Hibs hero John Burridge on Covid battle and ending Alex Miller feud as he prepares for emotional return

As you join us, John Burridge is sweeping his camera phone from left to right across his living room to provide a glimpse of the view he enjoys every day. Rolling rocks, white-washed buildings and, beyond them, a twinkling Indian Ocean combine to form a picture postcard vista.

Hibs goalkeeper John Burridge shows the Skol Cup to fans after the team returned to Easter Road following the 1991 victory over Dunfermline at Hampden (PHOTOGRAPHER ALAN LEGERWOOD)

"It beats Workington," he says, with reference to the Cumbrian town where he grew up amid impoverished conditions.

He remembers shivering while sitting on the outside loo and scrubbing his miner father's sooty back in bathwater that would then be used by his mother, two sisters as well as himself. Oman is another world.

“There is only one thing wrong with living here, it’s 44, 45, 46 degrees outside,” he says. “Too hot. Far too hot. For the three months, June, July, August, we have to suffer, then you get eight months like in Spain in summer. You walk around in a vest all the time. That’s why I look like I do. I am 70-years-old now.

Hibs goalkeeper John Burridge (left) in action as teammate Graham Mitchell covers in the Skol Cup quarter-final win at Ayr United in 1991

"I nearly took my top off for you there," he adds. "I look like Arnold Schwarzenegger!"

Reader, he did take his top off. More of which later. While some of the things he says might be taken with a pinch of salt, this 70 claim, hard though it is to believe, is true – or near as dammit. This significant birthday falls in December, shortly after the 30th anniversary of Hibs' 1991 Skol Cup triumph against Dunfermline.

The latter occasion is the reason we've scheduled a WhatsApp video chat. Hibs begin their latest League Cup campaign this weekend against Kilmarnock, who were eliminated in the third round of a glory run set to be marked by a reunion in Edinburgh on October 30.

Burridge is planning to return from the Middle East to share a stage with his old teammates and a manager he has not seen since slamming Alex Miller's door shut following the last in a series of rows punctuating his eventful stay at Easter Road.

Hibs manager Alex Miller (left) with his captain Murdo MacLeod before kick-off in the 1991 Skol Cup final win over Dunfermline

He headed to Oman four years and 21 clubs later at the behest of a Scot, the late Ian Porterfield. His former Sheffield United manager recruited him as a goalkeeper coach for the Oman national side. Burridge has been based in the Gulf ever since.

"People get the wrong impression about the Middle East," he continues in classic breathless, Budgie-style. "They think they chop heads off and you can’t have a beer and cannot go out. Totally wrong. That’s Saudi. But if you go to Dubai or come to Oman or Qatar – there’s only two countries in the Gulf where you can’t drink. Kuwait and Saudi. You come here and, well, I have just shown you what it is like. You can go to a hotel bar, get a pint, a whisky, do whatever you want."

Hang on, isn't Budgie famously teetotal? What's going on? Has his enjoyable public feuding with Facebook Live pundit pal Kevin Campbell driven him to drink? The pair lock horns on Twitter now after Covid meant they could no longer travel to Spain each weekend to cover La Liga games for viewers across the Indian subcontinent.

Budgie happily hopped on a plane on a Friday for the nine-hour flight, via Qatar. Facebook have since opted out of bidding for the rights. "They lost the contract because Budgie could not get there from Oman!" he says.

Hibs' 1991 Skol Cup winning side will reunite in October to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the achievement

Lionel Messi's departure from Barcelona provoked some recent back and forth with the former Everton striker. "That clown Campbell said he would never leave… he's such a control freak and knows nowt," wrote Burridge to his followers.

Campbell retorted with the observation that lockdown, which was severely applied for a spell in Oman, has clearly not been kind to his mate.

There's some truth in that. A fidgety, restless presence, enforced captivity, stunning views or otherwise, is Burridge’s idea of hell.

The blue plasters conspicuously wrapped around both his thumbs are not for old football injuries but to stop him biting his fingernails. Long before psychology had a place in professional sport, Burridge recruited a hypnotist to quell his nerves after being spooked by the bigger crowds involved after moving from Blackpool to Aston Villa in the mid-1970s.

John Burridge in his earlier days making a flying save while playing for Aston Villa against QPR at Loftus Road on September 11, 1976 (Photo Tony Duffy/Allsport/Getty Images)

He resolved to make himself physically more robust and lifted concrete weights with nightclub bouncers in back-street gyms. He eschewed the then more acceptable crutch of alcohol - and that's still largely the case, hence why he feels so settled in the Middle East.

"Alcohol's not pushed in your face like in England or Scotland," he explains. "There is not a bar on every street. You have to go to a hotel if you want a night out – and I live in a five-star resort.

"At 4pm today I will go down to the beach and the lads come out of work and we have a game of football on the beach. I still batter 25-year-old lads about. I still stick to my diet from when I was playing. I have steamed everything. Nothing fried. Broccoli, cabbage, carrots…a bit of salmon every night. I am basically teetotal – I will have a can of Guinness in the house watching television once a week, and that’s for iron. Just one. I never get pissed, never go out. I still live the life. I could still play.

"I am hoping to go back to the national team in September. I left in 2012 – you know I am their most successful coach they have ever had. I won a Gulf Cup, and I produced a Premier League goalkeeper (Ali Al-Habsi). I've been working for (second division club) Bawshar but it’s close season, it's too hot.”

He very nearly provides me with an unwelcome glimpse of his bawshars when he suddenly undresses to display the results of his still-stringent exercise regime. He asks April, his Filipino partner of nine years, to hold his phone. And yes, I can confirm, Budgie’s still buff.

Rather than put his shirt back on, he continues the interview topless. Mercifully, he still has his pants on but it’s strange to reflect that I now have intimate knowledge of the arrangement of moles on the broad, smooth chest of a goalkeeper legend. "No fat at all on me! I'm built like a brick sh*thouse," he says.

We move on.

Although relatively new in Budgie’s life, April, reclining on another sofa, has probably heard all this a thousand times before. She's sitting in prime position to toss a tangerine towards Burridge without warning. It's a drill, devised with Andy Gray, his old pal from Aston Villa days, designed to keep his reflexes as sharp as possible.

The role of tangerine thrower was once occupied by Janet, Budgie's ex-wife who, in nearly every interview in which she is mentioned in the last 40 years, was invariably described as “long-suffering”. They have now divorced. He’s built a new life with April, who he met while he was working for the Singapore FA. She flings fruit for him to catch as he watches episodes of Coronation Street while waiting for the sun to dip so he can go and play foot tennis on the beach with his mates.

It’s some life, Budgie. On the face of it at least. His struggles coping with retirement after playing until his mid-40s have been well documented while he was seriously injured in 1999 when he was knocked from his bicycle and dragged behind a car for 50 yards.

And then there was a more recent battle with Covid, which he presents as a blow to his pride as much as anything. He does attribute his supreme physical condition to being able to shake it off, but it brought him low and led to some serious re-assessment, although, as ever with Budgie, his 'fittest will survive' mantra won't go down well with everyone.

"I was one of the sceptics," he says. "'It does not exist' and all that…then one night I got home and I was in bed and I started shivering. I thought: 'Oh, bloody hell!' He was incapacitated for eight days.

“It was bloody frightening. Don’t tell me it does not exist, it does exist.

“I can see why people die of it now. It is not the Covid that kills you, it's if you have a bad heart, you are obese, you have bad kidneys, if you are not strong. If your body is not strong, you can die. That’s the long and short of it.

"If you are strong, you have a chance. Even though I am 70, I am like 40. I shook it off."

We drop this subject and reminisce.

*****************

There have been many fateful moments in Hibs’ history. Oddly, one of them occurred in a game between Southampton and Spurs at the Dell on Boxing Day 1987.

Ossie Ardiles was irritating Budgie at a corner and got a couple of studs in his metatarsal in return. If the Argentina playmaker was unaware that the ‘keeper had a habit of filing down his studs before games, he knew now.

The pair continued warring down the tunnel, which was all well and good until, three seasons later, with Burridge now on the books at Newcastle United, a new manager of was introduced to the players. Ardiles threw Burridge out of the club with a season left on his contract.

Aged almost 40, he was on the road again. Hibs were still recovering from an attempted takeover by Hearts chairman Wallace Mercer. What they probably thought they needed was some stability, some calm. What they got, initially on loan, was a lovable lunatic riding in on a motorbike he left chained to a lamppost near Waverley station. Burridge was a freewheelin’, crossbar-swingin’, somersaultin’, self-styled superman, around whom things tended to happen. Within three months Hibs were celebrating their first major trophy since the early 1970s.

"Let me tell you, Alan….and this is not a brag, if I had not come to Hibs, they would have had a stinker,” he says. “You have to realise the year before they would have been relegated if the top flight wasn't being made bigger. That saved them. If they had gone down to the second division the troubles the club were having them days, they would have gone out of business. They owed money left, right and centre. Easter Road would have been a block of flats.

“I walked into the club, bloody hell. The players were sh*tting themselves! It was full of negativity. If you are going to have a good season, you have to be positive. If you don’t think you can win it, you won’t win it."

He joined days before the start of the 1991-92 season after being close to signing for Falkirk, for whom he shone in a friendly v Charlton Athletic. "I didn’t know Alex Miller, I didn’t know any of the boys. I have always been a leader. Even now on the beach, I am a leader.

"Me and Alex Miller, we never stopped arguing. He wanted to be the boss and so did I. He wanted to be the boss, but he was giving me all the wrong information. He was killing the boys with negativity.”

Looking forward to seeing Alex again in October, then, Budgie? “Oh, don’t worry about me and Alex Miller,” he says. “I will just tell the truth! Of course, I will shake his hand.

“Have a Guinness with him? Why not! We were on the same team. We won the cup together, we kept them up together, but I will tell him the worst mistake he ever made was not giving me a rise."

According to Burridge, while Miller got a new contract on the back of the cup win, he was reluctant to spread the joy around. “I said: ‘Boss, I want £3,000 a week. He said: ‘No chance. You are on the same money as last year.’ I said: ‘Boss, I won you a cup!’ He was so arrogant. He thought it was him. I ended up saying, ‘well, at least pay for my season ticket for the train up from Durham – 300 quid a month!’ He said: ‘You’re getting no more, nothing’.”

Miller being Miller, Burridge knew there was no point debating the matter further. “Last time I saw him,” he says.

Burridge adored his time at Hibs and the manner of his departure clearly still rankles. After so long playing in England, he was unlikely to be cowed when lining up alongside the likes of Mark Hateley and Ally McCoist in the Hampden tunnel before the semi-final win over Rangers. Hateley was told he wasn’t as good as his dad, who Burridge had played against. McCoist was reminded he was a dud at Sunderland.

Nevertheless, the 'keeper was pleasantly surprised by the quality at Easter Road. “Keith Wright could’ve played for Man Utd!” he says. “That kid would chase paper on a windy day.

“When Keith got through against Dunfermline, I was like ‘GOAL!’ before he even hit it.” This strike clinched the cup after Tommy McIntyre had earlier put Hibs ahead from the spot.

Burridge even made sure his nemesis Miller enjoyed the moment. "I picked him up! After we won the cup, I put him on my shoulders. I went and got him. He was reluctant to do the lap of honour. I said: 'C'mon!’ He did not want to come. I said: ‘You’re coming, come on!’

"And then, when we got in front of the supporters, I put him on my shoulders.”

As remains the case now, Budgie always was good at giving people a lift. Fail to catch him at your peril.

The Longest Forty - in association with Events 105 - will welcome the Skol Cup heroes of '91 back to Edinburgh for a special 30th anniversary event on Saturday 30 October. Full details: www.thelongestforty.com

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