There is still a hint of a Newcastle accent when he talks, but Sir Bobby Charlton is Manchester United.
His brother, Jack, tells a story about the scouts who traveled to their family home in Northumberland to convince the pair to join their clubs. Jack went to Leeds. Bobby, he says, was interested only in United.
Last year, more than six decades later, as the south stand at Old Trafford was being renamed in his honour, Charlton said that "without Manchester United, I don't know what the hell I would have done with my life."
He is too modest to ask what Manchester United would have done without him.