Brian Viner: Worthington's frank stories have Ipswich smiling again

'Terry Butcher was the Douglas Bader of football. Great in the air, crap on the deck'

Last Tuesday, after a dinner at Ipswich Town FC, I had the pleasure of sitting in a Suffolk hotel bar until two in the morning with Frank Worthington. Followed by the pain of a wake-up call at 6.30am. Never let it be said that I don't suffer in the course of my journalistic duties.

Readers over 40 might remember Worthington, a footballer of rare talent, who, for Bolton Wanderers against Ipswich, of all teams, scored the most gloriously impudent goal I have ever seen. He played keepy-uppy on the edge of the penalty area with his back to goal, then chipped it over his own head, turned, and belted it past Paul Cooper. I can remember watching it on The Big Match one Sunday afternoon, then going into the back garden to try it myself, with a dustbin – not inappropriately in the case of that particular goal – representing the Ipswich defender Terry Butcher.

"The Douglas Bader of football," says Worthington, now, of Butcher. "Great in the air, crap on the deck." We talked about other past Ipswich stars, too. After rebuking my friend Neil for using the adjective "great" without due care and attention, Worthington attached it unequivocally to Kevin Beattie. One of the half-dozen finest English defenders of all time, he reckoned. He had praise for the defensive abilities of Mick Mills, too. "But a dour man. Dour. I went into a bar with him once and it was Happy Hour, so Mick pissed off home."

Worthington's numerous one-liners had earlier been more profitably deployed, for he was guest speaker at the dinner. His act could perhaps do with a little updating (David James is no longer the Aston Villa goalkeeper, and it's a long time since BCCI was in the news), but it certainly had its moments. Even Worthington, however, would probably concede that he was eclipsed by the evening's other speaker, Paul Boardman.

Boardman is a presenter on Sky Sports News and also a comedian, which is the most curious mix of jobs I've encountered since a man in my local pub told me he was not only a bus driver but also a shepherd. He is screamingly funny, in fact dangerously so; his routine gave me asthma, and I'm not even asthmatic.

You had to be there, of course. In print I can hardly evoke the hilarity, but suffice to say he made some wonderful observations about the sometimes absurd spectacle of fans wearing football shirts with their favourite players' names on. He recalled seeing a 20-stone man eating a pork pie in a Merseyside pub, squeezed into an England shirt with "McManaman" on the back.

And a ginger kid with freckles wearing a Liverpool shirt emblazoned "Heskey".

Along the table from him, the Ipswich chairman, David Sheepshanks, roared with laughter. Heaven knows, he needed cheering up. The day before, Sheepshanks had announced that the club had been forced into administration. And that morning, he said, he had looked in his diary and seen that he was due at a dinner in the evening, a dinner at which many of the club's suppliers had taken tables. "And I thought... 'shit'."

That brought some chuckles, but when he told the suppliers – who now don't know when, or more worryingly whether, they are going to be paid – how sorry he was, his eyes filled with tears. Even allowing for the fact that Sheepshanks is a suave, eloquent Old Etonian, it was clear that what we were seeing, unlike the later addresses from Worthington and Boardman, was no act. I felt as if I was intruding into private grief.

My colleague David Conn is far better equipped than I am to examine Ipswich's business troubles, and indeed did so on Saturday with characteristic thoroughness. But it seems to me that when a man as manifestly decent and as capable in business as Sheephanks has to call in Deloitte & Touche – despite the fact that his club finished fifth in the Premiership two years ago, and in a roundabout way because of it – then football is going down the plughole fast.

The preposterous level of wages is one reason for the game's accelerating demise. On the other hand, the stratospheric salaries at least means that today's top footballers will never be forced to make a living from the after-dinner circuit, which in the case of quite a number of them, could be a good thing.

Besides, would they have as many colourful tales to tell as Frank Worthington? I doubt it. He recalled nutmegging the legendarily fierce Liverpool defender Tommy Smith, whereupon Smith bellowed at him – give or take, OK take, an expletive or two – "the next time you do that to me, I'll break your back." Worthington sought protection from the referee, Neil Midgeley, who was nearby.

"Did you hear that, ref?" he asked. "Yes," said Mr Midgeley. "But I think he was talking to you, not me."

b.viner@independent.co.uk