After many weeks trying to get a slot in his dairy I finally arranged to meet and interview former football manager and TV football pundit Larry Ginacre at the head office of his self-publicity company Larry Ginacre is Great Ltd. I am met in the foyer by Larry’s personal assistant Nosinia Brownbottom who briefs me on the parameters of the interview. “Please note that Larry refuses to discuss his work with refugees or about either of his marriages.” I take a note to open up with refugees and to ensure that I ask about his marriages.
After a considerable wait in an ante-room outside the great man’s office, Nosinia finally emerges and ushers me in. The office is enormous and festooned with so many pictures from Larry’s footballing career that I almost don’t notice him at the end of the room sitting behind a desk. The desk is covered in green baize marked like a football pitch with goalposts at each end. Twenty-two Subbuteo figures, all of which look remarkably like Ginacre, are positioned around the pitch. Larry pats Nosinia affectionately on the bottom as she walks past him to go to the door of her own office, at the far end of the room.
LG: Sorry to keep you waiting, I had to make a call to Mark Lawrenson.
[Lawrenson was his original co-presenter on Match of The Day.]
RW: Still correcting his grammar, Larry?
LG: How did you know? He wrote a piece in The Liverpool Echo last week and the grammar was terrible. So, what would you like to speak about?
RW: I believe you are very reluctant to speak about your work with refugees so I will not ask you about that.
LG: That’s right. I hate people who self-publicise using important social issues. But maybe if you want to probe a little, I might just open up, it can always be off the record.
RW: No, I insist. I don’t do off the record and I want to respect your noble wishes.
LG: But, maybe…
RW: So, let’s move on. You were hugely admired as a footballer.
LG: Well, I did my best; we owe it to the fans to do our best.
RW: You had a remarkable career, a record goal-scorer in your time and you never even had a single yellow card in your whole career.
LG: Well, I did my best; we owe it to the fans to do our best.
RW: Are you still bitter against Graham Taylor for dropping you from the Sweden game at Euro 92?
[The door to Nosinia’s office, she has clearly been listening to every word, bursts open and she stands behind Larry making a cutting sign across her throat to indicate ‘stop’.]
LG: I don’t know where you get that idea from. I have never said anything to indicate that I harbour any ill-will towards Graham.
RW: Well, there are copious incidences reported in the press where you have appeared to have a go at him, put him down and belittle his record as an England manager.
[Further angry gesticulating from Nosinia before she returns to her office.]
LG: Just banter Robert, just banter.
RW: My name is ‘Roger’.
LG: Sure, it is.
RW: You have expressed support for gay footballers who come out publicly. Why do you feel so strongly about this issue?
LG: I see no reason, just because someone is a bit of a Nancy that they should not be able to play football.
RW: Moving on, you famously compared the British tennis player Emma Raducanu to illegal immigrants. What was your point?
LG: I Tweeted that it was ironic that we were stopping people crossing the channel while an immigrant of mixed race won the tennis.
RW: I still don’t understand what the point was. First, we seem to be very ineffective at stopping people coming across the channel, quite the opposite. Second, Emma Raducanu is not an illegal immigrant.
LG: But, you know, she’s ‘foreign’ not one of us really and we need to be nice to people who cannot look after themselves.
RW: Are you implying that Emma Raducanu needs someone to look after her?
LG: Does she? I’d happily look after her.
RW: I think we have strayed on to the immigrant issue and I would like to ask you about your own work with immigrants [I glance up at Nosinia’s door which remains closed.] You famously took a Syrian refugee into your home, and he wrote you a nice letter.
LG: Yes, he did.
RW: Did you correct his grammar?
LG: Well, he did need a bit of help. In the first draft he spelled ‘grateful’ as ‘greatful’ and
‘thank you’ as ‘thankyou’. Just a bit if tweaking you understand.
RW: What was his name?
LG: Never mastered it, something Arabic sounding.
RW: You recently had Covid on returning from South Africa and apologised to all the other people on the plane. Why did you do that?
LG: I felt it was the decent thing to do.
RW: It wasn’t because you thought you had Covid before you boarded the plane?
LG: I thought I just had a bit of the sniffles.
RW: Sure, you did. You also apologised for being caught on camera in a shop without a face mask when they were compulsory. You blamed old age. Do you think that all old people are stupid?
LG: Well, many of them are, look how many of them died of Covid. Frankly, I was more embarrassed that I was filmed doing my own shopping. Poor optics.
RW: You said that Covid had brought us together when you launched the Kindness Manifesto of the Red Cross at the start of the pandemic. There has been little kindness shown towards those who do not wish to get vaccinated or to wear a mask.
LG: Scum; they’re scum.
RW: Not a very kind sentiment.
LG: Even kindness has its limits.
RW: Did HM The Queen reply to your well-wishing message when it was suspected she had Covid?
LG: No, I’m still just an OBE.
RW: What tempted you to ditch your first wife and mother of your two boys Michelle in favour of nubile, attractive and twenty years your junior model Danielle Bux?
LG: I guess I am just irresistibly attractive to younger women.
RW: The second marriage did not last long though.
LG: We are still ‘best mates’.
RW: And she is a lot richer, I guess.
LG: No comment.
RW: If I could raise the refugee issue once more, along with one of my previous interviewees Bumbling Cabbage Patch you have said that we should be taking in Ukrainian refugees. Have you taken any in yet?
LG: Yes, she is at home right now looking after the boys and getting dinner ready.
RW: And do you know her name?
LG: Yes, it’s Covid Shevarnadze.
RW: And how are your boys?
LG: They’re both in bed with Covid.
[The interview ended when Nosinia entered the office and said “I have Graham Taylor on the line Larry, he seems a bit upset about something.]
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