‘I don’t think we’ll be seeing Harry Kane on the dole’
SIR GEOFF HURST OPENS UP ON THE HARD TIMES
WISH England luck as you wave them goodbye.
But if he emulates Sir Geoff Hurst’s hat-trick in next month’s World Cup final, Harry Kane is unlikely to find himself on the dole or spending almost 20 years flogging insurance.
Apart from the FA’s cheapskate £1,000-a-man bonus for England’s 1966 heroes, right, Hurst’s reward for an unrivalled achievement has been a lifetime of honest endeavour punctuated by unspeakable heartbreak.
He still laughs at the memory of a national treasure being invited to present a bingo jackpot winner with the keys to a Mini in Ilford and being introduced thus to the audience, “Ladies and gentleman, Mr George Hurst”.
He is also still baffled by the lack of an organised night on the tiles with his team-mates 56 years ago.
Jack Charlton passed out in a front garden after a pub crawl, Nobby Stiles stopped off for egg and chips on the M6, while Hurst and team-mates including Alan Ball and Martin Peters joined revellers in Danny La Rue’s London club.
Hurst, 80, is one of only three surviving Boys of ‘66 and increasingly he is aware of his own mortality.
Tomorrow night, in a powerful documentary produced by long-time friend and former TV presenter Matt Lorenzo, Hurst opens the curtains on his ups and downs. He talks on camera, for the first time, about his younger brother
Robert’s suicide when he stepped in front of a train in 1974.
Eight years later, after being sacked as Chelsea manager and a short spell drawing unemployment benefit, he was on a near-deserted train from Norwich to London when his memory was virtually tasered, let alone jogged.
Hurst said: “I was working for Anglia TV as a pundit and the train back was almost empty.
“The buffet car wasn’t open but the conductor offered me a cup of tea from somewhere and, when he reappeared with a brew five minutes later, he told me he was working on the train the day my brother passed away.
“Most strangers want to talk about whether my second goal in the World Cup final crossed the line – especially if they are Germans or Scots – but I wasn’t expecting that.
“You could argue it lessens over the years but the grief never leaves you.”
With indiscriminate cruelty, his daughter Claire also died – after a 10-year battle against brain cancer – in December 2010.
If he was offered two hours of his life to relive again, he would cash it in for an encore with her, not a football match that went to extra-time in July 1966.
“Family life is always more important than anything you’ve done in your workplace,” said Hurst.
“I would give anything to enjoy certain moments with her again.”
The anecdotes about his time in the insurance trade are mercifully brighter and he has high hopes of Kane avoiding a similar career path.
“I don’t think we’ll be seeing Harry on the dole,” said Hurst as he laughed. “That’s not how it works these days.
“As part of my induction process with Abbey Life we picked up a phone book and selected a number at random to try and gain appointments.
“I would go through the spiel, saying ‘Hello, my name’s Geoff Hurst’. One woman passed the phone to her husband, who said, ‘If your name’s Geoff Hurst, mine is f ****** Marilyn Monroe’ before slamming the phone down.
“That’s the way it was. Whatever you achieved in the game, and the salaries you were on, when your career was over you had to go out and get a job.
“I often joke that I played in the medieval times.”
●Hurst: The First And Only, Sky Documentaries, tomorrow, 7pm