WATFORD The Elton John years

The late Oli Phillips reported for the Watford Observer from 1968 to 2005 prior to his passing, he gave FFT the fascinating inside story of a rock 'n' roll superstar's love affair with his club...

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Looking back, it's funny to think we might have picked berries from the same bush. In the summer of '59, those blackberries proliferated to the rear of The Bend, the most unlovely corner of an unfashionable ground - Vicarage Road, home of the equally forgotten Watford FC.

Then, I was 18 and one of the Boys on The Bend, a disparate cluster of 20 fans who used the low bank as a vantage point to see over the greyhound track and watch the newly-named Hornets. I was only aware of my own group, yet I might have noticed a podgy 13-year-old Pinner County Grammar School boy appearing equally pleased.

Perhaps, had we talked, he might have volunteered that he'd inherited his love of Watford from his father, Stanley, and that his uncle, Roy Dwight, had scored and broken his leg in the FA Cup final that year. But the gulf between our teenage years was a chasm unlikely to be bridged at that stage.

We'd have been shocked if someone had predicted that, as a result of my negotiations, our paths would next cross deep in the breeze-block heart of Watford's unimpressive main stand. That young schoolboy, Reggie Dwight, would later burst onto the scene as Elton John, the iconic, flamboyant rock star. I would take a somewhat less exotic route to our eventual meeting, by joining the local newspaper.

In the early 1970s, after a series of phone calls to my home from Elton’s European manager Vic Lewis, informing me that the star wanted to become a director, I persuaded him that I could sell the idea to Watford’s autocratic chairman Jim Bonser. Beleaguered by fan criticism, the chairman treated the approaches of monied men asa threat to his regime. However, I convinced him the concept of Elton becoming one of the 20 or so vice-presidents - paying £50 per annum for a seat (plus access to a pay-bar and free sandwiches) - would be good PR.