Tommy Docherty was a man of dazzling wit, and a joy to write a book with

Of all the rag bag of jobs I’ve done in my life – sports editor, culture editor, music roadie, mail sorter, working in schools and in bars, book critic – few have been as wholly enjoyable as being Tommy Docherty’s ghostwriter, working with him on his memoir about managing Manchester United in the 1970s.

Docherty, who died today aged 92 following a long illness, was a true larger-than-life character, a football manager, known and loved for his rapid-fire wit. I first met Docherty when I was about 10. A “jobsworth” commissionaire stopped me going into the Hotel Russell in Holborn. I was trying to meet Bobby Charlton, Alex Stepney and their team-mates, who were in London for a match. “Let my nephew in,” boomed Docherty, in his gravelly Scottish voice, as he bounded up the steps. Docherty then led me through to meet the players in the lounge, joking that I might be fitter than a couple of them and asking whether I wanted to play at Chelsea the following day.

I told The Doc about my first memorable meeting with him when I was contracted to collaborate with him in 1991 on Manchester United: The Quest for Glory for the publishers Sidgwick & Jackson. By the time the book was being written, his eventful career as a manager was over. There was more than a little truth in his quip that he’d had “more clubs than golfer Jack Nicklaus”. After starting as player-coach at Chelsea in 1961, where he was soon promoted to manager, he went on to lead Rotherham, QPR (twice), Aston Villa, Porto, Scotland, Manchester United, Derby, Sydney Olympic, Preston, South Melbourne and Wolves, before his career ended at Altrincham in 1988.

The football he oversaw at United (1972-1977) was based on a glorious, attacking 4-2-4 system, built around a pacy midfield and two brilliant wingers, Steve Coppell and Gordon Hill. The fast, nippy style reflected his desire to play the two-touch football he’d been brought up with in a Preston side that featured the great striker Tom Finney.

Docherty steered the club through the traumatic post-Matt Busby years when he had been handed the tricky task of dismantling a team full of true football legends including Charlton, George Best and Denis Law. All three were either past their best or deeply troubled and Docherty admitted it was hard dealing with a club that was full of cynical old pros and “boardroom shit-stirrers”. He knew going into the job that his predecessor, Frank O’Farrell, had been harshly treated. Not many people knew that O’Farrell was a close friend of Docherty’s and actually sent him a letter warning him to watch his back with “The Knight” (Busby). Docherty kept the letter and allowed me to print it in the book.  

After suffering relegation, Docherty took United straight back up. His rebuilt team, full of youngsters, went on to challenge for the title and beat an almost invincible Liverpool team to win the FA Cup in May 1977.  

As a lifelong United fan, it was an honour to get the inside tales from a time I had followed the team from the terraces. Docherty, who was born in Glasgow, on 24 April 1928, the son of an iron foundry worker, never lost his Gorbals humour or bluntness. His stories were funny, insightful and sometimes shocking. An afternoon spent with him captioning the photographs for the book had me and the designer in stitches. Many of his tales were outrageous – and, unfortunately, deemed unprintable by the lawyers.

The wisecracking Scot was a football man through and through (when I saw him in his home, he would check teletext constantly for football news, even as a retired manager) and I loved hearing his tales of being a player. Docherty had a highly successful career in the game – he was a talented right-half for Celtic, Preston, Arsenal and Chelsea, and captained Scotland. His 25 caps included several for playing in the 1954 World Cup Finals. He once marked Spain’s Di Stefano in a famous Scotland win in 1957.

Although I was a relatively inexperienced football journalist – I was in my mid-twenties at the time – I think Docherty was fed up of jaded old hacks, and he took a shine to me. He invited me to stay with him, and his wife Mary Brown, in their home in Charlesworth in Cheshire, a beautiful converted farmhouse. He sometimes stopped joking and opened up about his background. He told me his mother never had much money and would dress him in clothes from jumble sales (“I looked like a First World War general”, he said). He admitted he was a real rascal in his young days and credited the Army for teaching him discipline.

During his two years’ national service in Palestine he was on guard duty at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem when it was blown up in July 1946. He saw quite a few friends perish among the 91 fatalities. It’s little wonder that the experience made him thick-skinned about dealing with the vagaries of football chairmen later in life. His tales of dealing with football owners were always funny. On one occasion the Derby chairman snoozed through a meeting, only to jolt awake and criticise Docherty for selling John O'Hare. “He was sold before I got here,” Docherty replied. “Well, that's my opinion,” the chairman said, before returning to his sleep.

One of Docherty’s bête noires was supposedly Doug Ellis, the Aston Villa chairman. Ellis prompted one of Docherty’s most famous quotes. When Ellis said, “don't worry, Tommy, I am right behind you,” Docherty replied, “I would rather have you in front of me, Mr Chairman.” Docherty told me that in fact their relationship was always amicable and remained strong even after he was sacked. Years later, Docherty sold Ellis some of the club shares he had been awarded as a manager to help him in a time of boardroom unrest. Ellis kept in touch and rang him just before one of our meetings, because they were due to appear on the same television show. “Please don’t take the piss out of me too much,” he pleaded with Docherty.

Ellis was right to be wary. Docherty’s cutting wit was memorable and some of his one-liners became part of football’s folklore:  

“I’ve always said there’s a place for the press but they haven’t dug it yet.”

“They offered me a handshake of £10,000 to settle amicably. I told them that they would have to be a lot more amicable than that.”

“The ideal board of directors should be made up of three men – two dead and the other dying.”

Docherty retained a strong affection for Chelsea. It had been his debut job as a manager, when he was in his thirties (young then in football terms) and was tasked with controlling a group of strong-minded players, including Terry Venables, Peter Osgood and Ron “Chopper” Harris. Docherty once hurled a pasty at the back of Harris’s head, when he wasn’t paying attention during a team talk. Harris later joked that he deserved it. During his time at Stamford Bridge, Docherty won the League Cup in 1965. He told me that Chelsea remained friendly to him, sending a Christmas hamper from Harrods for many years afterwards.

Work on the Manchester United book was constantly side-tracked because he kept telling funny stories about his dealings with managers such as Bill Shankly, Brian Clough and Don Revie. He got on particularly well with fellow Scot Shankly and said the former Liverpool boss often told him the same joke about retired footballers. First they play bowls, then snooker and then golf, said Shankly, adding, “which just goes to prove that your balls do get smaller as you get older”. He would add the same punchline: “So, Tommy, how about a game of marbles?”

Docherty was unfailingly generous. He would treat me to lavish meals, with enough champagne, wine, brandy and cigars to sink a youngster. He introduced me to Sambuca, and once cooked a wonderfully tasty steak dinner, explaining that when he was a young player at Preston, he ran a restaurant on the side to make some extra money. We once drank champagne watching one of United’s European Cup Winners’ Cup games on the television. His running commentary was hilarious.

Mary, a shrewd, humorous woman, was also wonderful to this young ghost-writer and the perfect companion for Docherty, organising a lot of his life as an after-dinner speaker. She came from a more affluent background and their daughters Grace and Lucy loved horse riding. Docherty surprised his family once at Christmas with the present of a horse, which he had adorned with lights and Christmas decorations before leading it to the front door. Docherty told me that the only time he had gone riding, the horse went off into a snobby woman’s garden and shat all over her patio.  

Mary and Tommy talked fondly of their days in Australia. Mary invited me out to lunch with them both – I was honoured, as she was wary of journalists – and she told me they used to sit out in the sun at their favourite café, playing scratch cards. All they had to wear were shorts, T-shirts and flip-flops, she said. “Ah Mary, don’t talk about your flip-flops, he’s only a young lad,” came Tommy’s instant wisecrack.

For one session on the book, he came down to the tiny flat I shared with my future wife Karen in Archway, and she was also won over by his banter. He took the mickey out of everything, from our odd-looking kittens to the security grill on the back door, which he said reminded him of a prison. Later that day, we had to endure a meeting with one of the pompous people who was working on the production of the book. “Well, thanks, Martin. It’s not often I get to lunch with The Brain of Britain,” was Docherty’s parting shot.  

Even people within the game found him irrepressible. George Graham was full of stories about his former boss. When I met the ex-Arsenal and Tottenham manager Terry Neill, he told me that he had hired “The Doc” as assistant manager at Hull in 1971. In one of their first games together in the dugout, he was surprised to see Docherty rush out and suddenly hold up the No.5 sign, ordering the substitution of a defender. The surprised player trudged off, and Neill asked Docherty what was going on. “I’ve always wanted to do that,” said Docherty with a big grin.

Along with his club exploits, he is remembered fondly by his compatriots for his spell managing his country and still has one of the highest win success rates of any Scottish national team manager. Docherty will always be remembered most for what happened at Old Trafford. People of a certain age will remember the colossal fall-out when he was sacked in 1977, over an affair with Brown, the wife of the team’s physiotherapist, just after the team had won the FA Cup.

The real story of that period is murky and the hypocrisy about breaking the club’s so-called moral code – when Busby had a mistress and the board was full of characters of questionable ethics – remains dismal. “Martin, every day since leaving United I have felt clean about what I did. My marriage was over and Mary was getting a raw deal from her marriage,” Docherty told me. He and Mary remained together for the following 44 years and were devoted parents.  

A year or so after the book was published, I was made redundant, a blow that came just before I was about to get married. Docherty, concerned that I was short of money, rang to offer the use of his country home for our honeymoon, saying he and Mary would go away for a week. For all the fun of being Docherty’s ghostwriter, and despite all the marvellous tales I heard in his dazzling company, it is for that kind, generous gesture that I will always toast his memory.