I never met Hugh McIlvanney, although I did have a close encounter one Thursday afternoon in Glasgow city centre. I’d been in Glasgow to see one of the cities big two European powerhouses play in a UEFA Cup tie the previous evening, the opposition, score or other minor details escape my rather discombobulated mind, but the sight of a middle aged gentleman striding up Queen Street and making his way over George Square has stayed with me right up to the present! I knew who it was the very moment my eyes latched onto the figure on the opposite side of the street, bathed in the last milky shades of light on a winters afternoon, the long Macintosh coat, expensive looking suit, collection of broadsheet newspapers under one arm and swathes of swirling smoke emanating from his cigar betrayed his identity!
I wanted to cross the road, to introduce myself and thank him for the many hours of entertainment and education that he had unknowingly accorded me for many a year, I wanted to hear that rich velvety voice thank me for my platitudes. My vacillating hesitation was a result of my thinking that these actions would be seen a little juvenile, akin to a star struck girl lusting after one of her pop stars! I glanced back across George Square and Hugh McIlvanney was nothing more than an anonymous figure in the gloomy distance. The chance had gone, I’d see him again I told myself, I’d have other encounters, other chances to meet greatness and shake its hand! Alas, now we know that there’ll be no more chance encounters, no more chances to thank him for being a huge part of my childhood, and with me for my journey through those teenage years and onto adulthood, for helping to mould my opinions on all number of subjects, and for being the very trig point that I always refer to when looking back into the annals of both football and horse racing!
It was my late father that first brought to my attention the writing genius of Hugh McIlvanney! He was discussing with a friend and fellow horse racing fanatic, a piece written by McIlvanney about Lester Piggott’s record in The Derby. I listened intently a few yards away, transfixed by argument and counter argument, and by reason and ruminative rationale! My father was a quiet man of few words, who, when speaking, was listened to and his measured, well thought out opinions respected! He had earned his living in the same way Hugh McIlvanney’s father earned his, many miles underground, toiling at the coal face to keep the country’s fires burning. There was a common connection, the coalfields of Lancashire were no different from those in Lanarkshire or Ayrshire, they were, after all, filled with hard men who toiled at hard jobs in harsh conditions, but the men who worked in those harsh conditions were also proud men, men who valued family, social justice and well mannered fairness and friendship above all else! My late father may have lacked Hugh’s extensive vocabulary, but he, like Hugh, didn’t suffer fools lightly, he was always immaculately turned out, displayed the same warmth, gratitude and fine manners, and when speaking, was listened to with an incredible intensity that I’ve rarely witnessed since! The said discussion went to and forth before my father remarked, it’s difficult to know who’s the greater, Piggott or McIlvanney himself!
I didn’t waste any time procrastinating, a boy who was yearning to be a sports journalist himself would waste little time wondering if this journalist was indeed as good as my father had remarked! Sunday after Sunday was now spent studiously reading everything Hugh McIlvanney had to write, I’d often be seen with a concise Collins English Dictionary glued to the palm of my hand, a crude substitute for shamelessly possessing a vocabulary a division or three below that of the great man himself!
There are literally hundreds of stories of chance meetings with the great man, social media has been full of wonderful tales in the aftermath of the announcement of his untimely passing last week, tales of a warm, polite yet passionate, sometimes volatile man with an immense amount of fire in his belly and that sparkling glint in his eye, only too willing to offer his opinion on any number of given sporting matters and woe betide anyone who dared to dismiss his opinions as pure supposition!
Born into a working class and fervently socialist family would provide Hugh with a set of principles that would stand him in good stead throughout his career, add to that an uncanny knack of being in the right place at the right time, and having served an apprenticeship as a news reporter made him the perfect character to gain the trust of giants of men such as Jock Stein, Matt Busby, Bill Shankly, Alex Ferguson, Mohammed Ali, George Best and Lester Piggott! When you take the time to analyse all those qualities, one can only come to the ultimate conclusion that here was a man with all the raw ingredients of a journalist of sublime ability!
The following years would see the master wordsmith agonise over the most minute of minor details, and that is what set him apart from his contemporaries, few journalists could match the attention to detail with which McIlvanney constructed his pieces, and none whatsoever could possibly match his superlative dandified prose, Hugh McIlvanney was now out on his own, (STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS)!
In a career that can only be described as illustrious, Hugh McIlvanney would see himself inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, and both the Scottish & English Football Hall’s of Fame, no mean feat for a mere humble journalist! Hundreds of other awards were bestowed upon him throughout that illustrious career and in 1996 he was awarded the OBE for his services to sports writing.
There have been many wonderful tributes paid to the great man over the past few days but none would ever fully describe his importance and ultimate standing in his chosen profession than the following from ‘The Great Reporters’ by David Randall…
”HUGH MCILVANNEY IS VERY PROBABLY THE GREATEST WRITER EVER TO APPLY WORDS TO NEWSPRINT!”
Fine praise indeed and few, if any can say it isn’t fully deserved!
I’d like to add my own tribute to him, like to quote Shakespeare, Hugh adored the works of William Shakespeare, but alas, my level of intellect wouldn’t do the great man or William Shakespeare justice! All I’ll say is that on the twenty fourth day of January, twenty nineteen, just nine days short of his eighty fifth birthday, when the towel was finally and reluctantly thrown into the ring, British journalism lost its finest ever scribe and the sports world indeed lost a colossus! I say this not because platitudes are en vogue at the time of one’s passing but because the statement is true! Hugh McIlvanney lived in an era when standards were high, far higher than those in which we live today, standards of conduct, of behaviour and of common decency. The mere fact that Hugh McIlvanney lived above those standards and set his own remarkable high standards of journalism in that age of fairness and integrity are a lasting legacy of a man who had few, if any equals! To borrow a quote of his own…
‘GREATNESS DOES NOT GAD ABOUT, REACHING FOR PEOPLE IN HANDFULS, IT SETTLES DELIBERATELY ON A BLESSED FEW” …Hugh McIlvanney was without any doubt, one of them!
THANKS FOR READING, AND THANK YOU HUGH MCILVANNEY, FOR BEING A WORDSMITH WITHOUT EQUAL AND AN EVERLASTING INFLUENCE IN MY LIFE!
THIS SPORTING LIFE 