Why did a City typist travel miles to follow her favourite wrestlers, what was it about Muhammad Ali that Peter O’Toole liked quite so very much?
In 1976, the Observer talked to some unlikely sporting superfans about what kept them watching.
The 89-year-old playwright Ben Travers showed a photo of himself playing cricket as a boy in 1896; the start of a lifelong passion. He had travelled thousands of miles to watch England play and his memory for long-distant matches and catches remained razor-sharp. That included a boyhood dream: seeing WG Grace score a century. ‘To hear him describe it is to look through a window into a sunny Victorian afternoon.’