The super-fan even named his son Upton, after the old home of the football club
ANTHONY Pemberton still remembers the first time he saw a black football player on TV. He was five years old and watching Brian Moore’s The Big Match.
That player was Clyde Best – a striker for West Ham United and one of the first black footballers to play in the English Premier League.
“I saw a black player that looked like my dad or myself,” says Anthony, whose parents moved from the Caribbean to Cardiff during the Windrush era.
“He drew me to West Ham being black, with dark skin and Afro hair. It was like ‘woah’ because there was nobody else black then playing English football.”
That was the moment Anthony’s life-long obsession with West Ham United began.
Soon, his school friends started calling him “Westy” – the nickname that people in Grangetown still know him by 50 years later.
With his huge, booming personality and decades working in council-run children’s services, Anthony has made a name for himself in the community.
“You could just walk around here, and ask people if they know Westy,” he said.
And most people know exactly where he lives too – because his house is the only one in Grangetown painted in West Ham’s claret and blue.
“My house has been like this for 20 years. I remember when I first decided to do it, I did check with a few of the neighbours. I said ‘look, I’m going to do my house claret and blue, with the hammers and the irons’. No one cared, because I think they would all say I’m a great neighbour.”
Inside, he shows me the West Ham-themed carpet running up his stairs. On the walls are framed West Ham football kits and even his radiators are painted to fit the colour scheme.
While he doesn’t buy as much any more, he says he used to spend thousands of pounds on memorabilia and football kits for his son, who he named Upton.
“I’d go up to catch a game and go to the shop afterwards. I knew the manager there on first name terms and she’d always get me a personal shopper. She’d say ‘walk around with Mr Pemberton’!”
Until last year, his entire living room was painted sky-blue with claret-coloured skirting boards. Now replaced with a vibrant floral wallpaper, he decided to redecorate after a female friend told him it wasn’t very tasteful.
But mostly, he doesn’t really care what anyone thinks. “I’m a bachelor!” he says, booming with laughter.
His house often grabs the attention of passers-by and occasionally he catches people taking pictures.
When the US President Barack Obama visited Wales he got an unexpected knock on the door. It was armed policemen.
“They said ‘we’re from Essex, we can’t believe this house!’ I told them, leave your guns there, you can come in and have a little look around.”
Anthony is a single parent to a 16-year-old son called Upton, whose name is inspired by West Ham’s old stomping ground Upton Park. He gave him the middle name Brooking, after Trevor Brooking who scored the winning goal against Arsenal in the 1980 FA Cup final.
When Upton was christened, Anthony says: “Everybody in the church was thinking, typical Westy. There’s no kids named Anfield, Old Trafford or Highbury. No other guys are doing that, he’s unique.”
But despite being showered with all things West Ham since he was born, Anthony says Upton isn’t that much of a fan.
Now 60, Anthony has been to more than 100 West Ham games – taking the coach from Cardiff to East London. To this day, Clyde Best remains his biggest idol.
As I take pictures of him outside his house, at least two people passing by shout hello.
“I’d like to think that if you walk around Grangetown and ask people if they know Westy, they might say he’s loud and don’t shut up, but it would be said with genuine love and affection and respect.”
