Son John said: “He’s fine. He had the operation this morning and the operation was fine. Everything went well.

“Basically, as everybody else would, he is just recovering from the anaesthetic.

“They will probably keep him in over the weekend and let him out on Monday if everything is fine. With hip replacements, which is what he has had, they don’t tend to keep them in too long.

“They do hip replacements all the time and they said it’s not a big operation and, as long as he came through it okay, they expected him to make a full recovery.

“He has come through it and now it’s all about rehabilitation.”

The Ashington-born former Leeds defender broke his hip after falling down the stairs at his home in Morpeth, Northumberland last night while his wife Pat was out, but eventually managed to get to a telephone to alert his son.

John said: “When he rang me, he told me he had fallen and damaged his hip, and said, ’You had better come around’.

“But it was surreal. When I got there, he was sitting in a chair watching the telly, although we then realised his hip was broken.”

Charlton senior, who also famously led the Republic of Ireland to successive World Cup tournaments as manager in 1990 and 1994, might have been home even sooner if he had got his own way.

John said: “He wanted to get up and come out, although that isn’t going to happen.”