West Ham Legends at Brentwood Live

Best part of the weekend was going to see 'West Ham Legends' Trevor Brooking, Julian Dicks, Frank McAvennie and Tony Gale at Brentwood Live on Friday night — a birthday present from Her Indoors. Brentwood Live is a strange venue, basically a sports hall with seats and not actually in Brentwood but Doddinghurst. But a £6 taxi trip from the station soon delivered Fraser and myself to the venue, where we found a thousand or so geezers in replica shirts and Camden Pale on draft.

Tony Gale was a fine compere for the evening, full of wit, delivering a surprisingly accurate impression of Sir Trevor Brooking and revealing that Trev once said a four-letter word on the golf course. Sir Trev stalked us through his FA Cup winning goal and said that although Ron Greenwood was a great coach John Lyall was a better man manager. Predictably he rather sat on the fence on possible replacements for Pellegrini, but did say that he thought Ajeti wasn't good enough. Dicksy added that the current side just doesn't work hard enough. Mention of Roberto inspired memories of Allen McKnight from Frank McAvennie.

There were lots of tales from the 1980s and 1990s. Frank McAvennie had a story of the players breaking a curfew in Amsterdam and John Lyall asking for £50 to be given to charity from every player who had sneaked out of the fire escape. Lyall was very surprised to find £1200 left on the table when he returned. There was also the story of Mitchell Thomas faking injury so that McAvennie could come on to score a hat-trick in his final West Ham game.

We had plenty of examples of footballers' banter. Tony Gale recalled the time Trevor Morley was in the treatment room after being stabbed by his wife and Julian Dicks had placed a series of knives in the anatomical skeleton on display. 

Dicksy remembered himself and Frank hitching a lift on a milk float during a cross country run under Billy Bonds; and also the time Billy Bonds wanted to fight him at half-time during a game at Coventry. Despite their differences though, Julian considered Bonds to be the best player he played alongside.

Everyone had massive respect for Bonzo and when asked by an audience member "Did Harry Redknapp stab Billy Bonds in the back?" Tony Gale replied that all he could say was that Billy was as honest as they come.

Tony Gale also revealed that the epic 1985-1986 season charge to third place was inspired by a pre-season defeat at Orient when a fan who looked like a member of the ICF broke into the dressing room and lambasted each player in turn. If that fan is still around then perhaps he could break into the dressing room again and deliver a few more ripostes to our underachieving side.

Overall a fine night of nostalgia from four players who still seem to enjoy each other's company. And what wouldn't we give to see these four back in the side today?