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AS part of the period of national mourning following the announcement that Sir Alec Douglas Ferguson is to retire, the BBC news site has run a feature called 10 little known facts about Sir Alex.
Well I knew quite a few of them, so I have put together 12 more that I doubt anyone else knows apart from me and Prince Andrew, to whom he was briefly married after he left the Three Degrees.
1. In spite of his strong accent few people realise that Sir Alex is Scottish.
2. He invented his own range of television sets called Fergusons, which were very popular in the 1960s. The sets were able to pick up Scottish broadcasts from The White Heather Club and Hogmanay which was at that time heavily linked to Andy Stewart and Jimmy Blue.
3. He has never used a teabag, preferring loose-leaf tea.
A good western4. People think that he constantly chews gum whilst watching the game. In fact he is chewing strips of rubber from Formula One car tyres, supplied by lifelong chum and champion racing driver, Jackie Stewart.
5. Sir Alex never watches football on the TV and prefers a good war film or a western.
6. Last year he had a major row with the directors when he cleared the trophy cabinet so that he could display his collection of Moshi Monsters, of which he has all the series, including a number of the rare special editions.
7. Sir Alex refuses to have a real Christmas tree in the house and has been using the same 3ft artificial silver tree he bought in Woolworth’s for £1.19s 6d in 1969. Christmas only begins in his house at 6.30pm every Christmas Eve, when he gets the tree down from the loft.
8. After 40 years of wearing briefs, Sir Alex was encouraged by David Beckham to invest in a pair of cotton/Lycra boxer shorts. He says he has never looked back and they give him the comfort and support he needs.
However, several months later, Beckham was photographed, in advertising campaign, wearing and promoting briefs. Sir Alex felt Beckham had betrayed him, and that he was laughing at him. This is believed to have caused the rift between the two men and prompted Sir Alex to allegedly try to kill him with a shoe.
9. Sir Alex is an accomplished musician and whenever he attends a party, he takes his clarinet with him. With a bit of encouragement he may be persuaded to play Acker Bilk’s “Stranger On The Shore”. However, due to being shy about his musical skills, he will only play whilst standing inside a large duvet cover with everyone facing the other way.
It was not until the 1980s, when duvets began to replace quilts and eiderdowns, that Sir Alex gained the confidence to play in public at all.
10. Sir Alex used to eat five bowls of Sugar Puffs each day and, if he had not become a football manager, he was hoping to take over the role as “Mummy” to the Honey Monster when Henry Magee’s contract ran out.
It was a bitter blow to Sir Alex when Manchester punk poet John Cooper Clarke was instead teamed up with the Honey Monster and is said to be one of the reasons Cooper Clarke was never given a trial, despite his natural ball skills.
Since then, all breakfast cereal is banned from the house, although he will permit porridge to be served as long as it is with the traditional salt rather than Sassenachs' milk and sugar.
11. When asked to go on Desert Island Discs, in 2008, Sir Alex chose five CDs about the assassination of JFK given to him by Gordon Brown (with whom he is obsessed), and a copy of Stranger On The Shore by Acker Bilk. For his luxury item, he chose a duvet cover.
Legend has it that the programme was never broadcast because he is said to have punched Sue Lawley when she said he couldn’t take his clarinet, claiming she let Mary O’Hara take her f*cking harp.
12. Being from the Clyde, one would expect Sir Alex to have been a fan of television detective series Taggart which starred ex-grunt-and-grapple hero Mick McManus as tough Glaswegian cop Juliet Bravo.
However, Sir Alex caused near riots in Govan when, in an article in the Scottish edition of Hello! magazine (Halloo!), he said he preferred Lovejoy and gritty US Detective series Father Dowling Investigates.
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18 comments so far, continue the conversation, write a comment.
My favourite Ferguson moment was his introduction of face matching wines to the UK. His favourite was red.
The Professor has neglected to cover Ferguson’s acting career. He played the eponymous ‘Taggart’ and cultivated a convincing Yorkshire accent to play the title role in long-running ITV coal-in-t’bath saga ‘Sam’.
Alex Ferguson (82) has now retired and plans to continue living with his mother Aggie (102) in her luxury bungalow in the seaside resort of Widnes. He plans to breed racing moths and brew Um Bongo.
After winning the treble back in '99, he wanted to be known as the Govanator, but Arnold Schwarzenegger was already using that nickname, and even though it was spelt differently.
He has a picture of himself in the attic of his Cheshire mansion. It shows a young man of great beauty, wit and charm. More mundanely, he gave in to Rooney's last "I'm f***ing off" tantrum but fooled him by giving him £300,00 per week, 50% more than Rooney's agent wanted.
According yesterdays Independent, SAF the football manager formerly known as Sir Alex Fergusson plans to spend his retirement perfecting his piano skills and learning German. This is because he is keen to land the part of Rufus T. Firefly in German language musical version of Duck Soup at Der Pina Bauusch Tanztheater Wuppertal. Apparently, when speaking German, Sir Alex has struggled to lose his strong Govan accent. In today's Frankfurter Allgemeine, Rudi Voller disclosed he almost pisses himself laughing whenever Sir Alex quotes the classic Groucho line “Ich weigere mich, jeden Club, der mich hätte als Mitglied beitreten“
Starts off well but fades toward the end. And how can someone who is known as the 'bard of Salford' be mentioned as coming from Manchester?!! Research.
Anonymous, forgive me using your name, but I am unable to sign in. You are quite right Punk Poet Ken Clarke does indeed hail from Salford but I penned this feature with Reuters in mind and thought an international readership would be more familiar with Manchester. Salford is a fine place but I suppose outside of the UK unless you are an art lover and familiar with the industrial scenes of Matchstick folk painted by P.J. Proby you may not have heard of the place. I agree Lovejoy did fade towards the end and Dudley Sutton (now also a great performance poet) was just going through the motions. Kind regards Y. Chucklebutty
Fantastically indulgent way to make your point, fully consistent with the above piece. Of course nobody outside of the UK would have heard of a place called Salford, a place currently home to the BBC alongside several other notable artists across a variety of cultural canvas. It is a city that will perennially live in the shadow of places of international fame like… Clyde. But please, deflect an oversight with some further word-play; no doubt Clyde is a reference to resourceful Texan couple during the Great Depression… 'Kind Regards', Anonymous Heavey Eschborn, Germany (‘international reader’)
He aint Heavey...he's mein bruder.
Shuffle with extreme prejudice Prof?
I just rang the House Of Commons to check and they confirmed Punk Political Poet Ken Cooper Clarke is not Barred From Salford. They said where is Salford anyway, I said Timporley. They said "ohh! Frank Sidebottom's home town."
12 THINGS YOU NEVER KNEW ABOUT ROBERTO MANCINI. 1 He's sacked. 2 That's it.
13. Sir Alex will be giving his cherished Timex-tra time watch to David Moyes...