Though Len Shackleton, who passed away on 27 November, 2000, is best remembered for his amusing and eccentric antics, is it easy to forget that he was an exceedingly gifted player.

He netted 101 times in 348 games during a nine-year career as an inside forward at Sunderland and was arguably the most naturally-talented player ever to grace Roker Park, even if the club’s lack of success didn’t reflect this.

He was born in Bradford on 3 May, 1922. He was spotted by talents scouts during his schoolboy footballing days, but after a year at Arsenal as a teenager he was let go for being "too frail".

He returned to Bradford in 1940 and helped the war effort in a factory making aircraft radios. There he signed for Bradford Park Avenue for whom he scored an incredible 160 goals during six seasons. He also made occasional appearances for Bradford City - on Christmas Day 1940 the eager rookie played for Park Avenue in the morning and City in the afternoon.

His wartime feats brought him back to the attention of the scouts and in 1946 he was able to leave the coalmines he had lately been working in behind to sign professional terms with Newcastle United.

He announced his arrival at the club with a double hat-trick on his debut, a 13-0 annihilation of Newport County – his first three goals were scored in the space of two and a half minutes, an English record.

Shackleton’s trouble was that often he was too good – he would frequently outfox his own team-mates as well the opposition. Also, the crowd would tend to get on his back quickly if he wasn’t felt to be getting stuck in enough, but he just wasn’t that kind of player – it would be like asking Paul Gascoigne or Cristiano Ronaldo to help out in the defence.

He signed for Newcastle’s arch rivals Sunderland in 1948 for a record fee of £20,000, leaving the Tyneside club in acrimonious circumstances. He would later remark: "I'm not biased when it comes to Newcastle - I don't care who beats them!"

In September of that year he got the first of only five England caps. His inconsistency and unpredictability were probably among the reasons he didn’t get selected more frequently, but his pugnacious nature was the most likely sticking point.

Even after an ankle injury ended his career at the age of 35, he continued to be markedly impudent – one chapter in his autobiography, The Clown Prince of Football (1957), was headed "The Average Director's Knowledge of Football"; it contained one page, completely blank.

He would later become known as an occasional football journalist whose humorous observations and opinions made for compulsive reading. He never won a single honour, a few semi- and quarter-finals the closest he came to glory, but he undoubtedly deserves to be remembered as one of the games greatest entertainers.

Football historian Malcolm Hartley wrote of ‘Shack’: "Apart from the adhesive ball control and breathtaking body swerve, Shack could hit a ball. His slender legs could crack the ball like a Bofors gun."

He died at the age of 78 in Grange-over-Sands, Cumbria, having never fully recovered from a heart attack several months earlier. He was survived by his wife Marjorie.