Football Daily - In Focus with Sir Elton John and Gary Lineker

Episode Date: November 24, 2023

Ahead of a new book launch, 'Watford Forever' by John Preston – which tells the story of how Sir Elton John and Graham Taylor saved Watford, the pop legend sits down with Gary Lineker to talk about his love of football, why FA Cup finals are like headlining Glastonbury and why Wrexham owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney remind him of himself.

I'm Mark Chapman and welcome to the Monday Night Club. Jim, after last week's show, please, please cut out all the in-jokes and banter and talk about sport. Honestly, it's really poor. It turns out if you shout at a kid through a megaphone, they do what they're told. You absolutely destroyed me. Chris, when you joined Birmingham, what made you pick number 40? You can't miss the start of something on that one, I play it. This could be a long two hours. What have I got myself in for? I made you pick number 40. You can't miss the start of something on an iPlayer. I mean, seriously, that's not going to work.

This could be in two hours. What have I got myself in for? The Monday Night Club. I hope Jim, who emailed about last week's show, is listening today. Listen on the Football Daily Podcast. Watch on the BBC iPlayer. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. The Football Daily Podcast. from BBC Radio 5 Live.

Elton, lovely to see you, lovely to talk to you. Congratulations on the book, I've thoroughly enjoyed it. There's something that's not in it. I came to Watford with Leicester City a long time ago around 79, 80 and one of our players got a terrible gash in his leg and was carried off and had to have stitches in the dressing room and you went down to Comfortin. Have you have any memory of that? I don't. That was me. Really I don't. That was me. It was you. It was me and you came down in the second half to see if I was alright and that's something that's always stuck with me and it was a very special moment. Yeah, you've got the book Watford Forever

Why now? Why are you doing that book now? I was approached by John Preston who wrote the book and said It's a really interesting subject and I thought yeah, it has I haven't really talked about it and I wanted to get my side of the story out because I think we weren't given enough credit for what we did and also I think when you read the book it's about the sense of community that's not really in football anymore not in the top six or anything like that it's gone from football a bit but not with the lower clubs but I just love that sense of community, and that's what football must never lose.

You started your interest in football when you were very young. Very young. Your dad brought you here. Yeah, my dad brought me here when I was about five or six. But I also used to sit on the touchline at Craven Cottage because my cousin, Roy Dwight, played for Fulham in the same team as Jimmy Hill, Bedford, Jerzard, Johnny Haynes, Tony Macedo. So I grew up watching Fulham a lot as well.

But this was my local team. And then when Roy went to Nottingham Forest, I just concentrated on this place. Yeah. Do you think that was the best decision? Yeah, I do. I can't tell you how much this club has given me so much pleasure. just concentrate on this place. Yeah. Do you think that was the best decision? Yeah, I do. I can't tell you how much this club has given me so much pleasure.

I get very emotional when I think about it because it was something I really don't think we've been given enough credit for, just apart from my career. This really sorted me out. I used to come here and it brought me back down to earth. And it was an amazing achievement, but it was also for me, it was a communal effort. And I find some of that missing a bit now in football. It was just, you know, you knew the

names of everybody, the tea lady, the pitch, the guy who did the pitch, the groundsman. And people would say to me, I'm not sure about your new record. I don't think it's as good as Daniel. And they weren't being nasty, but it was what I needed at the time. And I lucked out by getting Graham here. And in six years, we achieved what we wanted to achieve. But I don't know if we actually thought we could achieve it.

It was actually quite miraculous what you did, wasn't it? There was a point where you were absolutely bottom of the Football League. That's the old-timers four division. And then five years later, you were at the top. I know. Second to, we were second at Arsenal. We did get to the top at one point. Yeah. And we finished second that year. And it was an extraordinary, wonderful time of my life,

which, you know, thank God I did this it meant so much to me because it was part of my life coming here when I was a young boy to two horrible stands and and then a dog track or a Greyhound track and when you do things together and you know this when you're playing in a team that clicks and you've got the people and then you get the momentum it's so thrilling it's like doing a musical on stage that's successful an album in a studio that's successful doesn't happen very often but when it does you know it's magical. Would you prefer to have been a footballer? In my dreams. I think we always want to be something else that we're not possibly.

No I love football but I was you know i was destined to be who i was because i love music but um the combination of the music and this was um it's quite extraordinary do you think there are similarities between the two yeah it's all about it's all about momentum you know you get a band together like i had in the first place and then we started doing shows we went to america um played a at the Troubadour in Los Angeles to 300 people and it all took off. And then the next two years we just galvanized ourselves and traded in on that momentum that we had. And I think in anything, momentum is so important,

adrenaline, and if you click, and sometimes you see it when Leicester won the league and the premiership, it was one of the greatest moments, I think, in the history of football. And you see Ipswich, and you see Chesterfield down there in the conference, and you see the momentum they got. They lost out to one of the best matches ever, Notts County and Chesterfield, last year in that playoff final.

It was incredible. And this year, they're still there. They're at the top of the league. You've got Stockport going crazy. You've got Notts County going crazy, Wrexham going crazy. It's fabulous to watch that. And it's grassroots. It starts there. And if you have the right team, and we did with Graham and Eddie Plumley and Bertie Mee and Tom Walley, bless him. It was fun. It was like a, yes. Tell me about, I mean, Graham Taylor,

obviously he's a man that I played for, made me England captain. I'll be eternally grateful for him for that. How did you get him in the first place? How did that happen? Well, there was talk of us getting Bobby Moore, and I think I spoke to Bobby, but the board of directors weren't keen on it.

And Muir Stratford, who was one of our directors, he said, there's a chap at Lincoln City called Graham Taylor. I think he's the best young manager. And he was 28, I think, Graham. Were you not put off by the fact that he was so young? Not really. But I mean, I phoned him up. And he was being chased by West Brom. He was the name on people's lips.

And I said, I'm Elton John. I'm chairman of Watford. I would like you to be our manager. That's all it needs, surely. Someone calls you and says, I'm Elton John. And to his credit, he came down with Rita, his wife, and sat down with me in my house in Windsor.

And I convinced him to be manager. But then I think the thing that really convinced me was Burt Millichap of West Romajabi. And I said, what are you going there for? You know, you're turning us down to go to that club? And I can see Burt's point of view. Absolutely. How did you sell the idea to him then? Because obviously he had other people that wanted him to go to their club.

I don't know, we just clicked. I've had two great relationships in my life in football and music. Bernie Taupin came from Lincoln, Graham came from Lincoln. It's weird. And it was one of the greatest moments of my life when he said yes, because I really felt as if I'd done something outside of music that I never thought I could do. I convinced him that we would be in Europe in six years.

You convinced him? Yeah. Because normally it has to be the other way around. Yeah, yeah. You need to convince the chair. No, I said, listen, we've got to be in Europe. You've got to be in music. He sort of looked at me as if I was stark raving mad.

But we went on this great adventure. How did it come about being the owner and chairman of Watford? Well, first of all, I did a concert here with Rod Stewart to raise money for the club, and I became a vice chairman. And the chairman there was Jim Bonser. And I think he'd had enough of the abuse. You know, in those days if you were chair of a football club you were a local businessman and that was it. You went to Grimsby got fish, you went to Workington you got potatoes or something

like that. It was lovely and in the end I made him an offer he couldn't refuse and I became a director and then a chairman. Did you feel like you knew what you were doing at the start, running a football club because it's quite a thing isn't it? he couldn't refuse and I became a director and then a chairman. Did you feel like you knew what you were doing at the start? Running a football club because it's quite a thing isn't it? It is but I was so determined to do something other than what I've been doing. It's totally different from what I do. In what I do I'm surrounded by a lot of sycophants and you know it's a very weird business. But this was where I came from. I lived six miles up the road. I was born.

You talked about the previous guy, he got fed up of it because of the abuse. Did you ever get any stick? I suppose it started and went so well that perhaps... I didn't get any stick at all. I got homophobic comments, which I laughed at, and I expected that, so it wasn't coming into me. Oh, how dare you?

I knew that I was selling myself gay chairman of a football club. But everything I experienced like that was kind of done with humor and I always used to wave back at them. There were some really embarrassing moments, which I can't go into. But no, I was determined.

When I set my mind on something, I wasn't just playing silly games. I knew that I wanted to do this and we could do it. And you were so determined and obviously you had a special manager. We had a special relationship. That's very important. How did it work between the two of you? Well, I used to love, because I'm on the outside,

I used to love who was interested in buying. We used to go and watch games together outside of Watford, which was fun. We got locked in at Rochdale. Got locked in. Well, the crowds were so small, they wouldn't let them leave. So we got locked in there, but we stood on the terraces. For me, that was so interesting. What players are you looking at?

Who are you going after? Did you involve yourself in that, or was it pure? I talked to him about players. We talked about what do you think of this guy? What do you think about the guy? And then he'd say, listen, I've got this player. I need to buy him. And that was, here's the check to get him. But he would never overspend on players.

He'd never took advantage of money with me uh he bought players that he wanted to be a team like you know if you weren't walking through and through he would have you up against the wall and i've seen him with players up against the wall play this you're playing for our club now yeah um i've seen that side yeah i'm sure you have there were four of the players that went right the way through weren't they from the bottom of the fourth division to the top of the third. Yes I mean Ross Jenkins who he thought was a giraffe who became one of the best centre forwards and one of the most underrated centre forwards in the league and then Luther of course came

through and then the first person he really bought was Sam Ellis centre half. He said it all starts with a captain. Sam Ellis is going to be my captain. He bought Dennis Booth, Ian Bolton, who was a fantastic ambassador for this club and a great player. He wanted players who would die for him. And he got them. He played a certain way. He played a certain way, but we were very attracted to watch. We had two amazing wheels, Barnes and Callaghan. And Luther Blissett and Ross Jenkins up front would frighten anybody and I just think that

was a little unfair because you know you don't just win football matches I get so fed up with playing out from the back sometimes it's like everybody does it now even if they're not good enough to do so no yes on occasion he would have gone nuts yeah he would definitely would have definitely gone nuts. Football has changed. The reason it's changed, I mean, you look out this window here and you see a playing surface that's perfect. You could not have played that way back then because most of the grounds, there were mud heaps. There were mud heaps by this time of the year. Yeah. No, it's changed and it's probably changed for the better. And it's a privilege to watch some of these players play.

It's incredible the way they play. But that was the time we were playing out and we got a lot of criticism for it. Got a lot of snootiness thrown at us from certain clubs when we went to visit them because they thought we were a bit of a riffraff. That body? Yeah. Inspiring? Yeah, absolutely.

I remember beating Arsenal 4-2 at Highbury and I was so happy. Yeah, were they particularly pompous there? Not really. But there was a certain... It only came with the London clubs. Oh, really? Not up north. I remember going to Manchester United, beating them in the League Cup, 2-1 up there, and

they could have been more gracious. They were fantastic. They were amazing. And Liverpool... No, they were better up north and they could have been more gracious they were fantastic they were amazing and Liverpool no they were better up north than they were down here The Football Daily Podcast from BBC Radio 5 Live

My name's Joe Wilkinson and I'm doing a podcast because I love football but what I love football. But what I love more is the idea of being friends with a professional footballer. The footballer I'd like to be friends with is Patrick Bamford. Hello, Patrick. Will you be my friend? That's yet to be decided.

Okay, not what I was hoping. My Mate's a Footballer is a new BBC Sounds podcast with me, Patrick Bamford and Joe Wilkinson. Some days he'll hate it, other days he won't and eventually he will fall in love with me, Patrick Bamford and Joe Wilkinson. Some days he'll hate it, other days he won't, and eventually he will fall in love with me. Search for My Mate's A Footballer on BBC Sounds. Who's the best player you've seen at Watford? Best player that I've seen at Watford?

John Barnes. I thought that might be the answer. Yeah. He was special, wasn't he? Well, and we, Deryn played him when he was 17, 16 years of age. He just threw him in. I get crazy when they you know

The players get left out of clubs. I'm so glad Cole Palmer's in the English squad He's like this boy. He's only gonna learn by playing with the better players. He's a good player Anyway, very good player play it. Yeah, if he was good enough playing. Well, how is he gonna learn if he doesn't learn? It's like when you got a young musician go out there. Play to a club with hardly any people in it. It'll give you the experience, you'll write better songs. It's just learning the game. And did you socialize with Graham Taylor as well? Yes, I went round to his house.

It's a friendship. It seems you were very close. Yeah, we socialized. We loved going around there and playing games. He was a dreadful loser, as I was. And Rita always laughed. Yes, I loved going around his house. And yeah, we both came from similar roots.

We both came from working class backgrounds. You know, we just clicked. He was terrifying sometimes. Yeah, I can see he probably was sometimes. Yeah. Terrifying for you as well? He was never terrifying towards me, but I saw him in action sometimes and I thought,

I don't want to get on the other side, the bad side of you. That's how football used to be though. It's changed a lot now. I think all walks of life are changing. But he had great management skills as well, great man management skills. Maybe Ross Jenkins would probably disagree with me. Yeah, he was something... He was of his time. And I hated the way he was treated and called a turnip. And it hurt me very, very much.

You're talking about the England times. Yeah. And, you know, he was a good man. Why do you think it didn't quite work for him with England? I think football was changing. That was the time it was changing. And we didn't really have the players that, you know, maybe that he could... No, at that stage, it was just after there was kind of...

You lost Butcher and Shilton and Brian Robson. But then he was playing Palmer. Yeah. So we didn't really have... We had some great players, but it was changing. And I don't quite know if he knew how to adapt to being the England manager. I always felt that he, I think he should have played his way. I think he kind of thought, can I play that way for England?

And I think he just got stuck in the middle of the two things. He was stubborn. He was a good guy though. He was a very stubborn, very good guy. A great guy. I mean, he's like my brother. And I have the greatest memories of him. And when he died, I was distraught.

I just couldn't believe it. I'd only spoken to him a couple of days before that. Very sad. What's the highlight of the, what for the FA Cup final, though didn't end well? The FA Cup final is a conundrum with me because looking back on it, I should have told Graham,

I'm going in there to talk to the dressing to talk to dressing before the game because in music you have tours and you have special things like you play glastonbury or you play dodger stadium or there's always a highlight coming up and those things you have to pull off now when we got to the cup final i after the cup funnel i thought they played as if it was enough just being there. I would have gone in there and said to them, listen, in football, you don't get this very often. In fact, it is very rare.

You got to go out and believe that you can win this game. You think they went out without that belief. It was just, wow, we've done well enough. Yeah, that's what I thought. And I thought I'd made a mistake. I should have said to Graham, let me go in there and have a word with them. You know, please.

And I just think turning up was enough. Did you ever go in the dressing room and have a word with him before a game, though? No, I went in the dressing room after the game. Yeah, but would that have been out of the ordinary, though, wouldn't it? Would Graham have accepted it, do you think? I think he would have done if I had the courage. It made sense. Looking back on it, it made sense.

I've been there. I've been to the big occasions. These guys haven't. And it's like, come on, don it made sense. I've been there. I've been to the big occasions. These guys haven't. And it's like, come on, don't be afraid. You can win this. Everton aren't the greatest team in the world, but they had old heads. They'd been there several times before. And I regret that. You do.

The famous image of that fan, of course, is Abide With Me. And you stand there with tears in your eye. Very emotive eye very emotive very emotive well it's one of my favorite hymns of all time anyway and and with the brass band i've always cried out by with me it wasn't just because we were there i just it's just wonderful piece of music yeah and with the brass band and and the and everything like that and the occasion obviously was just i was walking around on the pitch thinking, God, we're in the Cup final.

Yeah. Well, we didn't handle it the right way, which is my fault, because I should have said to Graham, let me go and have a go at them. Yeah. Do you think it would have made it? Yeah. Absolutely.

I can be quite good at that. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. Very successful. You know, in your career career I've had an incredibly long career the highlight of my career this year was

Glastonbury which I never thought I'd play and I had to go in there and pull it off I did pull it off because you have to you don't get that

opportunity very often you were sort of the first celebrity shall we describe it that really got involved in buying a football club there are one or two now of course

including the likes of David Beckham, of course, at Miami now. Yes, of course, in Miami, yes. And Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney at Wrexham, which is slightly different with it being a TV show as well, but it's great, isn't it? Yeah, but it's great. And I phoned Ryan when they won and they got promoted,

and I just think it's fantastic. They're on the ride that I was on. It's slightly different because times have changed, but it's no more unexciting. It's so exciting for them. I bet they have more fun doing that than any movie they've ever made. Quite probably.

Do you think it's become even more about the top six now? Do you still think there's a chance of someone doing something like Watford did, like Leicester did, of course, not that long ago, which for me was the biggest sporting miracle I can ever remember. Well, it's not so long ago Brighton were in the bottom division. I love them. I love Brentford, I love Brighton.

I've got a soft spot for Fulham as well. I don't know, I get a little fed up with the top six all the time. But there are teams around like Brighton and Brentford who can give know give them a real go yeah and I love those kind of teams I think they're brilliantly run Brighton's brilliantly run Brentford's brilliantly run good we need more teams like that you need to be able to dream you know that yeah you need if you don't we dreamt and so many other clubs dreamt and they did it look at Swansea they did

the same as we did Shrewsbury Town with Graham Turner you know clubs dreamt and they did it. Look at Swansea, they did the same as we did. Shrewsbury Town with Graham Turner. You know, they dreamt and they got to places where they never thought they would be. So it's the great thing in life is to be able to dream of being successful in whatever you do. But in football, yes, you can win and you can be there. You have an entitlement to be there just as much as anybody else.

Well, we should finish really looking ahead at the game at the weekend. I know. ddod yno yn unigol i unrhyw un arall. Wel, rhaid i ni ddiweddar y rhan o'r gêm ym mis diwrnod. Rwy'n gwybod. Byddai'n eich cyflwyniad i mi am y diwrnod. Leicfeydd y City yn hytrach na Watford. Leicfeydd y City yn hytrach na Watford. Mae wedi bod ychydig o bwysau yn y cwrs hwn. Ydym ni'n ddigon o'r tenor? Tenor, iawn. Felly, gadewch i'r gorau gynrychioli gynrychioli.

Gadewch i'r gorau gynrychioli gynrychioli. Mae hynny'n iawn. Elton, mae wedi bod yn hwyl iawn ac mae'n hynod o hwyl i'w gweld chi eto. Ac fe wna i ddangos i chi'r sgwrn May the best team win. May the best team win. That's it. Elton, it's been an absolute pleasure and lovely to see you again. And I'll show you the scar that you were down in the dressing room at that point at that time. Thank you so much. Thank you very much.

Fascinating. The Football Daily Podcast from BBC Radio 5 Live. Match of the Day Top Ten Podcast The Match of the Day Top Ten Podcast is back

and this series could be our most controversial and argumentative yet with bigger debates more unruliness from this man and unheard tales

Yes Micah Richards and Alan Shearer are back with me for series nine of Match of the Day Top Ten on BBC Sounds

where if you've missed any episodes from previous series, you'll find the rest of our box sets to listen to, from Series 1 up to Series 8. The Match of the Day, Top 10 podcast. Listen only on BBC Sounds.