Kevin Keegan was once my babysitter. There. How’s that for an intro? It’s entirely true.
My dad used to be editor of the Football Echo in Liverpool and knew many of the players from both Liverpool and Everton very well. It was a time before agents, the Premier League, and global celebrity status for footballers. A time when journalists and the stars of the game could mix easily and become mates. Which was true of Keegan and my dad.
Kevin was the biggest name in English football but would regularly call in for a cuppa at our small semi in Hightown on his way home from training. One afternoon, my brother was sick and my mum and dad were just about to cancel their attendance at a dinner party down the road when Kevin knocked on the door.
“Oh Kev—great timing. Can you watch the kids for an hour while we go to this party and give our apologies?”
And so, I have a distinct memory of playing on our kitchen floor while Kevin Keegan, shaggy perm and all, read that night’s Echo from a bar stool. There’s a point to this story; bear with me.
I remember my dad telling me about Keegan’s sense of integrity. One day, Kevin’s dad had written to the Echo complaining about manager Bob Paisley’s treatment of the star striker. I think he’d been left out of the starting eleven for some reason. My dad phoned Kevin and warned him that his dad had written this incendiary letter. He asked him what he wanted him to do about it.
“Publish it! If my dad’s written to you, then that’s his business. What do you expect me to do?”
It was typical of Keegan’s absolute sense of personal integrity. If there was a price for honesty, then it was a price he’d pay.
Okay, maybe you can see where this is going now.
I interviewed Gary Lineker last week. Lineker’s absolutist approach to speaking his mind reminded me of Keegan. He ended our conversation by saying: “I have to look in the mirror each morning. The only person you can really control in this life is yourself, so that’s what I do.”
Lineker got fired from his job at the BBC for speaking his truth. He was turned on, publicly, by colleagues, and defended by others. The Daily Mail has gone to town on him more than any other celebrity I can think of. But inside him is a resilience that can only possibly come from someone who is reconciled to the fact that he’s not going to please everyone by speaking his mind.
Many find fault with his position – that he is, and has been for a long time, overtly partisan towards the Palestinian cause. It’s a fact, and he doesn’t seek to hide it.
What I found ultimately admirable about Lineker wasn’t his political positions or his empathy for migrants, or even his willingness to go toe-to-toe with a newspaper as powerful as the Daily Mail. It is his commitment to speaking out and stating his case, without fear of the consequences. If our politicians adopted that principle, the world would be a much more enlightened place.
Phineas Harper, one of this country’s great talents of architectural journalism, writes for us this week about why so much of the social housing in Britain is so… uninspiring.
At a juncture when a great programme of national house-building is promised, it’s a timely conversation.
“Social housing commissioners in the UK too often opt for big profit-driven development partners who churn out uninspiring and generic buildings with no thought given to the communities they will serve or the neighbourhoods of which they are part,” Phineas writes.
This clever and insightful article features an array of magnificently creative social housing projects that have broken the mould. If anyone has Angela Rayner’s email… do please send her the link!
Why, asks Matthew d’Ancona in this week’s magazine, “is Starmer not heading for one of the protest sites—Epping, Diss, Canary Wharf—and confronting the problem himself? True leadership means hugging the cactus.”
The cactus in question is immigration. Far-right activity around migrant hotels has intensified in the past few weeks. It could easily spread into another summer of disorder.
Nigel Farage has made his position clear. Aside from a “few bad eggs,” he understands the people of Epping. But what have the people of Epping heard from Yvette Cooper or the PM? Precious little.
Matthew’s contention – that this government needs to take itself to the streets and confront the very real issues – is 100% correct.
One of the privileges of being editor-in-chief of this fine organ is I always get to read Alastair Campbell’s diary first. This week’s is a belter.
Anyone who ever worked at the Daily Mirror in the 1980s, as AC did as Political Editor, will have a whole array of Robert Maxwell stories—and I’ve heard most of them.
But this series of Maxwell anecdotes, culminating in Alastair shopping for lingerie in Paris with Captain Bob’s now-disgraced daughter Ghislaine, is untouchable. Enjoy!
Finally, in which other magazine will you find a single column combining the concepts of predestinarianism, Niccolò Machiavelli, David Hume, and Lionesses captain Leah Williamson?
I’ll tell you – only here, and only thanks to our wonderful philosopher-at-large Nigel Warburton, who this week makes sense of England Women winning the Euros in a way that Gary Lineker himself could only marvel at.
Perhaps the BBC should have a rethink and get Nigel to front the new-look Match of the Day? It would be worth it for the look on Danny Murphy’s face.
