The first WAG Tina Moore on life with Bobby
First Wag Tina Moore talks to Richard Barber about a new TV drama revealing the rollercoaster of life with the World Cup winner
Tina Moore is bracing herself for the upcoming ITV series tracking her passionate, ultimately problematic marriage to football hero Bobby Moore, which is bound to trigger a whirlpool of emotions.
“I cried when I saw the trailer,” she says, half-laughing. “But Michelle Keegan is phenomenal. I’m so flattered to be played by such a beautiful young woman. And Lorne MacFadyen is blond with dimples, just like Bobby.”
The TV version is less than kind, though, to Bobby’s mother, Doris, universally known as Doss. “Doss was a Scorpio,” says Tina, now 72, “and a strong-willed woman who idolised her only child. They’ve made her into a bit of an old bag – and she wasn’t.”
Nothing can come as too much of a surprise, however. Tina acted as a script consultant on the series, based on her book unambiguously, you might say defiantly, titled: Bobby Moore: By The Person Who Knew Him Best.
“Ours was a dramatic life, but you can’t think like that when you’re living it. We were just two ordinary kids from Essex. What took us into the stratosphere was Bobby’s talent. Then he got testicular cancer at 23. I was six months pregnant with our daughter, Roberta. It was horrendous.”
Happily, he recovered well, back on form in time to lead England to World Cup victory in July 1966. “That was a tremendous high. We started getting invited to showbiz parties. We’d be completely starstruck by Sammy Davis Jr or Sonny and Cher or Sean Connery, not quite realising that they were all looking at Bobby.”
Tina, young, trim, blonde, was turning heads, too. The acronym hadn’t yet been coined, but she was the prototype Wag. She smiles happily. “I don’t mind people saying that. I did some modelling work. Flashbulbs popped wherever we went. So yes, we had fame but no fortune. Bobby was paid a bonus of just £1,000 – as were all the team – for winning the World Cup.”
It must make her sick when she looks at the six-figure weekly salaries of today’s footballers. “Not at all. I think it’s fantastic. Obviously, it’s an absurd amount of money. On the other hand, their careers can be cut short at any minute. They’re the workers. I’m a bit of a socialist. Good luck to them. And I’m not complaining. Bobby and I enjoyed a fantastic lifestyle.”
For a while. In what still seems a puzzling turn of events, Bobby’s fortunes, both professionally and personally, began to deteriorate from his World Cup peak at the age of 25 and continued to plummet right up until his untimely death from colon cancer aged just 52, in 1993.
Following that famous victory, he assumed, not unreasonably, that in time his playing days would segue seamlessly into managing top-flight clubs. And indeed, when Elton John bought Watford in 1976, he and Bobby met and shook hands on the manager’s job.
Tina recalls: “We then had a holiday in Majorca. Bobby went for a jog one day and returned looking absolutely ashen. He handed me a copy of an English paper. On the back page was a picture of Graham Taylor, who’d been confirmed as Watford’s new manager. That’s the first Bobby knew of it. He was shattered. To me, that was a major turning point in his decline. He was such a proud man. He internalised all the hurt.”
Then he lost £100,000 in an aborted country club venture. “Analysing it now, I think Bobby eventually started looking outside the marriage because he felt he’d failed his family. That’s a load of rubbish. But there’s no denying he got really depressed. He spiralled down and down.”
There was a recent campaign in support of Bobby being given a posthumous knighthood. “That would have been great,” says Tina, “but I don’t think there was a chance in hell. He should have been knighted while he was alive. Never mind. I think Bobby is a knight in people’s hearts. To this day, loads of people refer to him as Sir Bobby Moore.”
Tina was understandably devastated when she discovered her husband was having an affair with a stewardess called Stephanie whom he’d met on a British Airways flight. “I rang the hotel where he was staying in Australia on one occasion. A sleepy woman’s voice answered and then Bobby came on the line. I’m not a fool. I knew.”
Tina and Bobby had been together 26 years when they divorced in 1986: “Afterwards, I was in Langan’s restaurant in London one day and I overheard someone say: ‘Oh look, there’s Bobby Moore’s ex-wife.’
“I decided I had to change things. So I took off to Miami with a girlfriend and it was a quite different experience. I saw pelicans and dolphins. Everyone was so polite. It just seemed such a nice way of life.
“I found a room and got a job selling cruise coupons. I was illegal at the time. Then I met a guy from Stoke Newington who offered me a job managing his graphic design shop and got me my visa.”
When she bought an apartment for $43,000 – “that was nothing, even then” – she’d got her foot on the bottom rung of the property ladder. “I started to buy and sell. I did well.” It’s all a long way from Ilford. “Am I entrepreneurial? Let’s just say, I like to explore. I quite quickly got myself into a situation where I’d never have to be dependent on a man again.”
She met Steve Duggan, a twinkly Irishman who manages a bar in New York, some 10 years ago when he wangled a couple of first-class tickets for a British Airways flight to London for Tina and her cousin. Tina and Steve now divide their time between Miami, New York and London. “It’s funny, really. Bobby first met Stephanie on a BA flight. So the moral of this story is that BA taketh away with one hand but giveth back with the other.”
Back from Miami, she was on a District Line Tube one day when a man sat down next to her and touched her knee. “I tried to ignore him, but he did it again. Then he said ‘Madam…’ in a teasing voice. I looked him full in the face. It was Bobby, and I hadn’t recognised him. It all but broke my heart. He looked so ill, haggard and haunted. But he stayed on the train beyond his stop until I reached where I was going. So there was still a bit of something there.”
And her feelings now? “I just feel so sad he’s missed so much. When he died, I couldn’t stop crying for three days. I didn’t go to his funeral because I didn’t want my children to be confronted with any difficulty. I went to a church in Miami, but it was closed. So I stood outside and sent up a prayer to Bobby. I still light candles for him. He’ll always have a special place in my heart. But then, he’ll never stop being the father of my children.”
Mention their son, Dean, and Tina’s eyes spontaneously glitter with tears. “Bobby cast a very long shadow. Dean was so like him but intensely shy. He hated the limelight.” In time, Dean took refuge in alcohol and then developed Type 1 diabetes. He’d been dry for just 10 months when his body was found in a Notting Hill flat, dead at 43.
“I woke up one morning and told
‘He should have been knighted while he was alive. People called him Sir Bobby’ ‘I couldn’t rescue the marriage, but I never stopped being in love with Bobby’
Steve I’d just had the most powerful dream about Bobby. He’d come to me and was so loving, so caring. When I got back to London, I found out Dean had been lying alone for three days, but that he’d died during the night I’d had that dream. I swear to God that was his father coming to get him.” She dabs her eyes with a handkerchief. “Dean’s death was the greatest sadness of my life,” she says, unprompted. “For a mother to lose a child is beyond unbearable.”
That tragic loss aside, does she have any enduring regrets? “Not many,” she says, “although I do regret I couldn’t rescue the marriage. I never stopped being in love with Bobby.” She visibly pulls herself together. “Still, you know what they say? If you’re always looking back, you haven’t got a future.” And Tina Moore smiles her widest smile.