There’s red boots, terrible egos and attention- seeking haircuts…then there’s the one and only Billy Bonds

Billy Bonds is a living example of how hard work and “graft” earns its rewards and as a result he is now ready take take his place as a Hammers immortal when the East Stand is officially opened in his name on Saturday evening.

And in an interview with The Mirror‘s Darren Lewis he reveals how his Dad and the Hammers fans have driven him throughout his 72 years.

He explained: My dad was a grafter. He wanted me to learn a trade because he said, ‘If you don’t make football, son, you can have a trade.’

“So we went to see Frank Hill, the manager at Charlton where I was playing. Frank got me a job learning fitting and turning at Stones Engineering, across the road at Charlton.

“I’d bike all the way down from Eltham, clock on at eight in the morning, clock out at six at night, and it was horrible. It was boring. I used to go to the toilet a dozen times a day, just to get out of the way. You understand what real life is. It makes you realise that is people’s livelihoods.

“I said to my dad, ‘No, I want to go back to football, Dad!’

“I also did a bit of window cleaning. My dad had a window cleaning round by day and did night work at a bus garage. On the window cleaning round he’d do the tops and I’d do the bottoms. Just to make a few quid. You’d do all that, but it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

“You think to yourself, ‘I’m getting money for something I’d do down the park.'”

“I had chances to go abroad,” he said. “I could have gone to Portland (in America) under Terry Hennessey and I could have gone to China. I probably would have got double (the money) going out there but I’d never have done that with my kids. They were in school and it wasn’t worth doing that with them.”

Instead, Bonds stayed to write his name into the history of the club – and English football.

“I know West Ham’s fans helped me,” he said.

On Saturday evening the pride will be immense but Dad will take first place in his mind as he says: “He’d have loved it. Like when I had that window cleaning round then I became a footballer and a little bit famous. He used to walk round and I’d see his chest puff out and the old ladder on his shoulder.”

Bill meanwhile will have reached the top rung of his ladder – it gets no better than that.