Bananas about Varadi

"I was just jogging out at Manchester City one day in 1987 when these two or three fans started waving bananas and shouting something about Imre Banana," he tells the column.

"A few weeks later there were thousands of them, and then everyone else wanted inflatables. English football was having a hard time after Heysel and for a while it was good because it helped put fun back into the game.

"I don't even know how it started, because Banana and Varadi didn't rhyme and it was certainly nothing to do with what was down my trousers, but soon they were dressing the bananas up in wigs, skirts and all sorts."

Credit for the idea is generally given to City fan Frank Newton who subsequently, perfidiously, switched to a six foot inflatable crocodile.

Norwich City had inflatable canaries, West Ham air hammers, Grimsby Town (memory suggests) giant haddocks and Bury blow-up black puddings. "The firm that produced them all made millions and I never got a penny. It was a joke," says Varadi.

Due to kick off a new series of Tyne Tees television's "Football Flashback" tomorrow night, he is wholly contented, nonetheless.

His father was a Hungarian refugee, his mother Italian. He himself was born in Paddington, brought up in a charitable institution and spotted playing football for Letchworth Town.

Now 43, he's a players' agent, lives in Sheffield, regrets only that his ample hair has gone, attended a dinner on Saturday which honoured Leeds United's 100 all time greats.

"I was 52nd, can you believe that?" asks the speedy striker, who made just 29 Leeds appearances in three years.

He'd joined Newcastle from Everton for £100,000 in 1981, won the Magpies' golden boot in successive seasons - 42 goals in 90 black and white appearances - but was sold to Sheffield Wednesday, for £150,000, in the summer of 1983.

"I loved every minute at Newcastle and didn't want to leave. I was asked about five times to go to Sheffield Wednesday, the deal got better and better and it became clear that the manager, didn't want me.

"I got about 2,000 letters from Newcastle fans after I left. It took me four or five months, but I answered every one."

The Tyne Tees recording was his first return for years. "I just couldn't believe what they've done to both the stadium and the city. They're magnificent, and the Quayside has changed completely."

Leeds United have also persuaded their all time number 52 to run a marathon alongside the remarkable Jane Tomlinson - the Leeds athlete suffering from incurable multiple bone cancers - to raise funds for cancer research.

He also plans a fund raising match between his team and an all star XI chosen by Peter Lorimer, possibly higher up the Leeds hot 100.

"Jane's story brought a tear to my eye. It helped me realise how lucky I am to lead the sort of life I do now," he says.

Eventually everyone stopped going bananas, of course, though it took a year for deflation to set in.

"It got so out of hand that no one could see the match," says the man who'd help launch the yellow peril. "To be honest," adds Bananaman, "I was very glad when they disappeared."

* After tomorrow night, when Imre Varadi appears with Ally McCoist, Football Flashback reverts to a Monday 11pm slot, beginning on March 10.

Other guests in the series include Craig Johnston, Philippe Albert - talking about the Magpies' 5-0 demolition of Man United - and Derek Forster, 15 when he first kept goal for Sunderland.

The programme will also feature Blyth Spartans FA Cup run, 25 years ago this week, and Jackie Milburn's home movies - dug out of the attic by his son.

Not long after we recorded Leo Smith's 80th birthday in December they called him in for a knee replacement. It's not done much good for his prospects of a first team recall.

"I was supposed to be in six or seven days but it was 15, blood transfusions everything. It was a rotten two weeks," says the retired Seaham Harbour bookie.

At 70 he was still getting an 11-a-side game and burning his boots when dropped, at 75 he was running daily along the cliffs, at 79 playing five-a-side.

At 80? "They say I'll be another six weeks on sticks. I think I might be looking at next season."

Further reminiscences of Leslie Welch - the Memory Man - from long serving Middlesbrough councillor Ron Lowes.

Forty years ago, Ron was working in London and living out of a suitcase when he caught up with Welch at a pub show.

"We got talking beforehand and I told him I'd seen him at Middlesbrough Empire, when someone asked him the name of the Boro boy who scored for England in his bare feet."

The answer was Jack Hatfield, the prince of water polo. "He remembered it and asked if I'd put the question at the start of the show - break the ice a bit," says Ron.

In at the deep end, as a water polo player might say, he did as bidden and again fell in with the Memory Man after the show.

"The whole thing had gone very well, we had another bit chat and he left.

"Three minutes later he was back again. He'd completely forgotten where he'd left his car."

Joe Cushlow, familiar in cricket circles, rings from Blackhall to add Melvyn Rowe to the lengthening list of Horden lads who played top level football.

"Went to Derby County, did all right for himself," says Joe.

The column can find no record of him. "I'm sure he did, married the chairman's daughter," insists Joe. "I said he did all right for himself, didn't I?"

Brian Dobinson from the venerable Haughton Cricket Club in Darlington sends an article by Tom Smith, secretary of the Association of Cricket Umpires.

Smith condemns gamesmanship, attempts to deceive the umpire and appealing at every opportunity (and none.)

"The bowler who is constantly throwing his hands to the heavens with disappointment and anguished appeals in a menace.

"We have players at mid-on and mid-off and other positions talking about a man being 'plumb out'. It is ridiculous but can become fashionable and infectious."

Fashionable and infectious? Tom Smith's comments were written in 1960.

Still on the Haughton greensward, we hear that 67-year-old Norman Sturman - overall winner of The Northern Echo's Local Heroes award in November - may be planning a comeback.

Norman, whose browtings up were in East Cleveland, had 50 years fast bowling before hanging up his cricket boots at the end of the summer of 2000 - in his last match given out LBW for one by an umpire known as Sicknote whilst half way down the wicket.

"You couldn't even print his body language," the column observed at the time.

The gentleman has not been available, and not necessarily because he's the retiring type, either.

...and finally

the Football League ground which was used as a prisoner of war camp (Backtrack, February 18) was Swindon Town.

Today back to bananarama: who was Newcastle United's manager throughout Imre Varadi's two seasons at St James Park? We're back in the hot seat on Friday.

Published: 25/02/2003