Renowned illustrator Paul Trevillion presented the United Kingdom’s prospective next Prime Minister Andy Burham with a piece of Everton artwork
Renowned illustrator Paul Trevillion has revealed that he presented the United Kingdom’s prospective next Prime Minister Andy Burham with his own special piece of Everton artwork.
Following Sir Keir Starmer’s resignation on Monday morning, Burnham, who has only just returned as a Member of Parliament following his victory in the Makerfield by-election the previous Thursday, is currently the only candidate to become Labour Party leader and thus to become the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
A long-time Everton season ticket holder, back in 2015, the Aintree-born politician vowed he would still go to every Everton home game if he ever became PM. Asked if he would give up his Blues season ticket, the Independent cited him as telling Fubar Radio: “No, never. No, never. I will always go and watch Everton. Always. All my life. It will never change.”
Back in 2017, shortly after Burnham had initially given up his seat in Parliament to become the Mayor of Greater Manchester, he joined Trevillion, whose signed portrait of Winston Churchill sold for £72,000 in 2024, at the Football Walk of Fame outside the National Football Museum in Manchester.
While at the event, Tottenham-born Spurs fan Trevillion – he grew up on Love Lane across the road from White Hart Lane – presented Burnham with a mounted drawing of Everton’s record scorer Dixie Dean, who netted a Football League record 60 goals in the 1927/28 season and struck 383 times in total for the Blues, the highest number for a single English club.
Now 92, Trevillion told the ECHO: “Very few people know that Andy Burnham, who is all over the press right now, is a great fan of Dixie Dean. I was informed of this and when I travelled to the National Football Museum to meet him and Denis Law, I had a mounted drawing of Dixie with me.
“Andy, Denis and I talked football and I told Andy I saw Dixie play when I was three years old and met Dixie personally when I did his life story in the Liverpool ECHO. Andy was thrilled with the drawing of Dixie I gave him as a gift.”
Paul Trevillion with Denis Law and Andy Burnham at the National Football Museum (left) and Everton fan Burnham (right) looks at the Dixie Dean drawing by Trevillion which was presented to him
Paul Trevillion with Denis Law and Andy Burnham at the National Football Museum (left) and Everton fan Burnham (right) looks at the Dixie Dean drawing by Trevillion which was presented to him(Image: Vanessa Champion)
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Shortly before his third birthday, Trevillion was taken to his first-ever game, an FA Cup replay between Tottenham Hotspur and Everton on February 22, 1937. The north London outfit, playing in the Second Division at the time, would come from 3-1 down to triumph 4-3 with a brace of goals for the hosts in the last three minutes turning the tie on its head but it was the presence of a 30-year-old Dean, who was lining up alongside his 17-year-old successor Tommy Lawton (who played inside left) for the first of just nine occasions that they were paired together that transfixed the fledgling fan.
Speaking in 2024, Trevillion told the ECHO: “When Tottenham drew Everton in the cup, I was now coming up to my third birthday, my dad said to me: ‘Paul, if they’d have drawn at Everton at home, I would have took you to see the match’. I said: ‘Oh no’.
“They drew 1-1 at Everton and my dad, who was a bus conductor, said: ‘The replay is on Monday, I’ll work my shift and then I’ll take you’. I said: ‘Will Dixie be playing?’
“He said: ‘Yes, Dixie Dean will be playing and so will Tommy Lawton’. I don’t know how my dad knew that but it must have been in the papers because when I did come to the ground, I knew immediately that everyone, all they were talking about was Dixie Dean.
“Nobody else, it was: ‘Dixie, Dixie, Dixie, Dixie, Dixie Dean, Dixie Dean, Dixie Dean’. I got into the ground and I wanted to see Spurs players because I was a Spurs supporter but then when Everton came out and I saw Dixie, who whole stadium rose.
“I’ve never heard a noise like it. I mean this – never. I’ve been to Tottenham, even their new ground I’ve been there, but not like they greeted Dixie Dean. They all said: ‘Good old Dixie’, and he actually waved to the crowd.
“It was unbelievable and I thought: ‘Dixie Dean, he just like I imagined he would be, just like my dad had described him’. He looked unbelievable, he had that black hair, he had a big smile on his face and bingo, I couldn’t take my eyes off him throughout the whole match I watched just the one player, Dixie Dean, that’s all I watched.
“He scored two goals but my dad took me behind the goal in case the crowd was too big, he could lift me over the top. I saw Dixie get his second goal with the side of the foot, it wasn’t a thunderbolt – the one before was – but when Tommy Lawton scored the first goal, everyone said: ‘That was Dixie, that was Dixie’ because they wanted to believe it was Dixie but I knew it wasn’t Dixie because I hadn’t taken my eyes off him and it was different to how Dixie rose.”
A couple of Paul Trevillion's illustrations of Dixie Dean, the one on the right drawn when the artist was just 11 years old
A couple of Paul Trevillion's illustrations of Dixie Dean, the one on the right drawn when the artist was just 11 years old
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It’s often said that you shouldn’t meet your idols but 23 years later, Trevillion teamed up with Dean to produce the Everton legend’s illustrated life story that ran for 21 weeks in the ECHO. The artist admits that witnessing Dean’s incredible aerial ability in that FA Cup tie has stuck with him in the subsequent decades and has shaped all of his drawings since.
Trevillion said: “When I met Dixie Dean when I was working for the Liverpool ECHO in the 1960/61 season, he said to me: ‘What is your memory of that game? You must have one memory’.
“I said: ‘The thing I never forgot was when you were running, you were on the right side of the field, the ball came over and bang, you hit it with your head. I’ve never seen a header like it’.
“It went straight out to the wing man and it went faster than I’ve seen players kick the ball. I couldn’t believe the power behind that header. That has stayed with me ever since, the way you leaped, I’ve never seen anyone jump so high. You got right up there and bang.
“Every time since then that I’ve drawn someone and I’ve drawn Joe Royle hundreds of times, I’ve drawn Derek Dougan, I’ve drawn all the great strikers, Nat Lofthouse, you name them, I’ve drawn them, Jackie Milburn, the lot, it’s always Dixie. I always base it on Dixie Dean, how he jumped.
“Those drawings, although the faces were Milburn or Joe Royle, it was Dixie in the air and that’s the man. Even Roy Race, Roy of the Rovers, that was the man, Dixie.
“Each and every time I’ve drawn a player in air, it’s always been based on Dixie Dean. He was the best, he was unbelievable.”
Dubbed ‘the master of movement’, Trevillion’s ability to capture athletes in motion has earned him a reputation as being the world’s best sporting artist but it was a sketch he produced as a 21-year-old that found favour with its subject, Britain’s Second World War Prime Minister Churchill.
Graham Sutherland’s commissioned picture of Churchill, which the politician sat for in his second term as Prime Minister, was unveiled to him in front of both Houses of Parliament at Westminster Hall for his 80th birthday in 1954 but was hated by both the subject and his wife with Lady Churchill later admitting she’d had it burned. In contrast though, Trevillion’s more cheerful likeness produced the following year struck the right chord.
Dubbed “a boy from the Blitz” by Churchill when they met because in contrast to many other London children of his time, he wasn’t evacuated, Trevillion recalled his inspiration for the drawing by declaring: “All I could think of was Winston Churchill with his victory sign and his smile.
“I used to go to bed and say: ‘We’re going to win the war, we’re going to beat Hitler, we’re going to win the war, we’re going to beat Hitler’… That’s what I believed all the way through the war, that smiling face.”
Charles Hanson, owner of Hansons Auctioneers, with aritist Paul Trevillion and his signed Sir Winston Churchill portrait that was sold in 2024
Charles Hanson, owner of Hansons Auctioneers, with aritist Paul Trevillion and his signed Sir Winston Churchill portrait that was sold in 2024(Image: No credit)
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Having been summoned to meet Churchill at the Bernard Sunley Buildings so the sketch could be signed, Trevillion remembered some advice he was given by him. He said: “Churchill told me: ‘You must be original. Never ever give up’.
“He said: ‘You will never advance in life if you follow in somebody else’s footsteps, be original’.”
Almost seven decades later, Trevillion’s signed Churchill drawing was sold by Hansons Auctioneers for a final hammer price of £72,000 with the total paid with buyer’s premium of £94,896 to Andrew and Eva Jackson at London’s RAF Club in Picadilly.