Dad’s column kept him in touch with the people he loved the most – the fans
JIMMY GREAVES’S son Danny has spoken of the delight his dad took in delivering his much-loved weekly columns for readers of the Sunday People.
England’s greatest goalscorer, who passed away in the early hours of last Sunday morning, penned his witty anecdotes for us from 2009 until 2015.
He would have loved to have gone on longer but, in the May of that year, he suffered a massive stroke which robbed him of his ability to speak and confined him to a wheelchair.
Adamant
A week or so later, in the Wellington Hospital in St John’s Wood, he was adamant he wanted to keep writing.
Sadly, he was never well enough again to produce another column even though he, and we, would have loved it if he could.
“His column kept him in touch with the people he loved the most – the fans,” said Danny. “Dad was all about people, he loved people, he was a people person.
“So writing his column was his way of still being in touch with the people he loved and the people who loved him. He very much looked forward to doing it every week.” Greavsie was a national treasure and the outpouring of love his wife, Irene, and their four children – Lynn, Mitzi, Danny and Andrew – have felt for him again this week has been of great comfort.
Danny added: “It helps tremendously to know our dad was loved and cherished by so many people, and so many people speak so highly of him.
“On the telly, and in various media outlets, people were saying what a brilliant footballer he was and what a fabulous pundit he was, but most importantly just what a lovely, lovely man he was.
“So for the family to hear that is touching and it gives us a warm feeling. We’re so proud of him.”
Greavsie was 81 and hadn’t played football professionally for half-a-century at the time of his death.
Which makes the fact he remains the leading goalscorer in English top-flight football all the more remarkable.
He scored 357 goals – 74 more than Alan Shearer, in second place, and 104 more than Nat Lofthouse in third – for Chelsea, Tottenham and West Ham.
At Chelsea, he scored 124 goals in 157 games before joining AC Milan, where he scored nine goals in 10 games to help them win Serie A.
However, he hated life in Italy and returned to London, this time with Tottenham (right), where he went on to become club-record scorer with 266 goals in 379 appearances. His goals-to-games ratio was just as good for England with 44 goals in 57 games meaning that, while fourth on the list of all-time scorers, no one else has come close to scoring at such a rate in a Three Lions jersey.
After he retired from football, Greavsie had a well-documented battle with alcoholism, something he would speak about with searing honesty.
He built a successful packaging business, owned a travel agency and became a much-loved TV personality and newspaper columnist. He told this paper the awards he won for broadcasting meant as much, if not more, to him than those he won playing football because he’d had to work so hard to win them, while football came so naturally.
Observations
Those newspaper columns of his were a must-read every Sunday, too, as he married stories of old with observations about the modern game.
As Danny said on the day of his dad’s death: “I can only compare him to Bruce Forsyth. I know people might say, ‘Wow’, at that, but Bruce Forsyth and Jimmy Greaves started entertaining at a very young age and were still performing and entertaining at the other end of their lives.
“He touched so many people’s lives.”