Memories of a meeting with a Consett man who became Sky chief

Vic, who later became managing director of both news and sport divisions, was born in Low Westwood, near Consett, orphaned at the age of eight, had just finished his O-levels – and just finished that morning’s paper round – when he spotted an ad for a cub reporter on the Blaydon Courier and Consett Guardian.

Quite literally, he got on his bike. Appointed, he earned £3 19s 6d a week. It was 1960.

Thirty eight years later, we’d arranged an interview in his top floor office at Sky’s headquarters in Isleworth, near Heathrow Airport. Shortly before the appointed hour, Rupert Murdoch dropped by unexpectedly.

How long it took Vic to decide on his priorities was never recorded, but it may have been at least three nanoseconds.

Instead, they left me alone in the boss’s office with coffee, sandwiches and that day’s newspaper clippings – a file so thick, as the column 19 years ago observed, that it might have been stapled with a windy pick.

Vic breezed in 90 minutes late. We talked of early days in Consett – he liked a Brown Ale in the Miners, it was reckoned, remained particularly fond of his tabs – and of covering Whitburn cricket for the Shields Gazette.

The great Wes Hall, he recalled, would use the sight screen as a launch pad for his run-up.

By the late 1970s he was sports editor of the Evening News, long deceased in London. “Sport was regarded as the comic section, you had to fight for space. Sky was around at the right time,” said the man regarded (to his chagrin) as the most powerful in sport.

He proved wholly agreeable. “I have the best job in world television,” he said. “You couldn’t tell Rupert Murdoch, but I’d probably do it for half the money.”

By then, of course, Rupert Murdoch was probably half way back to New York.

THAT Sky trip had one down-to-earth disappointment. The column failed Evenwood Town FC.

On Friday August 29 1997, Evenwood v Durham City had kicked off that season’s FA Cup. Sky pitched up, broadcast highlights and interviews the following day, made the most of the hospitality.

“They particularly liked the pies,” said the late Jim Coates, Evenwood’s secretary at the time, though his four letters suggesting a few bob for their troubles hadn’t even had a reply.

By January, the competition had reached the third round. For allowing coverage of their tie with Newcastle United, Stevenage were to be paid £150,000. Evenwood heard that I was heading south, wondered if there might yet be a few crumbs from the rich man’s table.

Vic was brusque, said it was the FA’s pot, not theirs. Not so much as a placatory pie? Not a blooming sausage.

RAY Robertson, for many years the Echo’s man at the Boro, was believed a confirmed bachelor until he met Joan Bowen – his wife for 51 years.

Ever-supportive, former Butlin’s beauty queen, model wife in every sense, Joan even helped organise players’ testimonials.

Her funeral was held last Wednesday. Paul, their son, recalled that his mum was born in a terraced house in Shakespeare Street in Middlesbrough but had long lived in Nunthorpe – “one of the poshest parts of Teesside.”

He’d spotted her once outside a supermarket, feared she was being mugged by a tramp. “It turned out she was greeting one of her old neighbours.”

Greatly familiar former players like Jim Platt and Gordon Jones, born 74 years ago in Sedgefield, were among the mourners. Only one Middlesbrough player in history made more appearances than Gordon, North Ormesby lad and English international Tim Williamson, who in 602 games also scored twice from the spot. He died, aged 49, in 1943.

AMONG many others at Joan’s funeral was Doug Weatherall, Seaham lad and successful schoolboy goalkeeper, who became greatly familiar on the Daily Mail and, before that, the Herald. He’d started on two quid.

Now 84, still singing in choirs and still with a nose for news, Doug had come across a story of the Hartlepool Hospitals Cup.

Every little cottage hospital, near enough every ward, seemed once to have its own football cup. Hartlepool’s, still healthy, survives.

Back in 1961, 14-year-old Keith Stephenson was centre half and skipper in the Sunderland schoolboys side which lifted it. This season it was won by Newcastle schoolboys – Keith’s grandson Harry in midfield.

They held the presentations last week – proud granddad invited to do the honours.

….AND finally, the six North-East referees to have had charge of post-war FA Cup finals (Backtrack May 25) are Kevin Howley, Pat Partridge, Peter Willis, George Courtney, Jeff Winter and Mark Clattenburg in 2016.

Kevin Howley, Billingham boy, was just 34 – then the youngest ever – when he took charge of the Blackburn v Wolves final in 1960. “The dustbin final”, the papers called it, after Rovers fans pelted Wolves manager Stan Cullis and his team with orange peel, apple cores and plastic cups.

“A despicable display of bad manners,” said the Echo.

Kevin didn’t drive, declined a telephone despite the Daily Express offering to pay for it – “you buggers would be ringing me at three o’clock in the morning” – used red cards reluctantly. “When I caution them they stay cautioned,” he said. He died in 1997.

Readers are today invited to name the three players with North-East clubs who’ve won the Premier League’s golden boot award.

All that glistens, the column returns next week.