Going through Wind and Rain for the final time

"The club is playing on that in their current advertising campaign where its says it's not a badge, it's a family crest. But you wouldn't want the ones who are running it into the ground at the moment as part of your family - they're more like the Addams family."

As we talked over a pint under the portrait of Shankly in the legendary Albert pub next to the Kop, he was equally hard-hitting in explaining the reason behind his decision to call it a day.

"In the end, it had just become a group of people moaning about things they have no influence over or can do nothing about. We were cracking funnies but it was still coming across as like: I remember the days when you could buy a loaf and a bottle of milk and still have change from sixpence or you could leave your door open blah, bah, blah.

"All that bollocks."

"I always swore when I was 20 that I wouldn't go that way. The Victor Meldrew syndrome of bad tempered rants.

"I tried, but . . . "

He was unrepentant too about the way he felt that the path his beloved club and football in general had followed since the fanzine's foundation.

"If I thought it still had some validity then I'd keep it going but I don't think that it has. Certainly, since last year, I feel as though I've somehow lost step. Maybe I've just got too old for it."

Almost perversely he brought out the final issue with two months to go with the Reds' season still unresolved and the potential of a proper final farewell to readers left dangling in the air.

"To be honest, I'd already decided to quit before Hicks and Gillett came along," he confessed "I started to lose the plot a bit when the manager spends £10m on one player and everyone shrugs their shoulders and say that's not much is it?"

He added: "Once they decided to sell the club I thought, well, we're in it now. We're on a path that's been set out for us. Everyone has moaned and moaned and moaned about investment. So we've got it and wherever this takes the club you've got to go with it. Otherwise, start with another club or pack it in altogether.

"The hardcore readers liked the less positive viewpoint on things but I think in times of struggle the fans in general want something a little bit more upbeat with reassurances that everything was going to be all right. But it wasn't."

To change tack was out of the question.

"The newer fanzines that have come through such as Boss, for example, have grown up with the way things have been commercialised in football over the past 10 years. But you can get set in your ways.

"I think back to the way the game was 20 years ago. And it was starting to get lost to us even then.

"Now you even get fans using the expression that "we're not exploiting the brand."

"And these are the fans saying this!

"What they mean, and should really be saying, is this is the club exploiting you. These people in charge are sitting back and thinking if these people are dumb enough to pay 40 pounds to watch a match they'll be dumb enough to pay a lot more."

"Another thing is that I grew up with Shankly finding players such as Keegan and Clemence from nowhere. And there were other players later such as Alan Hansen and Ian Rush. Now I've got to listen to people saying that a manager's been given £60m to spend on scraps."

Despite the exasperation, however, his fanatical support for the club could never die as was proved before Liverpool's extra time defeat to Chelsea in last week's Champions League semi finals.

"I'd been quite blase beforehand and said whatever happens, happens.

"But when the final whistle went, I was still completely gutted. The thing is that you may not even be in the ground but you're still going to be somewhere, pacing up and down, biting on your nails or putting your shoes on in a certain way because that is what worked the last time you won. All that hocus pocus - you can't just lose it."

What he has lost are the hours spent before and after the game when he and his team of faithful helpers - Barry, Billy, Mark and Chris - would hawk the fanzine from the four corners of Anfield.

Kelly's speck was the corner of the Kop and the Centenary Stand.

"Sometimes you'd be standing there staring into space for an hour on end," he recalled. "The worst was against Forest in '98. It was like standing in the shower at home. It just bucketed down before the game.

What made it worse was that it was the first day of issue, We didn't have a car that day and we were left with all these boxes then the heaven's opened. People were just legging it past you trying not to get wet.

"The best was the home game against Spurs in the 95/96 season when sales were at the peak. We sold 2,500 copies at just one match."

The other lows and the highs were expressed forcefully and articulately on the printed page of the fanzine and especially on Kelly's supremely pithy Diary Page which will soon be compiled into a book.

"The most uptight I got was about the anti-football of Houllier. Grinding people into the ground, getting a result any old way and then hanging on for dear life. All I got from Houllier for three years was well we won didn't we, so what's your problem? I think you are entitled to a bit more. I began thinking if a result is all that matters, well in future I'll just stay at home and watch Final Score or check the text or whatever and get it in black and white, ah there it is, one nil to Liverpool.

A pause and a laugh.

"Having said that, Houllier gave us one of the highs in the treble."

Another high was three years ago in Istanbul when Kelly temporarily conquered his fear of flying to see the Reds beat Milan in what has become lauded as one of the great games of all time.

"Even the comeback in that match would have been good enough for me. Even if we had lost after that I would have said just to have been there for that would have been great."

In the future what would be "great" for Liverpool FC is the following:

"I'd like to see one owner and a situation where we only charge our fans for a certain amount and no higher.

"I'd like us to go out and find our own players and not buy them off the peg. And I want see a style of play that gets people excited."

But?

"The reality is I think a lot of people are having to say I used to go to 30 or 40 matches a year but can't because I can't afford it anymore.

"I think that's disgraceful but you either go along with it and treat football as a soap and revel in the freak show, which it now is, or resign yourself to it all."

On match days now. though, he and other faithful TTWAR contributors such as the Red Faced Ranter, Prometheus and Devil's Advocate will simply sit and watch - reflecting, no doubt, that the golden age of football, like the fanzine, has passed away

As Kelly so succinctly rounded up as we downed a final Guinness: " I feel the same about football as I do with music when I ask the questions: Where's me Sex Pistols? Where's me Roxy Music? Where's me Velvet Underground?

"Is there anyone, anywhere, who's going to make the difference.

"And the answer is no-one and nowhere."