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  • Peter Critchley

In Search of Billy Bremner

Updated: Sep 20, 2021




This is the kind of thing that tends only to happen to me. Or, appraising the situation more honestly, this is the kind of thing that only the likes of me tend to do. As much as I would like to complain about malign forces and cruel fate visiting demons on me, there are some things that I visit on myself. I have a particular talent for it. The fact that I can usually find pleasures untold in such visitations only serves to encourage me into carrying on in the error of my ways rather than learning from them. I guess I am some kind of incorrigible.


This story goes back a very long way, to 1971-72, when Hartleys jam had a very attractive football promotion, printing photographs of the head and shoulders of famous footballers from that time on the lids of their jam jars. These jam jar lids were a ‘must have’ for seven year old football fanatics such as I. Among the portraits were a number of England World Cup winners like captain Bobby Moore, 1966 hat-trick hero Geoff Hurst, final goalscorer Martin Peters, the great goalkeeper Gordon Banks, Alan Ball, and perhaps the greatest English footballer of all, the great Bobby Charlton. But it wasn’t these players that I wanted most of all, nor even Georgie Best superstar. Nor the great Scottish winger Jimmy Johnstone. The greatest ‘must have’ of all for me was none other than Billy Bremner, captain of Scotland and Leeds United. He was my boyhood idol. I followed Leeds and Scotland as a result of idolising Billy Bremner. He was 5ft 4 inches of barbed wire, fiery and tough and teak.


I had little trouble in finding all the jars in the collection, all of the above plus Colin Bell and Peter Osgood, whose stars were then on the rise, and the Welsh forward no-one seems to remember much, Ron Davies. But for the life of me I could never find Billy Bremner. Every week it was the same, looking forward to shopping in the early evening on Thursday. I remember the fevered excitement as my mum and dad prepared to embark on the family shop. Whilst they would be preparing lists of all the essentials, my one and only thought was on those aisles in Kwik Save which contained the jars of jam. I can see in my mind to this day, as clear as Heaven itself: first the cheese and cheese spread and then a little turn right to the aisles containing the jam. Since I quite enjoyed looking at the cheese spreads, my impatience to get to the jam was tempered a little in the approaches. But not much. As soon as that corner was reached it was a headlong dive into the aisle to find Billy Bremner. He was never there! Never ever. Week after week it was the same high fever followed by cold misery. All those journeys in high expectation ending in disappointment. The stage was reached when the entire family was mobilised to find Billy Bremner once and for all, smaller members – my brother and I – on hands and knees looking on ground level and under the lower shelving – taller members – my dad – up high – and middling members – my mum – doing a bit of both. Still no Billy Bremner. We looked for any boxes containing jam. Nothing. So we all got down on our knees to examine every jar of jam, working upwards as far as we could go. It was a family at prayer in devotion.


But wee Billy was never there. He really wasn’t. I should know. I think I checked every jar of jam. At the time, I put wee Billy’s scarcity on the shelves down to the great man’s popularity among the public. Others would contest that view. Billy’s ‘competitive’ nature made a lot of enemies among rival fans. The point came when every jar of jam was would be checked on every journey. I would refuse to move if every jar hadn’t been checked. But it was hopeless. Billy Bremner was destined to be some unattainable ideal, the object of a deep longing and desire that could never be fulfilled. There was a Billy Bremner shaped hole right in the middle of my heart. And no jam jar lid could be found to fill it. It was an early introduction to life’s long process of disillusionment. There is a Françoise Hardy song Can’t Get the One I Want (written by Beverley Martin). Billy Bremner was my footballing hero and idol, the player I rated above all others. And in this collection of portraits on jam jar lids, he was the one I wanted most of all, and the one I couldn’t get. He was the ultimate prize. And he proved unobtainable. It was a dry-run for real life.


Not that I was disillusioned. Discouraged, maybe, and temporarily thwarted and frustrated, certainly. But I never lost the idea of life as a search for various Grails of Holy and Profane nature. The moment passed. I was content enough with Banks, Moore, Charlton, Hurst, Peters, Best, Ball, and Bell. These are football legends after all. I didn’t know Jimmy Johnstone well enough to be excited, and Osgood and Davies left me cold. So I didn’t have the full set. Had I managed to find Billy Bremner, I would perhaps have been more concerned to push on to complete the collection. But, somehow, without Billy I could never quite warm to Ron Davies nor even Peter Osgood. I had the main figures and reconciled myself to flaunting the imperfection. In fact, I became perfect at doing that very thing.


The lids were put away and, as time passed, forgotten and scattered. The odd lid turned up in barely searched drawers and in my uncle Stephen’s big travel case that no-one used any more. The sad day came when I had to examine the contents of these drawers and cases and found that the fabled jam jar lids had finally all gone away. There was always two or three hanging around, giving the impression that the other five were still around somewhere. But now they had all gone. I don’t quite know how that could have happened. Who knows where old and precious things go when they are out of sight.


The story is now almost up to date. One evening, idling my hours enjoyably on the International Françoise Hardy Fan Club page, I saw a post which linked a site offering Françoise Hardy duvet covers and shower curtains. I don’t care for showers too much and don’t hang around in there, so shower curtains didn’t interest me. But I was very tempted by the duvet covers.




I couldn’t make up my mind which of the ones on offer to buy and, in my prevarication, a friend engaged me in deeply sceptical conversation. I’m not sure how the exchange came to veer in the direction of the Hartleys jam jar lids, but it did. I mentioned my failed endeavours to obtain Billy Bremner back in the day, and said friend went and did some research (Google) as I continued to wax lyrical on portraits on jam jars. It transpired that a collection was available at around the same price. Poor Françoise was quickly forgotten as I quickly ordered the full set of Hartleys jam jar lids at something like £40.


And there, at journey’s end, it would seem that the story is finished. Actually, no, not remotely. When the box containing the lids arrived, I wrapped it up in Christmas paper and put it under the tree as a long promised Christmas present that had now, finally, arrived.




It wasn’t Christmas, it has to be said. In fact, it wasn’t remotely Christmas. Circumstances were unusual. My dad had died December 2019, and I had kept the tree up in an extended last farewell. It was now April. Every day I would come downstairs and admire the box wrapped up nicely under the Christmas tree, looking forward to savouring the day of the great unveiling. The day came and was most enjoyable. I even made myself a Christmas dinner, roast and boiled potatoes, sprouts, sage and onion stuffing, sauce and gravy with a big veg roast that somehow looked like a Turkey. I then had a problem of finding a way of showing or storing the lids. I never did resolve that issue. My dad had left a box of chocolates as one of his last presents to someone or other (I ate them in the absence of instructions). I used the box to arrange the jam jar lids and they made for a perfect fit. And there I left them.


Move on another year, and I was having to organise moving house. That meant going through the rooms, each packed head to foot with treasure. I am used to things being in certain places and am prone to disorganisation whenever they are moved. But there was no option now but to move things. I also had to make decisions as to what to keep and what to discard. That made for some hard thinking. I started work on my room as I listened to Wales playing Turkey in the European Championships. I picked things up, determined that they had served well, and resigned myself to the certain knowledge that their day was now done. I threw many things into a big black bag. I had grown used to seeing the chocolate box next to the printer on my folding table. In the intervening months, however, with massive pressures to clean and clear now falling on me, I had become rather forgetful of its contents. The time had come to dispose of this – as I thought – empty chocolate box. Soon I had filled a number of bags, and was congratulating myself on my hard work. And as a couple of weeks quickly passed, the bags found their ways to the bin, to be gone forever.


And then one day it struck me – that Thornton’s chocolate box I had thrown out wasn’t empty at all! It contained my prized collection of jam jar lids! Heavens! This was the abomination of desolation. I was inconsolable, howling in my despair. I had had a year of seemingly unrelenting misery, with one thing after another going wrong. And now this little bright moment that I created for myself, the purchase of a prize football collection and the concomitant satisfaction of youthful desire, had turned sour. I returned to the table where it normally was, knowing that it was gone but needing to check anyway, and, sure enough, it was no longer there. I then opened every black bag that I had filled and tied in the past few days and emptied the contents out. There must have been six or more of these bags. I created a huge mess and had to do all the work of cleaning up yet again. And there was no chocolate box in any of them. Such is life.


It was at this moment that I simply rebelled against whatever malevolent demons were inflicting this cruel fate on me. When life doesn’t give you what you want – and what you need – you simply have to take it in your hands and turn it your way. Sometimes, if you are bold enough, you can get what you want. I was aided in my new found boldness by a nice find on the mantelpiece downstairs. I had helped organise my granny’s funeral back in 2010 and my aunty Joan had given me some money by way of thanks. I didn’t want paying and was honoured at having played such a prominent role in the funeral. I handed the envelope containing the money over to my dad. It turns out that he didn’t want paying either. He had tucked the envelope in a corner next to some of my granny’s treasures. I had discovered this envelope some months before, but had presumed that the old £20 notes were now worthless. I thought it a sad waste of money, but didn’t pursue the matter. As it happened, I had to go to the bank to organize a bank statement. I never venture inside the bank, so decided to ask about the old notes seeing as I was there. And I received a pleasant surprise when I was told that I could bank them and claim full value!




So, thanks to my granny, my aunty Joan’s generosity, and my dad’s monetary reticence, I was £140 to the rich. I went onto the Internet in search of a replacement football collection and, in no time, found the very thing. We are now a long way removed from weekly visits to the supermarket, getting on our hands and knees in search of desirable objects. We can now push a button and click if we want to satisfy all our whims and desires. Which makes things easier. But not necessarily better. I made my order and was happy to see how quickly it was finalised, receiving news in no time that it was on its way. A certain normality had been restored. Restoring equilibrium had cost me money, but the money was a gift for good deeds past, and I felt at ease.


I went back to clearing and boxing around the house. I went into the front bedroom and noticed a box in which I was putting more than a few of my favourite things. Things were no longer where they once were. I was feeling a little disoriented seeing things that were once somewhere else now being put in one place. I had a little root round in the box. Imagine how I felt when I saw, buried underneath miscellaneous gems and objects, a certain familiar chocolate box … a strange mix of surprise, uncertain pleasure, and profound consternation. I opened the box up. Sure enough, there were the images of the twelve football legends of yesteryear looking back at me. And I had twelve more on the way.


What was I to do? Well what could I do? Whilst there was a ‘no refunds’ policy, it was possible to make a request to the seller for a refund. I didn’t like to. It felt like I was complaining about this magnificent treasure. So I let it go. And therein lies the tale of how thwarted desire leads to obsession, excess, and indulgence. From having no Billy Bremner I now have not one but two very collectible Hartleys footballer jam jar lids set. I can only wonder what my mum and dad would have thought of it. Is Billy Bremner worthy of such devotion over the long haul? Yes, actually.




Now then, seeing as I have found Billy Bremner and now have two sets of jam jar lids, I think my attention is now free to return to pondering duvet covers and shower curtains.







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