“Elton was in Austria on tour, we flew out and met at this crowded hotel restaurant, he joined us at the table dressed as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, complete with wig. You could have heard a pin drop" Elton John: The Watford years

Elton John Watford.

Looking back, it’s funny to think we might have picked berries from the same bush. Back in 1959, those blackberries proliferated to the rear of The Bend, the most unlovely corner of an unfashionable ground – Vicarage Road, home of the equally forgotten Watford FC.

Then, I was 18 and one of the 'Boys on The Bend', a disparate cluster of perhaps 20 fans who used the low bank as a vantage point to peer over the greyhound track and watch the newly-named Hornets. I was only aware of my own group, yet I might have noticed a podgy 13-year-old Pinner County Grammar School boy looking equally pleased.