I can vividly recall the moment I fell in love with football.
May Day, 1965, watching Ian St John on a tiny black-and-white telly heading the goal that won Liverpool the FA Cup for the first time, then feeling pandemonium rock my nana’s terraced house.
This seven-year-old was smitten.
They say you should never meet your heroes but Ian St John was an exception.
As a kid, I’d looked on him as a fearless footballing gladiator who was a cornerstone in the building of modern Liverpool.
As a man, I knew him as a warm and witty character whose charisma lit up every room he entered.
When he became a TV star, and I was a young reporter, he couldn’t do enough for me.
When I had my own radio show he would come on most weeks to chew the fat and was always funny, intelligent and outspoken.
There was steel behind the infectious laugh though, and he became a fierce advocate of an inquiry into the link between dementia and football.
His partnership with Jimmy Greaves made him a household name.
But the Scot had been a much-loved figure in his adopted city way before that.
A point best summed-up by the tale of a poster outside a Liverpool church in the 1960s.
Simply, it asked: “What will we do when the Lord comes?”
Underneath someone had daubed “Move St John to inside-left.”
I’m sure the Big Man won’t have a problem with that, now The Saint’s come marching in.
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