Wallace Mercer: The Great Waldo knew how to put on a show

GRAHAM SPIERS January 18 2006

When news filtered through yesterday afternoon of the death of Wallace Mercer, my first reaction was one of sadness, quickly followed by a smile. Nobody's death should short-circuit the mourning process, and it certainly won't in Mercer's case. Yet the Edinburgh businessman and former chairman of Hearts was such a large, colourful, gregarious character, who packed so much into his painfully brief 59 years, that you can't help raising a glass to him.

With Mercer's departure, some of us are feeling the pinch of notable grandees of Scotland's capital city, with links to sport, being taken from us. In recent times the mercurial Brian Meek departed this realm, and now The Great Waldo, his old sparring partner in the Hearts-Hibs axis, has gone to join him.

Meek, a Hibs fan, and Mercer, the self-styled King of Tynecastle, had a few good-natured tiffs in their time. I just hope, wherever the two of them are, they're not already getting at it over the 1990 takeover business. Mercer, who at one point almost had an exclusive copyright on the phrase "larger than life", had been much diminished in physical stature in recent times, shocking those of us who only intermittently came upon him. Yesterday, he finally lost his fight with cancer.

The old impresario of Tynecastle deserves a rich obituary. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, the home of Hearts, with Mercer loud and self-aggrandising at the helm, was never less than an exciting old dump to visit. More often than not Waldo would be holding forth, very often being out on the pitch pre-match for some sort of souped-up announcement.

I remember, on one of my first visits to Tynecastle as a young hack, and with Mercer once more out on the pitch for some palaver of a presentation, a sports journalist of the time muttering: "It's incredible how the Hearts chairman never fails to transform these occasions into The Wallace Mercer Show..."

Mercer, of course, loved the press, and in the main, the newspapermen loved him back. There was almost something out of 1940s Chicago about the way Mercer, local grandee and city big-wig, would court the press, feeding them titbits of info about Hearts, and on some occasions even plying them with a bitter slug of his own Chateau de Tynecastle. Mercer was physically unmissable, charming, and highly likeable. At one point, when in the very prime of his success, he was evidently devouring such fine steaks and splendid wines that he developed a classic bon viveur's portliness. The truth is, it was hard not to take to Mercer.

Of course, his greatest hoo-ha, and the moment which cemented him as the great anti-Christ in the eyes of most Hibs fans, was his doomed takeover of the Easter Road side by Hearts in the summer of 1990, a classic piece of Waldo theatre which won him further fame and headlines.

Sixteen years on I can still hear his distinct, morally-aggrieved voice at a shambolic press conference. "I've won the economic argument but lost the social argument," said Mercer after, among other things, a set of twins called Craig and Charlie had slung their banjoes along to Easter Road and had found the crowd there quite happy to break into chants of "Mercer, Mercer, get tae f***!"

The bitterness towards Mercer dissipated, though he enjoyed getting his own back during a particularly purple – or maroon? – patch in the early 1990s when Hearts gave Hibs regular cuffings.

Following one such walloping, on a gloomy November night outside Tynecastle, I can still recall Mercer's cat-got-the-cream smile as he stepped forth into an unspeakably large car, the surrounding Hibs fans bawling every obscenity under the sun in his direction.

Ultimately, various business transactions, including the selling of his Hearts shareholding, meant Mercer was required to spend time in the south of France doing tax-avoidance duty. He re-appeared from time to time at Tynecastle in a cream-coloured suit and boasting a tan that you couldn't have got anywhere except by pleasantly exposing your highly-sated tummy to a Mediterranean sun for an unseemly number of hours.

I'm glad that Mercer, a decent cove, enjoyed the trappings of life, even if his span of years has seemed cruelly cut short.

Taken from the Herald