Steve Pele Paterson (eBook)

3

The Bisto tin bank

At the age of 14 I started under-age drinking regularly, again with my usual crowd, and would be served without question in the Stag Bar in Elgin. It was a sleazy joint but we would never dream of moving pubs for fear that some other place would refuse us our pints of beer.

Our visits to the Stag became a ritual every weekend and later became part of the football culture where you would hit the pub after every game. I was once caught drinking in the Tower Bar, also in Elgin, where the Bishopmill United players would assemble to get drunk and dissect that day’s match.

The police were cracking down on under-age drinking and one night, when I was just 15 years old, they raided the pub. Me and some of my friends escaped out of a toilet window and legged it, forgetting that I had, stupidly, left behind my club blazer and my holdall, items through which I was easily traced. I was hauled into the police station with my father and lectured about the ills of alcohol and told to stay away from pubs. It was water off a duck’s back and I returned to my usual ways the following weekend. I saw it as a normal part of football life and, in any case, I liked alcohol and the feeling it gave me.

All my influences in life were outside the family home. My parents knew nothing of my misbehaviour or, indeed, any of the activities that went on when I shut the house door behind me. Home was for food and shelter. Had I lived in a city I have no doubt I would have been a member of a gang, because I was into exploration and experimentation.

A prime example of my wayward adolescence came in May 1973 when my mates and I made the long trek to Wembley for the Home Championship match between England and Scotland. It was a huge pilgrimage in those days, with thousands of Scots descending on London in tartan attire.

My ‘magnificent seven’ from Milne’s High School had planned carefully for the adventure. We clubbed together and bought a battered old Transit van for £100 and we wondered at various stages of our journey whether we would make it to our destination.

Mike Hendry, one of my best school pals, had just passed his driving test and had the onerous task of getting us there safely and on time. An older lad from Fochabers, Roddy Munro, was a maths teacher in London and his flat was to be our base.

We set off from home at 6 a.m. on the eve of the big game, dressed in our kilts and Scotland jerseys, in a van packed with beer and lager. Needless to say, by the time we reached London we were all drunk – apart from Mike, of course – and we spent the evening with the hordes of Scotland supporters gathered in Trafalgar Square, singing and dancing in the fountain.

The game was a side-show – England won 1–0 with a Martin Peters goal – as the weekend evolved into a gigantic party. I enjoyed the atmosphere and the bright lights of London so much that, even though I was just 15 years old, I decided to extend my stay, another indication of my inability to withdraw from my pursuit of pleasure. Roddy, the teacher, was on holiday and did little to discourage me from staying on.

‘Tell my mum and dad I’ll be home next week,’ I shouted to the departing desperados as I waved them on their way to Moray and I remained with Roddy, still a friend today and one who could be described as a bit of an eccentric. He had long, flowing locks and a colourful, some might say outlandish, dress sense, in the style of Billy Connolly.

He was a witty person who liked nothing better than to drive his Harley Davidson. I was to become his regular pillion passenger for the following week, a period spent, because I had no change of clothing, in my Tartan Army uniform.

For all my misdemeanours, I was still starring as the best young footballer in the area and, at the age of 16 – although I never knew it – I stood on the verge of joining one of the greatest football clubs in the world.

I was capped for the Scotland Schoolboys’ under-18 side against England at Old Trafford, the home of Manchester United. It was the summer of 1974 and that game was to accelerate my progress from gifted youngster from the Highlands – who just might make the grade – to a talent with the potential to hit the high spots. Coming from a remote part of Scotland meant I wasn’t on the radar of any professional clubs. They did not see such sparsely-populated areas as ones for rich pickings.

Yet, through the schools’ system, I was propelled into the spotlight against the cream of England’s young players all of whom would, like my own team-mates, be preparing to join the professional ranks the minute they left school.

I was a versatile performer, able to operate in most positions. I preferred a striking role but, at 6ft 2in tall and an imposing figure, I was selected to play at centre half. We drew 1-1 and, by general consensus, I was seen as the man-of-the-match.

The scouts of clubs throughout the land who were present that day sat up and took notice. They liked my confident attitude, my presence, that I possessed a high level of skill and that I could read the game well.

I hardly had time to return to Moray after the game when the Manchester United chief scout came knocking on my door to tell me he had seen enough to recognise that I had what was required to make it in the big time of English football and that Old Trafford wanted me.

I would not, the scout told me, be signed as an apprentice and all the boot cleaning and dressing room sweeping duties that went with that role. I would join as a full professional.

Tommy Docherty was the manager and he travelled to my home a short time later to seal the deal as I still tried to come to terms with the enormity of what the chief scout had earlier told me. Could it really be true that I was wanted by such a big football club and by the man who, prior to taking on the manager’s job there, had been in charge of the Scotland international team? I was about to be propelled into the big time.

It was agreed that I would be allowed to remain in Moray to complete my schooling and to take my Higher examinations at Milne’s High School the following year. I would, they instructed me, join United for pre-season training in the summer of 1975.

During one of the meetings between Manchester United’s representatives, my parents and me, in my living room in Garmouth Road, the issue of the ‘sweetener’ was raised.

Without warning, one of the club’s envoys took bundles of banknotes from his pockets, each bundle rolled up and held together by an elastic band, and placed them on the table around which we sat.

Few words, other than ‘this is for you’ to no one in particular, were uttered and my parents just stared, open-jawed, at the fortune in front of them.

Ten times the man from United went into his pockets and plucked one bundle after another, placing them on the table as we watched in silence.

My parents weren’t worldly. They lived day by day, paid the rent and other bills and were, like many working-class couples, broke by the end of the week. They reacted to this pile of cash before them with disbelief. I swear there was fear in their eyes. They simply didn’t know how to react. They never touched it, never spoke about it, never mentioned it in any future conversation. When the United delegation left, my parents ignored the money on the table as if it didn’t exist and simply left it lying there. They wanted nothing to do with it. There was no thought or discussion about the possibility of banking it or setting up a trust fund for me for later in my life.

With the men from Man United gone, I counted the cash; ten wads each of £100, a total of £1000. In 2009 terms it is the equivalent of £12,500.

I knew then why my parents were apprehensive and be-mused. This was like winning the football pools and being bewildered and uncertain about what to do. But I certainly knew exactly what to do and I stuffed the £1000 into a brown Bisto tin and stored it at the bottom of my parents’ wardrobe. For the following year, that tin was to be my personal bank and its contents my entry to a life which hitherto had been beyond me: gambling for much higher stakes.

The Bisto tin was a bit like an Aladdin’s lamp for me. It would grant my wishes by delivering riches and I made sure it was used in the only way I knew how: to provide me with the best clothes I could get in the boutiques of Elgin, and for serious card games and big-money bets on the horses.

I was 16 years old and living the life of Riley. The book-maker’s in Elgin, with its board markers and commentary via the Tannoy, became my world, a magical place that presented me with the kind of buzz I had never experienced.

Out of my half-dozen best pals – Mike Hendry, Jon Law, Doug Will, Franny Slater, Ainslie Gordon and Les Newlands – I was the one who had the real addiction. I loved gambling much more than any of the others. I pushed for and organised the regular card schools and was the one who thrived on the trips to the bookies.

I dipped into the Bisto tin bank constantly, whenever I needed money, and my parents were completely oblivious to my withdrawals. They never even checked it.

That summer, although my friends and I still went out working during the school holidays, whether it was berry-picking or taking on roofing jobs on local houses, gambling was my major past-time. Having the Manchester United booty available was a real bonus and once, with £100 in my pocket, I persuaded my very good friend, Jon Law – still as close a pal today as he was then – to bring £100 he had saved because I had a full-proof method of beating...