Sixty-six and all that

A perennial sucker for feature films with sporting references, I suppose I’ll drag myself to Sixty Six, in spite of the verdict by the Spec’s Deborah Ross that, for all its occasional charm, it is ‘a comedy without any good jokes which takes itself too seriously’. It concerns a Jewish family’s dilemma, particularly 12-year-old Bernie’s, when the date of his bar mitzvah coincides with the England football team winning through to the 1966 World Cup final. The reasonable idea has Ross longingly sighing, ‘Where is Jack Rosenthal when you really need him?’ The late Rosenthal, of course, was a luminously original television (etcetera) playwright in the vanished, lamented days of grandeur for the single play. Most reckon Bar Mitzvah Boy (1976) was Rosenthal at his relishable best. Sucker moi as ever, my top two Rosenthals are his park football classic Another Sunday and Sweet F.A. (1972) and the weirdly titled P’tang, Yang, Kipperbang (1982), a touching and breathlessly zestful recall of the writer’s Lancashire schooldays at Colne Grammar. I met Jack only a couple of times in passing; I wish it could have been more often, but grevious myeloma got him a couple of years ago.

It wasn’t only Deborah Ross’s crit which reminded me of the droll filmscript maestro this week. I was reviewing Harry Potts, a commendable biography (by his 82-year-old wife!) of the legendary Burnley player and manager (SportsBooks, £17.99). Colne’s neighbouring Burnley F.C. was Rosenthal’s first schoolboy infatuation (before his enduring true-love affair began with Man United). Of a sudden, a portrait in the book leapt out at me: a distant, broodingly handsome stare, saucery ears, Brylcreemed ‘Tony Curtis’ quiff. It was Burnley’s fabled winger, jaunty, jinky, touchline twinkler Peter Kippax. Every team in those days fielded its exclusive schoolboy-worshipped Kippax.