More than three years ago, Peter Alliss called me to ask if I would join forces with him to help write what he said would be his final book.
“I want it not only to be about my golf life, player or commentator, but also about my life, my thoughts, the things I’ve seen, the adventures I’ve had, the fascinating people I’ve met. And I want you, Bill, to have input as well, to disagree with me if you wish. I want it to be our book. What do you think?”
Of course I said, “Yes, why not? Sounds fun. Let’s get Christmas over and start in January, which is an awful month anyway. It’ll give us both something to do. We might even have a drink while doing it.”
And so we began or at least tried to begin. By happenchance, when I and the Elliott family – wife Val, a very senior and eternally over-committed nurse, and our sons, Simon the Elder and James the Footballer – headed south in 1988 leaving behind the bleak, cold beauty of Glossop and my bedroom view of the quirky golf course that is framed by the opening mile of the Snake Pass, we ended up in deepest, far-flung Surrey. No view of a golf course this time but, unlike Glossop, an awful lot of trees and, as it turned out, we had chosen a location within a few miles of the Alliss home. Tarzan could have swung there in ten minutes.
We knew each other by then. I’d first interviewed him and met his wife Jackie when they lived near Leeds and I was based in Manchester. Their house
