THE gag that launched a thousand headlines, the original idea was simply to call the book Winter's Tale. It was the publisher who dreamed up "Who's the B*****d in the Black?", illegitimacy legit.

Argot of the age, they might as easily have called it "Confessions of a Yorkshire banker", because that's what Jeff Winter became after leaving Middlesbrough High School with an indifference of O-levels and an aptitude for woodwork.

He was also a Boro Boot Boy - "We were boot boys rather than hooligans" - became a top referee and now enjoys a media career from Alpha to Zoo. (Zoo, apparently, is a magazine for gentlemen. ) That his autobiography may never have been sub-titled "How To Make Friends and Influence People" worries him not a whit, nor that he is unlikely to become the next president of the Sir Alex Ferguson Fan Club.

Rather it is all an occupational hazard, his manifest unpopularity in some quarters worn as a badge of pride, as if on official issue from the Premiership.

Sir Alex considered him useless, even with expletives deleted. Peter Reid thought he should have stuck to Superstars - which probably he'd have quite enjoyed - Steve Bruce is quoted querulously, and at length.

"When have we ever been interested in Jeff Winter? He was hopeless as a referee and was despised by most of the professional players because of his attitude and thinking he was better than anyone else.

"What was he? A bog standard referee who loved himself. He drives me nuts, an absolute prat, as much personality as a bag of chips."

Another former top official tells the column that Winter is becoming ever more hated - "absolutely bloody hated" - along refereeing's arcane avenues.

Jeff takes another sip of his orange juice, outstretches a perma-tanned arm, deflects the blow with practised dexterity. "When you achieve anything in life, unfortunately you always get some criticism, some jealousy.

"I don't honestly think I've done anything wrong, but for some bizarre reason people are knocking me and the book even before they've read it. As a referee I was never used to being popular. All I asked for was respect."

The photographer's so much in his face he could pinch his prawn sandwich. He's unperturbed, good at in-yourface. "I may have been a lot of things, " he says, "but at least I've never forgotten where I came from."

He'd been book signing at Ottakars, the so-and-so in the yellow T-shirt, not the greatest time of year to be launching your autobiography. Joanna Trollope, Kate Mosse, even Jordan had big reductions.

"Amazon have a quarter of a million titles and I'm 77th. It's going very well, " he insists on the way to the pub.

He was born in innerterraced Middlesbrough in 1955, his father a London exile who hated northerners and, perhaps by definition, appeared not to be very fond of his son.

For years he followed Boro home and away, regulation uniform of Ben Sherman shirt, Levi's trousers, Crombie coat and Doc Marten's boots.

You can almost see it still: come and have a go, if you think you're 'ard enough.

The difference between boot boy and hooligan, he insists, is that the boot boys weren't really hell for leather at all. "A boot boy was more bravado than violence.

"Put it this way, I was never in much danger of going to prison, but neither was I an innocent caught up in trouble."

Puncher turned gamekeeper, he began in the Teesside parks leagues and graduated to the Northern League, which still he remembers with much affection.

"I was probably most comfortable and had more enjoyment there than anywhere. There was wonderful friendship in the Northern League and I still remember people like Cissie Summons at West Auckland, Arthur Waggott at Brandon and Mary at Tow Law."

Megaphone Mary, it might be said, has rarely has a quiet word for referees, not even six foot skinheads from the Boro.

"No harm in Mary, " he insists.

His reputation travelled from West to Wembley, from Tow Law to Tottenham and to the 2004 FA Cup final in Cardiff. Hard, no-nonsense, liked to talk to the players, quite liked himself, an' all.

"I've always been outspoken but I've always been totally honest, " he says.

"Unfortunately, honesty seems to upset some people and that's a fact of life.

"People say I was probably too honest for my own good, but if that's my problem, I'm glad to have it. If they don't like it, too bad."

He'd worked in financial services, cut back when the Premiership appointed full time referees, was obliged to retire at 48, turned once again to the happy media - "I hadn't a pension, I had to do something" - hoped to maintain football involvement as a referees' assessor.

The FA thought them strange bedfellows, insisting - with a 24 hour ultimatum - that all articles should first be vetted by its press office.

Censured, uncensored, he resigned.

"They trusted me to run an FA Cup final but not to write a newspaper article, " he protests.

Now he has appeared on everything from A Question of Sport to A Touch of Frost, has a combative Saturday evening talk-in on TFM Radio, writes extensively - like the book, sometimes ghosted - and is a familiar speaker on the lucrative after-dinner circuit, tapping his way into the room with white stick and dark glasses in self-effacing mockery of the legendarily myopic.

His wife doesn't like the white stick routine, but he's not going to worry about that.

The FA would be unlikely to approve of his post-prandial revelations, either.

"I have a lot of friends in the game but things are going on at the highest level which make me quite glad I'm out of it, " he says.

"Wherever possible I'm a supporter of referees and refereeing but there are times when you can't defend what goes on. There are referees at the highest level who are very unpopular with the majority of their colleagues."

Particularly he dislikes Graham Poll, the book recalling the occasion when Robbie Savage got into trouble for musing the referee's lavatory. "Anyone who craps in Graham Poll's toilet can't be all bad, " he writes.

To an extent, of course, he may be simply playing the black man. There's a book to sell and like Jordan, with whom he shares Ottakars window, he has to make the most of his assets.

"If it offends people, " says asterisk the gall, "then tough."

Backtack Briefs

JOHN Sproates, one of two Co Durham brothers to play professional football, has died, aged 62.

John, Easington Lane lad, played just twice for Barnsley after signing from West Auckland in 1963. Brother Alan, a year younger and a fellow Sunderland junior, made 346 first team appearances for Darlington and also played for Swindon and Scunthorpe before emigrating to America.

John went on to Gateshead, Scarborough, Goole and Worksop, was Bishop Auckland's manager in 197182 and after a spell in the Wearside League, returned to West in 1973.

"He was a better player than I was, or so he always told me, " says Alan, who now lives in San Francisco and works at a golf club.

John's funeral is at 3.30pm on Monday at Durham crematorium.

A PLAQUE to commemorate George Butterfield, Darlington's forgotten Olympian, will finally be unveiled in the town on February 28, outside the Hole in the Wall pub where he was landlord.

Born in Stockton but a Darlington Harrier, Butterfield was AAA mile champion from 1904-06, finished second and third in his heats at the London games in 1908 but failed to qualify for the finals.

Members of his family will be joined by Darlington mayor Stella Robinson and, it's hoped, by the former Joy Grieveson, the town's only female Olympian.

The unveiling has been made possible by veteran Darlington Harrier Ian Barnes, who read in Backtrack that the town hall had lost the illuminated scroll re-presented by the family in 1987 and decided that there should be a memorial.

George Butterfield joined the Royal Field Artillery in 1916 and was killed in action the following year. Now the London Olympics are again on the horizon. "A memorial, " says Ian, "seems rather overdue."

WE recalled a couple of months back the 1949 Durham Amateur Cup final, Bank Head v Grange Villa at Spennymoor, in which the folk back at Bank Head were kept up to date by homing pigeon. A Sunderland reader sends the programme.

It was April 23, when a Jackie Milburn goal gave Newcastle a 1-1 draw at Liverpool, dear old Witton Park lad Tommy Blenkinsopp starred for Boro at Blackpool and Willington beat West Auckland in the Northern League Cup final but couldn't get the trophy because no one had remembered to bring it.

The programme also carried the "flash" that Spennymoor full back Tommy Flockett, 21, had signed for Chesterfield.

He made more than 200 appearances for both Chesterfield and Bradford City, scoring once for each.

The Durham Amateur Cup had had a record 352 entries, Grange Villa's 1-0 victory the more remarkable because they'd lost in the semi-final to Highfield - rights and wrong 'uns, no doubt.

Bank Head's side included two Haddocks. We have also discovered that the wonderfully named Harry Herring, two games for Hartlepool in 1957-58, is alive and well and living in Hart Station. Plenty more fish in the sea.

HARTLEPOOL'S recent example of insubordination, as perhaps we may call it, may simply be a case of history repeating itself.

Ed Law's 1989 club history records that Bill Norman, Pool's manager in the late 1920s, ordered his players to change for training on a bitterly cold day.

When they demurred, Norman stripped naked and rolled in the snow which covered the Victoria Ground.

Instructively amused, the players did as they were told.

These days it would be called man management.

And finally...

THE only club to have won both FA Cup and League Cup just once (Backtrack, February 7) is Leeds United. To the list of men who've managed both Darlington and Hartlepool, we ought to have added Jackie Carr and Bob Gurney, an' all.

Bill Moore in Coundon today invites the identity of the only two men named European Footballer of the Year to have managed teams in the Premiership.

Blackpool beckons tomorrow; More of the bright lights on Tuesday.

Published: 10/02/2006