His booming voice will be familiar to all those who visit Anfield. It is a voice that has accompanied all of the magical European nights Liverpool have enjoyed over the last five decades as well as nearly every domestic match for the last 48 years. George Sephton’s debut as the stadium announcer on 14 August 1971 was somewhat overshadowed by another debutant who had been brought in by Bill Shankly from Scunthorpe United over the summer. Kevin Keegan only took 12 minutes to get on to the scoresheet as Liverpool ran out 3-1 winners over Nottingham Forest. Keegan went on to score 100 goals in his six years for the club, with Sephton there to witness the vast majority of them from his precarious perch on the television gantry.
Keegan remains one of Sephton’s favourite players. “He was certainly one of the greatest,” Sephton says. “His whole attitude to football, to life, his unbelievable work rate, he was the full package. I remember somebody came in, looked over my shoulder and commented: ‘That new kid’s a bit of a tiger isn’t he.’ That summed him up really.” Sephton has only missed a handful of games and he can explain them all, going back to his first absence in 1973. “I was best man at a wedding so I got the guy who was the DJ at Tommy Smith’s nightclub to deputise.”
He had no formal training and only applied for the role after hearing his predecessor making a hash of the job. “He was prone to making bloomers,” Sephton says. “Like putting records on at the wrong speed or mispronouncing the players’ names. Once he actually turned the PA on as Tommy Smith was about to take a penalty. So I said to my wife, this guy’s an embarrassment to the club and she said: ‘It’s all right for you. I bet you couldn’t do any better’. And that was it. Out of sheer pig-headedness I sent a long letter to Peter Robinson, the club secretary, and it happened to land on his desk just as they had decided to let the other guy go. So they gave me a trial and technically speaking I’ve been on trial ever since.”
His longevity is matched – and indeed pipped – by Peter Gilham who has been doing the same job at Griffin Park since 11 October 1969 when, by coincidence, Keegan’s old club Scunthorpe were the visitors. Like Sephton, he has become a club institution and incredibly, Gilham has missed just two games in those 50 years. The first was in January 2006, when Brentford beat Sunderland – who were in the Premier League at the time – in the third round of the FA Cup.
The other was a rearranged midweek game against Colchester United. “I had already booked a holiday so was caught out,” Gilham says. “By chance, I was watching Soccer AM and Helen Chamberlain said she had always wanted to be a PA announcer at a football ground so I contacted her and she jumped at the chance. But to her chagrin the game was called off at half time because of a frozen pitch, but at least it meant I hadn’t missed a game!”
By chance Sephton came across Gilham when he went on a tour of BBC Television Centre in 2006 to see Football Focus being recorded. There was a piece on an 100-year old Brentford supporter and the voiceover was provided by a man the BBC described as “the longest serving club announcer” in the game. “I thought it was a wind-up, but I found out that Peter had been doing it a year longer than me and we have kept in touch ever since.”
When asked for their favourite moment, neither of them misses a beat. “At the end of the Barcelona game this year,” Sephton says. “Once in a blue moon I’ll put You’ll Never Walk Alone on after the game. When I put it on, the whole squad lined up in front of the Kop and sang it together. Then after the players started to drift down the tunnel, nobody moved and I had run out of songs on my playlist but I searched through my CDs, banged on Imagine by John Lennon and, when the whole Kop took it up, I have never heard anything like it.”
There is a Beatles connection with Gilham, who fondly recalls singing Hey Jude on the pitch before Brentford’s play-off finals at the old Wembley in 1997, the Millennium Stadium in 2002 and the new Wembley in 2013 – all of which they lost. His most memorable game at Griffin Park also ended in defeat, 3-0 to Norwich City. “It was just after we had been promoted back from League One in 2014,” says Gilham. “We had a capacity crowd, it was under the lights and that was one of my proudest moments. Even though we lost, the quality of the football and just being back in the Championship meant so much.”
Sephton and Gilham have seen dozens of managers come and go, but both feel their clubs are on the brink of a new era. Jürgen Klopp’s reign is the 13th in Sephton’s time at the club and he is fervently hoping that this will be 13th time lucky. “I’m not counting our chickens,” Sephton says. “But we’re halfway between hope and belief. If we can keep the gap at around 10 points, I will definitely start to believe. And finally a whole generation of Liverpool fans, who have never experienced what we grew accustomed to in the 1970s and 1980s, will get to enjoy winning a league title.”
Gilham, also known as “Mr Brentford”, is hoping the club enjoy two portions of success at the end of the season. The Bees are third in the Championship and aim to reach the top flight for the first time in more than 70 years. That much sought-after promotion would coincide with their departure from Griffin Park, their home for 115 years, as they move a few miles away to the brand new, purpose-built Brentford Community Stadium at the beginning of next season.
Neither Sephton nor Gilham is considering retiring, even though both are in the early seventies and have suffered the odd bout of ill health. They are both absolutely determined to continue and are preparing to be there to announce the next chapter in their clubs’ histories, whether that be a first Premier League title or a debut season in the Premier League. And after 100 years’ combined service nobody would begrudge them their well earned swansongs.
Richard Foster’s new book Premier League Nuggets is out now and you can follow him on Twitter.
