Eric Cantona has written to France’s elected mayors seeking 500 signatures needed to stand for the 2012 presidential vote.

“I remember my first meeting with Sir Alex when he wanted to sign me from Leeds and in the first minute I knew that I had to work with the man,” said Cantona. “Of course, the name of Manchester United meant so much in football anyway, but I saw a man who wanted the same things that I wanted. He told me I could become a great player at United – and I believed in everything he told me. He is a man who has the same spirit as me. Looking back he also saw the same philosophy in me that he saw in himself. We are football men. He was very special to me because he treated me like a man, not like a boy.”

“There’s nothing to do in Manchester,” Tevez recently said. “There’s two restaurants and everything’s small. It rains all the time, you can’t go anywhere. You can buy a house in Marbella and take a vacation. I will not return to Manchester, not for vacation, not anything.”

Manchester United legend, Eric Cantona, has had a dig at Tevez, claiming he can’t understand how anyone wouldn’t like the city.

“I had a great time in Manchester,” the former United striker said. “I cannot understand anyone not liking it, though I suppose it depends on where they come from and why they are here. The most important thing for me was always to play, and if you are at one of the best clubs in the world then you should enjoy it. As a professional footballer the greatest time you have is on the pitch, but I loved the city as well, the club and the people.”

But even as I basked in the warm spring weather my thoughts turned to the FA Cup Final, trained in the United manner to forget the last trophy and think of the next.

First I needed to sort out tickets. Uri Geller, contributor to one of our Secrets of the Paranormal programmes, which had featured United beating Reading in an earlier round, was trying hard to get me two tickets, aware how keen I was to take my 11-year-old daughter, Kat, to see the King. Uri phoned apologetically to say he’d failed, despite pestering the Reading Chairman on my behalf as his ‘friend and associate’. He’d even tried the Leeds chairman.

No matter, I phoned my brother Chris, knowing he had one spare, only to find that it was not a good time to call. Hours before he’d heard that his first wife had died in the night after a long illness involving a heart & lung transplant. They separated 25 years before, but I could tell he was upset, making it feel almost crass to discuss cup final tickets at such a moment. Nevertheless he did still have the ticket for me,much to my relief. Altogether it was a sobering reminder of real life and death, making me think of Bill Shankly’s famous dictum. How appropriate that it should be his old club, Liverpool that United would be facing.

I’d got a ticket, but unfortunately Kat would miss out. I’m not sure who was more disappointed, her or me.

Final Week

For footballers Cup Final Week is a special, exciting, stressful time, flying past yet dragging with horrible slowness, all at the same time. It was like that for me too at work at the BBC. In fact it was a very good week, with several programmes shaping up well, others getting good reviews or excellent audiences, as we’d find out each morning from the dreaded ‘overnights’. For us, perceived to an extent as the embodiment of ‘public service broadcasting’, the ratings pressure was slightly less, but with every passing month that element of special protection was evaporating, with ever fewer slots safely out of the competitive firing line.Fortunately the latest Secrets of the Paranormal, on ‘ghost hunters’, had done well, getting over 2.1 Million, a good result on BBC2 at 8pm. The subject matter prompted my boss, Mark Thompson (now the Director General) to reveal to me that he’d seen a ghost. Twice.

There was a major presentation for senior management that week, on the BBC’s strategy for ‘Extending Choice in the Digital Age’, fronted by the DG, John Birt, the MD Will Wyatt and the new chairman,Sir Christopher Bland. I sat in the audience with the head of TV personnel, a lifelong United supporter so naturally enough we gloated together at winning the Premiership. She was on the board that had promoted me some three years before, so conspiracy theorists may think I got the job as part of some United mafia.

The presentation was actually very impressive and in many ways with hindsight one can see that Birt, for all his authoritarian management style which so alienated staff with his mis-placed trust in the ‘internal market’ and numerous other wrong-headed structural changes, actually got the big picture right. You can see that today in the BBC’s worldwide digital presence in so many fields, which is exactly what Rupert Murdoch and News Corp don’t like, of course, with their visceral hatred of anyone serving the public without being driven by profit.

Murdoch had always boasted of buying up sports rights for his satellite channels at huge, unmatchable cost, including the jewel in the crown, exclusive live coverage of Premiership football, as a ‘battering-ram’ to break down terrestial television. I once asked Birt at a management conference whether he ever lost any sleep over losing the football to Murdoch’s Sky and he replied with a glare, ‘Do I look like someone who loses sleep, over anything ?’ Lucky fella, I thought to myself. Meanwhile, the irony was not lost on me that the very success of Eric Cantona and the celebrity buzz he created beyond the world of football was exactly what fuelled the rise of Sky, an effect endlessly re-cycled and heightened by their constant drum-roll hype of ‘clashes’ and ‘show-downs’.

The launch of Extending Choice was Bland’s first significant appearence at the BBC and he looked pleased with himself, despite his slightly ill-fitting suit and discordant bright blue checked shirt and clashing tie. I was happy with his appointment however, because, despite being a Tory (‘self-confessed’, I almost said), he’d had a strong track record of standing up to the Thatcher government in defence of public service broadcasting from his position in the commercial world of LWT.

I also sat near the controller of editorial policy James Boyle, a very bright, softly spoken Scot who later became controller of Radio 4. We were then in discussions over how far we could go in terms of taste and deceny with a Video Diary with a male stripper. James had come to a viewing of a rough-cut and seen the scenes of the man having sex under a blanket with a woman he’d only met two minutes before and the shots of him arousing himself so he could tie his penis up before going on stage with his manhood ‘enhanced’, something which greatly alarmed his Mum, on health grounds. After long discussions James and I broadly agreed what had to come out and what could stay, but these were hard decisions, bearing in mind not just the law but also the BSC, who’d just upheld complaints against our Secret Life series. It was also important to protect the interests of the rather naive young stripper while giving an honest portrayal of his way of life and all it revealed about modern Britain, yet not gratuitously exploiting the voyeuristic appeal of sex.

In case it sounds like all we did was stuff on sex, drugs and paranormal, I should add that among other programmes viewed in the cutting rooms that week there was a Diary by a wonderfully public-spirited and charismatic lifeboatman and another by an inspirational anti-child-slave campaigner in India.We also broadcast another programme which I was proud of that week, Guerrilla TV, which showcased the work of video activists in the UK and round the world . One powerful sequence was based on recordings made by a courageous Tibetan who had documented rapacious illegal tree-felling by the Chinese in Tibet, long officially denied. For hour after hour he’d secretly filmed the huge logging trucks rolling down the highway in blinding snow.

But not everything was quite so inspirational in Cup Final week. There was always the tabloid press.

Mirror, Mirror

It turned out that one of our contributors to Video Nation, Carl, had won a vast sum on the Lottery, triggering an immediate media scramble to get his story, partly on the basis that he had a previous criminal conviction (for which he continued to claim his innocence).The Daily Mirror got him under exclusive contract and spirited him away and I was then contacted by a reporter who claimed a woman from my department had been ‘overheard in a pub’ (mmm, makes you think, that) saying she now regretted not accepting a date with Carl before he came into the money. My name had come up in the conversation and now the Mirror wanted to talk to her. As it happens she wasn’t interested, not least because it wasn’t true, regardless of the fact it could have been a nice little earner. Nevertheless we needed co-operation from the Mirror to get approval from Carl to put out a Video Nation Short that night based on footage he’d shot. They in turn needed our assistance for stills from his past output. The consensus in our office was how sleazy and unpleasant these Mirror people were. We helped them, they obstructed us.

All this was coming to a head the day before the Cup Final. As I flitted round consulting the Video Nation team there was much appreciation for my stylish black Eric Cantona t-shirt. It had his timeless ‘When Seagulls follow the trawler…’ quote across the chest, which seemed so apt on this day of all days as hack after hack phoned us, hoping for sardines.

Are you watching, Liverpool?

At long last, Cup Final day arrived. It reminded me of how much I used to love the build-up on TV when I was a kid, when the FA Cup meant so much more although in 1996 there was still considerable glamour surrounding the Final, certainly compared to 2011. In those days it still felt like it really mattered, not just because United were going for the Double Double but because of who their opponents were, Liverpool, the most enduringly ‘hated’ rivals were the most successful club in England , having won a record 18 league titles in their illustrious history, the most recent only six years before. I had hated the years of their dominance in the ’70s and ’80s when they piled up trophy after trophy, leaving United in their wake with eleven fewer league titles by 1990. Things were looking up under Alex Ferguson , having now been crowned Premiership Champions three times in four years, but nevertheless, in 1996, the only competition where United had a historic ascendancy was the FA Cup, and this was no time to let that slip away, not with a record breaking Double Double at stake.

This was my sixth United FA Cup Final and I wanted to enjoy it to the full, knowing there might never be another.

Tales from the Underground

I made my way to Wembley by bus and Underground, seeing growing numbers of fans at every stage. At Baker Street there was a big boozy bunch of Scousers – florid-faced, over-weight, swilling cans of Boddington’s, loud-mouthed, but not unfriendly, despite the legendary rivalry. There was some hostility between supporters but nothing malevolent in the chants and counter-chants as we all poured out of Wembley Park station.There were hundreds of French Tricolour-waving United fans, less unappealing than some of the Scousers, but no less juiced up. All over the pavements were signs of where beer had frothed up out of fizzing cans and where piss ran back from nearby walls. I walked against the tide, in both senses, to the top of the hill where I had a good fry-up in the greasy-spoon cafe where I’d eaten before United’s last Double in ’94, perhaps for luck, certainly not for a good digestion.

Up Wembley Way

I re-joined the crowds, enjoying the triumphalist singing directed at Liverpool, ‘Campione, Campione! Ole, Ole, Ole!’ In reply, all the famous Scouse masters of wit and repartee could come up with was, ‘Who the fuck are Man United?’

There were dozens of kids with painted faces, dyed hair and wild tinsel wigs (so like real Scouse hair, I noticed). I got my match prgramme and a big foam United hand with pointing finger, thinking it would look especially impressive in my office. As I fought my way through the crush I saw two particularly repulsive drunken men, both Liverpool supporters, being escorted away by the police, one with his mouth full of blood, roaring obscene threats in all directions. Most just shook their heads at the sight, some laughed.

I got inside the stadium, past the steps draped with scarves and banners, and found a long line of fans standing shoulder to shoulder pissing against the walls at the bottom of the stairs up to the stands. Picking my way through this Valley of Piss (which you don’t get at the new Wembley, Thank God) I got to my seat, where I was joined by my brother, a Spurs fan, but now an honorary Liverpool man. We were in notionally neutral seats, although most had their preferences, one way or the other.

The Spice Boys

Many still remember fifteen years after the event the famous ‘Spice Boys’ cream-coloured suits worn by the Liverpool players that day. They were pretty startling, certainly , and some certainly looked on them as evidence of their essential frivolity in that period, confirming their reputation for a lack of discipline off-field. There was certainly a contrast with the sober, dark-suited, visibly focussed United players. But I have to admit I quite liked the Liverpool outfits, thinking, well, they’re brave. I’d never have the nerve to wear something like that, except maybe with my black Cantona T-shirt.

There were displays by high-kicking pom-pom girls doing orchestrated displays at each end to the teams’ anthems, You’ll Never Walk Alone, for Liverpool of course, which, here’s another admission, still raises the hair on the back of my neck. I remember using film of the Kop signging it in the 1970s for a series on folk music and it really was an extraordinary sight, something I looked on with awe.As it happens here at Wembley in ’96 I thought United’s Glory, Glory Man United just about shaded it, although it was all a bit tacky and plastic, as was the traditional hymn ‘Abide With Me’, which for some reason has lost something of its lump-in-throat resonance in recent years. The need for the words to be put up on the electronic score-board probably didn’t help.

Not that anyone cared as the teams came out to thunderous, slightly desperate roars, flickers of anxiety detectable all round the stadium, probably sensed out there on the pitch too as the game kicked off. Eric Cantona was skipper for the day, with Steve Bruce unluckily injured.

Saturday 11 May 1996: FA Cup Final: Liverpool 0 Man United 1

United began confidently as befitted newly crowned Premiership Champions, passing the ball round purposefully, keeping a well-organised body of defenders in front of Peter Schmeichel in the United goal, generally asserting a cautious superiority. By comparison Liverpool looked ragged and out of sorts.

Early on, a Cantona headed flick-on created a chance which Andy Cole fluffed. Then Ryan Giggs laid the ball back from the left for David Beckham to drive powerfully from the edge of the box, only to see it palmed aside by the Liverpool ‘keeper David James. At this stage it was all United and the ‘Pool stars – Collymore, McManaman, Fowler, Redknapp – looked overwhelmed although the longer it went on the more the game sank into mediocrity, a numbing stalemate of stray passes, unforced errors and few openings. The main blocks of United fans were near us,behind the goal to our left, which United were defending in the first half. Chris, who undoubtedly wanted Liverpool to win was admitting United should win it comfortably, no doubt willing the opposite by saying it out loud, as we all do, a kind of reverse psychology.

I was surprisingly relaxed, thinking only a freak break-out against the run of play would deprive United of their unique Double, but I did wish they would play with more urgency and passion, urged on by the magnificent wall of sound from the supporters. They were jumping around so much Chris said they looked ‘like a writhing mass of maggots’.

Second Half

After the re-start, things were much the same, United still well on top without playing at their best, which, strangely has been a feature of cup finals under Alex ferguson, regardless of all the phenomenal success.Still, it was good to see the kids un-phased by the occasion, Beckham in particular delivered some glorious swinging cross-field passes. Nicky Butt was neat and energetic, Phil Neville, preferred to his older brother Gary, looked composed till he tired in the second half.Soon the inevitable happened and Paul Scholes replaced the lacklustre Cole, and he immediately added bite to the attack. Gary Nev came on as sub near the end, just as the great Ian Rush did for Liverpool, in what was to be the last competitive appearance of his distinguished career as one of the all-time great goal-scorers came to an end. I hoped he was not going to go out on a high. He didn’t.

I felt proud of the kids, none over 21 except the old man Giggs, almost in his dotage at 22, but as time went on it looked more and more like extra time would be needed. Liverpool’s cheerful Irish winger Jason McAteer had troubled United’s left flank but I still felt we were the better team, with Roy Keane magnificent at the heart of midfield bossing proceedings and winning every battle.But after all this dominance I feared a late error would blow it.

Then Keano won yet another corner.

Eric’s heat-seeking missile

For most of the match David James had plucked corner kicks from the air with aplomb. But this time, with three minutes to go, just as I was mouthing to Chis, ‘Over it comes, and James collects…’ for the first time he got it wrong. All he managed to do was to punch it out straight to Eric Cantona at the edge of the box. As it flew towards him he stepped back, nimbly adjusting his feet and volleyed the ball with unstoppable power. It flew into the net with perfect precision like a heat-seeking missile through the forest of Liverpool defenders massing across the goal. The ball seemed to be going into slow motion as it took little deviations in the air until it suddenly exploded in the back of the net, setting off an even bigger explosion among the ecstatic United supporters, me included.

Cantona raced dementedly towards Fergie and his assistant Brian Kidd as they leapt up from the bench with the coaching staff and subs. United fans broke into the most eye-popping rendition of Ooh Aah Cantona that I’ve ever heard, swirling round the stadium across the silenced ranks of bitter Scousers. Liverpool tried to hit back but they knew, they really knew, it was all over now for the Spice Boys. Seconds later the final whistle went and they sank to their knees in despair. The United kids were hugging and clasping each other and jumping up and down on the pitch, celebrating the greatest moment any of them had experienced in their young lives. Oh the glory glory as the Reds went marching on!

The Pied Piper and his Kids

King Eric looked happier than I have ever seen him, and strangely younger, like a big kid, with none of that enigmatic aloofness he sometimes adopted. He proudly led the team up the long flight of steps to collect the cup, a Pied Piper leading the famous kids with whom you win nothing, as asserted by a certain confident ex Liverpool ‘Legend’ on Match of the Day nine months before. Thanks Alan, something to remember you for, forever.

The triumphant players took the cup on a lap of honour past the rapidly emptying Liverpool stands and down in front of the massed ranks of United supporters, every single one of them loving Alex Ferguson for winning the Double again, and doing it at the expense of the Scousers.

In all truth it hadn’t been much of a game but the winning goal was of the highest quality, one of my favourites of King Eric’s, in a crowded field of great goals.What an amazing turn round for Mon Dieu, Footballer of the Year and now a Double Double winner, something no team had ever achieved before.

The F-Word

Chris and I left the stadium and headed for the station through the crowds.The Liverpool faithful looked utterly stunned. Around that time it had become de rigeur to look as tearful as possible on these occasions ( a trend possibly started by sobbing Toon Army Geordies in their bar-code shirts) thanks in part to the over-heated effect of Sky’s relentless hype. Nothing like it ever happened, as far as I can recall when I was a kid.

When Eric scored his winner many Scousers just sat there with their heads in their hands and now they as they traipsed home their heads were down, avoiding eye contact.United fans were of course entirely sympathetic, conscious of how things would have been if the roles were reversed, so they regaled a coach-load of the Scousers with a fine rendition of, ‘What’s it like to win fuck all??’ A mounted policeman angrily pointed his long baton at the singers and barked, ‘There are women and children in this queue, how would you like your mother to hear the f-word? SHUT UP!’

Everyone laughed.

He looked even angrier and rode off.

I saw people in big latex Eric masks accepting praise for the goal we all worshipped. Another supporter was in a big fluffy red outfit with horned Red Devil mask, carrying a trident, keeping alive a nickname and insignia going back to Matt Busby’s days. How he would have loved this.

Home Win

It took ages to get home after I split from Chris who was gracious about United. When I got home everyone knew United had won, and everyone knew Cantona had scored the winner, including my poor mother-in-law, who was having one of her more lucid days and was beaming for me when I got in. It all made me sad Kat had missed it, she would have loved it, F-words and all.

Everyone knew how happy I would be and we all went out to celebrate at Pizza Express. My only concern was to get back in time for Match of the Day, to re-live it all.

Match of the Day

The highlights on Match of the Day somehow contrived to make the Cup Final a lot better than it felt at the time, but maybe that’s because the frayed nerves can be set aside as you wait for the magic moments.

Something that did not look so good close up on TV was the behaviour of the Liverpool fans. As Eric walked up to accept the cup, he was spat upon. He stopped, looked disdainful, wiped himself, and carried on. Another Scouse fan took a swipe at Fergie. Pitiful.

The next day was time to wallow in victory but also check the pond for frogs and newts with Kat, after a bumper year of frog spawn, and no, I’m not going to make any connection with any other kind of Frog, except to say Le Roi!

Biteback

Later on I watched myself on Biteback on BBC1 on the Secrets of the Paranormal controversy. I thought the item was poorly constructed, with points made on one side of the argument which were then not addressed on the other side, and vice versa. Still, in its incoherent way it was OK, Bob Long and I had had a chance to defend and explain the series and I had no complaints. The only thing was I thought I looked gaunt and haggard, and older than I thought I was.This weekend I was sure I was 15, not 50

Back to work

When I went in to work on the Monday I wore another old Cantona T-shirt, from the time of his comeback after the 8 month ban. It showed him emerging from behind bars to strut down the players tunnel with the slogan ‘ He’s been punished enough… Now it’s someone else’s turn!’ Prophetic words indeed.

All day people came up to me to make comments, joking and teasing and congratulating by turn, all in a good natured, laughter-filled way, just as I like it. An amazing number of people had seen Cantona’s goal, a true celeb moment, I suppose. Everyone, fan or non-fan talked of it as a ‘Wonder Goal’. What a way to end the season winning the Double Double with a knock out volley which everyone talks about for days, and many will never forget.

To complete what was another good day at work (this couldn’t last, surely) lots of people had also watched Biteback. The consensus was that we’d come out of it well, though most people also thought the item was poorly produced. No-one is going to tell their boss that they were crap on TV, so I cheerfully took the praise with a pinch of salt, except what one producer told me. He said he’d watched it at home with his wife and she had commented that I’d looked great: ‘He’s a very handsome man!’

That made my day.

————–
Read Part I and Part II

On course, for United to now go on to win the Double, having secured their place at Wembley, much depended on how Newcastle handled the pressures of the league run-in.And we got a very significant clue only a few days after the semi-finals, in one of the all-time great Premiership matches, on 3 April, 1996. This was a passionate end-to-end encounter in which the lead repeatedly changed hands before Liverpool finally beat Newcastle 4-3 with virtually the last kick of the match, from Stan Collymore. The Toons had been leading 3-2 with only 20 minutes to go, and it was no wonder that Kevin Keegan was seen slumped over Anfield’s advertising hoardings in despair at the end. ‘Kevin Keegan hangs his head, he’s devastated’, cried the commentator, knowing Newcastle had just thrown away one of their two games in hand, leaving United still at the top of the Premiership, three points clear. Mind you, with my capacity for pessimism over United I had a horrible fear at this point that Liverpool’s dramatic winner would be just the boost they’d need to overhaul United and win the league. Worse, as FA Cup Finalists the Double was now suddenly a possibility for them too. What a nightmarish thought.

The Title run-in

If Newcastle had been nervous, United had their moments too. Listening to them on the radio on Easter Saturday, things began well as United took the lead against Manchester City at Maine Road only for them to surrender the lead not once but twice. Meanwhile,with Liverpool and Newcastle both initially falling behind in their matches only to draw level things were getting tense, especially when Newcastle dramatically took the lead while United were marooned at 2-2. But then came United’s clincher, a stunning 20 yard pellet from Ryan Giggs, whose contributions in this marvellous season sometimes get forgotten. Where Newcastle had folded under the floodlights at Anfield, United had kept their nerve against their closest traditional rivals.

The Red Devils now had five more league games and the pressure was undoubtedly enormous with intensive media attention, especially focussed on Eric Cantona, who seemed to attract comment at every turn, although, in sharp contrast to the way he had been reported in past years he was now getting praise on all sides. Even non-football folk seemed aware of his new maturity which had certainly not detracted from his star quality and marketability. People talked about him, they had opinions on him, they could show how au fait with popular culture they were by going ‘Ooh Aah’, and they could even speculate on whether he would deliver a second Double, just like he had in 1994.

Olympic Diaries

In one way this new centrality of sport in celebrity culture was an advantage to my department. Over more than twenty years we had hardly ever got any commissions on BBC1, where the frontline ratings competition is greater. We’d had a run of a ‘people’s journalism’ series, Private Investigations under executive producer Debbie Christie, which I was proud of, but then in ’95 we got a potentially high-profile BBC1 commission, a series of ‘Olympic Diaries’, in which a number of British competitors in different fields would record their lives and preparations in the year leading up to the 1996 Olympic Games.

We’d got beefy rowing titans Steven Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent, yachtswoman Shirley Robertson and the runner Kelly Holmes among others and it was a very exciting project to be involved in, scheduled for transmission in the week before the Games would open in the Summer of ’96. The series producer was Sue Davidson, who went on to have one of the most successful and wide-ranging careers in television of anyone connected to my old department, including stints on The Apprentice. But Olympic Diaries was plagued from start to finish by it’s inadequate budget and low staffing levels, making for enormous stress on everyone. It was a huge relief to us all when Alan Yentob liked the early roughcuts we showed him, ensuring we kept our slots in the schedules.

That was always the thing I most enjoyed about my job, viewing programmes at various stages in editing suites, seeing them take shape, sometimes after frighteningly poor beginnings. I always saw it as my job to help programme-makers make the most of whatever material they had and do so in a way that didn’t undermine anyone, editor or director, if things weren’t working at some stage. Directors get very defensive and resistant at times to outsiders, so that takes careful handling . (Whether I was successful in that is not for me to say, but I tried). Sometimes a film looks brilliant all the way through different versions until the final rough-cut and then it mysteriously falls down for no very clear reason , which can be scary. Or for days nothing works and everything gets very fraught and directors get very stressed.It requires strong nerves to overcome a situation like that, with the clock to transmission perhaps running down.

I used to love that process as a producer myself and still did so as head of department. I was lucky that as chief of a small outfit I could see everything before transmission, sometimes several times, which is why I’m a great believer in ‘human scale’ structures for creative enterprises. I knew everyone and everyone knew me, enabling me to give full attention to problems, whether programme-related or more personal. Mark Thompson told me at that time that our department had the best ‘programme quality control’ in BBC TV, which was down to execs like Debbie, Sue, Bob Long and the Video Nation producers Mandy Rose and Chris Mohr, not forgetting Ian Macrae, editor of the Disability Programmes Unit, Gazza’a cousin and a Newcastle supporter.

Unfortunately our small scale was completely against the grain in the BBC which went for bigger and bigger aggregations in successive restructurings, as I found to my cost the following year, regardless of the generous applause my department had received in Performance Review in 1996. Of course I couldn’t know that then, and I was very proud of some of the things we were doing, such as a Video Diary with a man in India who campaigned against the exploitation of child labour, and went on child-slave rescue raids, all captured on video, helped by a courageous young producer, Kuldeep Dhadda working alongside him shooting material herself as the children were plucked from harm’s way.

Blood on the pitch and grey shirts

Success at work only made it more satisfying that United were doing so well. They beat Coventry 1-0, with another Cantona goal, but that match is most remembered for the tragic accident that saw the midlanders’ David Busst carried off with a sickeningly bad leg-break, which caused the shocked Peter Schemiechel to throw up at the sight of blood in his penalty area. Busst never played again, a chastening experience for everyone who saw the horrific TV images, not all of which were shown initially on Match of the Day. The only consolation was that it was a total accident with no malice, and no recriminations as United players went to see the injured man in Salford Hospital.

After Coventry, United had their first major set-back since the astonishing 4-1 hammering at Spurs on New Year’s Day, when Southampton surprisingly beat them on 13 April, helped by the wondrous ball-juggler Matthew LeTissier strutting his stuff. This match will long be remembered because United famously came out in new colours after going in 3-0 down at half-time. Fergie blamed the grey strip United were wearing, colours they never used again, saying the players couldn’t pick out team-mates against the crowd background. Despite the shirt-shift United still lost 3-1, sending shudders down Red spines everywhere. Oh no, it’s not going to be a late season implosion like 1992 is it?

Fortunately not.

Things that really matter

At the same time things were going from bad to worse in the Middle East where we were hoping to get our Israel / Palestine Video Nation project under way. In retaliation for Katyusha rockets pounding Northern Israel from Hizbollah enclaves in Lebanon, the Israelis launched a massive retaliatory attack on Southern Lebanon, causing a mass displacement of around 400,000 people, accompanied by countless deaths, including women and children. Soon after there was an unconnected Islamist terror attack in Cairo, killing 18 tourists.

Fortunately there was eventually an Israel/ Lebanon ceasefire, but after such carnage it raised the eternal questions for both sides, do they really think all this killing is part of the ‘peace process’?

While the international scene darkened, I had further problems at work, with the Broadcasting Standards Council upholding complaints against one of our series, My Secret Life, a matter they regarded as so serious they were taking it up with the BBC Board of Governers, just when a new Chairman was taking up his post, which is why I was pretty nervous about the whole thing, despite the fact that the films had been approved through the referral-up system in advance. That may well have been what troubled the BSC, that no-one had stopped our outrageous films, all of which I stood by, of course. In fact I remained vocally unrepentant over all the programmes, on drug taking and other controversial matters, although it did add to the anxiety over Secrets of the Paranormal, which I was still having to defend on a weekly basis.

I was very grateful for Mark Thompson’s support at that time. He calmly told me as if describing a force of nature at the BBC, ‘Sometimes a door opens and you are showered with a huge heap of shit and there’s nothing you can do about it’

It was also encouraging when the heads of publicity and PR came to see me to discuss ways of capitalizing more on the success of Video Nation, which were perfect examples of openness and accountability to our public in the way we gave voice to such a wide diversity of individuals within British society. Luckily the Governors loved the project and often invited Nation contributors to their conferences to enable ‘ordinary people’, as they’d condescendingly put it, to have a say in policy debates. (At one such Governors’ meetings one Nation regular, a black guy called Conrad told me that at first he thought I was ‘quiet and aloof’ but now he’d got to know me he could see I was actually ‘loose and easy-going, a hippie but also a bit square’. Not far off, I’d say.Well, maybe not ‘square’…)

It was good to know there were crucial levels of support for what we were doing in the BBC, but nevertheless at times staff in the department itself would get quite twitchy, unsettled by, say, attacks on the Paranormal or Secret Life, worried about their own jobs and futures, understandably enough. I was thus grateful to those colleagues who did shape up and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with us.

On the buses

The exec producer of Paranormal, Bob Long went out of his way to thank me for so frequently and publicly defending his series, to the point where opinion within the BBC was beginning to shift. We invited him over for a meal and had a very entertaining evening with Bob regaling us with some of his many tales, such as the one about a certain perma-tanned daytime presenter who was having an affair with a woman Bob knew. Apparently he’d rush round to her flat, burst in and shag her against the wall in a frenzy, calling out ‘What a cunt! What a cunt!’ I hope he shaved you-know-where.

Bob’s coming to dinner necessitated him going on the bus, as I did every day, something he hadn’t done for nearly a decade, so it was quite an experience for him. As it happens a few days later the IRA exploded a bomb under Hammersmith Bridge, bang on my daily route. Only a mis-fire prevented a massacre and massive damage to the bridge, although a tiresome detour was imposed for months while they repaired it.

Love it, love it…

Meanwhile, against all these tragedies in the world, and all the aggravations of work – and the pleasures too, of course – it might seem odd to return to Eric Cantona and United but there was good news for both, celebrated with almost excessive glee by me. First United beat the old enemies Leeds United 1-0 in a tough encounter, prompting Fergie’s comments about hoping Leeds would try just as hard when they played Newcastle, which poor old under-pressure Kevin Keegan took so much exception to, apparently cracking-up live on Sky Sport (‘I’d really love it…etc, etc’)

Soon after it was announced that Eric Cantona had been voted Football Writer’s Player of the Year, the first United player to get the award since George Best in 1968. What a turn around.

All this seemed seemed to have some sort of liberating effect on the team who were in superb, championship-winning form in their last two matches.

28 April 1996: Man United 5 Notingham Forest 0

Before watching this match on TV round at some friends I scanned all the papers to see if there were any more attacks on Paranormal, but the previews were all good so I could relax, or rather I couldn’t, not with so much at stake in the Premiership. United now led Newcastle by three points but had played one game more, although United had the better goal-difference.

What added to the tension was the fact that when United collapsed in ’92 it was Forest who did much of the damage with a shock 2-1 away win. In the early, nervous minutes it felt like it could all happen again.

But then things suddenly took off, with Ryan Giggs flying down his wing like a gazelle in the outback. He slung a cross into the Forest box and there was Paul Scholes, who scores goals, as he now did, flicking the ball into the net nervelessly, instantly vindicating the manager’s decision to select him in favour of Any Cole. Just before half-time it was the kid David Beckham playing a man’s role, firmly heading United’s second (Heading? Becks?)

Now we could start to relax, and sure enough Beckham finished off a scintillating movement with his second goal, followed not long after by one from Giggs. To round things off in style it had to be Eric the King who scored an imperious fifth, chesting the ball down before lashing it unstoppably past the stranded keeper from close-range. Old Trafford erupted with mounting fervour as each successive goal went in, with much waving of French tricolours. It really felt like we could win the league, and who knows, maybe that elusive Double Double too.

My host for the match was the actor David Dixon, with whom I have shared many a tense couple of hours watching football on TV, reaching a certain unforgettable peak in 1999. He’s no United fan, but was always fair-minded, despite one son being a Newcastle supporter. I stayed chatting after United’s victory about how work was going. David is most famous as ‘Ford Prefect’ in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and on this weekend he was awaiting the result of an audition for The Bill. He’d sometimes done voice-overs for us and had been sorry to hear that one of the producers he’d liked had been made redundant. It can be a cruel world at times.

United’s trouncing of Forest put us in a very strong position, made even better when Forest stirred themselves in their very next match to hold Newcastle to a draw in midweek. My brother was watching on TV in a pub in London and he later told me ruefully that the whole pub groaned loudly when Forest equalised . Everyone knew that meant United would almsot certainly win the title. ABU’s the lot of them.

Thanks to Match of the Day, and thanks to a Liverpool supporter

Confirming my feeling that the Paranormal storm was abating somewhat, Uri Geller’s programme was well-received at the Weekly Programme Review meeting, when senior staff discussed the week’s output. I thanked Sport for the co-operation given by Match of the Day, which was graciously accepted, no doubt helped by the generally favourable response to the programme. Many reviewers had a bit of fun over John Motson’s somewhat leaden commentary about bending Cups and spoons.

It’s sometimes claimed that there’s institutional hostility to United at the BBC, some allegedly emanating from Brian Barwick , the Liverpool-supporting head of Sport who later became chief executive at the FA, and whom many blame for the inadequate celebration of United’s Treble in the 1999 Sports Review of the Year. All I can say is that he knew all about my United allegiance and it was a bond more than a barrier, perhaps because he liked the idea of someone from a documentary department liking football. Regardless, I had cause to be extremely grateful to him around this time when one of our programmes, about boxing, contained a serious error of fact about BBC Sport, such that they could almost have sued us for defamation. I was furious with the producer who’d had detailed instructions to check the facts and had not done so. Brian could have gone public at Programme Review and had a real go at me, just when I was ‘on the ropes’ on several counts but chose not to, and just had a quiet, friendly word about it outside the meeting. He later told a friend of mine it was because I was ‘a top man, a top man’. So here I’ll say a big thank you to Brian Barwick, Top Scouser.

Biteback

Although the Paranormal situation had normalised somewhat, BBC’s viewer feedback show Biteback was doing another big item on the controversy, causing me some alarm, in case it was another inaccurate stitch-up like C4′s Right to Reply, which had left a nasty taste. This time I was interviewed at length and very fairly, all calmly filmed in my office in White City by a self-confessed West Ham ‘obsessive’, which got us talking about that horrendous time a year before when on the last day of the season West Ham had held out for a 1-1 draw, thwarting United’s dream of a Double Double in ’95. He’d loved it.

So, now the Premiership Title again came down to the last match of the season, with all games kicking off at the same time, to avoid anyone gaining an advantage, just like last time.By this time it was United or Newcastle for the title. Who’d blink first?

Sunday 5 May 1996: Middlesborough 0 Man United 3

As my ‘Dicko’ neighbours were going to watch the Newcastle game I went into the office to watch the title decider. By now I was incredibly nervous, quite unable to do the bits of work I’d hoped to do before kick-off. I phoned Uri to see if he’d had any luck with cup final tickets which he kept promising to get for me from his Reading contacts. I was desperate to get two so I could take Kat, for what I hoped against hope would be an historic victory, making United the first team ever to win the League & FA Cup Double twice. Uri was still trying.

I paced round, went to the loo, ate crap food, drank fizzy water in gulps, fidgetted, looked vacantly at spread-sheets, tried to read scripts, gave up.

United were facing Middlesborough in their swish new stadium, the Riverside. They were managed by, Bryan ‘Red Robbo’ Robson, who’d only left United two years before, after United had done the Double for the first time. The ‘Boro keeper, Gary Walsh was another former United player, plagued by bad luck with injuries.

When the players appeared in the tunnel they looked composed and purposeful, unlike me. But when they kicked off they looked nervous and could easily have gone behind. Gradually they sorted themselves out, keeping a good shape and passing the ball about neatly until after 15 minutes they took the lead through a powerful downward header from reserve centre back David May from a perfectly flighted Giggs corner.

There were some anxious moments as the Boro’s little Brazilian genius Juninho ran at defenders like an eel, but May was in excellent form at the centre of defence in one of his best-ever performances, replacing the injured Steve Bruce. Shortly after half-time Andy Cole came on as sub and instantly proved Fergie right when he scored a lovely goal, flicking the ball into the net over his shoulder from another Giggs corner with such delicate precision I almost missed the fact he’d scored, silencing his critics at a stroke. He was instantly smothered by his teamates in a writhing heap of arms and legs in the goalmouth, with Boro looking on disconsolately.

Shortly afterwards we heard that Newcastle were 1-0 down to Spurs and, to add to the joy, Man City were losing 2-0 to Liverpool, meaning their certain relegation. (In fact in both cases the matches ended in draws but that made no difference to the outcome). United were now coasting, effortlessly in command and I could hear Red fans singing an Oasis song with new lyrics, ‘Man City are so shitty!’ The fact that the Gallagher Brothers were City fans added extra spice to this taunt.

Soon it was all over after Ryan Giggs ran at Boro like a mesmerising sidewinder snake, leaving defenders in his wake before unleashing a whiplash shot from 25 yards, which sailed past the flailing Gary Walsh, as must have happened many times in training when they were both at Old Trafford. He looked rueful as he picked the ball out of his net, knowing like everyone else ‘Down by the Riverside’ that United were rightful Champions again, the third time in four years.

I watched the celebrations with a soppy grin on my face, at long last able to relax, for the first time for months.

I enjoyed it all again later on Match of the Day, suddenly feeling sorry for City fans, and for Kevin Keegan and the legendary Toon Army, and of course my good friend Ian. But not that sorry.

The kids had been amazing in composure and effectiveness in the final push over the line, but at the heart of it all was Eric Cantona, who had such a tactical grip over the team from his central position it was almost like having a second manager, on the pitch. That was part of his educational role too, showing the younger players by example how to make use of space, how to offer angles, when to quicken the tempo, when to slow it down, when to hold back, when to push forward, when to get under the keeper’s nose, when to hang back at the edge of the area. When Eric came to Old Trafford in 1992 the Red Devils were good , pushing for honours, but he had turned them into a far more formidable fighting force in ’93 and ’94, a process thrown into disarray by the Kung-fu madness. Now when he came back in the autumn of ’95 he was something different. It took a little while to establish exactly what he’d become , but by the turn of the year the ‘new’ Eric was uncontainable as an individual, but even more as the catalyst for the whole team, unlocking skills and spreading an aura of invincibility.Cantona helped those famous kids enter a prolonged period of dominance which in the case of Ryan Giggs could still continue next season, an amazing fifteen years later, while Paul Scholes and Gary Neville have only just hung up their boots, both grateful for what they learned at the feet of The King.

Without Eric Cantona it would not have happened in quite the same way as it has. It’s a remarkable legacy. Patrice Evra is correct, he really was The King. If he felt guilt over ‘the Kung Fu moment, his redemption was complete, United were Champions.

Now for the FA Cup. Now for that Double Double

Part III will be on the blog tomorrow.

————-
Read Part I

It’s extraordinary what a hold Eric Cantona still has over our memories and imaginations, even now some fifteen years after his greatest days. Countless young fans who were hardly born still revere his name and what he stands for, and rightly so.

It’s never healthy to live in the past, but that’s not a reason not to celebrate it, especially when we can see what a powerful inspiration Eric the King still is, for players and supporters alike. It’s not for nothing that the immortal cry of ‘Ooh, Aah Cantona ‘ still echoes round grounds wherever United play.

So, in this spirit I’m going to continue the saga of Eric’s finest season at United, following my earlier eyewitness accounts of key episodes in his career (see under Archive), including the Kung-fu kick in January 1995, his imperious return after his 8 month ban against Liverpool in September ’96, and other milestones as United tried to make up for the missed Double Double of ’95 and go for it in ’96, including the magic moment when I was able to take my 10-year-old daughter Kat to see United for the first time.

Magical March 1996

You may remember that I was able to celebrate my 50th birthday in March 1996 with Kat by seeing United snatch a point with a lightning strike last-minute Cantona equaliser at QPR, which took United to the top of the table for the first time, as the Reds gradually reeled in Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle United who’d once held a 14 point lead. This was part of a Magical March when Eric seemed determined to win the lot on his own, and he was at it again in the next match against Arsenal when he thrashed in a ferocious 25-yarder past David Seaman off the underside of the cross-bar at home to win the match 1-0. I was working late at the BBC that night but I kept replaying the TV images in my head as I went to sleep.

The following Sunday Eric scored the winner against Tottenham in yet another 1-0 victory, keeping United top of the table by three points, having played two more matches than the Toons.

What made Cantona the King?

What I found compelling about Cantona at this time was the intensity and focus in his play, with none of the volcanic wildness bubbling up inside that was so much part of his pre-Kung fu persona. Some players at Old Trafford, including Brian McClair, blamed Eric for blowing United’s chance of a Double in ’95 (and a third successive league title, something never before achieved by United) and I believe Eric himself took that implicit reproach on board. The steely resolve in his play following his come-back was genuinely awesome, not just the goals he was scoring, frequently crucial winners in 1-0 victories, but his implacable will-to-win, by fair means, not foul.

As he puffed out his chest, turned up the collar on his proudly worn red shirt, you could sense, even from afar, that he was taking on total responsibility for the team as its hub.If he did feel guilt for what happened in ’95, he was damn sure doing something about it now, as you could see in his eyes, the needle sharp faraway look of a man in the grip of something almost transcendantal. By that time I had been following United for nearly 40 years and I had never seen anything quite like Cantona in this period, at one level so full of ego and individualism, but at another entirely selfless and outer-directed, dedicated to the team he loved, and which he perhaps felt he owed so much.

Another thing I loved about Cantona at this time was the way he nurtured and protected his brood of ‘kids’, the youngsters manager Alex Ferguson had taken such a risk with, following the departure of Hughes, Ince and Kanchelskis the previous summer. All those youth-team graduates, NIcky Butt, Gary and Phil Neville, Paul Scholes, David Beckham, and the ‘veteran’ Ryan Giggs, still only 22, still speak of the influence Eric had on their development, widening their awareness of what it takes to succeed at the top, through dedication, discipline, healthy living and constant practice and perfectionism. In some ways that’s odd given how flawed Eric had shown himself to be in so many ways in his succession of previous clubs in France and even at Old Trafford in his early, red-card-littered days. It seems that he grew up in 1995 in a startling turnabout of self-awareness.

In my own life at the BBC I found Cantona something of an inspiration. Sounds silly and pretentious, but I have always been fascinated by the ingredients of creative success, in whatever field, whether it’s a great band-leader such as the blues-singer Muddy Waters, a charismatic and idealistic movement figurehead such as Martin Luther King, or simply a great television producer. Team or individual, innocence or experience, youth or age, security or insecurity, innovation or tried-and-tested, how do you measure out and balance all these factors when constructing some collective enterprise?

Performance Review

March 1996 was a very intense period for me at the BBC, where I was still head of Community & Disability Programmes, a small TV documentary department. For months the Corporation had been wracked by financial problems and organisational change, making everything feel very precarious and insecure, especially as a swathe of lay-offs cut their way through department after department, including mine. In the spring we had a producer who was appealing against compulsory redundancy which had to go through various stages, eventually reaching the Controller of BBC2, Michael Jackson, our chief source of programme commissions.

This made everyone very edgy, especially as we heard that he knew he could never win his appeal, but was reportedly going to ‘spread as much shit as he could anyway’, presumably in his personal hearing with Jackson.

I wasn’t the only one feeling the pressure, far from it, and I had to laugh when I heard that a fellow head of department, known for his menacing dark suits and black office decor, had been attacked in the street (by his staff??) and was now demanding a bullet-proof car. The idea was apparently supported by Alan Yentob, then Controller of BBC1, but only as long as he had one too.

Each year departments had to go through a rigorous Performance Review, an in-depth investigation into all aspects of how you’d run things, managerially, financially and editorially. It can be very daunting as you face a Star Chamber of the top echelon, the two channel controllers and the managing director, Will Wyatt, in front of you like a row of magistrates, surrounded by their number-crunchers. I was very nervous as I went in this year, but it could not have gone better, with expressions of gratitude all round for what we’d been doing, with particular praise from Michael Jackson for coming up with so many new series formats and innovative ideas, especially against such an unfavourable financial background after years of ‘efficiency savings’. I thanked them all, including my then immediate boss, Mark Thompson, who was then the head of factual programmes. He is now the BBC’s Director General.

Then I took advantage of the positive mood to point out some home truths about what living with endless cuts meant for those at the frontline of making programmes in an already low-budget and efficient department like our’s. I described how often I would find staff reduced to tears of exhaustion and stress from the low budgets, ferocious turn-rounds and lack of ‘downtime’ (the period between projects when you can re-charge batteries and think up new ideas), which no-one had enjoyed in my department for over three years. I said I feared burn-out among the younger , less experienced producers, predicting many of the best and brightest would no longer be in the industry in ten years time, a prediction that came all too true.

Escape from pressure

I suppose I was very lucky to have United and King Eric to give me such a wonderful release from these pressures at work at that time. If you’re not into sport it’s maybe hard to comprehend just what a vital escape it can be, especially when things are going wrong. While United won match after match in the spring of 1996 I not only had work pressures I had distressing problems at home, including the sad realisation that my much-loved Mother-in-Law was suffering from the early, but significant, stages of dementia, which of course added to the pressure on my wife Hilary, who was at the same time trying to build up her own garden design business. I mention all this not to claim any special sympathy because these things happen to us all , one way or another, but these were factors in creating a greater intensity in life for me in general, at the time of Cantona’s supremacy on the pitch. I’m sure that added to the depth of my appreciation of what he achieved.

Strangely around this time I had a vivid dream about United. In it I saw Brian McClair on a motorbike in Barnes, a ‘leafy’ upmarket suburb through which I travelled to work everyday by bus. I flagged him down and showered him with praise for his ‘Choccy’s Diary’ in the official club magazine, which was consistently entertaining in its gentle poking of fun at ‘the kids’. I told him he should bring out a book based on it. (Sadly, now he’s on the coaching staff and more ‘responsible’ his diary doesn’t have quite the same irreverent snap. )

Meanwhile, there was our Kat, growing up fast but still a child, playing with her Barbie dolls one minute, listening to Oasis the next.In fact, one of our favourite jokes at that time was to offer ‘Oasis Soup – You get a roll with it!’ I heard Cantona’s winner against Spurs at Kat’s 11th birthday party involving skating at Brentford Leisure Centre, where I managed to keep up with what was happening at that other leisure centre at Old Trafford via an attendant’s furtively hidden radio.

In this same period Kat became fascinated by what she dubbed ‘The Gang’, a group of slightly older boys who got into all sorts of annoying acts of vandalism in our road, grafitti, scratching cars, tossing things into gardens, smashing bottles in the street, knocking off roof tiles, racing up and down making a racket and so on. I called Kat the Little Sleuth as she would go out with her pal from next door to see who they were and what they were up to. She knew some of them and on their own they’d be OK but when I told policemen who’d caught one red-handed that he was actually ‘a nice boy’ one of the cops drily commented,’They are always the worst, the ‘nice’ ones…’ I think for Kat there was something both alluring and repulsive about the Gang’s transgressive, anti-social behaviour. She has never acted in that way herself, but she’s always had a liking for ‘the street’, and it parallels her enjoyment of a packed football crowd or the buzz in surrounding streets on match day. She was constantly asking when could I take her to see United together again.

The FA Cup was probably the best bet.

If United got to the final, Uri Geller had promised me tickets. We’d worked together on one of the programmes in the highly controversial series Secrets of the Paranormal which involved him using his ‘powers’ to predict results (correctly twice) and help Reading win matches, which he signally failed to do when United beat them in the FA Cup. A high spot had been when Uri astonished Cantona’s Dad and Bobby Charlton by bending a spoon in time-honoured fashion.

United had beaten Southampton in the sixth round and would face a resurgent Chelsea in the semi-final at the end of the month. Annoyingly I couldn’t go as there was a big family party taking place which I really couldn’t get out of.

Sunday 31 March 1996: FA Cup Semi Final: Chelsea 1 Man United 2

I saw this match on TV, but only after the event, being stuck at the party, itching all the time to find a TV, but with birthday speeches and all I couldn’t sneak off in search of one. When folks find out you work for the BBC you get into all sorts of odd conversations which can be hard to get out of politely. I remember once years ago I was asked by a rather snooty woman at a party what programmes I was working on. When I said I was helping produce a series on the blues she said excitedly , ‘How absolutely marvellous! That was my husband’s regiment!’

Anyway, on semi-final day, after desultory chat about Mad Cow Disease and what the BBC should do about it, I got into a far more interesting conversation with a civil servant at the Heritage Department, which then had responsibility for broadcasting. He was a short man with an ominously large forehead, suggesting formidable intellect rather than Cantona-esque heading ability. He was briskly cynical in dishing out certainties in all directions, clearly not used to contradiction by inferiors. He was working on the next broadcasting bill which would sort out the digital future among other issues. He said that the ‘brightest people in the industry’ were those in satellite television , presumably meaning the Murdoch Empire: ‘You only have to say something once’, he said, ‘and they grasp it’. The BBC people were ‘all arrogant and complacent’ while the ITV folks were the least impressive. He said they all take him to expensive restaurants to get him on their side; ‘It’s hard, but someone has to do it!’

Of course, looking back it’s all too redolent of what we now know about how News International operate in their insidious ways. Anyway, I also had a ‘lively’ argument with him about popular drama, which he was snobbishly disdainful of, regarding series like Heartbeat and Peak Practice as ‘returning to the safety of the womb’, while I defended them as embodying certain values of community which people yearn for, sentimentally or not. Then I got onto my hobby-horse, the negative effects of cuts at the BBC and the damaging effect on programme quality, not to mention quality of life for the programme makers. He clearly couldn’t give a toss about that, and didn’t seem to care much abour public service broadcasting either, or how to preserve it in the age of digital proliferation. Maybe I was not one of these ‘brightest people’ he preferred dealing with at Sky.

Anyway, it was all a nice distraction from fretting about the semi-final.

At long last we were able to extract ourselves and head for home.

I was desperate for United to win, not just to keep the Double Double ‘on’, but because of United’s amazing record. If they beat Chelsea they would not have lost a FA Cup semi-final for 26 years, and they would have got to the final three years running and four times in six years. It would also be Fergie’s 8th final in all competitions in ten years with United . Astonishing, really.

United on tape

I tried to be disciplined about not knowing the score before watching the tape (for such it was then, a video cassette) but as I switched on the radio in the car I heard the end of the other semi, with Liverpool beating Villa to face United in the Final.

That at least meant I could enjoy basking in the warm glow of another semi victory without anxiety. It almost added to the pleasure that Chelsea took the lead through the superb Ruud Gullit, Cantona’s only serious rival for Footballer of the Year. He scored with a far post header from a pin-point cross from ex-Red Mark Hughes, whose departure in the summer had caused such heart-searching about United’s youthful line-up. Gullit was a brilliant player, and is quite an entertaining TV pundit these days, but maybe a little weird. Allegedly, as a manager he was known to have insisted on his players all shaving off their pubic hair, it supposedly being ‘more hygienic’. It’s not clear if he makes a personal inspection. Anyway, having had to shave that area myself for a hernia op in ’94 (an injury incurred scoring a goal with a literally cracking volley) it’s not something I’d like on a permanent basis.

Back to United. How nice to know what must come next on the tape. And sure enough, United equalised, through the much-maligned Andy Cole, the one player who didn’t particularly benefit from Cantona’s presence in the team, although on this occasion he created the opening for him to score with aplomb. It was the sweetly innocent-looking David Beckham who scored the winner, with a perfectly placed cross-shot from the right skimming over the rough muddy goalmouth into the far corner of the net. Another win, another cup final, possibly another Double. What could be better than that?

After the match Beckham was interviewed and had that lovely modest manner which has stood him in such good stead in public life, even after the vilification when he was sent off against Argentina in the ’98 World Cup. I thought even then, at the beginning of his career , that David could become a true popular hero of our times, somehow untarnished even by sporting acclaim and great wealth. I think I was partially right.

But of course, well though the kids played, it was King Eric who was the real star. He played with disciplined calm, a superb leader influencing the whole team around him, prompting them with subtle flicks and lay-offs, always with time and space to control the flow of play, with a seeming unhurried effortlessness that only the very best players manage.

With a place in the FA Cup Final secured the Double Double was still very much alive. Now it was time to turn attention back to the League.

Part II will be on the blog tomorrow

“The plan was for Eric to come back and overshadow me,” laughed Scholes. “Hopefully everyone will be concentrating on him and I can just mosey off somewhere and be out of the way. Seriously, the Cosmos are just getting back together again and it seemed a sensible thing to do. He was a big influence on a lot of the United lads’ careers. We grew up watching him and then trained with him. He led by example and it will be great to have him back.”

———-

Tickets on sale

He scores goals galore t-shirts

Eric Cantona is their director of football at the American club but will be coaching the side for the game.

“I wish to congratulate Paul for such an incredible career at Manchester United,” said Cantona. “I am looking forward to returning to Old Trafford in my new role with the New York Cosmos.”

Scholes has paid tribute to the club, fans and manager ahead of the testimonial.

“This is going to be a big night for me and my family but one which I intend to enjoy and I will savour every moment,” said Scholes. “I have spent my whole footballing life at Manchester United, so this will be an emotional farewell. This club is special in many ways but the fans are the best and I have always appreciated their support throughout my career. I hope they enjoy the night, especially seeing the Boss and Eric battling it out in front of the dug-outs.”

Scholes will be grateful of getting to share the attention with someone else, with plenty of fans eager to show their appreciation towards Cantona.