Along the way he became king of the lads: a poster boy for hedonism but with traces of street poet.
Pritchard, by his own reckoning, was too young for the Britpop moment, which "had all curdled" by the time he reached his teens, but he was certainly aware of the label and with all its associations, "the lads' mags and beers that came along with it".
With their tight jeans and updated teddy-boy styles, the four gaff lads exude rough sex: they could have walked straight out of the Smiths's "Rusholme Ruffians" from the album Meat is Murder.
"They are good group of lads but our form has been up and down," he said.
We went to a bar, shared one Bacardi and Coke and got chatted up by some lads from Preston.
I am lucky that when I arrived as manager I inherited a good group of lads".
"I nearly killed him in the tunnel," wrote Crerand, "but a couple of security lads got in the way and held me back.
The lads were beautiful, there's an honesty there.
Seeing the lads leering in that domineering row at the front of the stage like they used to sounds tempting.
For four months after the "glorious twelfth" of August each year, wealthy sportsmen pay up to £3,000 a day to stand with a gun on private moorland while beaters – usually farm workers or local lads – flap and shoo grouse towards the shooters' sights.
In fact, the great unwashed were constantly renewing the High Arts and some of the finest practitioners were actually ordinary lads (this was the Seventies) from similar backgrounds to mine.
