When Jamie Redknapp was playing for Liverpool in the early 90s, and his father, Harry, was managing Bournemouth, it was his grandfather who came to watch his matches. "I'd get off the coach for the game - say it was Newcastle away - and I'd be trying to remind myself what I was going to do, and my granddad would be there with a cheese and pickle roll," says Jamie.
Harry interrupts. "Yeah. But he said to my mum, 'I feel bad. Jamie and Steve [McManaman] drop me at the station after the games and I only have one cheese roll.' So every week my mum used to make a cheese roll for Jamie and a cheese roll for Macca. He was earning 30 grand a week! If he needed a cheese roll he could have bought one."
"He used to have extra butter on his too," Jamie puts in. "My nan used to see his spindly legs. She thought he needed feeding up. My roll didn't."
The Redknapps, senior and junior, are sitting in a back room at Tottenham Hotspur's training ground in Chigwell, Essex. The first team, fresh from a 1-0 victory against Blackburn Rovers the day before, have just gone home. But the reserves are still out there, running around in the bitter cold, hands jiggling in their tracksuit pockets, mud all over their kit. Harry and Jamie, on the other hand, are dressed off-pitch, both in black - the elder, jowly in a sharp suit and patent shoes; the younger ready to roll in tight skinny jeans, charcoal shirt and jaunty waistcoat. The room, which starts off quite empty, slowly fills with people. "Harry's always got an entourage," one member of the Spurs staff tells me, "he's that kind of bloke."
Father, 61, and son, 35, have come together today (though you get the impression they come together quite a lot) for the sake of a campaign launched by e.on, the sponsor of the FA Cup, to bring families back to football. There's a new website with prizes and special offers, the chance, for example, to "be entertained in a fun-packed e.on Football Family Lounge". Both Redknapps have presumably been briefed, though Harry possibly has his mind on other matters. "What? Yeah. When I was a kid there used to be a family section in every club where it would be all kids. That stopped." It's up to Jamie, seasoned Sky pundit, to lean into the tape recorder. "That's why an initiative like this is so helpful. Not everybody can afford to go to football. It's not easy, especially in the current climate. If you have an opportunity to win tickets, it could be you who goes to watch an FA Cup game. How good would that be?"
If anyone represents football as a family concern, though, it's the Redknapps. It's the family business. Harry's brother-in-law is Frank Lampard senior, who played for England and West Ham, and his son Frank Lampard plays for Chelsea. Football must be in the genes. "I don't think it can be in the genes," Harry says suddenly. "If you see the amount of footballers, how many sons play football? Not many. How many others turned out professional footballers?" He leans back, his eyes half-closing, his chin slugging into his neck in a gesture that is somewhere between defiance and pride.
Harry's father, who died in 2006, was an East End docker. "But he was football mad. He was a football nut. We used to go every week to football. I was an Arsenal supporter in those days. Manager of Tottenham now, there's probably nothing worse I could say."
"I don't know," Jamie interrupts. "At the moment, Dad, you could say you were anything and they wouldn't mind, the Tottenham fans."
"We were always at football, me and my dad."
"I can remember my first match," Jamie says. "FA Cup when Bournemouth beat Man Utd. I was 10. I'll never forget that day. It's more than a game. It's a day out, it brings you together."
"As early as I can remember, Jamie was kicking a ball," Harry says. "When I was manager at Bournemouth, I used to duck him off school most days. I was off to training and the school was on the way and he used to say to me, 'Can I come training rather than school?' and I used to say, 'Yeah, come on, but don't tell your mum."
Jamie leans into the microphone again. "This is a family initiative and everybody should go to school, so don't listen to what he is saying. It's not big or clever."
"There was never any doubt in my mind that he was ever going to do anything else. We went to America when he was about four. I was a coach at Seattle. We had a game at home to George Best's team - Los Angeles Aztecs. We lost 5-4. We had a young goalkeeper and every goal was his fault, under his leg, under his arm.
"The next day, young Jamie comes in - he was always blowing bubble gum in those days. The young goalie was on the treatment table. He was hiding away, this poor kid, and Jamie says, 'Gee, Cliff, you really blew it.' I'll never forget it. I said, 'Shut your mouth. Get out of it, clear off.' He said, 'But he did, Dad.'"
"You have to have a hunger," Jamie says. "The problem today is top players - their kids are going to have everything too early. I'm not saying I was a poor kid, but Dad always made me do the paper round."
"He was useless," Harry interjects. "I got up one day and he was late, so I ended up doing it. I'm the manager of Bournemouth and I'm pushing papers through doors. This old fellow opened the door. 'What time's this?' he went, 'cos I was late. 'It's Harry, innit?' It was a Bournemouth season-ticket holder, right, and I'm delivering his paper. He said, 'What are you doing?' I said, 'They don't pay me a lot, I'm supplementing my wages.'"
School football wasn't a big thing for Jamie; instead, it was his Sunday league team in Bournemouth that was his first passion. Harry watched every match, but quietly.
"I see it every week," he says. "Parents shouting and screaming at kids. My dad was the same. He was always there but he never interfered. Ron Greenwood, who was the manager of West Ham when I was a kid, wouldn't allow any parent to shout from the touchline. He thought players should be allowed to think for themselves. Half the games you see, any kid who wants to show a bit of skill and dribble, the other 10 parents are shouting, 'Get rid of it, you're too bleedin' greedy.' Most parents, the advice they give is probably wrong anyway."
Jamie adds quietly, "Not all of them."
"Nah. Not all of them."
Jamie, into the microphone, "They're very good. Parents are fantastic. Families are brilliant."
Jamie's brother, Mark, was a good footballer, too. He also played at Bournemouth, but his career stalled after a bad ankle injury. Harry sighs: "He did go back and play non-league football, but he couldn't walk for days after a game. He was just unlucky, you know."
As for Lampard, the other family star, competitiveness has never been an issue. "Though I do remember Jamie played Frank at Liverpool one day when Frank was at West Ham, which was my team then. And Jamie kicked Frank, caught him in a tackle, and Frank had to come off. And Les Sealey - who was my goalkeeping coach - he said to young Frank, 'Go back and do him. Go back and do him, good and proper.' And he's sitting next to me and I'm thinking, hang on, this ain't right, Les, it's my son. It was an amazing feeling, really. I suppose that's football."
Jamie has seen Harry take his share of knocks too. "Painful? When you know the business it helps you understand it a bit more. It's so results driven. Dad's obviously made a massive decision to come to Tottenham, and as a family we will back him. Some people say, 'You were cheering Portsmouth on six months ago [Harry's last job], what are you doing now?' I say, 'I'm a Harry Redknapp fan. It doesn't matter where he is.' That's part of being a family."
"We see the game very much the same," Harry adds. "He'd make a brilliant manager. I ring him up and ask him what's happening all the time. I swear I rang him at half time in the Cup final. [Harry won the FA Cup with Portsmouth this year.] And the semi-final - West Brom, wasn't it? I said, 'What do you think?' He said, 'You're being outnumbered in midfield, getting outclassed. You've got to narrow it up a bit.'"
"And I said Kanu will get the winner in the second half, so don't worry."
Harry laughs.
Jamie says, patiently: "I didn't really say that, but that's what happened."
Jamie and his wife, Louise Nurding, have got two little boys of their own now, four-year-old Charley and a one-month-old baby, Beau. Any signs yet there? "I'd absolutely love it," Jamie begins, "but Charley's telling me he doesn't like football."
"Early days," Harry adds.