The joy and tears of Denis Law
In 2002, I found myself living as a lodger with the jazz singer and former actress, Prudence Drage, just down the road from the Cromwell Hospital in South Kensington. She was (and hopefully still is) wonderful, but unless you’re familiar with the sniggery genre of movies that encompasses Adventures of a Plumber’s Mate and The Sexplorer, you may not be familiar with the main canon of her work. Suffice to say, she was unique but simultaneously the embodiment of the late 1960s, all flame-haired psychedelia and kaftans and plenty of rioja added to the cooking sauce. Even to the gravy.
She also appeared, albeit in a rather sparse and sparsely clothed role, in A Clockwork Orange. By contrast, the rather unconfidential robe in which she often appeared in our shared living quarters was a fluffy pink. There was suggestion at least two Bonds had been in the flat. Sean was “a very naughty boy…drank all my whisky”. Roger - she guested in The Saint - “an absolute darling”.
Dear Prudence, who spent her formative years on Merseyside, also intimated The Beatles may have had her in mind at the inception of the song. She may have know full well that they didn’t, but neither her nor anyone listening would wish to squander the magic of plausible illusion. I once broke one of her favourite pieces of china, a gift from god on earth knows which thesp luminary. She was distraught. I felt like I had run over Brigitte Bardot’s cat.
Years later I had left to make a different woman miserable by living with them, but for a few days in November 2005 I found myself seeing the Cromwell Hospital every day again. Regrettably everyone else saw it too because inside lay a jaundiced and dying George Best and outside were the global media’s cameras. They captured Denis Law going in to say the most painful goodbye and coming out again with a face like a devil’s sick of sin.
Arriving too late to see Law’s flame-haired playing career, I had to fashion it together from scraps of flashback replays until VHS and thankfully YouTube arrived. In my childhood, however, he was a common presence on TV and radio, doing both punditry and the light entertainment rounds. Vast swathes of football analysis just seemed to be him cackling and smiling impishly. I don’t think I ever saw or heard him devoid of joy. More pertinently, I don’t think I ever saw or heard anyone sharing a screen or commentary booth with him devoid of it either.
Law was crying a little that day outside the Cromwell Hospital, crying the profound but surely surreal tears of a man who knew he had just said his last words to George Best. He still spoke with immense dignity and with a seismic love for his team mate and pal. It is hard not to feel vast admiration for those in sport who have to suddenly shift from icon to iron girder to shoulder the grief of millions.
When Best died there was chastisement mixed in with the sorrow and adulation. For Charlton, a deep solemnity. For Law, I hope it will be reverence of his geniality alongside his genius.