An Interesting Fact About The Spurs Team of 1977-78

Bear with me even if you don't like football, this is worth it.

Spurs squad, 1977-78 season

The following Tottenham Hotspur eleven from 1977-78 has a claim to fame which I am pretty certain is unique.

Pat Jennings

Terry Naylor ; Steve Perryman ; Don McAlister ; Jimmy Holmes

Glenn Hoddle ; Neil McNab ; John Pratt ; Peter Taylor

Ralph Coates ; Martin Robinson

Tottenham’s “glory, glory days” were in the sixties, when they won the League and Cup double at a time when the talent in English club football was spread a lot more evenly around the clubs than it is now.

Then, it was a very rare achievement indeed. When Spurs did it in 1960/61, the previous team to do so was Aston Villa in 1896-97, when Queen Victoria was on the throne.

Ten years on in 1970-71, and in a very Spurs-y turn of events, their Double-winning exploits were matched by their bitter rivals Arsenal.

Spurs did win the League Cup that year, though, and also the following year, as well as winning the 1972 UEFA Cup. Their other honour of the decade was,slightly embarrasingly, promotion from Division Two back to the top flight by finishing third in 1977/78 after finishing bottom the previous season.

The answer concerns the writer David Nobbs, creator of Reginald Perrin, Fairly Secret Army, A Bit Of A Do and countless other comedy series, always rooted in real life, always touching, human and above all, screamingly funny.

Reggie (Leonard Rossiter, in a magnificent portrayal of a man in the throes of a midlife crisis) fondly imagining his mother-in-law as a hippopotamus. As you do.

Nobbs was a Tottenham fan, born in Orpington in Kent.

Pausing here to note that geographically he should, strictly speaking, have supported the mighty Crystal Palace, while regrettably understanding why he didn’t.

Nobbs decided to pay tribute to his team by putting them in a novel.

All eleven of them.

And he said so in a newspaper interview at the time the third book, The Better World Of Reginald Perrin, came out in 1978.

Football fans of a certain age will note that this was the year Spurs created a stir by signing Ossie Ardiles and Ricardo Villa, two of Argentina’s World Cup-winning side that year, but unfortunately that was after the book had gone to the publishers, so we were spared a “Mr Ardiles the pig farmer” character which may have given the game away somewhat.

As it is, the names are so well hidden, and separated from each other, that only a proper Spurs fan could ever have spotted them without knowing they were there.

I’m not any sort of a Spurs fan let alone a proper one, so I never had a chance, but I’ve pieced the full list together with the aid of Internet football statistics and the search facility on Kindle.

Nobbs sensibly left the appearance of the team’s most famous player, midfield genius Glenn Hoddle right to the end of the book. He pops up as Reggie’s secretary.

Iris Hoddle (Linda Cunningham). Put something in here about being two-footed work out exactly what later.

Pat Jennings is one of the many alter-egos of a conman, Don McAlister and John Pratt are diseases.

Several more are employees at Amalgamated Aerosols, which is where Reggie ends up at the end of the book, having started at Sunshine Desserts and now come full circle.

Terry Naylor, subject of perhaps the greatest terrace chant ever, pops up as “Mrs. Naylor”, the false identity of Reggie’s secretary Joan.

“One Terry Naylor, there’s only one Terry Naylor”

If you’re only familiar with the Reginald Perrin TV series, then I urge you to read the books - the first book predated the TV show and is the best, including many characters and plot that didn’t make it to the screen, as well as some quite dark moments.

If you’ve never seen Reginald Perrin, what on earth are you doing reading this gubbins?You could be discovering one of the finest sitcoms ever made.

Go. Now.

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