If you haven’t already, please do familiarise yourself with the story of a 65-year-old West Bromwich Albion fan called Peter George. All his family’s efforts to bring him around from a coma had failed until they played him a compilation of music associated with our football club. Incredibly, he responded. The club’s charitable foundation then got some of his favourite players to record messages for him, and something approximating a miracle came to pass. He is back at home now.
This is only a small part of what the club has been up to. A month ago, I got a text from a fellow supporter in Sutton Coldfield. “Just had a call from the Albion to see if Neville and I are OK!” It turned out that the Albion Foundation, West Brom’s charitable arm, were calling all of the club’s season ticket holders over the age of 70. Amanda’s husband is in his 70s, and she answered the phone. As she put it: “Not sure what they’d have offered to do if I’d said we weren’t OK, but it’s the thought that counts.”
How true. Everyone I have spoken to who is been making these calls said it was a fascinating and moving experience. All human life, it turns out, is right there at the end of a phone line.
I asked if I could help and was a sent a list of names and numbers. I was slightly cringing at the Surprise Surprise element of this. You know, the yes-it’s-me-off-the-telly thing. I needn’t have worried. Keen not to identify myself fully, nearly every conversation started the same way.
“Hello, there. It’s Adrian from the Albion here, just ringing round to see how our more senior fans are doing.”
“Hello Mr Chiles,” they would say, neither surprised nor pleased or displeased that it was me on the phone.
But everyone wants to talk.
Who knew you could get such a detailed snapshot of lives lived by asking just two questions: how are you managing in the lockdown? And how long have you been supporting the Albion? Everyone I have spoken to seems to be doing OK. If their families aren’t close by, then neighbours are doing their bit. One old chap I spoke to chuckled as he said: “I’ve got a young lady down the road who sorts me out good.”
“Good for you.” I said.
“Not like that!” he clarified.
As for the supporters’ tales, there is no more economical way of getting at a life story.
“First went in ’51. Our mum took me because Dad was always working.”
“I lived next to the ground but never went once until I was 66. My grandson wanted to go. I love spending time with him.”
“My dad was a Villa fan; he never forgave me.”
With the 75th anniversary of VE Day fresh in my mind, I noticed that all the people on my list were born during or not long after the second world war. I mentioned this to a man called Eric.
“No good asking me about that,” he said. “I was only two.” Enough said. Straight-talking people, are Black Country folk.
Rob Lake, who runs the Albion Foundation, said the point was to commit to ringing everybody, and not just have the odd player making a call and posting it on social media. Current and former players have chipped in, though, to great effect. Word having gone around about this, the foundation’s Lucy Moore, a young woman who has made hundreds of the calls, has detected some disappointment in their voices when they hear it’s only her on the line, not a player, bless her. But she has pressed on and heard it all: countless potted histories, some tales of struggle – in which case she has sought help – and, horrifyingly, bereavements, too. She spoke at length to a widow who went to every home game with the husband she had just lost.
“I didn’t know what to say at first,” said Lucy. “But she was just happy to be talking to someone from the club.”
I asked Lucy if there was one thing she had learned from the hundreds of conversations she’d had. “The incredible power of a phone call,” she said in wonder. “Just one call can do so much.”
• Adrian Chiles is a Guardian columnist
