His greeting passed into football fan history, ‘Afternoon, gentlemen, the name’s Bill Gardner.’ That introduction was often enough for the so-called football hardman to melt back into the crowd if you weren’t of a claret and blue persuasion. Among the West Ham following he has earned respect in all his endeavours. Bill Gardner has only ever been himself, he has never held back and the man and the fan is a absolute gentleman, proper old skool. His life story is a bestseller that is now out in paperback and I caught up with him recently and took the following interview for this site.

Describe your worst feeling at a game?
I was coming home from Chelsea away in the early ‘70’s. We pulled in at Whitechapel train station and some Millwall were on the platform. The doors opened and they jumped on and started slapping a few young West Ham fans about. I steamed into them thinking that the rest of our boys on the train would back me up, but no, I ended up steaming into them on my own.

Plus losing a game – being relegated has to be the worst feeling of all. If you follow my team then these things happen. But the spineless way we went down in the 2002/3 season and taking into account the squad of players we had, well …..

Recalling the mad days of the terraces what still do you remember?
There’s far too many to really mention but Man U in ’75 springs to mind. And the games we’ve had with Millwall – they’ve always been a lively encounter. The Harry Cripps testimonial over at Millwall in ’72. I’ve never seen anything like that – it was unbelievable. Definitely the worst I’ve seen in all my years of going.

The North Bank at Wolves. We went in there that day and someone sang ‘Bubbles’ and the whole end just cleared. You couldn’t see their arses for dust. I mean, in them days there was a lot of end taking but this one stands out.

Sacking of manager Alan Pardrew?
After the 4-0 defeat at Bolton which followed the Wigan game it was plain something had to be done, it was the worst in all the years I’d been going and it seemed to me that he had lost the dressing room. It was the sort of performance that suggests there are things going on in the background that we the fans don’t know about and they are not going to say.

Pards or Curbs?
When he first came here I’d interviewed him for the OLAS fanzine and he impressed me the first ten minutes but after fifteen he bored me and I don’t think he personally had as much confidence as he portrayed. I was not a fan in the beginning for sure but to be fair he won me over as he did many others and he did give us some great days out. He was unlucky in Play-offs with Palace, he blew that one but got us promoted when we beat Preston and who will forget how close he got us to winning the FA Cup final and then put us into Europe which I never thought we’d do again. This season the bubble burst when we had longer days at the hyper-market than we had spent in Europe and dumped out the Carling Cup by Chesterfield. I don’t think there is a lot of difference between Pardrew and Curbishley right now; he made some fine transfer buys. Pardrew has got more personality of the two and if he had a weakness then it is maybe himself in that he loves himself a bit too much and that might have been his downfall.

Alan Curbishley will work his nuts off for West Ham with his work ethic and he will do really well cos that will go through to the team and though he was not my first choice I do wonder if he was not the cheap option in that here was a man who was out of work whose service would not involve the paying of compensation to another club.

The Eggert Magnusson Takeover?
I meet him at the last shareholders meeting which it will be that too but I won’t be giving up on my shares too easy but you get them taken compulsory in event of a Takeover. To be fair he seems a nice fella who has obviously got a bit about him, bit of a presence, he knows his form and is a football man, has got great plans for West Ham and it seems obvious that will involve moving grounds. Wouldn’t say he is a West Ham man because he purchased the club with business at heart because that is what he is successful at. I feel some people at that meeting I went too made it quite clear to him that we are not all just shareholders out to make some money but people who bought their shares to be part of the club, our little brick in the wall. Like most businessmen you buy shares to make money in their eyes and I don’t think he quite understood us on that. The interesting thing that comes out of that meeting was that it was clear if they want to make this a bigger club we will be moving and that Stratford was the early option to explore.

Word had it from the various threats posted on the internet that when the Hammers played Millwall for the first time in ten years, Millwall fans would be coming over prior on a raid to graffiti up the Bobby Moore statue outside the ground. A certain fella we all luv and respect went and parked his car next to the statue and guarded it all night. This act of loyalty to all things West Ham was even reported in the Evening Standard now would that person in question be you Bill?
Yeah, when we first heard the rumours we was playing away and I said to a number of people on the train back that day did they fancy protecting Bobby Moore’s stature from this liberty planned. Everybody agreed but on the night in question I was the only one who turned up and sat like a plum in me car into the small hours until going home to a right earful from the missus.

Sicily was wild and that now famous march, remember?
Yeah I think people who got themselves into problems were people who branched off on their own. Got themselves into little bars down side streets or went off in two, threes on their own and got picked off, same story with the buses and taxes. Everyone was in agreement we would walk and it was quite evident that when we done the march and walked as one to the ground they weren’t as brave as they made out, the bulldog spirit, we was family. All said and done we put out some fantastic support to fill both top and bottom of the away section which can not be said of Newcastle who went out there after us with hardly any support on hearing about the troubles we encountered.

Team of 86 v Team of 2006?
The team of ’86 is light years ahead of the team of 2006 and it meant more to them to play for West Ham. This was evident at the Team of ’86 tribute dinner I recently attended; those guys were just like fans off the pitch and still have the club at heart.

Today there are too many cliques, too much infighting leads to problems on the pitch, and the new boys will be on good money and maybe have created a bit of jealous. The fans today no longer pay the players wages 'cos that all comes from Sky and corporate deals. You don’t really see the players today involved in the community and it’s across the board with the modern game this us and them attitude.

Bill Gardner’s West Ham Dream Team:

Parkes/Ludo couldn’t split but Phil Parkes, Ray Stewart, Julian Dicks, Alvin Martin, Bobby Moore, Alan Devonshire, Trevor Brooking, Billy Bonds, Di Canio, Geoff Hurst, Bryan Robson.

Copyright © Cass Pennant 2007

"Good Afternoon Gentlemen, The Name's Bill Gardner" is published by John Blake - ISBN 1-84454-261-0