Fans usually want to ask about my second goal... I was alone on a train and the conductor said: I was there when your brother committed suicide

days. Apart from the goalposts, just about everything in football has changed since 1966.

“As part of my induction process with Abbey Life we just picked up a phone book and selected a number at random to try and gain appointments.

“I’d go through the spiel, saying ‘Hello, my name’s Geoff Hurst,’ and 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.

“I used to practise my salesman’s patter at home.

“I would knock on the kitchen door, pretend to introduce myself as a complete stranger and my wife Judith would play the part of awkward customers.

“The job wasn’t all sweetness and light.

“At one Ford dealership, where I wanted to discuss warranty insurance, the boss flicked my business card back at me and, as it bounced across the floor, he said, ‘I don’t deal with exfootballers’.

“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 medieval times.”

As Gareth Southgate prepares for what could be his last crusade as England coach, Hurst remains entirely supportive.

“We have the best crop of young players I’ve seen for a long time,” he said.

“This ‘Southgate out’ stuff is nonsense. But fans of football seem to turn quite quickly now.

“We’ve reached the semi-finals and final of our last two major tournaments and yet some people want the manager out. Really?

“In 1966, we drew 0-0 with Uruguay in our first game of the tournament.

“Boring match, they didn’t want to come out and play. But we were booed off. Some things never change.”

HURST: The First

And Only, on Sky

Documentaries, tomorrow, 7pm

Football’s changed. I don’t think we’ll see Kane end up on the dole, like me