RIP Billy Newman, 1940-2003.
At Aintree Hospital, 8.30 a.m. on Tuesday 6th May 2003. Cancer.

It has been said you are a lucky man if you make three or four life-long true and loyal friends. Somebody up there must really like me because my much-loved best friend was Billy Newman and family of Hampden Street, Walton. Billy was ten such friends all rolled into one. I loved him as much as any human being I have ever known. I can never replace him but I will always treasure the memories he gave me and my family in good times and bad. As I write, there is a tonne weight in my heart and a cloying mist in my eyes.

That was the thing about Billy: he was a giver, a man of naturally generous spirit, and a stubborn fighter for his views, the kind of instinctive altruistic individual hardly seen in these days of every man a cheating bookkeeper or second rate salesman. Billy could slug it out with the best of them but much preferred to enjoy life in the company of those he liked and trusted. Thing is, if he was forced into slugging you, you’d be stupid to get up because he’d only slug you again until you did the sensible thing. He was absolutely his own man and you knew it within minutes of meeting him. If you argued with him he expected you to stand your corner as spiritedly as he stood his. He gave and asked no quarter. The chips fell where they may, garnished lavishly with laughter and with enough self-depreciation to keep a healthy balance. On the rare occasions he met someone who didn’t like him he would grin, shrug and move on to better things. The phrase, “Do your own thing” might have been invented just for him.

Our initial common ground was that we were both solid Evertonians. All the rest was due to indefinable human chemistry. Our lives took dramatically different courses. While I ended up in architecture and project management, Billy weaved a lively path through bus conductor, professional soldier, butcher, docker, pub manager and general handyman. Probably the only label Billy would allow you to attach to him was “working class.” Even then you better be ready to understand the nuances of the term.

His life experience virtually guaranteed visceral mistrust of authority of any kind. The way he dealt with it could be mortifyingly funny. On one occasion at a party I introduced him to a friend in the police, a very bright lad who later went on to great things in a Regional Crime Squad. When I introduced them Billy asked what he did for a living. When told he was a policeman, Billy simply said, “Look, no disrespect but I fuckn hate bizzies.” I feel the social ripples to this day. It was a legendary encounter.

Nor could you beat him easily. When he took the army shilling he somehow got dragooned into regimental boxing on the senseless basis that all Scousers are hard men. Billy turned out to be a good deal harder than the army expected. He was thrust into a complete three round mismatch with a champion boxer and for two rounds took a fearful pounding from a talented fighter. Billy wore pumps and shorts as big as an Arab’s tent, his opponent the full proper gear of boxing boots, socks, boxing shorts, body oil and dancing feet. At the end of the second round he flopped onto his stool, his face cut to pieces, bruises everywhere and a corner man saying, “Scouse, you’ve done your best. I’m throwing the towel in.” Billy would have none of it. The bell went for the start of the last round. And Billy shot off his stool, across the ring – and delivered a flying headbutt full face into his tormentor. The champion boxer was carried off spark-out on a stretcher while Billy was disqualified. But in his own book he wasn’t humiliated and he hadn’t lost. Afterwards, the champion boxer came to see him and said, “Tell you what, Scouse, I wouldn’t want to meet you on a dark night.” They shook hands on it. Nobody could ever say they didn’t know where they stood – or fell – with Billy.

This applied to football in equal proportion. When Everton reached the Cup Final in 1966 word got round the docks that there were some spare tickets available. The source turned out to be a former player of great fame acting for one of the first team. The dockers were promised tickets at a certain cost. Billy arranged to meet the former player and pay the asking price. The guy turned up in a flashy Jaguar outside a pub in Bootle. During the meeting the player said the price had gone up. Billy reached over and started punching him into the middle of next week, at which he started to plead it wasn’t him, it was the first team player. The previous price was paid, the tickets received and the first team player also received a visit he’ll never forget. Nobody was immune to the kind of summary justice we all occasionally condone, not even Everton heroes.

Working on the docks, he mistrusted most of the union leaders only marginally less than the hated employers. He knew whose side he was on without having any illusions or any ideological baggage. His employment there straddled the disgusting Pen System, decasualisation, containerisation, contractual recasualism and attacks on the unions. None of it fooled him because he was an instinctively clever and loyal man who knew how to strike a fair balance and recognise a cheat. He acquired the nickname Paki on the docks because he had the olive skin of a Greek family line on his mother’s side. You can imagine what he thought of Politically Correct self-righteousness. In Billy’s eyes you were worth only how you acted and dealt with other human beings face to face. Words meant almost nothing. In a rough working world he got the kind of respect you had to earn the hard way. He earned every last moment of it. The friendships he formed on the docks and elsewhere lasted all his life.

He was always a heavy smoker and it was this which eventually did for him. I made manic efforts to get him to kick nicotine addiction but none of them worked. One of these efforts consisted of an unbridled description of likely leg amputation if he didn’t give up smoking. “What will you do then, you daft gett, because I’m not pushing you around Walton in a wheelchair!” I fumed. Billy said with a grin, “I’d top meself.” And ex-docker Joe Long said, black humour to the fore, “Well, you won’t be able to stand on a chair to do it will yer?” At another time he had been fitted with a false leg and we were all playing snooker at a dive in Cherry Lane. He limped painfully around the table to take his shot and Stevie said, “Remember the rules, Billy. One foot on the floor.” He laughed as hard as anyone else even though every step was purgatory. The life and death irony is that he did end up with a leg amputation and I did end up pushing him around Walton in a wheelchair. At such times you know when to laugh and when to cry.

Though he loved Everton and footy he was never ever taken in by player celebrity or hype of any kind. It goes without saying he utterly despised the way the game is run these days, the spivs, salesmen and phoneys surrounding it and the lack of one hundred percent effort by too many players. Even in pre-hype days he wouldn’t hesitate to let any player know he wasn’t pulling his weight or if he was underperforming. He could launch the most outrageous barracking campaign you’ve ever heard. I remember on one occasion he committed the heinous crime of attacking my hero, Colin Harvey. Furiously, I turned on him and yelled, “You daft bastard! Who are you going to attack next!?” Without batting an eyelid he said, “Oh Mick Bernard’s handy.” And grinned. You just couldn’t win.

Years ago our pre-match watering hole used to be The Glebe on County Road. The company could number as many as twelve sat in a circle around a number of tables drawn in a laager. The number of glasses on the tables increased in direct proportion to the amount of alcohol quaffed. So did the personal attacks on everyone in the company. There was never any point complaining about this. You stuck it out bravely while you got slaughtered and then got your own back as the cross-hairs moved from individual to individual. Nobody was exempt. In those days, Scouse humour meant you could take it as well as dish it out. You hardly find the same kind generosity of spirit anywhere now. We all thrived in that sort of company, none more so than Billy. Blues and analfielders mixed and laughed at each other freely. We all got a better deal out of life then. We were of a piece.

In fact the only time outside home I saw Billy overwhelmed with emotion was after the Hillsborough disaster. As I said, he was a loyal man. When my life ran into inevitable difficulties he was always first to help and offer any support he could. After a few minutes sitting in his company you had the unerring feeling that everything was going to be okay. All you had to do was work at it. He wouldn’t let you feel defeated.

His general approach to life made it all the harder for everyone to bear his ill health during the last ten years. We were all used to seeing and loving him as a pillar in our lives. Even then his bravery was matchless, his courage indomitable. He didn’t want help even when he was confined to bed. Typically, the last time I saw him in hospital he refused painkillers. Prior to that, he said he didn’t “….want any flowers or crying women at me funeral.” It’s just about the only time he will be defied. Broken hearts are allowed some leeway.

I started out by saying how much I loved Billy and his family. Our families grew up together and have shared unforgettable good and bad times. Billy is a major part of my life and always will be. The football connection will close when his ashes are buried at Goodison Park. But he will never be forgotten.

He leaves his wife of forty years, Ann, his son Paul, his daughter Joanne and three much loved grandchildren and an extended family.

Mickey Blue Eyes.