Charismatic Scot cut a controversial figure as chairman of Newcastle United
HE cut a charismatic figure with his distinctive eye-patch, flowing silver hair, Scottish lilt and twinkle in his eye.
Lord Westwood was a man born to the centre stage, an accomplished after-dinner speaker much in demand on the American circuit where quick wit and a sharp mind translates to dollar signs.
I got to know Lord Bill very well during his long reign as Newcastle United chairman which stretched from 1964 to 1978 and covered the great Joe Harvey years when the Magpies won their last major trophy, the European Fairs Cup of ‘69.
Westwood rose dramatically not only to a seat of power at a historic club but to the presidency of the Football League, the top job for any club director.
In the days before owners like Sir John Hall and Mike Ashley bought football clubs, power lay in the hands of a few share-holding families and position was often passed from father to son.
Thus the father of the Second Baron Westwood had been a Newcastle director having risen to fame as a union leader in the shipyards.
Indeed despite his aristocratic looks, aura and title - the eye patch was a result of losing sight in his left eye after a car accident in 1956 Lord Bill was very much a self-made man rising from an inauspicious start as a railway clerk.
By the time he was appointed to United’s board in August of 1960 he was a director of a host of companies including toy manufacturing giants Hornby Railways.
His years saw United win the Second Division championship, their only ever European trophy, the Anglo-Italian Trophy, and two Texaco (Anglo Scottish) Cups as well as reach the FA Cup and League Cup finals at Wembley yet it all ended in a slump and financial collapse.
Lord Westwood was a cousin of Hal Stewart, who ran Greenock Morton in the Scottish League, and that is how United came to get Benny Arentoft, one of the first foreignborn players to perform in the Football League before it became the norm it is today.
Arentoft went on not only to star for United but score one of the goals in the Fairs Cup final second leg in Budapest of course.
I remember Benny telling me of those deals - the first from his Danish club Bronshoj to Morton and then Morton to Newcastle.
Morton, he claimed, made a fortune picking up players on the cheap and flogging them for a healthy profit.
As an amateur club Bronshoj did not get a penny for Arentoft with Lord Bill’s cousin telling him from the start the whole idea was to sell him on.
Benny wanted full-time football so that suited him fine and a secret meeting was set up in Carlisle where United did a deal with club and player.
As a consequence Benny ended up as a footballer with Morton AND United for a fortnight!
That was because at the time there was a ban on foreign players coming into the Football League but United director Wilf Taylor, a league vicepresident dispatched to Carlisle, had the inside track on such things and he believed he had discovered a loophole.
Arentoft had lived in Britain for more than three years and had married a Scottish lass. As such he would be acceptable.
At a meeting of the League Man