RIP Ian.
He was a good man. But perhaps not everyones cup of Tea.
Post football, post his TV days he threw himself into charity work and made many charities some very big sums.
I played golf with him at a couple of pro-am's and he was our celebrity player in a four ball. The first time was around 20 years ago and believe me he was as competitive then as he was as a player, I got dog's abuse for missing an easy putt and shanking a few! He desperately wanted to win as it was his 'home' course (when he played football at the red bin dippers) - a fabulous one at that, namely Royal Lytham and St. Annes.
After the game at the dinner we sat together and had a debate about the future of the professional game with Glen Hoddle, Frank Worthington (remember him?) and I seem to recall it was Chopper Harris was the other.
We had a long debate about how football and footballers were just going to get richer and richer and that TV would spend ever-increasing money on it as it was a big box office and 'cheap' programming, he kept saying it would never happen, only Frank agreed with him. The next time I played with him, remembered the 'debate' and took the time out to tell he had it all wrong and Like his old partner Jimmy was beginning to regret what he thought the game had become.
Roll on to around 2006/7 (might have been a year earlier but can't exactly recall right now) and we played again and had the same debate, by then he thought Football was going to a hell in a handcart, we didn't agree, anyway he was a great believer in helping those who were worse off than himself and kept fighting hard for his favourite charities and made you dig deep! He had my respect.
During that game, one significant other player was the then local chief constable - who was seriously up himself! And his cursing after and before every shot finally drove him to speak up and ask Ian to stop, Ian's answer was something like 'you fucking serious?' at which point I swear he spent the rest of the round swearing louder and longer than before, and I spent the game laughing like a kid at his antics - At the dinner as were all laughing at his antics again he got angry at me for laughing at/with him, boy did he let rip LOL!
The man wanted to win, so he never lost that competitive edge, even when it was all for charity, he was of course one hell of a golfer.
