Sixty Years of Hurt: 1. England v The World

Summary

The History Podcast: "Sixty Years of Hurt – Episode 1: England v The World"

Host: David Baddiel, with contributors including Stephen Fry, Nick Hancock, Jonathan Wilson, David Goldblatt, Gene Williams, Ellis James, Chris England
Release Date: May 15, 2026
Podcast by: BBC Radio 4

---

Episode Overview

Theme:
This inaugural episode of the "Sixty Years of Hurt" series, hosted by David Baddiel, delves into what it means to be English, exploring national identity through the lens of the England men’s football team. The episode interrogates the myths, contradictions, and anxieties tied to Englishness and how football both reflects and shapes these facets of culture.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Elusive Nature of Englishness

• Englishness is a “fiction” and hard to own, frequently tied up with historical power, empire, and awkwardness about national identity.
  • Baddiel: “Englishness is obviously a fiction.” [02:13]
  • Jonathan Wilson: “It's very deeply hard English to say. Maybe there isn't such a thing as Englishness.” [02:15]

2. Football as the Mirror of National Identity

• Football is posited as the singularly “important cultural institution” for expressing Englishness—unlike the Church of England, Royal Family, or Parliament, which are less distinctly English.
  • David Goldblatt: “The English national football team [is] the most important cultural institution … defining English national identity.” [05:07]
• This mirrors a shift from an imperial narrative to an underdog one, where failure becomes a source of identity.
  • Jonathan Wilson: “There's a huge English exceptionalism in England's punitive self-loathing. It's like we are the best at failing.” [05:41]

3. National Anthems and National Stories

• Contrasted with revolutionary anthems like France’s and Argentina’s, England's anthem is a “hymn to power” rather than resistance, making it hard to feel emotionally stirred.
  • Baddiel: “You can’t punch the air to a hymn to power because you can’t punch up while singing a hymn to power.” [03:09]
  • Stephen Fry: “For a small island, we were building an empire of trade and colonialism. … any exhibition of arrogance is simply not done.” [04:37]

4. Three Lions and the Embrace of the Underdog

• “Three Lions,” originally by Baddiel, Skinner, and the Lightning Seeds, has become a national football anthem because it resonates with English yearning and “glorious failure.”
  • Jonathan Wilson: “Oh, it’s so English. It’s happy, sad, mournful … a craving for something which you may or may not achieve, but the craving is the warmth.” [06:45]
  • Baddiel: “We’re probably going to lose, but somehow with magical thinking, not this one time.” [06:59]
  • Betrayal is woven into this fandom, with failure reinterpreted as intrinsic to English identity.

5. The Origins & Spread of Football

• The episode traces English football from folk traditions and village games to codification by Ebenezer Cobb Morley in 1863.
  • Gene Williams: “The simplicity of those rules was kind of revolutionary because it could be written on a side of paper and therefore it could be taken anywhere in the world.” [10:05]
  • Football’s spread is highlighted as a form of “positive imperialism”—a cultural export of which the English remain perversely proud.

6. Englishness vs. the Other Home Nations

• National identity and its assertion are deeply shaped by the relationships within the UK. England’s dominance makes it harder to be “proudly English” versus the easily claimed underdog status in Wales and Scotland.
  • Ellis James: “I would absolutely hate it and all the Scottish fans I know would hate it.” (on the idea of a unified UK football team) [13:00]
  • Harry Ritchie: “Oddly enough, I don’t want to be supported by English people. I find it condescending and patronizing.” [14:47]
  • Identity is constructed in opposition; Scots and Welsh relish the underdog status, while the English grapple with being “the power.”

7. Entitlement and Collapse: Early Disappointments

• England only slowly realized the limits of their football supremacy, with early exits from international tournaments and the landmark defeat to Hungary in 1953 serving as reality checks.
  • David Goldblatt: “This is the moment that the English football press … has to accept that England has fallen behind.” [16:44]
  • Baddiel: “But even then people refused to believe that England are shit. Sorry … that’s really what I mean.” [16:12]

8. 1966: Triumph and Complexities of Class and Identity

• The 1966 World Cup win resonates as both a culmination of old-fashioned England and the dawn of a new, more glamorous age. World Cup Willie—the first ever World Cup mascot—symbolizes the “cheeky” repurposing of imperial icons for a new era.
  • Stephen Fry: “The thing about England winning the World Cup in 1966 is not that they won the World Cup, it’s that they won the World Cup in 1966. It was the first kind of Cool Britannia, if you like.” [21:42]
  • Players like Bobby Moore and the Charlton brothers personify both class mobility and emotional reserve.
  • Gene Williams: “…Jack Charlton’s autobiography … We stopped at a transport cafe where I had some egg and chips … best meal I’d had for weeks.” [24:09]
  • The celebrated “deference moment” of Moore wiping his hands before meeting the Queen is framed as the essence of 1960s Englishness.

9. Images of Emotional Repression and Release

• Alf Ramsey’s stoic presence at the 1966 final is contrasted with the uninhibited embrace of the Charlton brothers, reflecting competing notions of masculinity and emotionality.
  • David Goldblatt: “The most English moment … Alf Ramsey sitting on the bench, literally unable to move. … at this moment of triumph, you want to explode, and this man just holds it all. … That’s such an English moment.” [27:38]
  • Nick Hancock: “Jack and Bobby Charlton on their knees, hugging each other. Go and find that photograph. It’s so beautiful.… liberation from themselves, from Mainz and Munich, from the antique masculine repression we are so often told is English.” [28:25]

10. The Legacy of Loss and the “Sixty Years of Hurt”

• The momentary triumph of 1966 is positioned as both origin and burden—the high point that haunts all subsequent failures.
  • Baddiel: “Jules Rimet gleams for a second and then slips away. The triumph of the past shines a light forward into the fractured future.” [28:57]
  • Sets up the themes for future episodes: binaries such as managers vs. mavericks, team players vs. individuals.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• David Baddiel: “Can football, and specifically the history of the English national men's team, answer for this fractured and disparate country? The difficult question of what Englishness is?” [02:25]
• Stephen Fry: “Because we rule the world, we mustn't look as if we think we do.” [04:37]
• Jonathan Wilson: “Among the fans, there's always a feeling of betrayal, like something really profound has been betrayed. … England is the greatest underachiever in world football.” [07:08]
• Nick Hancock (reading Jack Charlton’s autobiography): “…egg and chips with a nice bread roll and … it was the best meal I’ve had for weeks.” [24:09]
• David Goldblatt: “The most English moment for me in it is Alf Ramsey sitting on the bench, literally unable to move.” [27:38]
• Nick Hancock: “Jack and Bobby Charlton on their knees, hugging each other. Go and find that photograph. … liberation from … antique masculine repression …” [28:25]
• David Baddiel: “Jules Rimet gleams for a second and then slips away.” [28:57]

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Englishness and Football as Mirror: 02:13–05:41
• Anthems and National Myths: 03:09–05:00
• Three Lions and the Cult of Glorious Failure: 06:33–07:30
• Folk Football and Codification: 08:00–10:39
• The Empire, Rules, and Exporting Football: 10:39–11:57
• The UK as Footballing Quadruped: 13:00–14:41
• Scotland and Wales vs. English Identity: 13:00–15:24
• The Hungary Game and English Decline: 16:32–17:42
• Alf Ramsey and English Class Complexity: 17:04–17:53
• 1966 World Cup and Its Cultural Context: 18:35–23:21
• Bobby and Jack Charlton – Stoicism and Class: 23:59–24:55
• Tragedy and Resilience (Munich Air Crash): 25:08–26:26
• Bobby Moore’s Deference Moment: 26:53–27:08
• Ramsey’s Emotional Reserve and the Charlton Hug: 27:38–28:46
• 1966’s Legacy and Setting up Future Themes: 28:57–End

---

Conclusion

Episode 1 of "Sixty Years of Hurt" establishes football as a rich lens for understanding Englishness, reflecting its historical power, class complexity, emotional contradictions, and persistent sense of loss. From folk games to modern myth, from imperial hymns to underdog anthems, and from stoic managers to weeping brothers, this episode lays out the myths and paradoxes at the heart of English identity—on and off the pitch.

Next episode: Will investigate how football’s internal binaries—managers vs. mavericks, team over individual—further illuminate the story of England and its self-image.

Transcript

[Narrator]

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk.

[LinkedIn Ads Advertiser]

Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first but didn't live up to the hype? Like those $5 roses at a gas station? Or a secondhand piece of technology that breaks in the first 10 minutes? Marketers know that feeling. We optimize for the numbers that look great, impressions reach and reacts. But when they don't show revenue, well, that's a not so great conversation with the CFO. LinkedIn has a word for bullspend. Now you can invest in what looks good to your CFO. LinkedIn ads generates the highest ROAS of all major ad networks. You'll reach the right buyers because you can target by company, industry, job title and more. So cut the bull. Spend. Advertise on LinkedIn, the network that works for you. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a 250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com broadcast that's LinkedIn.com broadcast. Terms and conditions apply.

[Dish TV Advertiser]

Tired of overpaying with DirecTV? Dish offers a reliable low price every month without surprises. Get the TV you love and start watching live sports news and the latest movies, plus your favorite streaming apps all in one place. Switch to DISH today and lock in the lowest price in satellite TV starting at $89.99 a month with our two year price guarantee. Call 888 add dish or visit dish.com today.

[Stephen Fry]

This sceptered isle, this blessed plot, this England.

[David Baddiel]

Humor and ban.

[Stephen Fry]

Spirit and stoicism, Patience, kindness, tolerance, ease, self deprecation, irony.

[Match Commentator]

England have won the World cup here at Wembley.

[David Baddiel]

I have spoken all the while of the nation England.

[Narrator]

I think the idea of muddling through is definitely a very English idea to

[Nick Hancock]

have had the opportunity to serve the country I love.

[David Baddiel]

Englishness is obviously a fiction.

[Jonathan Wilson]

It's very, very deeply hard English to say. Maybe there isn't such a thing as Englishness. So when you say that, I think this guy's really English.

[David Baddiel]

I'm David Baddiel and for the history podcast this is 60 years of hurt, a series about a slippery subject, national identity. I'm a slippery subject myself, national identity wise, because I was born in America, my dad was Welsh, my mum was a refugee from Nazi Germany, and yet somehow I support England. Which is why I'm asking, can football, and specifically the history of the English national men's team, answer for this fractured and disparate country? The difficult question of what Englishness is? Episode 1 England vs the World

[Stephen Fry]

A

[David Baddiel]

good place to Start might be where international football matches start. That was the French men's national football team singing their country's national anthem. Les Marcier, written three years after the French Revolution, includes lyrics about how days of glory have arrived now that the people are massed against the bloody stained flag of tyranny. Elsewhere there's. That's the sound of the Argentina team singing their national anthem, written in 1813, three years after the May revolution. And that begins. Hear the sacred cry Freedom, Freedom. Freedom. Hear the sound of broken chains See noble equality enthroned. And meanwhile, we here in this country have. My point being, because most countries have had revolutions, most national anthems are songs of resistance or of liberation. We've mainly had kings and queens and an empire. So our song is a hymn to power. And the trouble with a hymn to power is it's not very inspiring. You can't punch the air to a hymn to power because you can't punch up while singing a hymn to power. Or as Stephen Fry puts it, for

[Stephen Fry]

a small island, we were building an empire of trade and colonialism. And it seemed to have been pushed into us that any exhibition of arrogance is simply not done. Because we rule the world, we mustn't look as if we think we do.

[David Baddiel]

So first issue, I guess, is why football? Why choose football as the mirror up to Englishness?

[David Goldblatt]

Football is singularly the most important cultural institution in the country when it comes to defining English national identity. What else is there? The Church of England? I don't think so. The Royal Family is British, right? And German. So that doesn't work. Parliament is British, you know, what is actually English? The English national football team.

[David Baddiel]

But if we are going to use football as our primary expression of Englishness, what about the fact that the team lose most of the time?

[Jonathan Wilson]

There's a huge English exceptionalism in England's sort of punitive self loathing. It's like we are the best at failing.

[David Baddiel]

A good point from sportswriter Barney Rone. Coming back to the national anthems, it's once again about how difficult it is to own your national identity. If your national identity is mainly imperial and powerful, what you need is to somehow create a new narrative, an underdog story. We're not creative enough and we're not positive enough where you frame yourself as not so powerful as losers hoping for one better day. And actually there is a story and an anthem that fits that version of England, which it turns out does chime with people who support England.

[Nick Hancock]

But obviously it would be very un English to refer to something so Self aggrandizing as a song that Eiko wrote. Although Barney does think that Three Lions is relevant.

[Jonathan Wilson]

Oh, it's so English. It's happy, sad, mournful. It's so English. It even reminds me of kind of Middle English verse, which is all about a craving for something which you may or may not achieve, but the craving is the warmth. So English.

[David Baddiel]

The reframing that Three Lions effects is that we're probably going to lose, but somehow with magical thinking, not this one time.

[Jonathan Wilson]

And it's really sort of bound up in ideas of betrayal. Among the fans, there's always a feeling of betrayal, like something really profound has been betrayed. And that's why England don't win. It's not a myth. England is the greatest underachiever in world football as a kind of men's international team. There's nobody with so much resources, so much history, so much ownership of the game who's won so little.

[David Baddiel]

We've established that Englishness is awkward to own because it's associated with power. So we found a way of celebrating our tendency to lose in order to reframe us as underdogs. But then we still feel betrayed because we still feel we should do better, we should have won more. That is the broken, contradictory, self lacerating story we tell ourselves. So let's start that story. Somewhere near the beginning, Henry VIII had

[Gene Williams]

a dedicated pair of football boots.

[David Baddiel]

Gene Williams, professor of Sports History at the University of Wolverhampton.

[Nick Hancock]

But with studs.

[Gene Williams]

Not with studs. We would think of them as very. Not even trainers.

[Nick Hancock]

Right.

[Gene Williams]

He was a fantastic sportsman.

[Nick Hancock]

You're actually saying he played football because football didn't exist as a codified game?

[Gene Williams]

No, he played a version of folk football. But we also know that it was a game of the people because there were a number of bans on football because certain kings and queens wanted people to practice archery because it was a more useful warlike skill. So those prohibitions tell us that the people wanted to play football.

[Nick Hancock]

Okay, so this is really interesting because by the early days of football, what most people think of is, you know, it's probably completely wrong, is that there was a sort of just massive game that two villages basically played with each other with a pig's bladder. And that was sort of like game

[David Baddiel]

that was two miles long.

[Gene Williams]

Yes, that's correct. So there are those Shrove Tide games which take place, as you say, over three miles between the Uppies and the Downies. There are things like the Ollerton bottle kicking where. Where the bottle substitutes for the football. And it's Actually a keg of ale. So whoever wins the keg of ale obviously gets to drink it.

[David Baddiel]

I would about this type of football. In fact, I'd like to see this type of football played in the Premier League. I'd like to see var about whether or not the keg of ale has crossed the line or has gone down the gullet of Oswald the pig botherer. But we need to get onto the beginnings of modern football when in a very English way, the decision was made that this anarchic carnival festival game needed to be controlled and codified into something people would go to every Saturday, even if it was always nil. Nil by a bloke with an absurdly Dickensian name.

[Gene Williams]

Passing from folk football into the modern era. We talk about the codification of football in 1863, obviously, Ebenezer Cobb Morley.

[David Baddiel]

Yes, Ebenezer Cobb Morley. That's who invented the rules.

[Gene Williams]

The simplicity of those rules was kind of revolutionary because it could be written on a side of paper and therefore it could be taken anywhere in the world. And it was broadly disseminated by people who came to be educated in this country and going back again so famously to South America, where there was a very Anglophile class in those countries, and also by the engineers going abroad and this kind of spread, this disseminated football and its simple rules. The English, I think, and the British have a love of rules.

[David Baddiel]

So this may feel like just another form of imperialism, but actually, don't forget, for once, the English British were not just bringing colonial rule and plunder of natural resources, they were bringing something good, football. So just a sidebar. The invention of football is disputed. China, from 206 BC, played a kickball game called Guju. But it doesn't matter. We feel that we invented the game and gave it to the rest of the world, and that is part of our malaise.

[Jonathan Wilson]

But I guess you could say that the story of English football is about ownership, that idea of belonging and keeping control of something. I mean, there are very few things in this country that haven't at some point been owned in a kind of ancestral, divine right kind of way. The England team's relationship with football and winning and victory, which is always the most important thing, is, as many people have put pointed out, essentially a kind of Arthurian thing, isn't it? It's the lost city. You know, it's the. It's drawing the sword from the stone and there's never any method attached to that. It's generally seen as an expression of identity winning and an expression of Regaining something that has been lost.

[David Baddiel]

Essentially this feeling is, it's our ball, we invented the game, we gave it to the world and now look how ungrateful the results are. We got round this feeling in the early days of international football by just not playing any foreign teams. England just exists in a kind of double think whereby they are better, even though unchallenged. The only fixtures England played for years were the home internationals, or as it was then called, the British Home Championship, which were games against Wales, Scotland and eventually Northern Ireland. But the British Home Championship establishes a key issue which is that international football in these islands is going to be a quadruped. Some England football fans, including me, have occasionally lamented this lusting after a world beating UK team, which could have included, at different times, Ryan Giggs, Kenny Douglas, George Best. But this lust is notably not shared by our co Islanders.

[Ellis James]

I would absolutely hate it and all the Scottish fans I know would hate it.

[David Baddiel]

Clear enough from Welsh comedian and host of the socially distanced Sports bar podcast, Ellis James. What about Scottish fans though, like the writer Harry Ritchie, surely he will be

[Harry Ritchie]

keen really, really hostile to the whole notion of it.

[David Baddiel]

This again might be to do with power. England has always somewhat annoyingly assumed it's basically a synonym for Britain. But if you're the country being swallowed up rather than the swallower, you feel differently.

[Ellis James]

Humri means sort of brothership or comrade. But Wales comes from Wallace.

[Nick Hancock]

Old English.

[Chris England]

Yeah.

[Ellis James]

Which meant sort of foreigner or that lot.

[David Baddiel]

Really?

[Nick Hancock]

Yeah.

[David Baddiel]

Oh, that's so amazing. I didn't know that within the United Kingdom we have this anomaly that Wales and Scotland can claim to be underdogs.

[Jonathan Wilson]

Yes, of course.

[David Baddiel]

Which allows you to be proud of your Welshness in a way that it's difficult for an English person to be.

[Ellis James]

I would also say that discomfort with being English is often a very middle class thing as well. The thing with the Welsh, I think, is that we were overwhelmingly a working class country. And so I. I would say that our attitude and our relationship to power is slightly different to the English.

[David Baddiel]

The anti Englishness here is not that surprising. Identity, as social media has now toxically taught us, is something that is often constructed in binary opposition, as in this is who I am, via how much I hate my opposite. National identity can be the same, at least for the underdog.

[Harry Ritchie]

You wanted nasty, violent aggression and you thought of me.

[David Baddiel]

Harry Ritchie again, I often get people

[Harry Ritchie]

saying, oh, it's not fair that you guys hate us because, you know, I always support Scotland. You know, it's a nice luxury that you can Afford if you're the dominant party. I always get a bit irked by it. Oddly enough, I don't want to be supported by English people. I find it condescending and patronizing. Yeah, yeah, I'll support your little team.

[David Baddiel]

Meanwhile, I remain confused as to why at the beginnings of football, the English, obviously because they're the power, wanted to control the sport, but still pushed for the creation of separate Welsh and Scottish fas and teams. Luckily, Ellis is here to explain.

[Ellis James]

England needed someone to play.

[David Baddiel]

Of course, that's the reason the FA

[Jonathan Wilson]

was founded in 1863.

[Ellis James]

The Scots, you know, in the 1870s,

[David Baddiel]

Wales a few years later. Basically we shat in our own kettle because if it wasn't for that, if it had only not been so high and mighty, then we could have had Gareth Bale playing for uk.

[Phil Wang]

That's what you're saying.

[David Baddiel]

For a while we kept the myth of n English football supremacy going by just not playing any other countries. But once we are actually contesting in tournaments, it becomes harder to sustain.

[Historical Narrator]

For English football. It wasn't a happy year. 17 star players set out from England for Brazil and the World Championships. They left as favorites. They came home with only one win to their credit.

[David Baddiel]

But even then people refused to believe that England are shit. Sorry, but there's been a lot of high flown language in this show and that's really what I mean. Finally, the self awareness of our shitness, the beginnings of the consciousness of our own English frailty on the international stage happens.

[David Goldblatt]

I mean, I think this sense of entitlement is best understood by looking at the Hungry Game 63 in 1953.

[David Baddiel]

Football historian David Goldblatt and England are

[David Goldblatt]

seriously flattered by the three. This is the moment that the English football press and eventually the wider English football culture has to accept that England has fallen behind.

[David Baddiel]

Meanwhile, England did score three goals that day, one of them a penalty. The name of that penalty taker is worth noting.

[Stephen Fry]

So Alf, you've had a very distinguished career in British football.

[David Baddiel]

Alf Ramsey may be the quintessential Englishman, not because he's a posh gent, but because he sits at the very nexus of English class complexities. He's working class, but he took elocution lessons to fit in with the FA's idea of what an England manager should sound like.

[Chris England]

The ultimate question came how do you think England will get on in the World Cup? And for the want of something better to say, I said England will win it. It became an embarrassment, I think probably an embarrassment to the players.

[David Baddiel]

He is reserved in the extreme. And yet this game, this crushing loss to Hungary.

[Liberty Mutual Advertiser 1]

And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting flat front row at a comedy show.

[Liberty Mutual Advertiser 2]

Hey, everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?

[Liberty Mutual Advertiser 1]

Oh, no. We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.

[Liberty Mutual Advertiser 2]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.

[Liberty Mutual Advertiser 1]

Anyways, get a'@libertymutual.com or with your local agent.

[Liberty Mutual Advertiser 2]

Liberty, Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.

[David Baddiel]

Bias him. Which brings us finally. Sorry, felt we needed a bit of context to the beginning of the 60 years of hurt.

[Gene Williams]

I am very pleased that this country

[David Baddiel]

is acting as host for the World Cup.

[Nick Hancock]

Most of our contributors, sorry to say

[David Baddiel]

this, are not young, but they are

[Nick Hancock]

mainly too young to remember much about the 1966 tournament.

[David Baddiel]

Although podcasters and comedians Nick Hancock and Chris England do recall one thing. The only thing I remember, and at the risk of sounding like June and

[Liberty Mutual Advertiser 1]

Clary, was that I had a World

[David Baddiel]

Cup Willie, which we did. We did. And I remember growing up with. Yeah, it was one of those in the house, me all level two World Cup Willie.

[Nick Hancock]

The World Cup Willie that you're talking

[David Baddiel]

about was an actual figurine then. Cuz I only. I'm aware. Teddy bear, soft toy.

[Jonathan Wilson]

Soft.

[Liberty Mutual Advertiser 1]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Nick Hancock]

But actually, World Cup Willie, the first ever World cup mascot, is, according to sports writer Jonathan Wilson, a significant cultural figure.

[Narrator]

What happens in 66 with World Cup Willie is so fascinating. 1962, you've got Dean Acheson, the US Secretary of State, saying Britain has lost an empire and has yet to find a role. And yet actually within four years, certainly England has found a role which is as this sort of hub of this great new cultural movement. Swinging London, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, David Bailey. It's a very quick repurposing of the iconography of Empire and World Cup. Willy, the first World cup mascot, is the absolute apogee of that, that the imperial lion is reduced to, transformed into this cheeky cartoon line with the Beatles haircut, the union flag waistcoat. And he's sort of smiling and he's welcoming. It's not this sort of terrifying imperial lion and he's essentially there to sell you tat.

[David Baddiel]

So in the tournament, England do a very England thing, which is to begin with an anti climax, a nil, nil draw against Uruguay. England, lower expectations. But then gradually we get better. We beat in the semi final Portugal and we get to the final against West Germany, which wasn't just a football match. It was a moment that, almost as it was happening, was being enshrined in personal and national memory.

[Stephen Fry]

One of the few occasions we were allowed to watch television. My parents were not great fans of it, but they sort of knew it was an important moment. And I remember a grainy, fuzzy black and white picture.

[David Baddiel]

Can Hurst get a shot in? There's a chance for Jefferson and he's hit the bar.

[Match Commentator]

It must be a goal.

[Stephen Fry]

Father poured a drink and you know, not for me, but for himself and my mother. And they sort of toasted England and said, that was rather wonderful, wasn't it?

[Match Commentator]

Shoot as you go by Hearst, you

[Stephen Fry]

know, the year before had been Churchill's funeral or something and that we'd watch that on television. That was probably the only thing we'd seen together on television. That the funeral of Churchill. And now this extraordinary moment.

[Match Commentator]

And there it is, the game is over. The Union Jacks coming up. The Reds have gone marching in. England have won the World cup here at Wembley.

[Stephen Fry]

The thing about England winning the World cup in 1966 is not that they won the World cup, it's that they won the World cup in 1966. It was the first kind of Cool Britannia, if you like. Only it wasn't so self conscious as to call itself that. And although the voices that were commentating were somehow still quite old fashioned. And a lot of, you know, the police in their pointy helmets. And you look at it now and it looks like another world, but it is ushering in just the beginning of a new one.

[David Baddiel]

Although how much football and specifically the England team are part of that 1960s culture is not straightforward.

[David Goldblatt]

So I think the 1966 World cup is a Janus faced moment. It looks backwards and it looks forward. The players are all born either during the war, maybe just after they've grown up under rationing. They're also skinny. I mean, it's one of the extraordinary things about looking at football players of the 1950s and early 1960s. And they all look like your great uncle. Everybody looks like they're 45. You know, there is not a scintilla of sex appeal. You know, there's no kind of erotic energy around any of these characters.

[David Baddiel]

Perhaps this is because football at the time still represented a very controlled idea of what England should be at a time when other parts of popular culture were breaking free of that. There is a player playing in England who is football's man in the cultural revolution, but he is Northern Irish Well, I think that's because I'm more really

[Gene Williams]

like so, you know, I'm a bit pop star.

[David Baddiel]

So where is the English George Best?

[Gene Williams]

Jean suggests Bobby Moore becoming England's youngest ever captain at the age of 22. And of course he was already being seen. He was already being photographed and appearing on the COVID of Vogue. He was being seen in the same places as the likes of Gene Shrimpton and Terence Stamps. So he's part of swinging London.

[David Baddiel]

But Bobby Moore is fairly on his own in being a bit of a sex God in this England squad. Perhaps we can offer up as a contrast the Charlton brothers. Firstly, Jack and his unbelievably stoic, no nonsense Englishness.

[Gene Williams]

I thought you might find this interesting. This is actually from Jack Charlton's autobiography.

[Nick Hancock]

Right, okay. On the Sunday after the World cup final, a friend who had a car drove us home.

[David Baddiel]

On the way back up the A1,

[Nick Hancock]

I said I felt like something plain to eat after all that luxury hotel food I've been having with the England squad. We stopped at a transport cafe where I had some egg and chips with

[David Baddiel]

a nice bread roll and do you know what?

[Nick Hancock]

It was the best meal I've had for weeks.

[Gene Williams]

I love that he buys his mum a house and she has never had indoor plumbing before and she calls the house Giorime.

[Nick Hancock]

How totally brilliant.

[David Baddiel]

Meanwhile, Jack's brother Bobby, our most creative player, a natural football genius. Bobby Charlton looked like the old Englishness. He looked like an Englishness that knew less about partying and swinging and more about suffering.

[Nick Hancock]

I think one thing most interesting thing about Bobby Charlton is maybe because of Munich, he always carries with him a slight sadness I think as well, which a profound sadness which comes back again to my idea of Englishness as being slightly broken.

[Historical Narrator]

So far we know there are 23 survivors after Manchester United's air crash at Munich this afternoon and were just taking off for home in poor weather when the crash came at 3:00'.

[Chris England]

Clock.

[David Baddiel]

It's worth remembering that although Munich was primarily a Manchester United tragedy, it was also a tragedy for England. There is a ghost team of players who died, who would have played at international level.

[Narrator]

I think Bobby Charlton fits exactly into that slightly old fashioned idea. He's the phlegmatic hero. He's gone through the tragedy. I mean I don't think he dealt with it at all. But he gets his treatment in the hospital in Munich. He goes back home to Ashington, to his parents house and he goes see the local GP, Dr. McPherson. And this is something that in most accounts Dr. McPherson's held up as having done something wrong here. But Dr. McPherson says to him, I was in the RAF, I lost mates all the time. It's awful, but you got to get on with it. And the reaction for us is to say, well, that's incredibly callous and cruel. But a, it's 13 years after the war, everybody has lost somebody. B, it's in a mining community where people were losing people all the time. I find it incredibly moving because the amount of death, the presence of death in those communities is so strong.

[David Baddiel]

For our mythic. Younger listeners used to the idea perhaps of footballers as bronze gelled multimillionaires, footballers used to look like they'd had a really hard life because most of them had Football as a vehicle of extreme social mobility, from poverty to celebrity. And wealth is not with us yet. And in 1966, that's clear. The class barriers that the game is really not breaking through yet are still radically visible.

[David Goldblatt]

One of the things we remember most is Bobby Moore wipes his hands on the velvet tablecloth before shaking hands with the Queen, who's got, oh, my God, white gloves on. And we celebrate the moment of deference.

[David Baddiel]

I guess if you want to know what Englishness is in 1966, in one image, you could do worse than a working class man, a defender, secretly a sex symbol, it turns out, wiping his hands on velvet before touching a woman of German heritage who he and we have been conditioned to believe is the epitome of Englishness. But then there's another very telling image at the end of the 1966 World Cup Final.

[David Goldblatt]

The most English moment for me in it is Alf Ramsey sitting on the bench, literally unable to move. The whole place is going wild around him and he literally cannot crack a smile. The man is so emotionally tightly wired, and that's such a kind of, you know, that version of Englishness, so emotionally constipated that even at this moment of triumph, you want to explode. And this man just holds it all. I feel so sad for Ramsay that that was his kind of emotional life and emotional space. That's such an English moment.

[Nick Hancock]

Yes, it is, but so is in

[David Baddiel]

another corner of the pitch.

[Nick Hancock]

Jack and Bobby Charlton on their knees, hugging each other. Go and find that photograph. It's so beautiful. Two brothers lost in a moment of liberation from themselves, from Mainz and Munich, from the antique masculine repression we are

[David Baddiel]

so often told is English.

[Match Commentator]

Germany too. And what a scene here of Wembley. The England players all going down on their hands and knees, the players hugging each other.

[David Baddiel]

On this Wembley turf, England's crowning glory in 1966 hangs over all our failures since. We watch and play and replay the footage now, knowing it was a moment, knowing that it's the beginning of the 60 years of hurt. Jules Rimet gleams for a second and then slips away. The triumph of the past shines a light forward into the fractured future. In the next episode, we'll go into that future to outline a particular football binary, a fault line that runs down the national sport managers versus Mavericks team players versus Individuals, workhorses versus versus Flair. And we'll find out what that tells us about Englishness. You can listen to all episodes of 60 Years of Hurt first on BBC Sounds if you want to be notified as soon as a new episode drops. Make sure you're subscribed to the History podcast on BBC Sounds and have push notifications turned on.

[Phil Wang]

Hi, I'm Phil Wang and this is a podcast to podcast trailer for a different podcast than this podcast that you've listened to to or are going to listen to, but nonetheless, I'm talking about another podcast that you should also definitely listen to. The podcast I'm talking about is Comedy of the Week, which takes choice episodes from BBC sitcoms, sketch shows, podcasts and panel shows, including my own show Unspeakable, and puts them all into one podcast. Maybe I'll trail this podcast on that podcast. Who's to say I'll do what I like. Listen to Comedy of the Week now on BBC Sound Podcast.

[VRBO Advertiser]

Looking for the perfect rental? Discover top rated stays loved by guests Rated highest by real guests through authentic reviews. These traveler loved stays are recognized by the details that matter most and validated by real experiences. Choose confidently from rentals you can trust. VRBO Book Now a vacation rental loved by guests.

[Liberty Mutual Advertiser 1]

And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual, even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

[Liberty Mutual Advertiser 2]

Hey everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?

[Liberty Mutual Advertiser 1]

Oh no. We help people customize and sell save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.

[Liberty Mutual Advertiser 2]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.

[Liberty Mutual Advertiser 1]

Anyways, get a [e-mail] or with your local agent.

[Liberty Mutual Advertiser 2]

Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty.