Tom Watt was an original cast member of BBC soap opera EastEnders, playing Lofty Holloway in the mid-1980s. As a sports journalist and broadcaster, he has also been on Talksport, Arsenal TV and BT Sport and has also written a number of sports books including ‘The End’ about the North Bank at Highbury, ‘My Side,’ David Beckham’s autobiography and ‘Arsenal And After’ with Paul Davis.
When did you start supporting Arsenal and why?
I started supporting Arsenal in the mid-1960s.
It was my local club, I grew up in Holloway, 15 minutes walk away from the ground.
It was coming off the back of the last very successful Tottenham team, the ’61 Double team, and everybody around me was either Arsenal or Spurs.
My family weren't into football at all. My old man liked cricket and my mum was American, so her sport was probably baseball.
But my Dad was teaching at Holloway School, which was a big, big football school in Islington at the time, and there were Arsenal connections there.
Bob Wilson was on the staff, because he was still an amateur in the mid 60s, even though he'd signed for Arsenal.
Charlie George was at Holloway School and there was Terry Burton as well.
It didn’t take long for my Dad to become a big Arsenal fan, as did my mum eventually. I sort of handed it (Arsenal support) up to the family really.
What was your first Arsenal match?
I haven't got a clue, but it was sometime in 1965-66 season.
And I'll be honest with you, for the first year or so it was everything else around the games, not the football, that I remember.
Everything around the football absolutely got me more than the game itself.
My old man and I would walk down to Arsenal and the Clock End was the first turnstile we'd come to, so that's where we started watching from.
Everybody having a beer, having a smoke, swearing all the time? And that was it. I was hooked.. And Highbury….what a place to go and watch football! Just the most amazing, amazing place.
To be honest, the atmosphere when I started going wasn’t the best. There was quite a lot of moaning going on because we hadn't won anything since 1953.
The team was struggling and the only thing we ever won was Quiz Ball, a footballers’ quiz show on the BBC. Ian Ure was really good at that. Better than he was at centre half, anyway!
I think we made quite a good start to the 66-67 season and then the next year we ended up playing Leeds in the League Cup Final. I remember that really well, going to Wembley for the first time.
Who was your first Arsenal hero and why?
There were a couple really. The first was John Radford.
I loved the fact that he was a centre forward who played with number seven on his back. I think John did start playing wide on the right, which is probably why he hung on to that number.
He was so big, so strong, so quick. If we were going to win games, the chances were John Radford would need to score the goals to do it.
Playing football in the street or at school, I was always going to be John Radford. If only! He had so much courage as a footballer.
The other one was Jon Sammels, a lovely man and a wonderful midfield player.
He always scored his goals from 20-25 yards, a graceful, elegant footballer.
But when things weren't going well, he was always the player that got stick from the crowd. Some of the abuse wasn't great, actually.
The fact that other people standing around us used to give him stick made me and my dad stick up for him even more.
Every supporter of every club, you just want to see people putting in a shift. There was something about the way Jon played that made it look like he wasn't doing that. But it was just his style: he was a very graceful footballer.
It came to a head in 1970 when we were losing at home, to Cologne, I think. Jon got substituted and the crowd kind of turned on him and he gave the crowd the V's. It was a bit like Granit Xhaka, but Jon didn't get the support Granit did.
As I understand it, he went to see Bertie Mee the following day. Bertie told him to find a new club. He went off to join Leicester City and did really well for them.
I've spoken to Jon since and I know that really hurt. He was a homegrown boy, he has come up through the ranks with Peter Storey, Peter Simpson, Charlie George, John Radford, George Armstrong: all these young players who grew up as Arsenal players.
Who is your favourite ever Arsenal player and why?
If you ask me who's the best Arsenal player then that's easy. That was obviously Liam Brady. Until Dennis Bergkamp turned up. Dennis is the best player I've ever seen in an Arsenal shirt. Liam says the same.
But a favourite? There are so many. You get to a certain age and you're lucky enough to see entire careers and those are the players who stick with you.
Players like Brady, David Rocastle -- God rest his soul -- and Tony Adams. I do think there's something, particularly at Arsenal, where when we've had successful teams, we’ve always had a core of homegrown players.
Now it’s Bukayo Saka and Emile Smith-Rowe and Eddie Nketiah – Arsenal in their blood, players you have a connection with. Seeing them come through is special.
What’s your biggest Arsenal regret/disappointment?
The one that stands out is the Champions League. Final in 2006.
I went to every game, home and away in that in that Champions League run.
When Jens Lehmann saved the penalty at Villareal, I just thought This Is Us! We’re going to win this thing!
It was an amazing night in Paris. We'd come off the back of saying goodbye to Highbury and there was a massive thunderstorm before the game.
Then there was the sending off, Sol (Campbell) scoring and Thierry Henry having two chances to make it 2-0 which 99 times out of 100 he would score from. But he’d probably run his legs off: we were a man down and everybody was having to chase so hard.
That was a heartbreaker and I'm still not sure about Barcelona's goals. I can't bring myself to watch that game back.
We played really well and we would have been worthy winners because that was a great team.
That was The Invincibles’ chance to cap it all, and who knows what might have happened to the club if we’d won that?
What is your favourite Arsenal memory (away from the pitch) and why?
I've been lucky in that I've done quite a bit of work around the club, be that presenting the old Arsenal TV or doing Q&As with ex-players before games.
You know, I grew up watching the team that won the Fairs Cup in 1970 and the Double in 1971, people like Bob Wilson, Pat Rice, Sammy Nelson. Frank McLintock, Eddie Kelly, Peter Storey, George Armstrong. I was 15 watching them scale the heights.
In the late 1980s I was doing EastEnders and we had a charity football team called the Walford Boys Club which was mostly actors and a couple of ex-pros.
At the same time there was an Arsenal vets team and I can't remember quite how it happened but even though I wasn't actually old enough at the time to officially qualify as a vet, I was so useless they let me play. Like off a handicap. So, if my team didn’t have a game, I would go and play for the Arsenal vets.
From a boy growing up watching all these players, I ended up lining up in a back four with Pat Rice, Frank McLintock and Sammy Nelson, wondering what I’d done to deserve that.
They say never meet your heroes, but they were just the most fantastic human beings. Even forgave my lack of ability.
Eventually the Arsenal vets and the Walford Boys Club came together as the Arsenal charity side. That’s been going for 35 years now.
What is your favourite ever Arsenal match?
The obvious one is 26th of May 1989 but I've been very lucky.
I've seen us win the league at Anfield, win it at White Hart Lane twice and at Old Trafford. I was in Copenhagen for the ’94 Cup Winners Cup Final.
But I think there's a thing when you're a teenager. If you get hooked on football then, start going to games on your own, I think the things that happen then really stick with you forever.
I did a Q&A with Nigel Winterburn before the Fulham game and I was just looking around and I could tell some of the guys had been going to Arsenal since they were kids just like me. Lifetimes watching Arsenal
I think that my most memorable match probably is still the second leg of the Fairs Cup Final against Anderlecht in 1970.
Even though I've had nights and afternoons, which were probably as spectacular, as exciting, that one is still the one.
We were 3-1 down to what was, in effect, the Belgian national team, after we’d knocked out Ajax in the semi-finals, who went on to win the next three European Cups in a row, by the way.
It was pouring down rain and me and the old man turned up on the night, got in and stood on the Clock End.
Eddie Kelly scored in front of us and that meant that we needed one more goal to win it. After Eddie scored, the crowd and the team were together, like a force of nature.
And then John Radford scored second half, in front of the North Bank and Jon Sammels scored the third.
The atmosphere was incredible, just like it is right now at the Emirates for every single home game.