Reptonian reptiles
MICHAEL HENDERSON
0 h, where are those snows of yesteryear? The Times ran a series of features last month in which they sought to identify the coming men and women in different fields — politics, the media and so on. And blow me down with a feather if one of the people to watch' (watch what, exactly?) in the paper's legal supplement was a lad known in his house at school as 'Mary' (something to do with Miss Hopkin's hit, 'Those Were The Days'), who is now a judge on the northern circuit. Should I ever appear before his lordship, I trust he will cast a kindly eye upon my misdemeanours, as we did upon his.
Another lad in the same house, two years our junior, was a truculent scruff called Clarkson, who still looks a scruff whenever he appears on the box, which seems to be every half hour. He's less truculent these days, which may have something to do with all the dosh he has trousered, Well done, J, say I. Unlike other members of the Media Mummers, who kick up their legs on our screens whether we want them to or not, Clarkson has added his share to the gaiety of this nation. He's a funny writer too.
Another member of the Repton media set to make waves is Charles Sale of the Daily Mail, though 'Charles' is quite inappropriate for one of life's most natural Charlies. His father, Dick, may have been the headmaster of Brentwood School after playing county cricket for Warwickshire, and his younger brother Bobby may have been a scholar at Balliol, but Charlie's tastes have always been less refined. His leer, modified only slightly by age, enlivens the bar-room today as it did the classroom back then, though his conversation hasn't improved.
Charlie earned his own niche in sporting history in July 1974 when he got off the mark first ball at Malvern and then blocked for the next two and a half hours, refusing even to contemplate another run. The Malvernians were up in arms — a pose that suits them perfectly, for they are only slightly better than the wretched Salopians — and Charlie came off unabashed. He even raised his bat! One not out and straight into the Guinness Book of Records! A year later, when the Shrewsbury slugs deigned to pay us a visit at our marvellous ground, 1 managed to hold a tumbling catch at deep square leg (a jolly good one, if you will pardon my bragging) and the first team-mate to approach me, galumphing across the outfield with a bounding stride that could be felt on the other side of the Trent, was the panting, red-faced Leerer himself, who informed me, 'I'm going to Roger you!' Reader, he didn't. But it was a close-run thing.
Anyway, now that he is Sale of the Mail, with the heaviest contacts-book in the business and a neck of pure brass, Charlie is unstoppable. Day in, day out, he makes public what others in sport would prefer to remain secret, and last week he hit the jackpot when he revealed the '99 questions' that John Magnier, Manchester United's major shareholder, has demanded that the board should answer. It was a scoop that put a stick of dynamite under the dishonest, scratch-my-back world of high-level football and confirmed Charlie as the reigning king of sports newshounds. If he doesn't win an award at this year's British Press Awards, one can only assume that Lord Hutton chaired the panel.
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