Cooking the books at Norwich

There's something about grainy black and white images that convey a message of purity, almost as if the mere fact that they haven't been digitally enhanced means that this was really the way it was. Times were different back then, that's for sure, and a couple of football-related documentaries mid-week couldn't have brought home the message any clearer.

In the splendid Football Stories series on Channel 4, old footage of the Charlton brothers, Bobby and Jack, much of it in black and white and some of it in that primitive Technicolor that made everything seem brighter than it actually was, added an authenticity to a footballing tale that was far removed from the one that was portrayed on UTV some 24 hours earlier where the suspicion that wine-sipping suits have infiltrated England's tribal culture was given further credence.

Ooh, Aah, Delia on Wednesday night followed the trials and tribulations of celebrity cook Delia Smith, a director of Norwich City. Delia has sunk some £4 million of her own money into the club and even postponed working on a new television series and another cook book so that she could devote her time and energy into transforming the club's fortunes.

We saw Delia entertaining the sports editors of the local papers (who, she felt, were too hard on the team) with wine and fine food in the boardroom at Carrow Road. We saw Delia and friends sitting in the private jet sipping wine and eating sandwiches (cucumber?) prior to a flight for an important early-season match.

We saw Delia getting a tour of Newcastle United's ground with its new grandstand, modern lifts and swanky trophy room and promising, jokingly, to Bobby Robson that she'd buy the club as a feeder club to Norwich. We saw her fight back the tears when informed that Bryan Hamilton had resigned as manager after a disastrous start to the season.

Delia is obviously a passionate Canaries fan - "She's tough and ruthless, not all sweetness and light," insisted her legal adviser at one stage of the programme - who has backed up that fanaticism with her own money, but the image of modern corporate football was a world away from the footballing life that the Charlton brothers were born into.

When England's most famous footballing brothers were playing in the World Cup semi-final in 1966, their miner father was working two miles underground in the pit. The BBC heard of this, and rebroadcast the match especially for him. Yet, the mere fact that he had worked during one of England's most important matches ever, with his own two sons pivotal to the team, brought with it an image of honesty and integrity that belongs to a different era.

The story as related to us worked mainly because the two brothers were so different. Bobby, we were told, was "naturally gifted, (who) glided effortlessly around the pitch," while Jack was "ruthless, uncompromising" whose life revolved around "stopping others playing the beautiful game".

Tommy Docherty had another way of analysing the two. Jack was a "pie and pint" man, and Bobby was "more elegant, more happy in the Savoy Hotel having a meal." It was a simplistic analysis of the two brothers, but the nub of the story was really how different they were . . . and how they had grown further and further apart as the years went on.

That was the sad part. These days, they hardly ever talk to each other, much of it stemming from Jack's criticism in his autobiography of his brother's failure to visit their mother more frequently prior to her death. At the funeral, we saw footage of the four Charlton boys carrying the coffin. Noticeably, Jack and Bobby were on different sides of the casket. The insight into the family was given to us by another of the Charlton brothers, Tom. He referred to them as that "daft family, the Charltons" at one stage, in attempting to enlighten outsiders. But he informed us of how Jack was "the apple of mother's eye". And when he got his bonus for winning the World Cup, Jack bought a new house - named Jules Rimet, with the house plate made by Tom down the pits - for his parents.

The road to that World Cup win in 1966 had come by vastly contrasting routes for the two brothers. Bobby signed for Manchester United - "the Hollywood of football", we were informed by Harrg Gregg - and was part of the Busby Babes, with all the tragedy and glory, that went with it. Jack signed for Second Division Leeds United and spent two years sweeping the terraces and cleaning boots before making it onto the first team. When he got the call-up to the England team, he even queried manager Alf Ramsey as to why he had been selected.

When Jack went around to the Manchester United dressing room to tell them of his elevation to the national squad, Bobby's reaction was low key. "Congratulations, great," he told his older brother.

But many believed that Bobby had changed after the Munich air disaster in 1958. "Survivor's guilt", is how Tom Charlton described it, while an actor's voice read an extract from Jack's book explaining how "our Robert stopped smiling, a trait that continues to this day" after Munich. When Manchester United reached the European Cup final 10 years later, Bobby was made captain for the night. He scored twice and was the team's hero. He was so emotionally shattered by the experience, however, that he spent the night in his hotel room and missed the team's celebration party downstairs.

It was only when the two moved into management that Jack emerged from his brother's shadow. They both retired from playing on the same day, and moved into management: Bobby with Preston, Jack with Middlesbrough. But Bobby preferred to play head tennis with the apprentices - management was a "bit of a chore", explained Mark Lawrenson, who was then on Preston's books - while Jack revelled in it all. At season's end, Preston were relegated; Middlesbrough were promoted. That finished Bobby's managerial career, but Jack went onward and upward. He had spells with Sheffield Wednesday, Newcastle United and of course the Republic of Ireland.

He operated without contracts. "The day you don't want me is the day I'll leave," has been his managerial motto, and invariably he has stuck by it. The programme touched in a schmaltzy way on his career as Ireland manager, of how Ireland had a new patron saint but the one grievance he carried with him was the failure of the English FA to even respond to his letter of application for the England job.