Jonny Dexter’s life has seen him be a ‘forward thinking’ optician who opens his store up to the customer, someone with an outlandish eye for fashion at a time when such taste may have been reviled and a man who has rubbed shoulders with, and treated, some of England and Liverpool’s football legends.
Born in Liverpool in 1950, Dexter spent his childhood abroad due to his father’s work. He was raised in Australia and New Zealand and travelled a great deal in his formative years before returning to Merseyside in 1968. He then went to Manchester University to study optometry and follow in his family’s footsteps.
‘It was a family occupation,’ says Dexter, former owner of Batty and Dexter Opticians in Liverpool. ‘My father was an ophthalmologist by trade and my older brother is also an optician.’
But Dexter’s life would turn out to be far different from your typical optometrist. After buying Batty’s Opticians with his brother in 1973, he went on to develop very close relationships with some of Liverpool Football Club’s doctors in the 1980s and helped establish an eye health agenda as one of their priorities.
‘If you spend all these millions of pounds buying a player, and they do, you need to do all of these medical inspections to ensure they are physically perfect,’ says Dexter. ‘And a lot of the time the vision and the eye health are overlooked. Vision is so important for footballers. When they’re in the game they need good visual awareness in order to pass the ball and see other players clearly. It was something I suggested to them as visual awareness is so vital.’
While Dexter, a modest and ‘understated’ man according to his close friend and famous sports journalist Bob Harris, does not claim to have influenced the club to such a degree, he did help drive eye care up the health agenda at Liverpool FC, to the extent where players would regularly see him for eye exams as part of their health checks.
Harris, a journalist of some fame and one with many connections through his work, formed a strong relationship with Dexter when he stayed in Liverpool to cover sporting events.
‘I used to stay at the old Holiday Inn, it became my Liverpool home,’ says Harris. ‘We all used to meet in the bar after games, as teams did in those days, and a constant factor throughout that time was Jonny.
Ian Callaghan MBE, record holder for most Liverpool appearences and winner of most major honours in the game, including a World Cup in 1966, and Jonny Dexter in 1977. Two days later Callaghan flew to Rome and won the European Cup for Liverpool
‘We became very friendly and during those years he made me many, many glasses. I became known for them. I’ve kept a lot of the really good old ones as they’re great memories for me. I was first to wear multi-coloured glasses, even before Elton John. My glasses were outrageous.’
Harris says that even though some people ‘used to take the piss’, he would regularly wear glasses that Dexter had sourced for him, often displaying a style and design that would seem acceptable now, but which, at the time, were outlandish and bold.
Dexter would source frames from various suppliers before glazing them in his on-site lab in Liverpool and giving them to Harris. ‘I think he got them from around the world. They were very distinctive,’ says Harris.
‘I introduced Jonny to friends of mine, one of whom was Bobby Robson,’ he explains.
The three then developed into close friends. Robson even dedicated his first autobiography, Against the odds, which he co-authored with Harris, covering the 1990 World Cup in Italy to Dexter.
‘Can you imagine that?’ asks Karl Spinks, current co-owner of Batty and Dexter. ‘The England manager and football legend dedicating his autobiography to Jonny.’
This relationship then took Dexter deeper into the world of professional football, treating some of the game’s biggest stars and managers.
‘Jonny was not only close to the Liverpool boardroom but just as close to the dressing room and the players,’ says Harris. ‘He and Graeme Souness have remained friends for many years after I introduced them. Any problems with their eyes or sight and the players would automatically seek out Jonny for advice, as he did for Souness after an injury while playing.’
Bob Harris with ex-England manager Sir Bobby Robson with one of the books they wrote together
‘He had a great reputation,’ Harris adds, ‘because in those days, and I can say it because I’m not an optician, opticians charged outrageous prices for spectacles and the more different they were, the more they charged.’
Dexter says his position never saw him try to extract the greatest amount of money from those he provided cared to, even though they certainly had the money. ‘Very often we made suggestions about what they should buy, but we didn’t exploit my role as a football club optometrist. My main concern was the welfare of the players. I wasn’t there to set up shop on the training ground,’ Dexter says.
‘They had to be happy with their vision and we didn’t put any emphasis at all on selling sunglasses or what have you, that’s the fashion aspect of optics. It would have been good for business to a certain extent, but that wasn’t why I was there,’ he adds.
This reluctance to up-sell football players did not, however, prevent Dexter pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable fashion at the time, often through providing experimental frames to the willing Harris.
‘The things you would buy in a normal opticians were, shall we say, old fashioned,’ says Harris. ‘Or, Jonny made them old fashioned. I think his biggest step forward was in the colours he used and the different glasses he had, because his frames were so adventurous.’
Dexter was also one of the first opticians in Liverpool to make use of his shop front and open it up to customers. ‘There’s an old joke in optics,’ says Dexter, ‘independent opticians used to have a couple of old frames in the window and a bottle of contact lens solution surrounded by rust.’
Instead, Dexter developed the displays of his stores, encouraging customers to come in and browse products without being pressured to buy. ‘People wanted fair optical treatment, so we started doing these displays and putting prices on them,’ he explains.
Dexter’s impact on optics in Liverpool can still be seen to this day. Upon his retirement from full-time work, Dexter sold his practice to optometrist Karl Spinks, who now owns the practice with his wife Beverly. The couple still enjoy a fruitful relationship with Liverpool FC because of Dexter’s long-standing relationship with the club.
‘He made Batty and Dexter very well known,’ says Spinks. ‘He was a forward thinker in the optical industry,’ says Spinks, ‘And I still benefit from his relationship with the club.’
‘If there is any eye care that is required at the club, the club doctor will give me a call and I will go to the training ground and examine any of the players and give my advice,’ says Spinks. ‘If they require any contact lenses then they come in store.’
Spinks’ work recently made the pages of this magazine (Optician, 28.09.18) when Liverpool’s star striker, Roberto Firminho, had what appeared to be a serious eye injury during a premier league game against Tottenham Hotspurs. Spinks was asked to provide protective eye wear to enable the forward to train before a crunch Champions League clash against Paris Saint-Germain, in which he scored a late winner.
In the five years he has been working with Liverpool FC, he has met a host of star players and training staff and often takes the opportunity to eat at Melwood training ground when he gets the chance.
‘It’s a great experience for me going to Melwood. The facilities are fantastic, they’ve got amazing football pitches and a huge gym,’ he says. ‘There’s also a great restaurant with fantastic food – I try and eat every time I go there. They’ve got two full-time chefs. It’s a very smart environment to see.’
The close, and highly unusual, relationship that Batty and Dexter still enjoys with Liverpool FC can be traced directly back to the remarkable life of Jonny Dexter. A pioneer, a friend and an avid red.
‘I don’t know anyone who doesn’t respect Jonny,’ Harris concludes.