Is this Yorkshire's busiest retiree? ‘I followed Sheffield United player Trevor Hockey everywhere he went, then started playing football in my 70s’

Perhaps one of the region’s busiest retirees, the 73-year-old has packed rather a lot into the last eight years. He’s written his memoir, and a children’s book, taken up an allotment plot with his wife Denise, got his voice back on the airwaves after more than a decade away from radio, and joined a football team at the ripe old age of 71.

“For many people the prospect of life in retirement, away from the working environment, may fill them with dread,” says Mal, who lives in Sheffield. “After all, work gives you a reason to get up in the morning, and, if you are lucky, a sense of achievement and intense satisfaction. It would be so easy to find yourself without motivation once working life comes to an end. What are you going to do with yourself with so much time at your disposal? What will your purpose be? These were questions I asked myself.”

Keen to keep his mind active, Mal took up writing at the age of 65, devising a play about old age and dementia, and crafting a children’s picture book called Shubby and the Mammacs. The writing then led to one of his biggest post-retirement projects to date, inspired by the diaries of Sheffield-born actor, comedian and writer Sir Michael Palin. Reading them gave Mal the push he needed to compile his own memoirs – and A Mere Mortal was self-published in 2019. A second edition was then released last year, updated with tales from Mal’s retirement so far.

"This is no ordinary book of memoirs,” he says. “There’s no worldwide success in there. No medals. No chart-topping. No accolades. Just an average man, living a life of ‘almostness’. It’s a book about following your dreams, the occasional successes and the almost predictable failures.”

The book is an episodic account of Mal's life, beginning from birth in Gwent, South Wales. After a degree in French at Swansea University, he embarked on a career in banking, and then later went on to work with the Audit Commission, and with local authorities including Sheffield City Council. He also ventured into the creative industries, spending a stint running a photographic studio in Truro and, in his 30s, joining an amateur theatre group in Swindon, where he took to the stage in numerous plays.

Throughout it all, Mal has carried with him an interest in radio, which began in his early years, after moving to Gloucestershire at the age of four. “I had a really strong Welsh accent (at the time),” he recalls. “And kids being kids, they mimic you and just generally take the what's it out of you…I remember I listened to Radio Two, listened to that accent and I got rid of my Welsh one and the bullying stopped. That was it, my love for radio – and it continued...

"When I listened to the radio I would always try and introduce the next song coming on without crashing the lyrics just as a hobby...I could have joined the radio club at university but I was just too shy, too nervous. So it wasn't until years later that I went into hospital radio in Truro. And that's really where I got started.”

Mal has also dabbled in commercial radio and volunteered for some time with Sheffield Hospital Radio after moving to the city around two decades ago. His first interview once there was with professional snooker player Steve Davis. “It was supposed to be two minutes, you tell me which song you like and we'll play it,” Mal recalls. “Well, nine minutes later and we're still going me and Steve Davis and he picked three records for us to play on the radio show. So that was great.”

For 15 years though, radio became one of Mal’s “more-or-less abandoned hobbies”. That was until last year, when he joined the community-based station Crags Radio and now produces a two-hour sixties music show once a week. “It’s been a long time since I did any radio. But it's coming back to me gradually and I'm enjoying it,” he says. “I like the communication with people...and I enjoy playing music for people to sing along and dance to.”

Radio is not the only hobby that Mal has reconnected with during his retirement. Two years ago, he began playing football, a sport he was last previously involved in six decades ago. “When I was 10, I was a good footballer and my primary school entered me for the Gloucester Schools Trials,” he says. “But I was quite a sickly child. And the day before I was due to play, I sneezed and that was it for my mother - ‘You can't play football. You've got a cold’. So that was the end of my football career at 10. And I didn't play again until I was 71.”

That’s not to say Mal hasn’t followed the sport though, and he continues to this day to support his “beloved” Blades. He was first introduced to them long before moving to the Sheffield, as he got behind his cousin, the late professional footballer Trevor Hockey, wherever he went. Trevor was with Sheffield United during the same era as Tony Currie in the 1970s.

“Trevor introduced me to him one day,” Mal remembers. “We were in Swansea, I was at uni and Trevor was playing in a testimonial match with Sheffield United. So obviously I went along. After the game he took me down to the changing rooms and he was introducing me to people. He said, ‘Have you met Tony Currie?’ I said, ‘No, but I'd love to.’ And he was so proud to introduce me. He said, "he's over here in the bath’’ So I kind of hesitatingly shook his hand and then he got back in the water. It was really strange.”

It was whilst at United’s Bramall Lane ground a few years ago that a friend mentioned to Mal about joining an over-60s football group at Leisure United Sheffield Westfield. At the time, he declined as he was regularly playing tennis in North Derbyshire, but when a shoulder injury halted that, he went along to see what the ‘Silver Foxes’ was all about. “Within a month I was playing seven-a-side football, three touch, on reduced size pitches, and thoroughly enjoying a sport I had previously played some 60 years earlier,” Mal says.

I tentatively ask if he has anything else in the pipeline for his busy retirement. "I can't think of any more projects on at the moment,” he says. “The grandchildren take up a lot of our time, which is great – we love them. And work on the allotment carries on...We’ll be back watching the Blades soon, (I’m) still playing football, the radio station is still going strong and I’m trying to push the book as much as possible as well.”

“There was never any intention to wind down,” he admits. Well, there’s certainly no sign of that.