Never Meet Your Heroes? Yeh, Right…

They say you should never meet your heroes.

“They” know nowt. Trust me: take every chance you get.

The best moment of my career was getting an interview with Jürgen Klopp. The Premier League winning manager was being granted the freedom of Liverpool - a mainly symbolic gesture of love but one which allowed him to take a sheep for a walk down Dale Street. I was told I had four minutes with him. We’d got the cameras set up, lighting sorted and I raced in with my first three questions, almost denying him the chance to answer any of them before I started on the next one. After three minutes thirty, I stopped the interview.

“You’ve got another 30 seconds,” the press officer for the club said.

“Nah, I’ve finished… but there’s one more thing I’d like”

I pulled out a red Liverpool shirt with white pinstripes from my bag. The Paisley shirt, it had been nicknamed, on the basis that Nike has run out of all creativity and originality and were stripping out LFC’s heritage in an effort to get fans to cough up the best part of a hundred quid for £2.50’s worth of polyester (which, of course, we all did).

“Can you sign this, please?” I asked the greatest manager since Rafa Benitez.

After a big toothy grin (him, not me), Kloppo took my Sharpie and signed the front of the shirt. What really impressed me was the expert way he stretched it out to get it taught enough to sign. This was not the first time he’d written his name on polyester.