The story of a regional football journalist who appeared on assignment as The Pink Panther and featured in a pantomime is reviewed by Eric Brown…
BY ERIC BROWN
My first faltering steps into journalism occurred in the 1960s, when there was some pretty weird stuff going on.
But even in that hedonistic era, I don’t recall anything in the journalist training modules about dressing up or appearing in pantomime.
True, I once pulled on a borrowed trench coat, sucked a pipe and held out an imaginary microphone in pathetic impersonation of BBC TV news icon Fyfe Robertson during the making of a spoof news programme while on the NCTJ training course at Harlow, Essex.
I was interviewing another trainee journo pretending to be a Scottish yokel who had wandered out of a pub suitably fuelled and claimed to have seen the Loch Ness Monster. Yes, really.
Said interviewee was from a Norfolk paper and didn’t bother to transform his broad East Anglian accent into Scottish, so soon had both of us corpsing as we laboured to produce a serious news item for the rolling cameras.
But back to the dressing up and pantomime. These fates befell David Prentice during his long stint writing about Everton for the Liverpool Echo.
Attendance at a players’ Christmas party required Dave to don fancy dress, and so it was that at some point in the evening, he sidled into the gents and discovered relieving himself wasn’t going to be easy while dressed head to toe in a Pink Panther costume.
Cocking a leg didn’t help, so our Dave virtually stripped off before doing the business. All the more galling then that Everton winger Pat Nevin should stand alongside him performing with freedom after having the gumption to hire a catsuit with a zip!
The Pantomime at the Royal Court Theatre was called Snow Blue and the Seven Blue Noses (honest). This featured several fairly well-known personalities such as Kenneth Cope (Coronation Street, Last of the Summer Wine, Randall and Hopkirk Deceased, etc), comedian Mickey Finn, TV commentator Elton Welsby and several Everton players.
It raised cash for local charities during a successful week-long run, but the single line uttered by our Dave failed to attract any offers from impresarios seeking to lure him from journalism.
Dave Prentice has packed his autobiographical account of a journalistic career spent entirely on Merseyside with plenty of amusing anecdotes like these.
One favourite concerned how he ended up driving the star striker’s very expensive new Merc from Merseyside to Southampton. Or how he came to share a car with Everton’s star defender and the FA Cup.
But there’s also a serious side. Most journalists will know the tightrope-walking trick of trying to upset no one during early career years on local papers.
Football journalists were warned by old stagers that they wouldn’t be doing their job if they were not banned by local club(s) at some point. Dave was, and so was I.
This delicate balance is a recurring theme as Dave Prentice, thwarted in ambition to play for Everton, deserts the Goodison terraces for a first job as news reporter at the Formby Times, a spell at the Southport Visiter, and then starts a 45-year stint writing about Everton FC for the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo, where he eventually graduates to the lofty position of Sports Editor under an over complicated title.
Along the way, this committed Evertonian shares in the peaks and troughs experienced by the club and turns many contacts into genuine pals. Managers Joe Royle and Walter Smith attended his wedding, and he spent some time on a former chairman’s luxury yacht in Mediterranean sunshine.
There is, of course, much about Everton, but Dave Prentice is at his best when writing about his job and the dilemmas presented by it, like the secrets he was required to keep over transfer deals and staff appointments or departures, plus struggles to meet evening newspaper deadlines.
There were great changes in the newspaper business during Prentice’s career. These included the introduction of laptop computers, while websites saw the Liverpool newspapers’ circulation crash. Happily, the company established a widely-read website of their own.
Dave Prentice is now employed by his beloved Everton in the publicity department and recently wrote the excellent “Farewell to Goodison,” a book commemorating the club’s switch from Goodison to Hill Dickinson Stadium.
His memoir of a career path now mostly denied to embryo journalists should nevertheless be required reading not only for Evertonians but for everyone enrolled on a National Council for Training of Journalists course. Just avoid reaching for the fancy dress.
‘A Grand Old Team To Report’ by David Prentice is published by Reach Sports, price £8.99
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