Bits and Bobs

I always felt sorry for an old schoolfriend of mine.

He had a great and distinctive name, the same as an iconic sporting star, one of the 1966 England World Cup winning team, a survivor of the Munich Air Crash which took the lives of some of his Manchester United colleagues and to the present day one of the most worthy ambassadors for club and country that you could hope for, selfless and dedicated to a game in which he earned his living and so many admirers.

You would think then , logically and rationally that my friend Robert or Bob Charlton would have a suitably majestic nickname by association ,one that if overheard would cause people to evoke their own memories of his namesake or make some remark along the lines of ...

"did you know, sonny, that you have the same name as one of the best long range and dead ball kickers in the whole of football?"

Even if tempted to reply " well actually, no-one has ever mentioned that before, who was he?" you could probably dine out or drink for free in any sporting club or football ground bar forever.

The hype machine that runs on the fuel of celebrity places great emphasis on same-named persons or if you happen to be a lookie likie for someone famous even if only one other person sees it in your facial features or mannerisms for a fleeting second or in a certain light.

Everything was set fair for Robert Charlton to sail through his life basking in the reflected glory of Bobby but yet the nickname that attached itself to him was that of "Chunky".

Alliteration is a key factor in many nicknames and so Chunky Charlton eminently met this requirement.

To add further insult this nickname was not even original and bespoke in that it was and remained simultaneously that of his older brother.

In order to differentiate the two there was the cumbersome sub-title of Little Chunky and Big Chunky.

This caused even more confusion as there was only a couple of years between them in age and on just about every day they could , apart from their home life, be within earshot of each other in the same school assembly hall, on the same playing field, in adjacent classrooms, at opposite ends of the canteen and on upper or lower levels of the double decker bus for the journey to and from the village in which they resided.

It is nearly forty years since I first met and went to school with Robert. I moved away with my family in 1979.

We have not met up for perhaps a dozen years but Christmas Cards and a few messages flit through the various media based channels, likes and dislikes seem to be compatible and we feature on a few Linked In forums and shared contact lists.

It is interesting how nicknames persist though and it was just the other day that I was asked out of the blue by another long since seen but mutual friend if I still had any contact with Chunky Charlton. In the instant the faimilar prefix was mentioned I was transported back over the decades.

Although we are now both a lot older, and, in my case, saggy and very grumpy, I can clearly recall what was a momentous period in our young lives.

We both fell for French girls on a school exchange and moped around like lovesick fools for a good many weeks, we regularly got drunk on Double Diamond from a party pack keg even being well under-age for alcohol, we shamelessly chatted up females regarding them as fair game , swopped soft porn but often topically on-message Mayfair Magazines and disgracefully got thrown off a Charity Carol Singing trip on one Christmas Eve for being loud, unruly, disorderly and disrepectful to those whose homes we had been invited to. That last one we could probably attribute to Big Chunky, rightly or wrongly so that otherwise our current senior status and respectability remains unblemished.

Still, who would ever bother to scrutinise the behaviour of anyone in the 1970's.?