As one half of Saint and Greavsie, the former striker spoke about the sport he loved with enjoyment and wit. We could do with some of that now

“I am someone who believes that what we need without a doubt is more of Jimmy Greaves,” wrote the performance poet John Hegley in Greavsie, an ironic yet affectionate early-1990s paean to a then ubiquitous figure. “The more I get of Greaves, the more my life achieves.”

The Premier League’s paywall model would soon be bringing down the curtain on one of the more curious and varied media careers of an ex-footballer. ITV’s failure to land broadcast rights to what the victor, Sky, would trail as a “whole new ball game” meant the axe for Saint and Greavsie in July 1992.

The sight of Ian St John’s shoulders rocking in laughter as his pal riffed away was lost to a large viewership that had enjoyed the pairing of the former Liverpool and Tottenham forwards. The pair seldom met outside the studio as they lived on opposite sides of the country, but they had chemistry. Saturday lunchtimes spent with them were diverting and fun, during an easy yet informative stroll through the week’s footballing issues.

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Here was a time before virtual-reality analysis, tactics boards and GPS running stats read-outs, but the pair still knew the game inside out. Beyond the Greaves gags and mockery of Scottish goalkeepers was someone who had been there, done that. It was not until May 2017 that his European record of 366 top-flight goals was surpassed by Cristiano Ronaldo.

Though the show’s seven year-run from 1985 took in some of the most turbulent years in the English game’s history, anyone dipping into the archive of episodes that can be found on YouTube will not fail to be struck by the lightness of touch compared to the portentous treatment given to any rank-and-file live match these days.

“It’s a funny old game” was Greaves’s catchphrase, and it spoke to the special peculiarities and the sense of enjoyment that could and should be attached to the game. Football was, back then, a weekend diversion from the rest of life, something to be savoured during the Saturday afternoon kick-offs that followed their lunchtime broadcast. Once the satellite revolution came, football would morph into a deadly serious business played every night of the week to fill schedules and media companies’ ravenous appetite for content.

Setanta Sports got the band back together for a special 2009 FA Cup final broadcast but a further televised reunion is sadly unlikely. St John, now 81, was recently sighted during Liverpool’s “This Means More” viral campaign, visibly emotional as he recalled Bill Shankly, but Greaves, 79, has rarely been seen in public since suffering a near-fatal stroke in May 2015 that initially robbed him of speech. He remains severely disabled and requires full-time care.

His old club are currently at one of their highest points since his heyday but Greaves, Spurs’ greatest goalscorer, could not be present when they opened their new stadium in April. “Jim was the absolute best,” as his Spurs teammate Terry Dyson told this writer a couple of years ago. “He was as good as Messi.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jimmy Greaves, right, and Ian St John on the set of Saints and Greavsie in June 1987. The show ran for seven years on ITV. Photograph: ITV/Rex/Shutterstock

The idea of Greaves as an artful dribbler whose pace would whip him by defenders on heavy pitches can be difficult to process. To anyone under 50, his image is that of a balding, gringo-moustached wisecracker in garish shirts built for comfort. The neatly Brylcreemed hair and trim figure of Jimmy Greaves the 1960s goal machine bore little resemblance to the jowly raconteur who served as TV-am’s telly reviewer.

During his imperial period as a light entertainer of the mid-to-late 1980s, Greaves was to be found fraternising with Hollywood idols, pop starlets and Anne Diamond on the TV-am sofa while carrying out his morning duties. In the evening he served as rival team captain to Emlyn Hughes and Tessa Sanderson on Sporting Triangles, ITV’s rather weak facsimile of the BBC’s Question of Sport. All this at a time when the widest access to his playing greatness came in one of his goals being included in the BBC’s 101 Great Goals VHS compilation.

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The left-foot tap-in that followed an Alan Gilzean flick-on and a long Joe Kinnear throw-in at an icy Valley Parade in January 1970 was not much to go on as confirmation of genius. The overriding majority of Greaves’s goals were not even televised in black and white and by 1970 he was on the steep decline, exacerbated by the alcoholism that led to him retiring at 31. A spell at West Ham was most famous for him – and Bobby Moore – being caught out on the razz in the former boxer Brian London’s nightclub the night before the Hammers lost a January 1971 FA Cup tie 4-0 at Blackpool.

It was not until after he took his last drink in February 1978 that he returned to the public eye with This One’s On Me, the book detailing his troubles and near-downfall. He and his ghostwriter, Norman Giller, later penned novels, including one centred on “soccer superstar Jackie Groves” and another on “controversial manager Steve Walker”, who joins Alcoholics Anonymous in the fight against his demons, but it would be as a TV star that Greaves’s second life would be lived.

At a time when those with regional accents would still attempt to amend their voices into an approximation of received pronunciation, Greaves spoke in an unabashed, unpretentious east London accent, his wit almost as sharp as his finishing skills. After stints on Central Television and ITV’s World of Sport, Saint and Greavsie first aired when he was just 45, a year older than Gary Neville is now.

“I thought let’s have a lot of fun and we did,” Greaves, by then using a wheelchair, reminisced in April 2017, while being shown around the old White Hart Lane one last time. Such an attitude to football and football television is one largely absent from a game now far too serious for its own good.