PERSPECTIVEUKNORTH

 

People and their profiles: dukes, archbishops, actors, writers, monks, oddbods, the garish, the gregarious - here they are in single file, chosen by chance, by inclination, or by necessity ... and all reflecting, one hopes, the essential, but indefinable, spark that makes one human being interesting to many. Geoffrey Mather

The secret self of Eddie Waring

The most tormented tonsils in television history long ago (1998) ceased their perennial struggle with the English language, but memories of Edward Marsden Waring - Eddie Waring as was - are slow to recede.

A curious man to be exposed to public scrutiny, for he was excessively secretive and did his best to obliterate his footsteps.

I once met him in the cocktail bar of the Queen's Hotel in Leeds, a solidly respectable place full of solidly respectable citizens with watchful faces, the sort who feel each others' lapels to test the quality of the cloth. He had joined a group of industrialists, who bought drinks rapidly. I was introduced and tried to buy a round. was silenced. tried again. The barman whispered that I should not insist. "Why are you here?" they asked. And I gave the standard Lancastrian reply: "A bit of pillaging and sheep stealing." They accepted the joke without either humour or comment, but it was silently noted by both sides that it had established credentials to join the club. Later, none of us could remember who won the Wars of the Roses.

At closing time, I realised why I had not been required to buy a round of drinks. I became the host, by statute. I was the resident at the hotel, able to buy rounds of drinks for guests. They moved swiftly into my lounge. At 1 a.m. an introspective Yorkshireman among us announced that he was popping out to his factory to surprise the night shift. He surprised me. He had had a good night; I could not see why he should, on a whim, spoil someone else's.

Eddie Waring regarded the Queen's Hotel as a post box. No-one seemed to know where he lived, but if you wished to contact him, you wrote to the hotel and he would phone back eventually. He checked the cubbyholes at reception regularly.

As he climbed the long ladder to the commentary box at Headingley, Leeds, he used to sing to himself three verses of "Fight the Good Fight," and when he came to the words, "Faint not, nor fear, His arms are near," he knew he had, at last, arrived.

He was much loved by old ladies in Southern counties. They could listen to his Rugby League ("R-r-r-ugby") commentaries and not understand a word concerning the action, but he occasionally used a phrase they treasured, such as, "It's a coat colder on the East coast," or "I don't know whether that's his head or the ball, but we'll soon know if he gets up." Close adherents of the game tended to scoff at him. They never liked the way he gave away the secrets. They thought he trivialised matters. Rugby League (as opposed to Union) is, to them, a mystic rite, something like Freemasonry, and not to be spread about among ordinary folk, particularly those of the Southern variety.

When I first wrote about Waring, a Rugby writer shouted across a crowded room of the Daily Express, "Don't talk to me about Eddie Waring."

"As far as know, Jack," I replied, "I am not talking to you about anything." His face was bright red. He could not have been angrier if had stolen his whippet. "You can't" said Waring, when he and were closeted on some dank Northern ground, "expect to be loved by everybody."

Rugby League, involving 30 clubs on both sides of the Pennines, is second only to football as the North's spectator sport. When Waring referred to mayhem in deep mud, he was merely reflecting for disbelieving Southerners what the North accepts as a Saturday afternoon diversion. Could it all be real? It could, indeed. Alex Muiphy, a great name in Rugby League, once described, for instance, what happened when a player was being carried off by ambulancemen:
"He pushed them aside and said, 'Just wait there for about five minutes because he (meaning an opposing player) is going to need you.' And with no more ado, he gave that man the biggest hiding have ever seen anybody have on a field. Then he said to the ambulancemen, 'He's yours now."'

Uniquely in sport, such aggression usually vanishes once the game ends.

Back in 1976, a 10,000-name petition was organised asking for Waring to be replaced. He was accused of turning the game into "a music-hall comedy." It was harsh criticism. Had he been commentating for the game alone, it would have had some validity; but for the mass audience, Rugby League was on a par with rain forests and vanishing Indian tribes: it was there to be wondered at, but you could not be expected to remember the detail.

A former Rugby League international wrote to Waring saying, "Don't explain the rules. If they don't know them, don't tell them."

He was around so long that he was once called "Mister" in newspapers, even in headlines. Early pictures show him sleek as a brush salesman who has just won the area bonus: black hair brushed straight back without a parting, white collar crisp. In later years he looked grizzly. He remained totally defensive: one faint whiff of derision or hostility would cause him to descend into obfuscation.

His commentaries averaged around 35 a season. He reckoned he had done more than 500, though he had lost count. The first was in 1995, when BBC went North. "First game, Great Britain and New Zealand at Swinton. Tremendous match. Four of us doing it - God rest their souls. Did get much of a what? A say? Oh yes. They had a producer who later became a great pal. I was the one who turned up at the meeting, so he made sure I had a say."

Waring was both one of the highest-paid managers and the youngest in the game. His father was a choirmaster and his talk tended to be punctuated by religious references: "I did two Songs of Praise. I was wanting to take part in that instead of just announcing... I was well interested in hymn singing. In Desert Island Discs, I had two hymns..."

Was he married? Did he have children? Who were his closest friends? Here were questions which left him mute. Like a News of the World reporter confronted by vice, he would make an excuse and leave. Or fumble about with words: "Ah well, you know, this is how people decide for themselves what I am... There are certain sections of your life that are private and I don't... I suppose people never think of me as a shy man, but there are certain reticencies... Let's get back to what we came here for: Rugby League."

An Eddie Waring Society came into being. Universities had Up and Under Parties. Waring was asked to speak in debates. He phoned me one day and went through an agonising conversation. Never once making clear his wishes, he described how a publisher had asked him for his life story. There were difficulties about his writing it, he said. Perhaps it would be better if someone else did it for him. I gather he was inviting me to do the job; but so obscure was his intention that I put down the phone, and I was never "asked" again.

His departure from the BBC was the equivalent of the removal of Nelson's Column from Trafalgar Square. He could only be followed (by Ray French, whom I also knew, and who has a remarkable collection of good Rugby stories). He could never be replaced. Life's steps climbed. The good fight fought. The monument rested. Where? Who could know except those few who had always known?

And then he died (in 1986) and all the mystery went with him.

 

 

 

Geoffrey Mather © 2008