An unmistakable voice: Graham Tatters on football, family and finding home in Moray

He may have lived in Scotland for more than half a century but there’s still no mistaking where Graham Tatters comes from originally.

In his Geordie accent he starts: “I was born in Newcastle in 1949. My dad was a long distance lorry driver. My mum worked in shops and pubs.

“In fact she worked her backside off after he left when I was about seven or eight.

“But it wasn’t a case of ‘poor sorry me’. It didn’t affect my life or my sister’s.

“Our gran used to live just across the road and I had an uncle who's about two or three years older who took care of me as well.

“I had a really good childhood and loved school.”

Graham was the chairman of Elgin City football club for nearly 20 years and, by any measure, sport has played a major role throughout his life.

Recalling his childhood, he says: “It was football, rugby, cricket, everything.

“You didn't just play sport at school. You played it all the time everywhere – any field, any lamppost, anywhere at all.

“You very rarely went in the house. Your mum had to call you in about half past nine, ten o'clock.”

Then, as now, Newcastle United football club were a central pillar in his home city’s identity.

Graham says: “When I first came up to Scotland it was strange to see some people were walking around in green and white scarves while others had blue scarves.

“In Newcastle you either wear a black and white scarf or you just don't support football at all.”

Graham joined the RAF as an apprentice in the same month that he turned 17 and did his basic training at RAF Locking in Somerset.

He recalls: “When you arrived there was a hierarchical system.

“In the NAAFI you’d sit right at the very bottom of the table and the others could jump the queues in front of you.

“Because you had full kit inspections you’d have your shirts, your towels and everything pressed and laid out on your bed. You never slept on your bed but underneath it.

“But at least for your first three or four weeks, probably every second night, somebody would come in and raid you.

“They would come in around two o'clock in the morning, tear everything up and throw it all around the place, so you had to start again.

“I suppose it was bullying and, when we became more senior, we put a stop to it, but looking back I think it was character building.”

The RAF gave Graham the opportunity to play a wide range of sports.

Besides football, cricket and rugby, there was water polo, diving, cross-country, shooting, fencing and boxing.

In fact he ended up winning the Victor Ludorum shield for best sporting cadet.

Having trained as a ground radio technician, he was based at RAF Henlow near Luton and would travel all over to update the communication systems at other camps.

At the age of 19 he was posted for nine months to Gan, a tiny island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, which was used as a refuelling points for flights between military bases such as Bahrain and Singapore.

Graham recalls: “Gan was the bottom island in the Maldives and it was absolutely stunning. Palm trees and swimming with turtles.

“The drawback for a young man, though, was that there were 500 blokes and just one WRVS woman.”

After having returned to the UK he eventually became an electronics operator aboard the Nimrods.

There was only one problem, and it was a major one: his chronic travel sickness.

Graham says: “I can't even be driven a mile as a passenger in someone else’s car without feeling sick.

“I think I did 2100 hours flying and I felt ill for about 1900 of them.

“In a Nimrod you’ve got the hydraulic fumes plus a crew of 13 and, worst of all, people were still allowed to smoke in those days.

“So you had guys smoking cigars, pipes and cigarettes, and it was absolutely horrendous.

“It becomes psychosomatic eventually. You start feeling ill even before you take off, while you’re still walking up to the plane, because you know you're going to be sick.

“By rights I should really have been chopped but, when I wasn’t vomiting, I was quite good at the job.”

By this stage Graham had been promoted to Sergeant.

In addition, he’d also met his future wife.

Damaging his knee while playing football, he was sent to the former RAF Chessington Hospital near London, where Paula was working as a physical training instructor.

He says: “Within about an hour and a half I knew I could marry her.

“She was going through a divorce at the time and I was going out with someone else, but we became friends and then the relationship developed.”

Paula left the RAF not too long afterwards and became an air hostess with British Caledonian.

The job allowed the pair to meet up on one occasion in Singapore during a three-month detachment Graham had to undertake.

He recalls: “She swapped flights with a Malaysian air hostess who went to see her boyfriend in London while Paula came to Singapore.

“She got into a bit of trouble when she got back but it all worked out.”

Graham was posted to RAF Kinloss during June 1973 and Paula followed him to Moray in due course.

He says: “Gordonstoun had started taking girls in and they needed a female PT instructor.

“Because it's a private school, you didn't need a teacher's training certificate so Paula applied for it.

“She was a 400-metre runner, a swimmer, an England trials netball player, a real sports star – and she got the job

The couple moved into the house where Graham still lives on Elgin’s Duncan Drive in August 1975, and they married two months later at Spynie Church.

Graham says: “I thought Moray was wonderful as soon as I got here. I thought it was fantastic.

“People take you for what you are.

“And when I played football you met a lot of people because the junior league was really strong then.”

Graham turned out for RAF Kinloss, then began managing a team called Bishopmill United.

His involvement with Elgin City started in the early 1990s.

He says: “John Teasdale got the job at Elgin and he asked me to come and train them. Then, eventually, I signed on to be his assistant manager.”

Over the years Graham has had several spells as either the club’s manager or caretaker manager.

In addition he also managed Lossiemouth FC where he found success in the Highland League.

Graham says: “I wasn't particularly tactical, but I could talk to people, help and motivate them.

“And I was a very good trainer. I used to punish them hard.

“In the Highland League if you were fit and had average ability, you would win more games than you’d lose.

“Mind you, we had some very good players at Elgin City. It wasn't just my fitness training there.”

Graham and Paula had three sons together – Stewart, another Graham and the youngest, Colin, who was aged just four when he drowned in 1984.

Graham says: “That really set me back. It happened on the same day that we opened Fitness & Fun, a gym on Elgin High Street.

“For a while I was really struggling. I think it was football that kept me going.”

Paula, meanwhile, threw herself further into her entrepreneurial activities.

As well as the gym, she opened Clancy's Hair & Beauty in Elgin along with her sister, and would eventually go on to have four salons locally.

Graham left the military in 2012 as a Master Aircrew, the highest non-commissioned aircrew rank in the RAF.

By that stage he’d already been in the post as Elgin City’s chairman for nearly four years, having taken on the role in December 2008.

He says: “The biggest problem is we never got promoted while I was there. But I'm proud of what I did at the ground.

“The infrastructure and the stuff that we did for the place itself – I mean, it's night and day. And it wasn’t just me – there was loads of help from loads of people, such as builders, electricians, everything.

“I think if you have a rapport with people and you show them that you care, then they'll do things.

He laughs: “What's that famous quote? That Kevin Costner film?”

[‘Build it and they will come’ from Field of Dreams]

“I liked the way that people wanted to do things.

“And lots of people are still down there at the club now, helping out.”

Graham stepped away in December 2023, six months after Paula’s death from Motor Neurone Disease, a condition she was only diagnosed with 12 days before the end.

He says: “There's nobody written a book about how to deal with something like that because everybody's different.

“I'm not bragging but I've got lots of good friends – lots and lots of lovely people.

“Everybody kept on ringing. I must have had five or six different people invite me for Christmas.

“But I couldn't get to a place where I believed that anybody would want to be around me, especially not at Christmas which is supposed to be a joyous occasion.

“As the chairman at Elgin I always used to walk around the tables and speak to everybody on match days, but I found I just couldn’t talk to people.

“So I just walked away and left. I've only been to watch two games since.

“I've got no feeling to go back – not at the moment anyway.

“I was with Paula for 53 years. It's a long time and it was a fantastic marriage. She was a lovely lady.”

At one point in our conversation Graham states that he’s lost his love for football, and barely even watches it on TV any longer.

But then our chat turns to Newcastle United and their 3-0 victory in the Champions League the previous evening.

Perking up, he starts analysing the performance of the Newcastle winger Anthony Gordon.

“I like Gordon. He’s quick and he can beat people. But then he starts cutting across the park … and all that does is close the space down.”

Then there’s Graham’s family in the shape of his four grandkids.

Stuart, a keen golfer, used to live in the USA but now stays just across the road from Graham in Elgin and has two daughters, Kylie and Regan.

Meanwhile, Graham jnr, a former Elgin City player, still resides across the water in the town of Charlotte in North Carolina.

Graham snr paid a three-week visit in September and will be heading back over to the States again very soon.

He says: “They adopted a boy, Alec, who’s awesome.

“Graham's got US citizenship two months ago and now him and his partner have just had a son as well. They’ve called him Skye.

“He’s going to have an American accent. One thing’s for sure, he’s certainly not going to sound like his grandad.”