A few tears and laughter, too, as Pilmar Smith — his vice-chairman in those roller-coaster years at Tynecastle — recalled the flamboyant side of his nature. On a trip to Aberdeen when the chairman travelled north with the team, the other directors made their own way. “Wallace didn’t like being on his own too much,” noted Smith. “So to keep him company he took the team’s bus driver into the Pittodrie boardroom and introduced him as ‘my director of transport’. Mercer was so media astute he knew his obituaries would begin, ‘Former Hearts chairman’, and then he would joke, ‘And it will go on to say he was the man who tried to merge Hearts and Hibs’.”
When his death last Tuesday, aged 59, was announced the obits followed the lines he forecast. But his contribution to football was far greater than the earthquake he sparked off with that unsuccessful takeover bid for Hibs in 1990. It was one of the few times his populist instinct deserted him.
Mercer originally bought into Hearts in 1981 to increase his business profile in Edinburgh but the one-time Rangers fan from the south side of Glasgow soon became the Tynecastle club’s number one fan as he rescued them from financial and playing disaster. Few outside Celtic’s ranks would have grudged him the league title which slipped from Hearts’ grasp in the last game of the season in 1986.
His greatest contribution was making sure that no matter how they played, the club’s name was rarely out of the headlines, generating interest which paid off with increased gates. Current owner Vladimir Romanov, another with an eye on headlines, could take a lesson from Mercer’s mastery of the media. For all the stories he set up, he never stirred up the storms that have greeted the many irrational statements of the Lithuanian-based banker.
Sometimes Wallace, dubbed the Great Waldo by friend and foe, could show a pompous side. He liked to wear expensive shirts with monogrammed initials and once, jacket off, he was involved in a row with the manager of a Dundee hotel when the Hearts squad’s pre-match meal didn’t match the standards he felt was required. “Do you know who I am?” he enquired of the manager, and for once was floored by the reply: “No, and judging by the need for initials on your shirt neither do you.”
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Mercer and his successor, Chris Robinson, fell out after the handover of power. They disliked each other intensely, and Mercer gave him the nickname ‘The Pie Man’, as Robinson was boss of a catering firm. Mercer launched a court action to get back his seat after he alleged he had been deprived of his place in the Tynecastle directors’ box. Typically, when he won his case he rarely used it.
He was a generous host; legend had it he never tasted a bottle of wine under £10 and he was just as expansive when being entertained. It was a tribute to him yesterday that old battles were forgotten when Hibs’ representation at his funeral included Sir Tom Farmer, chairman Rod Petrie and former chairman Douglas Cromb.