As a 10 year old my biggest hero was Roy Race. For the uninitiated Roy was(and still is!)the captain of Melchester Rovers Football Club from the Roy of the Rovers magazine A few pence of my weekly spends went on this publication for several years as a child.
Occasionally, my older brothers would pick it up and have a good chortle at some of the reading material within the pages. They used to find opposing team names like "Everpool" and "Sundercastle City" hilarious, being just 10 I didn't understand their mirth. I knew there were "real world" teams with similar sounding names but in my imagination they COULD have been real teams.
Every week would end with a cliffhanger on or off the pitch i.e a penalty waiting to be taken in the 93rd minute or the Cup draw would be about to take place with all the players crowding around the radio hoping they would draw "Kings Park Rovers" or some such fantasy team.
My section of the shared bedroom wall at home with 4 brothers was covered in pictures of Roy and his teammates. He captured my imagination so intensely that for a while I even had a schoolboy crush on his drawn wife called Penny, that's right I even remember her name which of course is not in any way weird at all..
In typical 1970s style she only made an appearance when preparing a meal or attending some "gala" or other with Roy but to me she always looked gorgeous. Of course, these were the days before the WAG culture so I felt I had my 10 years old credibility intact being smitten by my made up hero's wife.
When I had stopped worrying about Roy's next move, my attention would turn to the other features. which included one which forced me into writing a strongly worded letter to Roy. They had a quiz every week which would include photos of so-called well known players which you had to guess the identity of. It wasn't a competition as such. It was just for fun and they would give you the answers the following week. At the time I felt it was one of the hardest quizzes possible for a kid my age. There were normally around 10 photos every week and usually only one of them would be a First Division player. The rest tended to be made up of journeymen players from the lower leagues.
I got really frustrated with this and one week I didn't know a single one of them. This made me so angry I very nearly didn't dream about Roy's Mrs that night.. I decided to ask a few of my brothers if they knew any of them and the ones who didn't tell me to piss off, and feigned interest didn't know them either.
I decided to write in and address my letter to Roy himself. but just hoped my criticisms weren't read by Penny as this would have made me think I had blown my chances with her. My childhood morals hadn't formed yet. A couple of weeks later a letter arrived addressed to me. This was the first letter I had ever received in my nascent life..I was so excited my hands were trembling as I opened it. Inside the envelope was a photograph and a return letter written by.......Roy himself ! I bloody well nearly fainted!
Once I had calmed down and started to read it. Roy said that he agreed some of the players were difficult to guess but he had fans of all ages so he couldn't make them too easy. Anyway, I thought "What sort of shit is this Roy?!". I'd told him I was 10 years old in my letter but felt like I had already learned everything there is to know about football so thought this was a cop out. I calmed down eventually and showed it to my semi-interested immediate family and became more appreciative that I had at least received a signed photo from the great man himself .
Don't be alarmed, I wasn't still believing in Father Christmas and the tooth fairy at this age but the waters were still a bit muddied where Roy was concerned. I do remember for a while wondering why Melchester Rovers were never in the FA Cup draw that I heard on the radio.
I finally realised it was all fantasy when I was...35.
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