The word 'legend' is bandied around all too freely these days, but Jimmy Greaves is one man who can genuinely lay claim to that title. Modern day marksmen like Ruud van Nistelrooy, Alan Shearer and Thierry Henry are the pick of the current bunch, but Greaves is still the past master.
By the age of 21 he had scored 100 league goals (the youngest player in the history of English football to do so), and he scored on every debut he made (youth and England teams included). Greaves was the leading scorer in the old First Division (now the Premiership) for six seasons, and during his playing career, was never out of the top five scorers.
He also scored a record six hat-tricks for England and his England record is a remarkable 44 goals in 57 appearances.
Now Greaves has written his autobiography. Imaginatively titled 'Greavsie', it gives the real story of the East End goal machine, from the schoolboy who banged in 122 goals for Chelsea's youth team, to the alcoholic who admits he can't remember what he was doing for half of the 1970s.
"You do get a lot of autobiographies which just have the glossy side of things and tend to ignore what really happened," says Greaves, now 63. "But mine is the real story of somebody's life and that includes the difficulties."
The book is an excellent read about an era now long gone. In Greaves' day, boys played football with tennis balls in the street, families went hop-picking for their summer holidays and top football players earned less than £10 a week.
He doesn't go to many matches these days, preferring to watch games on television, but he's intrigued by developments at his old club Chelsea. "It's very interesting and exciting times at Chelsea," he adds. "We all know it could end in tears, or in glory. But I still think Manchester United are the team to beat. Alex Ferguson is still the number one manager and the rest are playing catch-up."
Playing catch-up was something Jimmy Greaves was happy to do. Scoring goals always came easily to him, and in his day, football score-lines were far more dramatic. It wasn't unusual for a team to score five or six goals in one match and Greaves was a master poacher.
"We had a different mentality then," says Greaves. "And football was more open. When I was playing, if you were winning 4-0 or 4-1, the attitude was to go out and make sure you made it 5-1 and then 6-1. People used to go for the big score. Now with ten minutes to go and a team two up, you just see them going towards the corner flag or passing it around among themselves."
It's not just the scorelines that have changed in football. Nowadays there's much more emphasis on the tactical side. Greaves, however, is sceptical.
"People say that football in those days lacked tactics and organisation, but that's nonsense," he says. "There are thousands of us who could do (Sven-Goran) Eriksson's job - and other people's jobs. Good luck to him and I hope he does extremely well, but at the end of the day, most footballers will tell you as long as they're happy, kept nice and warm, well fed and are enjoying themselves, they will play football. They don't need tactics.
"If any player at a very high level needs to be told what to do, he shouldn't be there in the first place.
"Bill Nicholson (the legendary Spurs manager) never spoke to me. I used to come in after scoring three goals and he'd ignore me and walk straight past. Bill and I had a good relationship. We knew what we wanted from each other and that was good enough. It didn't need words."
Greaves was bought by Nicholson after an ill-fated move to AC Milan. He hadn't wanted to go from Chelsea to Italy and, he reveals in the book, tried desperately to get out of the deal. In 1961 he returned to England, and Spurs, for a record fee of £99,999. He joined West Ham in 1970.
It was after leaving Tottenham that drink started to become a major issue in Greaves' life. He retired just a season later, aged 30 (too early, he now readily admits) and drink took over his life. It plunged him into bankruptcy and divorce - what he describes as a 'living hell' - before he joined Alcoholics Anonymous and rescued both his life and his marriage.
"It's a physical and mental illness," he says. "Nobody really knows what causes alcoholism and I think it's genetic. But whatever the cause, when you are an alcoholic, that's what you are. You can either be a sober one, or carry on drinking. The choice is yours."
He is emphatic that his descent into alcoholism does not stem from his disappointment at not winning a World Cup winner's medal in 1966, nor his transfer to West Ham. "There was no trigger whatsoever," he says. "Just a slow decline over the years."
Greaves later became a star of a different kind when he teamed up with Ian St John for their own television football programme.
"We wanted to do things that were a bit different and obviously other people liked it," he says. "It had a massive following and it was a cult show. I don't think that there's ever been a sports show to follow it, to be honest. But I'm biased." The show was scrapped in 1992, and Greaves found out by reading about it in The Sun. "I wasn't treated well," he says. "And I'd still love to be doing it, to be honest."
Nowadays he does after-dinner speaking and still writes a football column for The Sun. He also dotes on his ten grandchildren and his partner Irene. It's clear he's crazy about her, and was devastated when they temporarily split due to his drinking. However, the couple got back together again and he says it's for life - even though she's refused to remarry him.
"We have a laugh about it," he says. "Anyway, I don't believe there is any real need to commit ourselves with a piece of paper.
"I fell in love with Irene because she was beautiful, a lovely person and I just wanted to spend the rest of my life with her," he adds. "I'm glad I did, because she still is a beautiful person, has a wonderful nature and is the only person I want to be with."
Jimmy Greaves' playing days are over, but his goalscoring records will take some beating. And even if they ever are, it looks like he'll still be living happily ever after - as long as he's with his beloved Irene.
* Article reproduced by kind permission of Players Club, the official journal of the PFA.
