During his 50 years in football, Bob Hamer has been a Football League and Premier League referee and a Fifa Match Official. More recently he has been a match observer for the Football League, assessing the performance of the referees and their assistants. In the first part of our two-part interview Bob tells us why he became a referee in his early 20s and about some of the top players he refereed during his career including Ian Rush, Gary Lineker and Paul Gascoigne. He also tells us how a trip to New Zealand to officiate for Fifa at a World Cup qualifier had a profound impact on him that resulted in him starting a charity to help disadvantaged people in the developing world.