The Brexit-backing cricket legend in line for a peerage
Sean O’Grady on a different kind of test for Ian Botham
Given the importance of sport in our lives it’s a little surprising that this particular area of human endeavour isn’t better represented in the House of Lords. There’s Lord (Sebastian) Coe, who used to run a bit, though he was also a politician, and Baroness (Tanni) Grey-Thompson, former wheelchair racer. And rumour has it that if Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell had had their way Sir Alex would have been converted into Lord Ferguson of Hairdryer, but the Manchester United legend thought better of it. That’s it really: but things may be about to change with the elevation of Sir Ian Terence Botham to the peerage.
It has been widely reported, if not leaked, and has the ring of truth to it; that indispensable guarantee of
truth only journalists can divine. Apparently, in news speak, it’s for “services to Brexit loyalty”, which is certainly true. Sir Ian can’t comment on it, as protocol dictates, but it seems preordained, another honour heaped upon a national hero. When he swaps the cricket whites or, more likely these days, the charity walking boots, for a touch of ermine, as Baron Beefy it will be a bit of a moment. At a mere 64, he’ll be a bit of a nipper in the upper house, and we can look forward to many years of him contributing on the great issues of the day.
He’ll probably be a rather unconventional member, in more ways than one. One hopes, for example, that he doesn’t repeat the prank he played on his last day as a competitive cricketer, back in 1993. As Botham tells it: “I was playing for Durham, against the Aussies, and David Boon faced my last-ever ball. Booney was struggling for his Test pace and was deadly serious. But he just about fell over laughing and shouted ‘Beefy, you can’t do this to me.’ I was midway through my run-up and he’d spotted that I’d unzipped my fly and hauled out the meat and two veg. The old man was dangling in the wind as I steamed in. If I’d got it on target I would’ve bowled him. I thought it was a nice way to go out.”
And so it was, much nicer than when he received a ball in his mouth, and just spat out the four redundant teeth to finish the match – “we had to win”. In fact, Botham is so hard he claims to have had Covid-19 in January but didn’t notice. The likes of Lord (Robert) Winston, and Lord (Jonathan) Sumption had better not try bowling any googlies at Botham.
Not to be overshadowed by this spectacular display, or forgotten, is Botham’s remarkable and sometimes dominant position in the game. As his own website states with no false modesty: “Perhaps the greatest allrounder the game has ever seen, in his 102 test matches Botham scored over 5,000 runs, including 14 centuries, took 383 wickets, and 120 catches. He was also the fastest to the double of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets.” He also, even more impressively, found time to play football for Scunthorpe and for Yeovil Town (though born in Cheshire, he was brought up in Somerset). He was always an adventurous, robustly built child, which gave rise to the “Beefy” nickname at school, but also “Guy the Gorilla” and “Bungalow”, because there wasn’t much “upstairs”. That does seem unfair though, as you’d readily concede to the 6ft 2in sporting legend.
As a youngster, indeed, he was offered a contract with Crystal Palace, so you wonder a little what might have been. Cricket, though, was more in the family tradition. His father, an engineer, played, as did his mother in her local nurses’ club. As a professional footballer, though, he would have fitted in well to the increasingly ritzy and glamorous lifestyle as his career developed in the 1970s and 1980s (his first class debut was in 1974, for Somerset), following the example of, say, George Best or Paul Gascoigne onto the front as well as the back pages of the newspapers. The trademark moustache was sometimes teamed with a mullet hairstyle which, if nothing else, helped to establish the Beefy brand image. So did the scrapes he got himself into, and the casual playful insults he’d chuck at the Australians – “Aussies are big and simple, just
like their country.”
The news that he smoked a spliff wouldn’t cause a stir these days but earned him a 63-day ban and global notoriety in 1986. He was never a favourite of the blazers who ran cricket, and the feeling was mutual. To be fair to Botham, he’s never been a snob or rude to his fans, and he has sufficient self-awareness to put a clip from The Office up on his website, where David Brent claims Botham as his life-inspiration in terms so politically incorrect they cannot be repeated here.
Botham has given up the wild man of cricket stuff now, and is more distracted by angling and grouse shooting. This is no doubt comforting to his wife of 44 years, Kathy (nee Waller), often described as “longsuffering” . Botham’s affairs with an Australian waitress and a Miss Barbados (the latter resulting in a broken bed) were painfully publicised by the tabloids, and even referenced in one of his memoirs, subtitled “Don’t Tell Kath” (it was her idea to name it so, apparently). They have one son and two daughters, and a large extended family, many of who live close by. Son Liam Botham was a cricketer and rugby player.
But it is a long time since Botham’s bowling, batting and romping days, and he no longer commentates or appears on TV as much, more inclined to just lob a few underarm balls at the grandchildren. He still keeps up with his friend and old teammate Sir Viv Richards, and lives a contented existence pursuing his charity work, speaking and commercial activities. As a matter of fact, Botham now has his own range of wine, Australian as it happens, and a bottle of Botham 80 Series Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon can be had on special offer at Tesco for £9 (75cl). The thought occurs that Brexit and a free-trade deal with Australia might be good for sales of Botham wines, though there is no doubting Beefy’s well-witnessed patriotism and devotion to the monarchy.
His charity work – all these walks from John O’Groats to Land’s End – is more than generous. Botham’s efforts for leukaemia, for example, have raised more than £12m. It stems from when he went to hospital to have a foot injury treated and found himself on a children’s blood cancer ward. He now also helps with diabetes (his daughter Becky has type 1 diabetes). He’s available for all manner of speaking engagements, in which he can air his private views, but hopefully nothing more intimate than that.
His outspoken views, though, have opened up yet another career for him. He supported Brexit from the outset and was a support act for Boris Johnson at an early Leave event in Durham. He later commented of Johnson that “his footwork at the crease still needs work but I thought he had guts to campaign for what he believed in”. In fact that might be precisely the other way round – Johnson was nifty enough to abandon his previous reluctant pro-EU stance for personal advantage, but there we are. BoJo and Beefy were photographed outside the pavilion enjoying a pint of bitter – what else?
Botham’s patriotism, like a lot about him, is old fashioned, back-to-basics, if not always topographically accurate: “Personally I think that England is an island. I think that England should be England. And I think that we should keep that.” He wrote the usual sort of stuff about Brexit, sincerely enough. Under the
headline “As a patriot I’m going in to bat for my beliefs” and with a byline photo of him in a Union Jack bow tie he told Sunday Times readers that: “Anyone who is proud of their country and cares about its future should take their share of personal responsibility for what happens to it. We now all have the chance to do our bit and vote to get Britain out of the racket that the European Union has become.” After the vote, Botham demanded that Theresa May trigger Article 50 immediately, though his opinion that the US, China and India were interested in trade deals with the UK seems over-optimistic now. Still, Botham is still pushing the cause, recently telling Remainers to “accept we’re leaving”. He’s sticking to the script so far, then, and there is a lot to said for having experiences and voices such as Botham’s heard; but, with his track record, you wonder how long it might be until he starts bowling a bit wide.