LISTEN: What It's Like To Report On Everton Football Club

John Keith is a veteran reporter and broadcaster who has covered all things Everton since the days of Harry Catterick and quickly had to master staying on the right side of the Blues' highly-successful but notoriously authoritarian boss.

Dave Prentice is a lifelong Evertonian who achieved his dream of reporting on his beloved Blues for the Liverpool Echo and has done so for more than 30 years.

The pair discuss their favourite personal anecdotes from decades writing and talking about the fortunes of the Club in an exclusive interview you can listen to below or here.

Tales include how Keith found himself locked out of Bellefield by a "furious" Billy Bingham and why Prentice had to hide from Mickael Madar when the Frenchman was leading the line for Howard Kendall’s struggling team in 1998.

“We were in Holland and he wasn’t happy with something I had written. He was going around asking for ‘David Princess’ and made it clear he was looking for me,” said Prentice. “Fortunately, he didn't know what I looked like and I had a warning so managed to stay out of his way!” 

Prentice, whose new book A Grand Old Team To Report: 45 Years Of Following Everton Football Club is available online and in book stores now, also tells of how Walter Smith had to lie to him about Nick Barmby, Keith recalls how close Bobby Robson came to the manager’s job at Goodison Park and both reveal the best Blues player they have ever had the pleasure to watch.

Listen to our entertaining chat with two long-serving local journalists, who have spent decades on the ‘inside’ of life at Goodison Park, Bellefield and USM Finch Farm, below or here