The three of them got plastered. Bobby was violently sick and spent the night in Noel’s room and I ended up sobbing with his wife, Maggie. Can you imagine being on your honeymoon and ending up in bed with the best man’s wife while the best man and your husband of one week are together down the corridor?

After we returned home to Gants Hill, Bobby bought me a Hillman Minx for £100, and a Siamese cat. We called it Pele and it quickly became famous when it attacked John Bond. It was a real hard cat, was Pele.

Our first home was a three-bedroomed terrace house in Glenwood Gardens. We’d wanted a slightly grander one nearby but couldn’t stretch to the extra £600. It was a shame Brylcreem didn’t seek out Bobby’s services earlier. Later that year they paid him £450 to appear, with strangely tamped down curls, on an advertising poster. That was a one-off, quite possibly because, unlike Johnny Haynes, Bobby was not a credible Brylcreem man. He didn’t have the kind of hair you could slick back. No Brylcreem jar ever graced the bathroom shelf at Glenwood Gardens.

The house had French doors at the back which opened onto a pretty garden where Bobby and I planted a magnolia tree - our favourite. Indoors, the lounge had a green carpet patterned with pink roses and a plate rail going round the walls where we put Bobby’s memorabilia.

We were especially proud of our hostess trolley. One Christmas morning, after I’d prepared the turkey and all the trimmings, we went to a drinks party where we met up with our friend Lou Wade. Lou was 6ft 6in tall, thin and Jewish, and he adored Bobby so much that he followed him all over the world. He wore really outlandish clothes and was noted for his garish check jackets, but he was very definitely not a spiv, just an enormous character - his children went to top public schools and his wife was a lady. He used to laugh standing on one leg and he would wind the other leg around it like a snake because he was so tall.

By the time we got back from the Christmas drinks party, Bobby and I were a little bit ‘under the weather’ and when we went to push the hostess trolley plus contents into the dining room, everything shot onto the floor. We picked up what was salvageable, then rang Lou. ‘Bring it round here,’ he said, so we had Christmas dinner chez Lou Wade that year.

I suppose that, by today’s standards, our Gants Hill house was pretty modest, but Bobby had previously lived in a small house close to an industrial site and I’d had a flat with an outside loo, so to us it was fantastic. Even so, I found the first year of our marriage a bit uncomfortable. It took a long time to adjust to such a huge change in my life. Bobby didn’t want me to work, because he trained in the mornings only and came home for lunch. In those days, the close season started in May and stretched on until well into August, so we could get away for lovely long summer holidays. But I missed the company and stimulation of working life at first.

In so many ways, Bobby was a paragon among husbands - I never had to tidy up after him. Not only immaculately dressed, he was also obsessively neat. He just had to arrange everything in order and just so. The clothes in his wardrobe were lined up as though they had been prepared for inspection. His jumpers were hung in sequence from dark to light. It was almost an aesthetic pleasure to open the wardrobe. Something I did find difficult about those early days, though, was that Bobby had been cosseted by his parents, whether it was Big Bob cleaning his muddy boots for him on a Saturday night after the game or Doss’s five-star ironing and sewing service. But the incident of the sub-standard Vs in his shorts should have been a warning to me. I had trouble coming up to Doss’s standards.

In my own way, I’d been equally spoilt. My mother felt guilty about leaving me to go to work every day and I’d usually be treated to breakfast in bed before she set off. I never ironed. I hadn’t really learnt to cook, either, although as my family always ate well, at least I knew how things ought to taste.

After I’d been married for six months, I solved the problem of the ironing. Sometimes I’d visit West Ham to help out in Bobby’s sports goods shop. My mother had given up her job as manageress of a large clothes shop to run it for him. It was opposite the stadium in Green Street and one day I took a wander up the road and discovered a Chinese laundry. That was the end of my ironing angst - I just took everything there from then on. I never let on to Doss, though.

It wasn’t only the housework which got me down. In that first year of marriage, Bobby’s England career began to take off big time. That, plus his West Ham commitments, meant he was often away. I felt isolated because I’d been used to the warmth and security of Christchurch Road, with Auntie Mum, Uncle Jim and my three cousins, Marlene, Jenny and Jimmy, just a flight of stairs away.