Michael Foot

The passing of Michael Foot yesterday marked the end of an era as one of the last of the true Parliamentarians (rather than politicians) died at the age of 96.

A man of integrity, great intellect and undoubted conviction, his political history is legendary but I'd like to focus on his rather understated knowledge of football and lifelong support of his football club Plymouth Argyle, where it is often overlooked he was a director for a few years in the nineties.

Two stories sum up his lifelong addiction and rather eccentric approach to life with the Greens....................one was the little known FACT that his long time home was in Pilgrim's Lane, Hampstead NW3 but even less known was that the little thoroughfare on the edge of Hampstead Heath was only so called because Michael had petitioned his neighbours to have the road re-named as such in defference to his football club!

The other was that he was the oldest ever registered player with a Football League club after Argyle registered him on his 90th birthday and awarded him the no 90 squad number...............sadly, they never picked him!

I last saw Michael in his inimitable fashion walking over the Heath a couple of years ago early one freezing morning and before that I had spotted him at Dagenham & Redbridge watching uncomfortably as his team lost embarrassingly to the then non league minnows..................no fair weather man, Michael.

There is a marvellous story of how one day Tony Blair was shocked to answer a knock at the front door of his constituency Sedgfield home to find Michael standing there, taxi waiting with it's engine running. When asked what he was doing paying such a surprise visit on a weekend;he replied that he was in the area to see Argyle play at Sunderland and would the PM care to come along with him to watch the match?

I also spoke to him on one occasion when he got on the number 30 bus I was driving through Kings Cross and he sat at the front along with his little dog Disraeli adjacent to me. Sadly, I seemed to be the only one on the bus to recognise him and I commiserated with him on Argyle's recent defeat at Peterborough and on their general struggling season. He asked me who I supported and when I told him he guffawed and said it was always nice to come accross someone worse off than him.

A good man, a genuinely honest man and a very nice man..................Michael, this Gull will misss you!