Accidental interview leads to 8 million views online

Stuart Flinders, presenter on BBC North West Tonight, was out and about in Liverpool producing a vox-pop, asking passers-by what their memories were of a football match in 1967. He didn't expect to bump into a member of the team from the very match in question. Nor did Stuart expect the worldwide interest the clip subsequently got online - to date, 8 million views online.

It was one of those extraordinary coincidences you can’t wait to tell everybody about, but I didn’t expect to tell quite so many! I was filming a preview of the Merseyside football derby, which included a reminder of a previous match. In 1967, the game was played at Everton and, in an unprecedented arrangement, it was relayed via a big screen to thousands more fans at Anfield.

In Liverpool city centre I approached randomly selected members of the public, asking if they had any memory of the ’67 match. Were they there? Did they watch it on the big screen? One man smiled as I asked him about the game and answered: ‘I played in it. I was the goalkeeper for Liverpool.’ The man I’d stopped in the street was Tommy Lawrence, Liverpool’s goalkeeper through the 1960s, known affectionately, on account of his remarkable agility for a man of his size, as ‘The Flying Pig’! The chances of me bumping into any former Everton or Liverpool player in the brief time I was filming there were slim. What, then, were the chances of me finding one of the survivors of the particular match I was asking about.

The moment was included in my report for North West Tonight, watched by six hundred thousand. It was put on the North West Tonight Facebook and viewed by a further 1.5 million within twenty-four hours. The story was then beginning to be picked up by other websites and mainstream British media. First, The Independent carried a story about it on its website, then the Daily Mirror, Star and Express. Within three days, the moment had been viewed by eight million through the North West Tonight Facebook page alone and many more worldwide. You could read about it in Russian and Polish, Thai and Vietnamese. The video had been given Malay subtitles on one site. The Washington Post told the story and urged its readers to watch the video, assuring them, ‘don’t worry if your English soccer knowledge lacks, you’ll still be able to enjoy the happy accident that happened here.’

Why were so many people talking about it? Perhaps comments on the North West Tonight Facebook site offer an insight. ‘Even as a diehard Everton fan, loved this,’ wrote one. ‘The big smile on Tommy’s face says a thousand words,’ wrote another. Many of those touched were not even football fans.

This was not ground-breaking journalism. Nor could Tommy be regarded, more than forty years after his playing career ended, as a celebrity. Tommy’s son tells me the fuss about the encounter has surprised and delighted his dad, and the story put a smile on the faces of many people around the world. Isn’t that enough?

• Watch Stuart's interview with Tommy Lawrence on the BBC News website.