 TO sports fans worldwide, he was ‘Dixie’ Dean – sporting icon, legend of 60 goals . . . and a man who would have celebrated his 100th birthday today. But to Barbara Dean he was simply dad. While to Melanie Prentice he was grandad. And both will raise a glass to his memory today. The two lived and grew up with the greatest centre-forward in British football history, first in Bebington and later Upton. But while football fans recall a striker of pace, immense power, precise finishing skills and arguably the most vaunted heading ability ever seen in the British game, their memories are very different. “Obviously I realised that my grandad was a little different to other children’s at school,” said Melanie, now mother to two children of her own “because of the different types of people who would come to the house to visit him. “Bill Shankly would often pop in for a cup of tea and a chat – and that was when he was still Liverpool manager; Joe Mercer was never away from the house; TV camera crews were regular callers; while journalists would be on the phone on an almost daily basis. “So I knew he was a bit different. But to me he was simply grandad – and because we all lived together he was my playmate really. “He would let me get away with things my mum wouldn’t, although he was usually even naughtier than I was! “We’d have a laugh and while I couldn’t do anything really bad, we did cause a bit of mayhem. We were like partners in crime. “Like a lot of men of his generation he was a bit suspicious of dentists and a few times, when he had toothache, he’d ask me to sit on his chest with a pair of pliers and pull one of his teeth out. “Another time he asked me to tie a piece of string round one of his teeth and attach the other end to the kitchen door, which I’d slam to try and pull it out!” That Dean almost certainly never winced, is a given. Dean the footballer’s temperament was almost as legendary as his goalscoring. | 
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