The lounge of the Oatlands Park hotel in Weybridge is not the ideal place to meet a legend. For a start, there is a wedding reception in progress. Then there is the curious decor, with its baronial theme and wrought-iron chandeliers. Wembley it isn't. And the legend isn't wearing socks; he is kitted out in sneakers, neat slacks and a Pringle T-shirt - what might be called Weybridge-wear. Reliving the great day is clearly going to be a challenge.
That great day - when England, for the first and only time, won the World Cup - was 35 years ago, but it feels like yesterday. "They think it's all over . . . It is now." The man whose goal prompted Kenneth Wolstenholme's hasty addendum is drinking tea with me in celebration of the publication this week of his autobiography, 1966 and All That. Even sockless in Weybridge, the heart still skips a beat.
Sir Geoff Hurst (the knighthood was bestowed in 1998) is staggeringly normal for a legend. It probably helps that until the 90s, when Britain went collectively football mad, he was treated like a mere mortal. The story goes that after the World Cup final, he took his leave of England manager Alf Ramsey with the words "See you soon, Alf". "Perhaps, Geoffrey," replied Ramsey. In 1966 the England team were heroes, treated with respect; by 1996, after 30 years of World Cup famine, they were legends.
Hurst has borne a lifetime of hand-shaking and backslapping, of unstinting anecdotage, with good grace. "I'm eternally grateful for having been involved," he says. "Your first emotion on winning is one of relief, not enjoyment - relief that you've played in the tournament and got through the month. The enjoyment is that people still talk about it today, more so than ever, so not for one second when people approach me do I think, 'Here we go again.' They remember the day and they want to tell you about it."
Hurst is an odd combination of modesty and self-assertion. While far from arrogant, he is touchy on some points - especially the view that his performance in the final was a one-off. "Some people think of me as a one-game player," he says, "but I scored 40 goals a year, played 500 games for West Ham, scored 250 goals for the club, including six in a game. In a competitive era for great players in England I was the number-one choice for six years, which I'm very proud of." It's not conceit; just inner certainty.
It's that self-belief which, he says, made his international career possible. "Talent alone is not enough; you have to have the character. There were better players at school than me, but they didn't want to be footballers. I did. Even today I have a burning appetite to be successful. I don't work as hard now as I have done [he is a semi-retired 59-year-old], but I want to be successful at whatever I'm involved with."
Hurst was 24 when he picked up his World Cup winner's medal. In the previous two years, with West Ham, he had won the FA Cup and the European Cup Winners' Cup. Those were the glory days of his career, so was the rest - especially defeat against Germany in the 1970 World Cup - an anti-climax? "You could argue that I could have finished after the 1966 World Cup, and maybe if I'd been on the money players are today I could have, but we were in football for a living," he says. "In our time you wanted to carry on playing for as long as you could."
Hurst was dropped by England in 1972 and released by his beloved West Ham in the same year, but he ploughed on in league football with Stoke and West Bromwich Albion, and had stints with Cork Celtic in Ireland and Seattle Sounders in the North American League. It was all a long way from the triumphs of '66. Then he had to confront the chasm that opens up before all professional sportsmen. "It's a very brief career, but you don't realise that at the time. You think you'll play for ever; you think you'll live for ever. I had no concept of what would come after. You have a cosseted lifestyle and everything is done for you, and players come out at 35 and wonder: what next? In my time, players would go into insurance, manage a pub or stay in the game at any level. I did a bit of all three."
Hurst ran a pub in Newcastle-under-Lyme for five years. He combined that with being player-manager of non-league Telford United, as well as helping out his old boss Ron Greenwood, who was managing the England side. Then, in 1979, the managerial opportunity of a lifetime beckoned - the chance to coach and, soon afterwards, manage Chelsea. He gave up Telford and the pub for the lure of the Blues, but within 18 months he had been sacked.
"Chelsea was a low point in my life," he says. "I was unjustifiably sacked and then accused of being negligent, which was outrageous. I think I did a reasonably good job at Chelsea under difficult circumstances. I'm pleased I had a go at management. If I hadn't, I would always have been thinking, 'What if?' But I didn't want a job where I had to move every year and be sacked every year. I wanted a secure, proper job.
"In those days the money you earned - I was on 28 grand at Chelsea - wasn't worth the aggravation; today it is. You can be dedicated as a manager, you can be talented, you can do all the right things, but if you get beaten three or four times you get the sack. In business if you have the same qualities, you've got a chance of staying in the job, and I've proved that."
He invested his earnings in a motor insurance company and never looked back. He has become a successful businessman, and seems as proud of his commercial success as of his World Cup medal. His life, he says, has split almost exactly into two 30-year halves - football and business - and he has tried equally hard to win in both. "If football means everything, your whole life finishes when your career ends and you've got nothing to live for," he says. "I've never felt that for a second. I had to carry on earning a living to provide for my family."
His family is clearly the centre of his life, and they refuse to let him get carried away by his past glories. "We never sit at home and talk about the World Cup final," he says. "I didn't even have the video until seven or eight years ago when my daughter bought it for me." He has sold all his football memorabilia (part of the proceeds went to the cancer fund set up in the name of his skipper, Bobby Moore). All he has left is his winner's medal, sitting in a bank vault somewhere, but he does not discount the possibility of parting even with that.
"When I asked my children what they wanted when we are no longer on this earth, my eldest daughter said, 'I'll have that three-piece suite,' " he recalls. "She didn't say, 'I'll have the World Cup medal.' We're a family like any other. My family are very proud of me, but I'm principally the father and the grandfather in the household and that's how it should be."
He talks of his wife Judith as the rock of the family, running the home while he was out kicking a ball. I put to him my pet theory that the fact that his own parents divorced had led him to value the security of family life, and without accepting it he doesn't reject it out of hand either. He describes his childhood as "reasonable" - hardly high praise.
His life has had its fair share of tragedy. His younger brother committed suicide, and his eldest daughter Claire fought a long and successful battle against a brain tumour. He calls the latter period "nightmarish" in the book, and recalls sitting on the kitchen floor with his wife and two younger daughters weeping. "At that moment I would have sacrificed all the cups and medals for a guarantee that my daughter would be cured," he writes. World Cups, despite a lifetime's applause, are fleeting glories; a father's love an eternal bond.
• Geoff Hurst's autobiography, 1966 and All That, is published on Thursday by Headline (£18.99).
