As the door swung open, I turned with a slight jump and an eager glance toward my next interviewee… England’s captain David Beckham. It was the summer of 2002, we were in Japan, and I was previewing the next match of a Three Lions’ campaign that would ultimately end with defeat to Brazil in the quarter finals.
Beckham had already scored his penalty against Argentina, England were all-but guaranteed their place in the second round, but there was the small matter of a final group game against Nigeria to contend with. The internal loudspeakers had heralded Beckham’s availability for interview in one of the side rooms of the mass media centre at the Westin Hotel on Awaji Island, but I was the only reporter to have taken up the invitation of speaking to England’s skipper.
Me, the Yorkshire Evening Post Chief Football Writer, face-to-face with one of the most famous figures in world football who was now sat patiently waiting for me to begin my interrogation. I emerged half-an-hour later with an exclusive line about Rio Ferdinand’s potential move to Manchester United (which would go ahead later that year), and plenty of great copy on England’s World Cup hopes. I also came out of that room with a renewed admiration for a man who, despite only being faced with a guy from an evening paper in Leeds, still paid full attention throughout the interview and gave me 100% respect.
Twenty one years have passed since my moment with ‘Becks’, and I still can’t believe I didn’t either ask for a picture or an autograph. Indeed, I don’t have any pictures at all from that trip to Japan… I was there to work, I was not a football tourist (although I regret that today).
I found myself recalling the story to a friend recently who, having been told I had been made redundant from my role at the Harrogate Advertiser, asked me to list the top three highlights of my 30-year career in newspaper and website journalism. Top of that list was, undoubtedly, that meeting with David Beckham and the month spent covering the fortunes of the four Leeds United players in the England squad throughout the Japan tournament.
The other two highlights? In second place was my trip to Chernobyl with the late comic Norman Wisdom. I was reporting on a charity re-build of a children’s hospice, Mr. Wisdom was the president of said charity. The story of how he saved us from machine-gun wielding bandits as we trundled through the Ukraine countryside is one for another time.
And in third place comes my brush with evil… the day I saw murderer Rose West standing in the dock, and I swear blind she winked at me. I still get shudders thinking about it now.
A career that saw me move from Portsmouth to Bristol, Derby to Swindon and Leeds to Harrogate has come to an end… now it is time for the next chapter, I wonder if anything will beat Messrs Beckham, Wisdom, and West?