SPURS legend Jimmy Greaves will be remembered as one of the all-time footballing greats and the King of White Hart Lane.
But by his side throughout his phenomenal career and beyond, was his doting wife, Irene Barden.
Jimmy – who died today aged 81 – and Irene married when they were just 18, and have been together ever since.
There were some heartbreaking bumps in the road including the tragic loss of their second child and the couple’s separation for 18 months at the height of Jimmy’s battle with alcohol.
But, over the last 60 years, they always found a way back to each other.
And Irene, 81, never left his side for more than an hour after he suffered a stroke five years ago that left him wheelchair-bound.
“We’ve always adored each other, without a doubt,” Irene said, earlier this year. “I never wanted anyone else.”
Childhood sweethearts
Jimmy and Irene were just 18 years old when they first got married in a small ceremony at a registry office in Romford, Essex in March 1958.
At the time, Jimmy was playing for Chelsea, earning £17 a week and £100 if he played for England.
Irene wore a smart belted beige dress and jacket with white gloves and a white hat for the ceremony.
But tragedy struck the couple just three years later.
Agonising loss of 5-month-old son
In 1961, Jimmy and Irene’s second child, Jimmy Junior, died from pneumonia aged just five months.
The couple – who also had a daughter, Lynn, now 61, by this point – were left in despair.
Jimmy once said: “Jimmy’s death devastated us, it nearly drove us out of our minds.
“We were inconsolable.
“You grieve for the death of any loved one but when it is for your own child no words can describe that grief.”
Irene has said: “He was five months old and there was no rhyme or reason about it. It just happened.
“He’d been a healthy baby, 9lb at birth, and when he died we didn’t speak about it — you were told to go home and get on with your lives.
“There was no counselling.”
Irene and Jimmy went on to have three more children, Mitzi, now 59, Danny, 56, and Andy, 54 – and she says she still thinks of Jimmy Jr too.
“I still think of him. You always do,” she said.”
“I’ve still got a lovely picture of him hanging on my wall with all the other family photos.”
Selling jewellery to keep the family home
Football became a guiding light for Jimmy, but his top flight career ended at West Ham in 1971.
It was at the Hammers that his alcoholism began.
“He’d just shut himself away in a room at home and drink,” Irene said.
Some days he would go straight from training to the pub and stay for the rest of the day.
At his worst he was downing 20 pints of beer and a bottle of vodka a day.
Meanwhile, Irene was training as a nurse and raising their four children single-handedly.
At one point, as Jimmy lost himself to the bottle, Irene had to sell her jewellery to keep the family home.
“I just got fed up with him,” she said. “I realised it was no good nagging or pouring his drink down the sink because he’d hide bottles everywhere. I had to wait until he was ready to stop himself.
“He’d promise to give up but he carried on.
“I’d say to him: ‘You’ll drink yourself to death and you won’t be here to see the kids grow up.’
“But nothing worked.”
He and Irene divorced at the height of his alcoholism in 1977, when she “told him to go”.
‘I was at the bottom of the heap’
His marriage over, Jimmy was living in a one-bedroomed flat in Wanstead, east London, scraped a living selling sweaters from a market stall.
Destined never to see 40, he even ended up sleeping rough.
Did it prick his pride, he was asked in 2005?
“I didn’t really have any,” he said “I was at the bottom of the heap and what had happened in the past was the past.
“I didn’t look at it and think, ‘Well I’ve done this and I’m entitled to that’. Life, I found, was not like that.
“I basically felt pretty worthless and there wasn’t a lot left in me. I didn’t have any plans.
“My sole ambition in life at that time was to remain sober, nothing else, that was my only target.”
Couldn’t live without each other
It was just 18 months later, when they found they couldn’t live without each other, Jimmy and Irene got back together – with him promising to stay sober.
Irene recalled: “Jimmy came back home. He said: ‘I’m ready to give up drinking now’ — and I just knew he meant it this time.”
Jimmy took himself to Warley Hospital in Brentwood, where he’d been twice before.
This time would be “third time lucky”.
“There was a small pub on the corner,” Irene said. “He went there and had his last pint of beer.
“And that was it. He stopped.”
Remarrying in 2017
Although Jimmy and Irene lived together ever since, they only remarried in 2017.
Their wedding was a small ceremony in their village church.
“Oh, it was a lovely day,” Irene said.
But she added how they always felt like they’d never split up, and still celebrated their anniversary every year throughout their marriage.
She said, earlier this year, “We’ve been together 63 years now and we always considered ourselves married, even when we weren’t.
“We still went out for our anniversary.”
‘I’ve lost my best mate’
Jimmy suffered a minor stroke in 2012, and then a more major one in 2016, which left him partially incapacitated.
Before he died, Irene said: “He was so charismatic, so funny. Now he’s a shell of the man he was. After his last stroke, I didn’t think he’d make it.
“And in a way I think it would have been better if he’d gone.
“This is no life for him.
“He doesn’t want to be here. He says: ‘Get me something so I can go.’ And I tell him: ‘You’ll have us both in jail.’
“Sometimes I wish he could just slip away peacefully. I know that’s what he wants.”
The former footballer had constant care around the clock, and Irene never left his side for more than an hour.
“Although many people have worse lives, as a carer you feel a bit trapped,” she confessed. “My eldest daughter Lynn lives nearby and she’s in my bubble, so she calls round quite a bit.
“But I can’t leave Jim for more than an hour.
“Sometimes we have a tiff and I say: ‘That’s it. You’re going into a home!’ But I don’t mean it, of course. I’d never, ever do that.
“I’ve promised the children I won’t, too. I’d never want that for Jim.”
“We’ve always adored each other, without a doubt,” she finished. “I never wanted anyone else. But I look at him now and think he’s not the man he was.
“I’ve lost my best mate. There was no one like him.”
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
