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and the highest wage of any young professional at the club.

      After receiving this good news, Jack went across the road to a newsagent’s shop run by Jim Johnson.

      ‘Well, have you signed yet?’ asked Johnson.

      ‘Just now,’ replied Jack, surprised at the question.

      ‘Thank God for that. I’ve had scouts from other clubs, about a dozen of the buggers, in and out of here all week, wanting to know if you’d signed.’

      ‘What, to know if I’d signed?’ said Jack, astonished at this level of interest.

      ‘You, yes. They’ve been sweating on the highest line, over the road.’

      Jack walked out of the shop, sensing that after all the doubts, he might at last have a real future in the game.

      That feeling was only enhanced when, after a year of further progress with the reserves, he was elevated to the first team on 24 April 1953, the last day of the season. He was not yet 18 and it was only four years since he had been a struggling left-back in the East Northumberland Juniors, yet here he was, making his League debut against Doncaster Rovers, a full month before his more talented younger brother had officially signed for United. Despite his inexperience, Jack received little support from either management or players. He was merely informed that he would be at centre-half while John Charles would play centre-forward. As he recalled, ‘Incredibly, Raich Carter never came near me that day, never told me why he had put me in the team. And when I climbed aboard the first-team bus taking us to Doncaster the next day, I was left completely alone, without as much as a word from my new team-mates. I mean, nobody told me what I was expected to do, no tactical talk, nothing,’ But Jack acquitted himself well against Eddie McMorran, the Doncaster and Northern Ireland centre-forward, who himself was a player at Leeds in the late 1940s. ‘Charlton did not let his side down,’ was the verdict of the Yorkshire Post.

      Soon after his League debut, Jack was called up to do his National Service. Because of his physique, he was selected for the Horse Guards and, during his two years of duty, he was based mainly at Windsor. It was through the army that Jack discovered two of the vices he had been carefully avoiding at Leeds: girls and cigarettes. Jack learnt that Windsor was a Mecca for young women, who came up from London to admire both the sights and the soldiers. For the first time in his life, he went to dances, and with his easy confidence and striking appearance, he was rarely short of female company. ‘I had a girlfriend in Slough and a girlfriend in Maidenhead, but it was never very serious,’ he later explained.

      Smoking was a habit that Jack started during his years as a cavalryman. But he has always been an eccentric sort of a smoker, rarely getting through more than 10 cigarettes a day, unlike the real addict who cannot go long without lighting up. More interestingly, because he often does not have his own packet, he has become notorious in the football world for taking cigarettes off others, usually without their permission. Peter Lorimer, his colleague at Leeds, recalls: ‘The funny thing is that he did not really smoke that much, yet was always cadging fags. He would not mind who he asked, even total strangers. I have seen him on the train just reach over to the fags on another table. If the Queen Mother was sitting next to him, he would ask her if he could borrow one.’ In fact, when he was on guard duty at Windsor, Jack once went to have a cigarette break in the bushes. Finding that he was without any matches, he came out from the foliage to ask a passer-by for a light. To his embarrassment, he was face to face with Prince Philip. Jack ran faster than he usually did at Elland Road.

      Jack later said that his two years of National Service were amongst the happiest of his life, especially because the budding manager in him emerged. In an interview in 1994, Jack said, ‘My spell in the army did me the world of good. When I was with the Guards at Windsor I really began to enjoy myself. I was made captain of the army football team, the first private to be given such an honour in the history of the Guards. For about a year I organized the training and everything we needed. I made sure that I got myself and all the lads the cushy jobs. We had all the time off we needed, no guard duty and a late breakfast everyday. Because we had a couple of other professionals like me, we had a good team and we did bloody well. We flew to Germany and won the Cavalry Cup.’

      Due to the amount of football he played in the army, Jack turned out only occasionally for Leeds reserves when he was on leave, while he made a solitary appearance for the first team – in August 1954 against Lincoln City. But the army had a profound effect on his character. Jack had gone into the Horse Guards as a diligent young apprentice, only too grateful just to be part of the Elland Road squad. He returned the captain of an army cup-winning side, certain of his own leadership abilities and used to ordering around other players. In short, he had become a rather brash, presumptuous young man. And, now he was available again, that could only spell problems with the other Leeds professionals and officials. The next few years at Elland Road were to be filled with so many clashes that it frequently looked like Jack would be forced to leave the club.

      Albert Nightingale, the Leeds striker in this period, told me: ‘I know he was only starting his career but he was terribly confident about himself, even arrogant. He used to give real stick to the players around him if anything went wrong, even to me – and I was in the forward line. Big Jack did not care what he said to anyone, he was that cocky. He would not speak to you properly. If you were having a bad game, he would lose his head and start swearing at you. He would bad-mouth players on the pitch, and that would lead to a lot of rows. Nobody liked him really. His head was too big for his shoulders. Because he was always shouting at them, people found it difficult to play with him. And, though he was a strong character, he was only a 50–50 footballer, decent in the air but not much skill on the ground. He was mean as well, never spent two ha’pennies. It was a joke in the team, the way he never put his hand in his pocket. But Big Jack took it all in his stride.’ John Charles, the star of that Leeds team, was frequently infuriated with Jack’s attitude. On one occasion, Leeds were playing Fulham and John Charles was playing centre-forward. With just 10 minutes left and Leeds 1–0 up, Buckley decided to bring Charles back to strengthen the defence. ‘Fuck off back up the field,’ said Jack when the Welshman arrived. Charles was so annoyed that, in the bath afterwards, he grabbed Jack and pushed him right under the water. ‘That will bloody show him,’ he said. Another time, when Jack questioned an instruction, Charles pinned him against the wall and said, ‘Listen, I’ll give you a bloody hammering next time.’

      Bobby Forrest, who also played with Jack and became a good friend, recalls: ‘He was always outspoken. He never worried about having a go at anyone, never held anything back. He let you know if he thought you’d done wrong. With his quick temper, he encouraged mickey-taking. Because he had a long neck, some of us nicknamed him “Turkey”. I remember we played up at Sunderland on Boxing Day and we stayed in a hotel in Seaburn the night before. Jack was, typically, the last one down to the dining room that evening, and while we were waiting for him, I had gone into the kitchen, where there was a turkey with its head chopped off. So I grabbed the head and put it on Jack’s plate. When he came in and saw this, he was absolutely furious. He really lost his temper. All the lads started laughing so he picked it up and threw it at me. But I ducked and it went crashing into a table behind, where a couple were quietly having their Christmas dinner.’

      Bobby Forrest also remembers what Jack was like as a footballer in the 1950s: ‘In his later career, he was so strong in the air, but in his first years, it was very different. It was striking the number of times in practice that he would try to head the ball and it would just shoot straight up instead of in the direction he wanted. There was no way, when I first saw him, that I would have ever thought he might one day become an England player.’ But, unlike some, Bobby was fond of Jack. ‘For all his confidence and hardness on the field, there was never an edge to him. He was just one of the lads, good for a laugh.’ Jimmy Dunn, the Scottish-born defender, speaks of both Jack’s resilience and his interest in money-making schemes, what Jack has always called his ‘little earners’. ‘Jack would stand no bloody nonsense. He could be bloody hard and was never intimidated by anyone at all. He was tough, confident, a strong devil. I got quite close to him. During the summer, when we reported for training and the team were building up a sweat in the hot weather, Jack and I would buy several litres of pop from over the road, then charge

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