Actor, comedian and producer Jimmy Mulville - a figurehead of British TV - speaks to the Liverpool ECHO about his journey from Walton to the limelight and the love for Everton that formed the backdrop to his story
Comedians (L-R) Stephen Fry, Jimmy Mulville, Nonny Williams and John Sessions recording an episode of the BBC Radio 4 series 'Whose Line is it Anyway?' in January 1988. (Photo by Tony Timmington/Radio Times via Getty Images)
Comedians (L-R) Stephen Fry, Jimmy Mulville, Nonny Williams and John Sessions recording an episode of the BBC Radio 4 series 'Whose Line is it Anyway?' in January 1988. (Photo by Tony Timmington/Radio Times via Getty Images)
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When Jimmy Mulville became an Everton season ticket holder in 1995 he had little idea the FA Cup win the club was basking in would be the last taste of silverware for decades to come. There are no regrets, however, for the boyhood Blue whose wonderful career has taken in success on both sides of the Atlantic.
Those seats, first in Goodison Park and now at Hill Dickinson Stadium marked the rekindling of a connection to Liverpool the actor, comedian and producer had lost amid a furore of fame, alcohol and drugs.
Everton and the fortnightly pilgrimage to L4 and the streets he had grown up on, allowed him to rebuild his relationship with his family, his city and himself.
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It all started with his therapist. Jimmy had left Walton in 1974, aged 19, to head for the prestige of Cambridge University. Success and celebrity followed, initially in front of the camera, in shows like Who Dares Wins and Chelmsford 123 and then via Hat Trick Productions, which he co-founded and which delivered hits from the late-80s with the likes of Whose Line Is it Anyway, Have I Got News For You and Drop the Dead Donkey.
Personal troubles developed against the backdrop of stardom, however, leading to Jimmy seeking the help that eventually got through to him. Speaking to the ECHO, Jimmy, who has now documented his life in the book There's Gonna Be A Show, said: “After about a year or so he [the therapist] said to me: ‘You need to go home. You need to get back to Liverpool.' He said I was running away from all these feelings, all the things that had happened. And you can't run away, it follows you.
“And when you stay still long enough, and now I was staying still, I wasn't bouncing off the walls with drink and cocaine and running around London like a crazy thing, it all caught up with me and it kind of overwhelmed me like a tsunami.
“And so I decided to reach out. And that's what I did. In 1995, I went to see my two surviving uncles, my dad's younger brothers - uncle Michael, who just had a quintuple bypass and wasn't really that well, and then I saw my uncle Gerard and he reminded me of my dad. He was just as funny and smart and mischievous and took the mick and a little while later I rang him and said: ‘Listen, I'm going to get some season tickets for Goodison next season, do you want to come?’
“We had just won the cup against [Manchester] United against all the odds, Paul Rideout scored the goal and, of course, just my luck, we bought season tickets, we sat next to each other for 30 years, and we never saw them win a trophy. But we've enjoyed ourselves. I wouldn't have swapped it for the world... I can see now I needed to go away to come back, some people do need to go away in order to make the journey back and now I'm back I'm different to the person that left when he was 19 - and Liverpool's different. We both changed but we both know each other really well, so it's like seeing an old friend, but seeing them for the first time, and I feel really at home."
That process was crucial for Jimmy, enabling him to reconnect with his mum and re-discover a childhood that had also centred on Everton, the team he fell in love with through the influence of his dad. He had the fortune of being introduced to the Blues in the 60s, when he would walk to the ground with his father and, as he recalls, try and throw jelly babies onto the pitch before he too fell in love with the action playing out before him.
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“There was never a moment where I thought ‘I'm gonna choose Everton’,” he recalls. “No, Everton chose me and I did this with my kids - my three boys support Everton.”
An early highlight was sneaking into Goodison for the final minutes of the 4-1 win over Fulham that secured the league title in 1963. With his dad in work, Jimmy was not at the game but desperate not to miss out on the celebrations he managed to get inside the ground when the exit gates opened and watched Alex Scott add the gloss to Roy Vernon’s hat-trick.
His favourite player became Alan Ball, he said: “You never have heroes like the heroes you have when you're 13 years of age… I loved Alan Ball because he was about my height, he was five foot six, and he had red hair like me, and he was also just as belligerent as I was.”
When a guest of the BBC at their 2006 World Cup coverage in Germany, Jimmy was able to tell his hero how much he loved him - and how he cried through the festive season after his sale to Arsenal in December 1971. Recalling Ball’s response, he said: “He looked at me and said: ‘Yeah. So did I.’”
Ball’s departure marked the start of a bleak decade for the Blues - one in which Jimmy came of age as he grew through Alsop High School and gained entry into Cambridge. The move to university was the rupture in his relationship with his home city, one intensified by the death of his father.
Jimmy reflected: “In 1977 I rang home at the end of my exams. I hadn't spoken to my dad for three weeks. My mum had said he was at work or he was out, he was in the pub. He was very keen on me getting an education. So I was surprised that he wasn't around when I was doing my exams, because I was ringing up to tell him how each exam had gone. Then at the end of that three weeks, I rang mum and said: ‘That's it, mum. I've done all the exams now.’ And she broke down on the phone and she explained that my dad was in hospital. He'd been stricken down by this terrible illness called transverse myelitis, which paralysed him.”
Jimmy’s dad took his own life the following year, a tragedy he concedes “pushed me even further away from Liverpool because I didn't want to address that, I wanted to forget it”. That changed with the intervention of the therapist who forced him to reckon with his roots - with Everton eventually the vehicle that led that reconciliation as he committed to returning for Blues home games, often travelling up from the capital with former chairman Bill Kenwright.
Jimmy is now working hard to help Liverpool in its efforts to grow its reputation as a hub of creativity, innovation and regeneration, working with Liverpool Council and the city region’s Combined Authority to promote his place of birth - and to provide opportunities for those growing up in the area. And, like the men’s team, he has migrated to the club’s stunning new stadium - a development he describes as “a call to arms" for the wider region.
The move did not come without emotion, however, and Jimmy was present for the final game, the 2-0 win over Southampton. He remembered: “When they played the John Lennon hit In My Life, that's when I went. I just broke down, and so did people around me, and my son, my middle son, George, put his arm around me and said: ‘Are you alright, dad?’ I said, actually, I was fine. I was overcome with a feeling of gratitude. That I'd had a connection with the club that I absolutely love and had given me the whole range of the experience of being a football fan.”
There's Gonna Be A Show: Everton and me - a complicated love story is available here
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