Ferguson, Alex - Alex Ferguson My Autobiography

At first I had no recollection of this visit to the political arena, but the note jogged my memory and eventually I recalled going round the pubs in our area to raise money for the strike. I was not auditioning for a role in politics. To call my shouting a ‘speech’ would embellish it with oratorical qualities it almost certainly lacked. I remember ranting on like an idiot after being asked to justify my request for money. Everyone would have been nicely lubricated and in the mood to hear the young fundraiser explain the cause he was advancing.

Pubs were a large part of my early experiences. My earliest business idea was to use my modest income to enter the licensed trade, as security for the future. My first establishment was at the junction of Govan Road and Paisley Road West and was populated by dockers. Pubs taught me about people, their dreams and frustrations, in a way that complemented my efforts to understand the football trade, though I was not to know that at the time.

In one of my pubs, for example, we had a ‘Wembley Club’, into which customers would pay for two years so they could get to the England v. Scotland match at Wembley. I would double whatever was in the kitty and off they would go to London for four or five days. Or, that was the theory. I would join them on the day of the game itself. My best mate, Billy, would head off to Wembley on the Thursday and come back seven days later. Inevitably, this unscheduled extension of the trip would cause ructions with his family.

One Thursday, after a Saturday game at Wembley, I was at home when the phone rang. It was Anna, Billy’s wife. ‘Cathy, go and ask Alex where Billy is,’ Anna said. I pleaded ignorance. Maybe 40 of our customers would make the trip to the Twin Towers and I had no way of knowing why Billy was absent without leave. But for the working men of my generation, a big football match was a sacred pilgrimage, and they loved the camaraderie as much as the game.

The pub we had on Main Street, Bridgeton was in one of Glasgow’s biggest Protestant districts. The Saturday before the Orange walk, big Tam the postman would approach me to say: ‘Alex, the boys are asking what time you’re opening next Saturday morning. For the walk. We’re going down to Ardrossan,’ which is on the west coast of Scotland. ‘The buses leave at ten o’clock,’ says Tam. ‘All the pubs are open. You’ll need to open.’

I was flummoxed. ‘Well, what time should I open?’

Tam says: ‘Seven.’

So there I was at 6.15 a.m., with my dad, and my brother Martin, and a wee Italian barman we employed. We’re well equipped because Tam has told me: ‘Get stocked up, you’ll need plenty of drink in.’ I open at 7 a.m. The pub is soon full of Orangemen in full voice and the police are walking by, not saying a word.

Between 7 a.m. and half past nine I took four grand. Double vodkas, the lot. My dad sat shaking his head. By 9.30 we were hard at work getting the place ready for the rest of our clientele. Scrubbed the place, we did. But there was four grand in the till.

Running pubs was hard work. By 1978 I was ready to escape the onerous responsibilities that came with running two watering holes. Managing Aberdeen left no time for wrestling with drinkers or staying on top of the books. But what good stories those years left in my memory. You could write a book just about those. They would come in on Saturday morning – the dockers – with their wives, having been paid on the Friday night and deposited the money with me behind the bar in the night safe. On a Friday night you felt like a millionaire. You didn’t know whether the cash in the safe or the till was yours or theirs. In the early days Cathy would count it on the carpet. On the Saturday morning the money would be away again when these men came to collect it. The record of these transactions was called the tick book.

A female regular by the name of Nan was especially vigilant in tracking the movements of her husband’s money. She had a tongue like a docker. ‘Do you think we’re all daft?’ she would say, fixing me in her sights.

‘What?’ I said, buying time.

‘Do you think we’re all daft? That tick book, I want to see it.’

‘Oh, you can’t see the tick book,’ I said, improvising. ‘It’s sacrosanct. The taxman wouldnae let you do that. The taxman examines it every week. You can’t see that.’

Nan turns to her man, subdued now, and says: ‘Is that right?’

‘Er, I’m not sure,’ says her man.

The storm had passed. ‘If I find out my man’s name’s in there I’m never coming back,’ Nan says.

These are lasting memories of a young life spent around people of great character and resilience. Tough people, too. Sometimes I would come home with a split head or black eyes. That was pub life. When it became too exuberant or fights broke out, it was necessary to jump in to restore order. You would try to separate the protagonists but often take one on the chin. Yet I look back and think what a great life it was. The characters; the comedy.

I always remember a man called Jimmy Westwater coming in, unable to breathe. Grey, he was. ‘Christ, are you all right?’ I asked. Jimmy had wrapped himself in Shantung silk to creep out of the docks without being caught. A whole bale of Shantung silk. But he’d wrapped himself so tightly in it, he could hardly draw breath.

Another Jimmy, who I employed, and who kept the place immaculate, turned up one night in a bow tie. One of my regulars was incredulous: ‘A bow tie in Govan? You must be joking.’ One Friday night I came back to find someone selling bags of birdseed by the bar. In that part of Glasgow, everyone kept pigeons.

‘What’s this?’ I asked.

‘Birdseed.’ Like it was the most obvious answer in the world.

An Irish lad called Martin Corrigan prided himself on his ability to meet any domestic need. Crockery, a canteen of cutlery, a fridge – anything you like. Another guy walked in and announced: ‘Want a pair of binoculars? I’m skint.’ Out came a beautiful pair of binoculars, wrapped in greaseproof paper. ‘A fiver,’ he says.

‘One condition,’ I said. ‘A fiver as long as you drink in here. Don’t go over to Baxter’s.’ He was a nice guy with a speech impediment. So I get the binoculars and he immediately spends £3 across the bar.

When I brought purchases home, Cathy would go crackers. I can remember coming back with a nice Italian vase that Cathy later saw in a shop for £10. The problem was that I had paid £25 for ours over the bar. One day I swaggered in with a new suede jacket that really looked the part.

‘How much?’ says Cathy.

‘Seven quid,’ I say, beaming.

So I hang it up. Two weeks later we are going to her sister’s for a wee party. On goes the jacket, and I’m standing in front of the mirror admiring the cut. You know how a man gives the two sleeves a tug to get it to sit just right? That’s what I did – and the two sleeves came right off in my hands. There I stood with a sleeveless jacket.

Cathy was rolling about while I was shouting: ‘I’ll kill him!’ There wasn’t even a lining in the jacket.

On a wall in my snooker room hangs a picture of Bill, my best mate. He was some lad, Billy. Couldn’t even make a cup of tea. Back at his house one day, after we had been out for a meal, I told him, ‘Get the kettle on.’ Off he went. But Billy was gone about 15 minutes. Where the hell was he? He was on the phone to Anna, his wife, asking: ‘What do you do with the tea?’

Anna left a steak pie in the oven one night, while Billy watched the movie, The Towering Inferno . Anna came back two hours later to find smoke spewing from the kitchen.

‘Christ, did you not turn the oven off? Look at the smoke,’ she puffed.

‘I thought it was coming from the telly,’ Billy cried. He’d thought it was a special effect from the burning tower.