The Side magazine remembered - Pt 1

I've been wallowing in nostalgia having stumbled across some back copies of The Side magazine, a 'seminal magazine' (so says me) from the 90s.

The Side was my first 'real' job in the meeja and what fun it was. We used to sit around, drink beer and talk about football all day, popping out briefly to interview someone from Liverpool, Everton or Tranmere Rovers, or sometimes one of the (even) lesser local clubs. We also carried features on ex-players and celebrity fans who had some kind of link to Merseyside.

Usually I interviewed the Rovers players, supporting them as I do. I also seemed to be at Bellefield more often than the other members of The Side editorial pack who were all Kop-ites, so wouldn't be seen dead talking to a Blue.

Anyway I thought it was worth blogging/logging a few of the old issues so that there's an t'interweb record to laugh at when the last remaining issues of this poor man's local loaded mag have perished.


We put Joe Royle on the cover of this one, which could have been misinterpreted. Big Joe had just been appointed as Everton manager, but we didn't actually have an interview with him at all. We took a picture of him while we were waiting to talk to someone else.

But people we did interview in this one included Wirral-born Beautiful South singer Paul Heaton (who turned down an offer of a trip to the San Siro to drink with one of our lads in The Vines), Mike Newell, then Liverpool boss Roy Evans, Tom Watt (aka Lofty) and John Durnin.

The ones I did myself were:

David Burrows (Everton left back at the time): Lovely bloke. He genuinely requested that I didn't stitch him up. I genuinely didn't know how to.

Ian Muir (Tranmere legend and my all time TRFC hero): What a disappointment for me. He was a right moaner and used the entire interview to badger the club for a testimonial. Didn't do him much good.

Alan Kennedy & John Bailey (ex-LFC and EFC left backs, respectively): What a hoot! We met up in the bar of a hotel by Paradise Street and had a few pints while these two crackpots rattled off hugely entertaining tales of players' Christmas parties over the years. It ended up as a four page spread in the Christmas issue. Great fun and nice chaps both.