The current Euro Football competition reminds me of the greatest day in English football, July 1966, when we won the world cup at Wembley in the final against Germany.

At the time I was working in a student holiday job as a barman in a pub on Villiers Street, central London. Saturday lunchtime opening hours in central London in those days were 11.00am – 3.00pm, rigorously enforced, so unfortunately we were collecting and washing glasses for 20 minutes after closing time, and the big match had started at 3.00pm. Pubs didn’t generally have televisions for patrons then, so we rushed upstairs to the staff television as soon as we could, to find that England were one down.

I was a rugby man rather than a football supporter, but the country had been captured by world cup fever, and I was goalkeeper for my college as well as for Soho in the London Sunday morning football league, (and some years later for St Briavels in The Wye Valley Sunday league),and I couldn’t help being carried away by the general public interest in this doubly unique event (England reaching a world cup final, and the match being played in England). After the early German goal England were soon back on even terms. After 90 minutes the scores were equal, and England’s two goals in extra time to win the match generated a sort of national ecstasy which lasted for years.

We bar staff were just able to see the match through to the end of the game, before rushing downstairs to serve the queue of ecstatic customers waiting at the door. Well, not exactly all the customers were ecstatic. The pub (The Princess of Wales), was directly opposite Charing Cross Railway Station, which was the London terminus at the time for the boat train from Germany. It was packed that evening. There was a German side and an English side of the bar, and fortunately they got on pretty well together. We had to make sure that the pub was closed by 11pm, so we rang the bell at 10.45pm expecting, if not some trouble, certainly some difficulty in getting rid of the punters.

But astonishingly the English and German customers seemed to get on well together, and formed into two national conga lines and weaved their way around the pub before disgorging onto the street at the appointed time.

I left the pub after tidying up time, to find the streets alive and packed with people celebrating. The England chant of eleven loud handclaps or car horn sounds, followed by the roar of ‘Engerland’ was deafening. My bus stop for my journey home to Hampstead was at nearby Trafalgar Square, which was crammed with celebrating people and hooting cars and an aura of boundless joy. I was waiting at my bus stop but was kidnapped by a car load of euphoric and noisy England supporters who insisted on taking me back to my place, even though I believe it was way off their route. We circled Trafalgar Square for a couple of times, with the horn working at full throttle, and took me home, the noisiest car journey I have ever experienced.

Can we look forward to similar celebrations if (sorry, when) we win this Euro football competition?