The Culture Blog For Connoisseurs Of Everything

Every month we award a bottle of Glengoyne 10 year old single malt – the finest whisky available to humanity – to a commenter who tickles our fancy…

Of course, amazing things happen in The Dabbler’s Comments section every day. But last month saw it providing for the first time a valuable primary source to future sporting biographers. Jonathan Law (who’d probably win this every month if we didn’t think it slightly unfair that he should be so regularly plied with The Finest Whisky Available to Humanity) provided this imperishable pen-portrait of the younger Botham:

Strange to think of it now, but there was a time when I knew Ian Botham – and rather wished I didn’t. Let me take you back to the early 70s, Yeovil in Somerset. Botham was then 15 or 16, my group of friends about 10 or 11. As his uncle lived just around the corner from us, young Ian was an occasional unwelcome visitor to our road, the future sporting demigod being at that time a mere lout and a bully, albeit one with a loud circle of friends and admirers. Generally, a Botham sighting was enough to send the bravest of us running indoors or jumping headlong into the nearest shrub. Of course, we’d hear people saying that he was good at games – something of a star when it came to the football – but his most visible talent seemed to be for parting younger and smaller boys from their dinner money. Certainly, if anyone had suggested that this guy would end up a Knight of the Realm, honoured by HMQ for services to charity …

As for Botham senior, the uncle, I should perhaps tell you that he was notorious for having a plaque on his gate engraved with the single word ‘BOTHAM’. For some reason this was considered pretentious – it was the 1970s – and doubly funny because some sort of staining or weathering had blurred the letters so we could almost tell ourselves that it read ‘BOTTOM’. So, walking past his gate, the game was always to shout or say or murmur (depending on level of courage) the word ‘BOTTOM!’ – and hope to hell that Ian was nowhere around.

Of course, it would be quite wrong and foolish to judge anyone at all by their 16-year-old self. But Roebuck’s piece suggests some continuity:

Swept along by the bonhomie, his chums salute him. Recognizing his malice, wary of his populism, his opponents avoid him.

Well, we certainly did. Through all the years of Botham’s fame there was a part of me that always felt, ridiculously, that my IB was the real chap and this other one — the famous, loved, and respected one — some sort of funny impostor. Mentally, I was always shouting BOTTOM. Roebuck’s piece tells me there were others, who knew the man a whole lot better, doing much the same.

A precious resource for future biographers, I’m sure you’d agree. Would it be insensitive to point out it’s pretty bloody funny too? There’s something comically ridiculous about even the bullying ‘Beefy’ Botham.

I also realise now where he got his nickname. Here’s The Beano‘s Bully Beef: