Thread by @Ludicrousscenes

There's a lovely piece by @henrywinter in the Times today - a tribute to Alex Ferguson which reminded me of a story I'd half-forgotten.

In the 1990s, I was a reporter in Leicester. Pre-Twitter, of course. Back then, if readers hated something you'd written, they'd write a letter to you, in furious capitals.

Or they'd ring you up, twisting your ear through the handset like the General to Dick Dastardly.

Or worst of all, they'd actually come in to the office and demand to see you.

That's what Alice used to do. She was a Mercury reader in her 90s who used to trek from one side of the city all the way to the office, purely to tell me off.

I probably deserved it.

Alice lived in Leicester but she was from London. She supported Manchester United. Insert your own predictable remark here.

She was nice, was Alice, but steelier than a submarine hull. She told me several times, in tones reserved for explaining daybreak to an idiot, that I should be writing stories about Manchester United.

"But we're a Leicester paper," I'd say, "we write about Leicestershire things..." and she'd sniff at such stupidity.

They'd probably make her managing editor now.

Anyway, it turned out Alice was Manchester United's oldest season ticket holder. And here's the thing: Alex Ferguson used to send a minibus to Leicester to pick her up and take her to Old Trafford.

Every game. All the way to the East Midlands. All the way back. Repeat every other Saturday/Sunday/whatever day Sky demanded.

We did write about that. That was about her. Although in hindsight, it was more about him.

One day Alice came in to berate me about something or other - I forget what - and by the by she told me she had stopped going to matches.

Why? She was in her 90s. Her eyesight was failing.

She was too old for corrective surgery on the NHS, she said. And then she told me Alex Ferguson had offered to pay for her to have the operation.

Now I didn't get a great deal of celebrity scoops on the Mercury. For 'didn't get a great deal ... ' read none. (Unless you count a chat with Charlie Chuck that peaked with him saying "erm, is this an interview, then?")

So I opened my notebook and started scribbling.

Cue Paddington-style hard stare. She didn't want it going in the paper, she said. It wasn't something he was doing for publicity. She just wanted me to know the kind of man he was.

I closed my notebook, and went back upstairs to the newsroom, and carried on writing stories about people being furious with the council.

I think that was the last time I saw Alice. She'll be long gone now.

Had she lived to know what Twitter was, she probably wouldn't want me writing about it on here either. But she would have been worried sick about Alex Ferguson. So I thought I'd write this anyway.

I'm off to bed now. I'll get back to you if I'm berated from beyond the grave.