“This house will become a shrine, and punks and skins and rastas will all gather round and hold their hands in sorrow for their fallen leader. And all the grown-ups will say, ‘But why are the kids crying?’ And the kids will say, ‘Haven’t you heard? Rick is dead! The People’s Poet is dead!’“
Those who know, know…
Ordinarily, I would be gnashing my teeth this morning at the impressive way we somehow managed to lose at Plymouth yesterday.
All we had to do was clear it properly one more time, and it would have been a well-earned point. It wasn’t that difficult.
And as somebody elsewhere said, it was four minutes of injury time and we had a corner in the 94th minute…
While it very much matters, it wasn’t quite the biggest punch in the gut this week.
I think everyone will know how they feel once they heard the news of Michael “Mikey T” Taliadoros, how unreal it sounded to hear even now.
I doubt if I was the only one who was genuinely floored by the news, and I’m someone who isn’t surprised by most things that occur.
But Mikey T? Dead? That’s not supposed to happen.
Sadly, it did, and yesterday down at Plymouth there was somebody missing from everyone’s collective AFCW experience.
I haven’t heard Rob Cornell’s comments from Home Park yesterday (and I’ve no idea what he must have been thinking this week), but this was one of these occasions where something from the club moved on.
Sometimes, you read obituaries of people at other clubs dying, like a long-serving commentator who has seen it all, and you see their age and you think they had a good innings.
As most of you know, I do written press many weekends and there’s been a couple of people in the last five years in various press boxes who I used to see but no longer will do.
Ollie Phillips at Watford, Pete Burrowes at Charlton, Paul Hiscock at Orient (who’s role there I’ve taken over in large part at the moment), all regulars sur espace média who spring to mind here.
But it feels wrong to add Mikey T to that list. Even though that’s what we have to do.
This isn’t going to be the most structured writeup you’ll ever read on here, I didn’t have any time until this Sunday to put any of it up.
And some of this will be just personal thoughts and anecdotes from somebody I knew for about 35 years.
I first met MT from way back when, probably early 1990s when I saw him at places like Coventry, searching for chip shops at Lymm for evening away games at Liverpool and the like.
As it was back then, as we were quite a small band you tended to eventually get to know people to acknowledge if not actually speak to.
Mikey was definitely somebody in the latter category, and even if it was just a quick “Hello Mike” to him, it felt like you knew him. He was one of those sort of blokes.
The photo at the top of this piece is from the 1999/2000 season (I think), at some away ground.
I’ll be honest, I’m struggling to place where it was, the file says 9th September 1999 but we didn’t play on that date.
One person would have seen the photo and told me exactly where it was, what the scoreline was, and how shit the game was…
It was only obvious later in life that MT had an almost dangerous memory of dates, scores, attendances (I think) and anything else like that.
An amazing talent, probably never to be repeated – just as seeing over 2000 consecutive games up until his untimely death.
Thinking about that, it was a bit of a mad thing to do. Although with MT, it also made sense that he would do that.
I took the above at Brentford, soon after the MK shit was first announced, and we** all looked so young then.
** – from left to right: Warren Church, Tim “Plough Lane by Numbers” Hanson, MT, Graham “Timmsy” Timms, and apologies to the other two who I can’t place.
Ironically, it was the AFCW era where we probably best knew Mikey for, in his stint as WDON commentator.
When it was started, it was (from memory) him, Marc Jones and Chris Phillips before Mikey took the microphone, joined up with Rob Cornell, and the rest is now history.
In more ways than one now.
Mikey was a natural as a commentator, if you can find those Nuts TV programmes of us, he was doing it for the games and he was as good as anyone you find on local radio and even some national channels.
Broadcasting and media seemed in his blood – he did some actual proper radio shows for local stations, and from earlier he was responsible for Tenants Extra and (IIRC) Carlton Carlton fanzines.
His “real” job was something in banking/finance, indeed he actually worked in the same place as my sister-in-law for a time.
If that was his job, commentating on AFCW was his passion. Everyone will play back THAT Ronan Curtis moment, but generally he was basically your mate commentating on the game you couldn’t make on your behalf.
Even if you’ve never met him, you always felt you knew him anyway.
I did wonder what he would have made of yesterday’s horror show right at the end, although probably the same as other last minute horror shows in the past.
He definitely found it difficult to be upbeat in some runs of form, with the end result being the same almost weekly.
But win, lose or draw – he was there describing it to anyone who cared to listen.
He (and your editor) were one of the very lucky ones to watch games in the flesh during Covid, and that kept a lot of people going.
Probably him as well, because you always felt with him he needed to be involved with AFCW on that level. Going to games, seeing people he knew, the highs and even the lows.
It’s a shame that his last game at Plough Lane was against them, a task he absolutely hated to do. Especially at their place.
The last time I ever saw him was Cambridge away a couple of weeks ago, where he helped me get into the press area because I couldn’t get a ticket.
Mikey always knew somebody via WhatsApp or whatever who could get you in, that’s how generous he was.
In my case, he helped pull a string or two to get me into the Abbey and he actually said in our pre-game chat that he’d do that for me any time.
Surreal thinking about it now, the little chats before and after, the obligatory Young Ones re-enactments that was something else him and me shared.
And in a moment that is now exceptionally poignant, the “see you in a press box soon” throwaway comment at the end.
That “soon” was supposed to be Leyton Orient away in November, with Notts County and Leicester on Boxing Day in due course.
It’s hard to think he’s not going to be at any of them from now on.
Apologies for the quality of this picture, taken at some away game in 1999/2000, I was never one for photography.
Again, I don’t know what journey that was, but we knew somebody who would have known.
I spent about 20 minutes going through old photos for one of Mikey in particular (the one at the top), though I found a couple more that are on here.
And it’s a bit bittersweet doing it – the reason why you’re searching is offset a bit by the “oh yeah, I remember that” pangs you get.
And I’ve missed plenty out about Mikey that I’ll no doubt remember in about a month and wish I’d put up here.
Like him and me finding a gay bar in Blackpool after an evening game at Fleetwood, where we both had one drink then left.
Or the “Everywhere we go” renditions, with ad-hoc lyrics that involved curry houses and sex shop accessories.
Or me giving him a lift to a game and describing why her ethnicity meant Tulisa Contostavlos performed so well in a certain video that was doing the rounds at the time.
Or that he thought I looked a little bit like Martin O’Neill when I had my glasses on.
Or other things that I will no doubt remember at 02h30 in the morning on some random Tuesday in the next month.
Other people will have other stories about him, and they will almost certainly be universally positive.
As for this, I’m trying to think of a way of ending this, it’s rambled on a bit and it’s more of a train-of-consciousness at times.
But I’ll try it this way, knowing what Mikey T knew about my views on religion. If there is such a thing as the Pearly Gates, St. Peter just needs to be a bit careful.
After all, if he asks Mikey what he was doing on a certain day in 1998 and gets the match date wrong…