YET another former Hammer has sadly died – this time it’s colourful Cockney character Ken Tucker, who collapsed while attending a routine hospital check-up near his Southend, Essex home yesterday. He was 83-years-old.

A successful left-winger signed by Charlie Paynter from non-league Finchley, Tucker was one of the most prolific wide men in Hammers’ history, having scored a remarkable 31 goals in 83 league appearances.

The stocky-built entertainer – he was renowned for his ability to backheel a freekick! – made a sensational debut, scoring a hat-trick against Chesterfield at Upton Park in October 1947. Incredibly, he had to wait another four years for his next goal, as he played just 14 more first team games in that period!

As anyone who read our exclusive, in-depth interview with Ken in issue 33 (April 2006) of EX will testify, he was an outspoken personality who never minced his words. It was this no-nonsense approach that brought him into regular conflict with West Ham manager Ted Fenton and ultimately led to Ken’s acrimonious transfer to Notts County in March 1957.

Tucker, who once went on strike in his quest for a better pay deal from the club and on another occasion threw his boots at the manager, told EX: “Ted once said to me that all his troubles at West Ham were down to me. But if I didn’t think I was being treated fairly, I’d rebel and tell it like it was.”

Kenny Tucker will never be forgotten by all those who met him during his 10 years at Upton Park, for he was a larger than life figure both on and off the field. He inherited two shops – a tobacconist and another one selling confectionery and fancy goods - in the Barking Road from his mother Elizabeth and thus became one of the wealthiest players of his generation, easily identifiable as he cruised the local streets of East London in his flashy black-and-chrome American Ford Chrysler. In fact, he was the first West Ham player to own a car.

Tucker was so rich compared to his team-mates that he would regularly lend them hundreds of pounds to fund visits to London dog tracks and horserace meetings. It was not unusual for Ken to allow weeks to pass by before he would bother to collect his weekly pay packets from the club.

After he left the game, Tucker and his wife Joan continued to run their two shops until the mid-60s, when they sold up and became licencees of The Bell pub in Rainham, Essex. But they quit there after Joan and their daughter, Lorraine, were robbed at gunpoint while Ken was enjoying a night ‘up West’ at the Astor Club. They then retired to a newly built house at Langdon Hills.

Despite his long-running feud with Fenton that forced him to leave the club, Tucker remained a Hammer through and through. At the end of the interview he gave EX two years ago, he vowed: “I’ve lived West Ham and I’ll die West Ham.”

Our sincere condolences go to Joan, Lorraine and Ken’s son Raymond, who played for West Ham youths under manager John Lyall in the mid-60s.