Eric Cantona had already conquered English football, but Geoff Twentyman discovered that the Manchester United legend could command a room just as effortlessly.
The former Bristol Rovers defender and long-serving BBC broadcaster was asked by film director and Bath City supporter Ken Loach to host a Q&A with Cantona at Twerton Park.
It was an unusual setting for one of the most famous footballers of his generation, but Twentyman quickly realised he had something special on his hands.
“I'd been away on holiday and I had a message when I came back from my computer. ‘Oh, Ken Loach. Can you ring Ken Loach? Quite important.’”
Twentyman assumed Loach wanted some publicity for an event featuring Cantona.
“Before I had a chance to ring him, he rang me,” he recalled.
“He said, ‘Geoff, do you know Eric's coming to Bath?’ I went, ‘Oh yeah, I did read that.’
“And I'm thinking, you're going to say to me, ‘Can we publicize it to get a crowd in?’ And he went, ‘I'd like you to host a Q&A with him for me.’
“And I went, ‘Oh wow, yeah, do that with pleasure.’
“And he went, ‘Yeah, but you don't know when it is.’
“I said, ‘Don't worry about that, I'll clear my diary because, you know, it's Eric Cantona.’”
There was another reason Twentyman was keen to do the interview.
Cantona had appeared on BBC One with Jonathan Ross the previous evening, but Twentyman deliberately avoided watching it.
“I like to do my own questions,” he explained to Football Presse.
“I don't like to think, ‘That's what he said. And that's what...’”
When he arrived at Twerton Park, however, people immediately warned him that Cantona had been somewhat frosty during his television appearance.
“I thought, ‘Oh, okay then.’”
The venue itself could hardly have been further removed from the glamour of Manchester United's Old Trafford.
Twerton Park was the old home of Bristol Rovers and, by then, Bath City's ground.
“It's like a non-league football ground,” Twentyman said.
“It's very old and needs a bit of TLC and a bit of a revamp.”
But the surroundings did not matter once Cantona arrived.
Ken Loach introduced the two men, and Twentyman believes one detail immediately helped establish a rapport.
“Ken Loach introduced me to Cantona, and he said, ‘This is Geoff Twentyman. Geoff's played over 400 games professionally.’
“And I could see that moment where Cantona thought, ‘Ah, he's played 400 games.’ Obviously not the level he played at, but it kind of gave him some level of trust in me, I think.”
The event was supposed to accommodate around 250 people.
Instead, the room was packed.
“There must have been 300 people crammed in, and anywhere they could stand in the background, they were there,” Twentyman said.
And Cantona immediately took control.
“I admired him twofold,” Twentyman recalled. “A, because his English was so good, and B, he was genuinely humorous.
“And to do that in someone else's language, I think, is an absolute skill.”
Cantona had the audience completely captivated.
“He had the room in the palm of his hand,” Twentyman said.
“There were children, teenagers, mums, dads, all kinds of ages, and their eyes were popping out of their head, their mouths were ajar.
“They were like on every syllable.”
But Twentyman had one subject he particularly wanted to address.
Cantona's infamous confrontation with Crystal Palace supporter Matthew Simmons at Selhurst Park in January 1995 had become one of the defining moments of the Frenchman's career.
After being sent off, Cantona reacted to abuse from Simmons by launching a flying kick at him.
Twentyman decided there was no point avoiding the obvious question.
“The big question I wanted to talk to him about was when he was at Selhurst Park playing against Crystal Palace and Matthew Simmons came down the steps and Cantona went horizontal and, you know, kicked kung-fu in the chest.”
So Twentyman asked him the question that had been debated for years.
“‘Eric, let's go back to Crystal Palace, Selhurst Park, 19-whatever. And Matthew Simmons comes down and like, and you've gone over the top of the advertising board. Have you got any regrets about that?’”
Cantona paused.
“Yes, Geoff, I have one big regret.”
Twentyman took the bait.
“And I said, ‘Have you? What's that regret, Eric?’”
The answer was pure Cantona.
“With this impeccable timing, he just paused and he goes, ‘I should have f***ing killed him.’”
The room erupted.
“And the whole room, like you did then, the whole room just exploded into laughter,” Twentyman said.
“And he sat with a big smirk on his face, like the king at Twerton Park.”
For Twentyman, though, the story was about more than Cantona producing a memorable punchline.
It demonstrated why the best interviews are not necessarily about asking the most complicated questions.
The interviewer has to understand the person sitting opposite them, listen carefully and allow the conversation to develop.
“The most important point I want to make is, like, chatting with Eric Cantona is amazing, chatting with high politicians and all of that, but they're all ordinary people and you treat them with respect,” Twentyman said.
“You do your research, you listen and you chat.”
That approach became central to Twentyman's broadcasting philosophy during a career that stretched across professional football and three decades with the BBC.
He now passes that experience on to students studying sports media journalism.
“Never be wowed by anybody,” he tells them.
The Cantona experience offered a perfect example.
Twentyman had walked into a room filled with people desperate to hear from one of football's most famous figures.
But he did not treat Cantona as untouchable.
He researched him, listened to him and asked the question he genuinely wanted answered.
And the result was an extraordinary moment in a very ordinary football setting — one of English football's most famous personalities sitting in a packed room at Twerton Park, delivering a punchline that left the audience in hysterics.
For Twentyman, it remains one of the many reasons he considers broadcasting such a privilege.
Geoff Twentyman is author of "Top Man: The Geoff Twentyman Story" from Pitch Publishing - which is available here.
