Sir Bernard Ingham

‘All right, Prime Minister,’ Ingham told her, ‘If that’s what you’re going to say I’m going to go outside and commit suicide.’ So she didn’t, and he didn’t.

I've mentioned a few times in this blog that I attended my first football match back in 1967 thanks to (later a Sir) Bernard Ingham, who was a neighbour across the road from my home in Old Lodge Lane, Purley. 

His son John was a similar age to me, and knocked on my front door one April Saturday morning asking if I would like to go to and watch football that afternoon. 

Parental permission was obtained, and the memories of that afternoon are forever seared in the memory. In those days Crystal Palace played in claret and blue, it was sunny afternoon, Palace won 2:1 (v Birmingham City), and I was hooked. 

As an event which changed my life, that afternoon was up there with the incident of the door handle, and it was personally sad to hear yesterday that Sir Bernard Ingham had passed away at the age of 90.

Long after I knew him personally, his comments about the Hillsborough disaster were of course indefensible, and his refusal to apologise for them after they were proven to be wrong even more unconscionable. 

Many will remember him negatively for his time as Press Secretary for Margaret Thatcher when she was Prime Minister, but when I knew him he was working as Press and Public Relations Adviser at the Board of Trade for Barbara Castle, and later for Tony Benn, and not long before moving south, he had stood as a Labour candidate for the Leeds City Council in 1965, and had a Labour / union background. 

He might have lost his way politically, but in regards to football it was the opposite as, when I first knew him, he was a Leeds United supporter, but he saw sense after a few visits to Selhurst Park and his son still goes to matches there. Perhaps seeing Leeds win just one of 17 games at Selhurst Park between 1966 and 1993 helped with the decision! With the Hillsborough comments in mind, it's an unfortunate coincidence that Palace host Liverpool tonight.  

Politics weren't much discussed on trips to the New Addington swimming pool on a Saturday morning, ten-year-olds have far more important things to talk about, but I do remember him getting a ticket for speeding as we left New Addington one day. Mind you, if you're at all familiar with New Addington you'll have some sympathy, as the desire to leave the place in a hurry isn't unusual! 

He also took me to my first Rugby Union match, though I'm not 100% sure where it was (I think Rosslyn Park), before they (the Inghams, not Rosslyn Park RFC),  relocated to the other side of Purley - the posh part - soon after. 

My parents, I think jokingly, often said they would never forgive him for converting their normal - I use the term loosely - son into a 'football crazy' boy!

I'll remember him as he was in the 1960s, a good dad, a good neighbour, and a man who certainly impacted my life in a way that I will forever be grateful for.