I LOVE MY football possibly even more than I love my telly, although as the years have passed, I think the balance is now changing! Over the years, I’ve played in celebrity matches, been a director of Brentford, a Chairman at Camberley and I’ve even owned a team in America (Philadelphia Fury). But perhaps it’s best if I start off small-scale and tell you about Marlow Town, George Best and the groundsman’s hut.
In the early 1970s, like many clubs at the time, Marlow Town was having financial problems. They were a lovely bunch of people and I’d become friends with many of the faces behind the scenes. They desperately needed to find some money so I offered to arrange a charity football match. At that time I was friends with a lot of professional footballers because Yes had an office in Hillgate Street and in the same building was the headquarters of Ken Adams, one of the very first football agents. He looked after the likes of Alan Hudson, Rodney Marsh, Bobby Moore, Stan Bowles, George Best – some great, great names. Occasionally we’d empty all the desks and chairs from the main office in Hillgate Street and have an indoor five-a-side match! That’s how I became friends with people like George Best, Peter Shilton, Gordon Banks and so on, but before I tell you about Marlow Town, let me tell you a little bit about these pro-footballers that I had come to know.
A lot is said about modern-day footballers, some good and a lot of bad, but I will tell you something about their 1970s counterparts: like George Best at Marlow Town, they were the first celebrities to come along and support a charity event.
These guys were very special. They knew how to play football, have fun when not playing and were always around to help out a good cause.
I remember getting a knock on my door way back in the mid-70s from a relation of the little boy Anthony Nolan, who had leukaemia and they were desperately trying to raise money to bring in a chap from New Zealand whose bone marrow seemed to match that of Anthony’s. She asked if I could help and I immediately thought ‘Charity Football Match’.
I called all the usual guys from the Top Ten XI such as Chris Quentin from Coronation Street, Tony Osoba from Porridge, David ‘Diddy’ Hamilton, Tony Selby and Jess Conrad, to name but a few.
I then needed to find a ground and another footballing friend of mine, Stevie Perryman, suggested Hillingdon Borough who were in the then Southern League and had a really nice ground that held quite a few thousand people. The manager was Jimmy Langley who used to play for Fulham. The club very generously offered me a Sunday for no charge and full use of all the facilities, so I was up and running and a date was set.
I then set about organising the professional ringers. I called Ken Adams. ‘You’ll have difficulties, Rick,’ he said, ‘we’re nearly at the end of the season and the managers are not going to let their top players play in a charity football match for fear of injury at this time of the season.’
Sure enough, he was right. Every manager refused permission for any of their players to appear. I was distraught. True, I could muster up enough celebrity footballers to field two sides, but I knew the standard would not be good enough to keep a crowd truly happy. I also only had access to two kits that had seen better days, if I’m really honest.
The day of the match arrived and I drove with some trepidation to the ground. It was a really deserving cause and the ground was packed. That made me feel even worse as I felt I was letting them down with what they were about to see on the football pitch.
Most of my celebrity friends had already arrived and were mingling in the changing room waiting for me to bring the kit in – for which I was already thinking up excuses . . . ‘Sorry guys, they were put on a boiling wash setting instead of a warm wash and that’s why they’ve shrunk quite a lot and also why the additional red blotches are there as well, plus a pair of the wife’s red knickers went in the wash with them and they weren’t colourfast’ . . . but I didn’t need to say anything because as I walked through the door, Stevie Perryman walked in behind me with a huge holdall bag.
‘Hi Rick,’ he said. ‘This is such a great cause that I’m donating two complete sets of kit from my shop in Hayes for the two teams . . . and I want to play.’
I nearly passed out.
Then over the course of the next ten minutes, in walked Peter Shilton (the England goalkeeper), Mickey Droy from Chelsea, Bobby Moore, Frank Worthington . . . the door kept opening and they just poured in.
‘I thought you’d all been forbidden to come,’ I spluttered.
‘Never got the message,’ said Peter Shilton.
‘Nor me,’ said Bobby Moore with that familiar glint in his eye.
Needless to say, when the teams were announced over the tannoy speakers, the crowd went nuts. It poured with rain, but that didn’t matter. The pros didn’t hold back either and there were a few tackles that had me worried I can tell you.
They all stayed behind afterwards to sign autographs and from that day onwards, I will not have a word said against footballers. To me they are very special people and many have become close friends.
And now – back to Marlow Town . . .
From my experience with previous charity games, such as Hillingdon, I knew that you had to always get a few ringers, a few ex-pros and some actual talent, otherwise the crowd would very quickly get bored just watching a bunch of celebs trying their best. You can only watch a celebrity playing football for so long, you’ve got to have some people in there who can actually play a bit.
I was in the Hillgate Street office telling a few people all about the game at Marlow and by chance George Best was there, listening.
‘I’ll play, Rick,’ said George out of the blue.
‘Don’t be daft, George, you’ll be mobbed!’ At this point, George Best was arguably the biggest celebrity – never mind footballer – in the world. And a very serious pin-up to boot. But George was serious and the offer was genuine.
On the day of the match, a large crowd had turned up as the rumour mill about George Best playing had gone into overdrive and even though it was meant to be a secret for security reasons, I think I may have accidentally mentioned it a few hundred times in local pubs and even on the radio if I recall! George did have a reputation for sometimes not turning up, (which on occasions included Old Trafford and playing for Manchester United), but I have to say that in everything he ever did for me (on about a dozen occasions) he was always on time, made a brilliant effort and I considered him a great friend and a lovely man.
George didn’t play the entire ninety minutes but when he was on the pitch he completely threw himself into the spirit for things, he ran rings around everybody, scored half a dozen goals in about three seconds and then went off to this massive standing ovation. For Marlow Town it was the coup of a lifetime.
Afterwards we all crowded into the clubhouse. It was heaving, with about five hundred specially selected people in there. You couldn’t move, the club was making a shed load of extra money over the bar and it was great. I’m in there looking around and thanking people but at the back of my mind I’m thinking, Where’s George?
Then one of the senior committee men from the club spoke up (unlike professional clubs that had directors, semi-pro clubs were run by a committee and this gentleman, who will remain nameless for reasons that will shortly become apparent, was very much a senior official). His face was beaming.
‘Ladies and gentleman, welcome to Marlow Town, I’d like to thank you all for coming along on this splendid day . . .’
As he continued speaking, a terrible realisation dawned on me.
This particular committee member had an eighteen-year-old daughter.
A very beautiful daughter.
Stunning, in fact.
He worshipped her more than anything on the planet. He cherished her with his life and was fiercely protective of her. The Marlow Town footballers all knew that she was very much forbidden fruit and so kept well clear.
I knew she’d been at the match that day but was now nowhere to be found in the clubhouse.
And neither was George Best.
The world’s favourite pin-up who was known, to put it mildly, for having an eye for the girls.
Oh shit.
I could feel the whole wonderfully successful day collapsing around me.
I got one of the back-room boys to scout for George and about ten minutes later this guy came back looking rather pale.
‘I’ve found George.’
‘Great! Where is he?’
‘He’s in the groundsman’s hut with the senior committee man’s daughter.’
Shit.
At this precise moment, I became aware of said senior committee member addressing me directly over the microphone.
‘I’d particularly like to thank Rick Wakeman, who has made a huge effort and a fantastic gesture by helping us arrange this charity fixture.’ Round of applause. ‘And of course, ladies and gentlemen, we also have a very special player here today who really has made this a remarkable occasion. We have a memento for him as a small token of our appreciation, so if Mr George Best would kindly come forward . . .’
(Crowd erupts.)
After a few moments, when George didn’t appear, the applause gradually abated and a steward went up to the man in question and whispered something in his ear. I was terrified: if he found out about what was undoubtedly happening in the groundsman’s hut, all our hard work would be wasted.
What he said next did come as somewhat of a shock, I have to admit.
He walked back to the microphone in the middle of the small stage and uttered the following words whilst beaming all over his face.
‘Apparently,’ he said, ‘everything’s completely under control. George is actually being looked after by my daughter and I’m told he will be with us in a moment.’
An audible round of coughing and spluttering, intermingled with applause and a few cheers, rippled around the clubhouse, but the now proud father never batted an eyelid. The day was a huge success and the curious incident of George Best, the committee man’s daughter and the groundsman’s hut was never mentioned again.
I was able to arrange these celebrity football matches because I was a long-standing member of the Top Ten XI celebrity team which spent much of the 1970s and 1980s playing charity fixtures (you can read more about the team in Grumpy Old Rock Star; by the way, the hardback ISBN is 978 1 84809 004 0 and the paperback ISBN is 978 1 84809 005 7). How I came to be recruited wasn’t exactly out of the pages of any football agency manuals.
In the mid-1970s, I was the owner of two racehorses, who were with the John Webber stable (now run by his son Anthony, after John passed away). One of the horses, Tropical Saint, was running at Windsor in a televised evening race. I was due to be interviewed on the television and so vowed to stay sober until I’d spoken my words of wisdom.
I failed.
I have to be honest: I was completely rat-arsed. I was being invited from tent to tent, from race to race, all suitably oiled by masses of alcohol. I was absolutely ratted. By about 9 p.m. I was lying prostrate on the grass in some small marquee, whilst people just looked down and occasionally tutted before stepping over me.
Then I heard a very strong Irish accent speaking to me.
‘Mr Wakeman, I hear you like football.’
I looked up, tried to focus and recognised a man known in the business simply as ‘Father’.
‘Yesshhh, I do like football, yesshh,’ I slurred.
‘Would you like to play a game tomorrow at Barnet FC? For the Top Ten XI.’
I belched.
‘Ssshhmmashing, yeesshh.’
I woke up the next day in my bed at about 10 a.m. and as I drank my morning coffee I started to have vague flashbacks of this small Irishman leaning over me and saying, ‘Do you want to play football, Rick, Rick, do you want to play football?’ At first it felt like a dream but that was simply because I’d been so incredibly drunk the night before.
I wasn’t sure so I phoned up Barnet FC and asked the receptionist if they had a match on that day. They did indeed: a charity match featuring a host of celebrities who were appearing as the Top Ten XI.
Shit.
I showered quickly, grabbed my football boots and, as you do when you are a twenty-five-year-old rock star, jumped into my flamboyant Mulliner Park Ward Cloud III Chinese Eye Rolls-Royce coupé. I finally found the ground and feeling unbelievably hungover made my way to the dressing room and as I walked in all the other celebs and players stopped talking and just stared at me. I was standing there, painfully hungover, feeling total crap. Death warmed up and with long blond hair straggling all down my back.
One of the TV actors who shall remain nameless looked me up and down and said, ‘I don’t care how much money he’s got, if playing rock music means you end up looking like that I’m sticking with acting!’
I surveyed the dressing room slowly, turned to the Irishman and said, ‘Have you got a drink?’
‘Vitamin drink?’
‘No thanks . . . a large Scotch might do the trick though.’
‘Are you going to be able to stand up?’
‘I’ll be fine, thanks.’
I scored a hat-trick.
I didn’t do much else to be honest. I didn’t run back to help defend, that was too far to run. I was an old-fashioned goal hanger. I suppose today I’d be described as a cross between Rooney and Ronaldo. (Editor’s note: I have spoken to some of his celebrity teammates from that time and after a good deal of thought have come to the conclusion that he actually meant Mickey Rooney and Ronald MacDonald.)
The thing about the Top Ten XI was that, despite being a charity fund-raising idea, some of its matches could get quite violent. Sometimes you played against the local town team rather than other celebrities and those sorts of players thought it was great fun if they could kick a famous face (or famous arse) up in the air. The most violent matches of all, however, were when we played the priests at Worthing Football Club. They would try non-stop to really to kick you up in the air at every opportunity and then as they stood over your crumpled body on the pitch, they’d say, ‘Bless you, my child.’ Ten minutes later they’d body-slam you to the ground again, make the sign of the cross and jokingly say, ‘How naughty of me. God bless you, my son.’
One day we were playing a particularly violent team of priests. Junior Campbell, the great singer who composed the music for Thomas the Tank Engine with Ringo Starr, was in our team and because he was a really talented amateur footballer, was getting a real pasting from these priests: ‘Bless you, son’, ‘God bless you, child’ and so on. After about forty minutes, he’d just had enough so after yet another vicious challenge he waited for the priest to start saying, ‘Bless you, my . . .’ and then Junior nutted him.
Early bath for Junior!
Three more of us – including me – and three priests also got their marching orders; in fact, if the game had gone to extra time there would only have been two goalkeepers left on the pitch.
It’s quite a leap from a groundsman’s hut to owning an American soccer team so let me take you through that particular period of my life. It was 1976 and the American Soccer League was putting franchises up for sale. Phil Woosnam, the ex-Aston Villa footballer, was in charge of the league and I was one of the eleven people who got involved in buying the Philadelphia Fury soccer franchise.
As you do.
Brian ‘Deal-a-Day’ Lane was also a member with shares, although I’d lay odds his actual financial contribution was nil! I’m sure his skill at creative accountancy worked wonders – you couldn’t help but like Brian!
Most of the other members of the syndicate were American and had very Italian-sounding names. None of them knew anything about football, so they said to me, ‘Well, you’d better go and get the team sorted.’ So there I was, a twenty-seven-year-old long-haired rock muso going off to buy players for a professional soccer team in America.
Fortunately we had far more money than did the English clubs, plus we offered cars, pensions, houses and other perks, so we could attract some decent names. Generally, the American League appealed to older players who were coming to the end of their main careers and wanted something different and some good pension money, so in this way we were able to sign the likes of Johnny Giles from Leeds, the former Arsenal player Terry Mancini, Alan Ball and Peter Osgood from Southampton, to name but a few. The following season I bought Frank Worthington as well. Brilliant. We then brought in Richard Dinnis as manager, who had previously been at Newcastle.
When it came to the first match of the season, all the players had arrived in Philadelphia except Alan Ball who was flying in on the morning of the first game on the Sunday.
I was living in Switzerland and flew in on the Saturday, arriving in New York for some press I had to do and then drove up to Philadelphia. I got to the hotel around midnight and checked in and as I did, I noticed Peter Osgood, my star striker.
He was leaning across the reception desk in a state of semi-consciousness.
‘Peter, what are you doing? You’ve got a game tomorrow!’
‘Rick! How are you? It’s great here – what a party they are throwing!’
‘What party, Peter?’
‘The mayor, Rick, he’s done us a great party, it’s fantastic!’
‘And where’s Richard, our manager?’
‘He’s gone to bed, Rick.’
Peter teetered off and I followed him through some ballroom doors where I was met by a scene of absolute mayhem. It was the party of a lifetime, there must have been about a thousand people in there, all drinking, singing, laughing, dancing, falling over, it was chaos. As I scoured the dark corners and bar areas, I began mentally ticking off all the team members who were in there until I eventually got the full squad (apart from Alan Ball) on my team sheet of ‘Absolutely Paralytic FC’. And it was my job, as the twenty-seven-year-old rock ’n’ roll monster who’d had three heart attacks at twenty-five and could drink for England, to get everyone to bed. The irony was not lost on me.
On the afternoon of the game, I walked into the dressing room of our magnificent stadium to find Alan Ball red-faced and absolutely ripping strips off the rest of the team. He was properly reading the riot act. ‘This is such a fantastic opportunity for all of us: our careers are coming to an end in England, here we are getting great wages, a great future, this is our pension, houses, and you lot are all hungover – this is not a professional way to go about this.’ To be fair, they all agreed with him.
I made my way to the directors’ box. In front of me sat Jimmy Hill who was the president of the team we were playing, the Washington Diplomats. He turned around, shook my hand, introduced himself and said, ‘That’s quite a team you’ve assembled, Rick – we don’t hold out much hope today and are expecting a very difficult match.’
With the memory of carrying most of our squad unconscious to bed the night before, I replied, ‘Jimmy, take it from me: we’re nowhere near bedded in yet. I have to say you’re the favourites in my book.’
Jimmy leant even closer to me and semi-whispered. ‘I don’t think so, Rick. You won’t believe this but when I arrived at the team hotel in Washington late last night, the mayor was throwing a massive party for the team and most of them were completely legless.’
‘In that case, we’re in for a very interesting afternoon,’ I retorted.
Before the match started the mayor did this big, triumphant speech saying what a great day it was for Philadelphia. The crowd were going nuts. Then our team staggered on to a huge fanfare, which did nothing to soothe their pounding heads, that was for sure. They looked really exhausted and were still obviously hungover. Terry Mancini later told me that as soon as he ran on the pitch his head started thumping. It was a really sunny, hot day and both teams were seemingly preparing to die.
My particular highlight was the kick-off.
Peter Osgood passed the ball to Alan Ball who chipped it back to Terry Mancini, who – out of force of habit – headed it. It’s what central defenders do a lot. They head the ball.
Normally though, they would follow a powerful header by running forward to assist the attack.
This was a slightly different occasion though and upon heading the ball, Terry sank to his knees in obvious pain. You could almost see the little tweetie birds flying round his head. Terry later told me he thought his head was going to explode!
All the Americans around us – who knew absolutely nothing about football, sorry, soccer – were saying, ‘Gee, look at that, he hit that ball with his head! That guy is so tough, that must have really hurt, this soccer is a real man’s game.’ The game was played at just slightly below Sunday School pace and ended in a drab 0–0 draw. We lost the resulting penalty shoot-out 3–0. Welcome to American soccer!
I’d first got involved in US soccer because of Ahmet Ertegün and his brother Nesuhi. Yes were signed to Atlantic in America and we had quite a few dealings with them. They were lovely people, both sadly no longer with us. Anyway, Nesuhi absolutely loved soccer. It was his dream to be involved in football in some capacity and he was certainly very knowledgeable. Whenever he came to England he’d go to as many football matches as he could.
On one visit in the early 1980s he came to me looking rather troubled.
‘I am so worried, Rick, about your stadiums.’
‘What do you mean, Nesuhi?’ I asked.
‘You see, whilst these old stadiums were fantastic when they were built at the turn of the century, they are now really dangerous.’
‘Yes, but that’s all right for America, Nesuhi, your teams have all this money to build these fantastic new stadiums.’
‘Not true, Rick. They go and get big companies to fund them, sponsor the building, companies like McDonald’s or Ford or Chrysler, then the stadium is named after them and it is modern and safe and has all the very best amenities. Half your stadiums are made of wood. You let people smoke in them, you have these old metal railings waiting for people to get crushed if the crowd surges forward and if everyone is standing up, you can’t do this . . . it is a matter of time . . . someone’s going to die, Rick.’
‘I can see what you are saying, Nesuhi,’ I replied. ‘But that isn’t gonna happen, because of the way the English game is run.’
‘Then they will have blood on their hands, Rick.’
Of course, at the time sponsored stadiums were almost unthinkable to the English game. It took a needless loss of life at both Bradford and Hillsborough to make our national game come to its senses. Thankfully, things have changed but frighteningly for me, almost without exception, everything that Nesuhi prophesised came true. And not just the tragic concerns he had. The glitz and glamour, the Emirates, the Reebok, the huge TV coverage deals, the cheerleaders, half-time shows, the big screens, the razzmatazz. Nesuhi started it all with his brother at New York Cosmos. Plus they started all these academies for youngsters and also encouraged girls to play. Now the irony is that the USA international side is very highly ranked with FIFA. Back in the 1970s the English press pilloried the American game for doing all this but if you look at the English game in the twenty-first century, the Americans have finally caught up, over thirty years later.
Now, Nesuhi’s brother Ahmet loved his soccer too. Along with Nesuhi he owned the New York Cosmos and that remains to this day one of the most high-profile American soccer teams ever. At their peak, the Cosmos were getting 70,000 fans per game – people forget how popular the game became for a while over there. If the more knowledgeable Nesuhi wasn’t around, Ahmet would sometimes call me to ask advice about possible new signings and if these players were any good. One day my phone rang and it was Ahmet with just such a question.
‘Rick, I’ve got a chance to buy two players and I need to be quick if I want them. I want you to tell me if they’re any good or not.’
‘Okay, I’ll do my best, Ahmet – as long as I have heard of them, obviously.’
‘Okay, great, thanks. The first one is . . . hang on a minute, I’ve got this written down, Rick, the first one is called . . . Pee- . . . er, Pee-lee.’
‘Ah, okay, well, that’s actually pronounced Pelé.’
‘It’s written Pee-lee on my piece of paper.’
‘Trust me, Ahmet, it’s Pelé.’
‘Okay, okay. But is he any good?’
‘He’s is probably the greatest footballer the world has ever seen, Ahmet.’
‘Okay, but according to this, he’s getting on a bit.’
‘Getting on a bit or not, he can still play.’
‘So I should buy him, Rick?’
‘Can you afford him, Ahmet?’
‘Of course I can afford him, Rick.’
‘Then buy him.’
Brilliant. ‘Who’s the other player, Ahmet?’
‘It’s another difficult name, Rick. It’s written down. Franz Beckleybob? Bickleybum? The writing’s not very clear.’
‘Franz Bickleybum?’
‘Yes, it says he played for Germany . . .’
‘Oh! Franz Beckenbauer! He was the German captain.’
‘Who, Beckleybob?’
‘No, Beckenbauer, it’s Beckenbauer. He’s phenomenal, you must sign him. Can you afford—’
‘Rick . . . of course I can.’
So he did.
He only went and signed Pee-lee and Bickleybum.
A few weeks later, Ahmet phoned me again and said, ‘Rick, I’ve signed Pee-lee and Bickleybum, they are making their debuts next week. You must come as my guest to the game. And if they are no good I will blame you.’
‘Trust me, Ahmet, trust me on this one, they’ll be all right.’
And they were. They were sensational and it cemented my friendship with the Ertegün brothers even more.
That’s enough about the New York Cosmos, billionaire music moguls and South American soccer gods. Let me tell you how I became Chairman of Camberley Town Football Club.
It was 1982 or thereabouts. My two boys Oliver and Adam were staying with me for the weekend, I guess they were probably about ten and twelve years old respectively. I had a copy of the Daily Express and noticed that Camberley Town were at home that Saturday. Now, the ground was literally a two-minute drive from my home so I thought that’d be a great trip out with the boys. So I phoned the club to find out what time kick-off was.
The phone had the engaged tone. I wasn’t concerned though because that wasn’t not unusual on match days as the local press and radio are always on the phone and clubs get very busy. So I thought I’d just take a chance and go down there. We pulled up at the entrance. Big iron gates with the lettering ‘Krooner Park’ emblazoned over the top. It looked like a nice little ground. Four huge sets of floodlights at each corner, a nice stand that probably seated three hundred or so and a newish-looking club-house.
On the gate was an old boy sitting in a hut on a wooden chair.
‘Afternoon. Can we have three tickets, please? Two kids, one adult,’ I asked.
‘Yes, mate, it’s three quid for adults and two quid for kids, so tell you what, call it a fiver.’
‘But it’s seven pounds for the three of us, isn’t it?’
‘A fiver’s good enough thanks.’
‘If you’re sure . . . any programmes?’
‘They’re fifty pence but I’ll throw three in for nothing. I’ve got hundreds of them.’
‘But won’t you need them for the crowd?’
‘You are the crowd.’
‘Oh . . . where do we park?’
‘Anywhere you like, mate. Enjoy the match.’
We parked up on an empty strip of grass and went inside the ground to the pitch: it was dead. There were literally only a few people in. The two boys loved it – they went off running around the edge of the pitch, having a great time. I walked up to another really nice old fella who was leaning against a railing.
‘Bit quiet, isn’t it?’ I offered.
‘No one comes any more,’ he replied and explained the club was about to fold up altogether.
‘How is their season going?’ I enquired.
‘Played seventeen, lost seventeen, goals for: three; goals against: sixty-seven.’
‘Well, at least they’ve scored three goals,’ I said chuckling as I spoke.
‘Own goals,’ he said, without looking up.
He went on. ‘There’s a very nice man called Roy Calver who tries desperately to keep things afloat almost single-handedly, but he’s fighting a losing battle. Nobody wants to play for the side any more – it’s just hopeless.’
Anyway, the teams came out and by half-time they were four goals down. It could have been ten. It was absolutely demoralising to watch. I took the boys to the clubhouse for a half-time Coca-Cola and went up to the bar where there was a young girl filing her nails. ‘Can I have two Cokes and a pint of lager, please?’
‘No, sorry. Lager and Coke’s off. We haven’t had a drinks delivery for eleven weeks.’
‘Okay, how about some lemonade and a Scotch?’
‘Sorry, lemonade and Scotch is off. In fact, everything is off.’
I looked up and all the optics and bottles were empty.
‘Okay, how about a coffee?’
‘Sorry, we can’t boil the kettle, the electricity’s off as well.’
At that moment a man walked up to my side and introduced himself as Roy Calver. I warmed to this man straight away. It was obvious he loved this club and was certainly fighting a seemingly hopeless battle both on and off of the pitch.
He knew I’d been a director at Brentford and started telling me about all the problems he was having with Camberley Town.
‘We’re in a spot of bother down here, Rick. This club is my life and I think it’s going to close down and that would break my heart. I’m all on my own here. We have a committee but we’re just fighting a losing battle. You couldn’t come and give us some advice, could you?’
‘Who’s the team manager?’ I asked.
‘Me,’ he replied.
‘And the general manager?’
‘Me, as well.’
‘The coach?’
‘Err . . . ah yes, that’s me as well.’
‘The chairman?’
‘We’re about to appoint a new one.’
‘And in the meantime, who’s acting chairman?’
‘Me.’
‘When’s the meeting?’
‘Well, I’m in London all day at the accountants but I reckon I can get back for about seven thirty. Get all your books and paperwork together and at least I can have a look. I can’t promise anything but I’ll try and be helpful and give you any advice I can.’
When I walked into the committee room the following Thursday, the first thing I saw was two old guys swapping duck eggs and home-made wine.
Roy was there with another very well-dressed gentleman who worked in a managerial position at Beechams. He was a local man keen to help, as was the fifth person in the room who had recently taken over a nearby pub in Bagshot.
‘Thank you for coming tonight, Rick. We’ve begun the meeting in your absence as we’ve a lot to try and get through, but as you’re here now, I think it’s only right and proper that we start off with a few words from our chairman.’
At which point every pair of eyes in the room turned to look at me.
‘Sorry, gents, I don’t know who he is . . .’
The chap with the duck eggs looked up and said, ‘It’s you, Rick.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, I’ve just popped in to try and offer some advice. I’m not the chairman, I haven’t been proposed or voted for or anything . . .’
‘You have,’ he replied. ‘We voted you in half an hour ago.’
‘You can’t do that.’
‘We can and we did. It was a unanimous vote. Five to nothing. No abstentions.’
‘But how can you vote me in as chairman when I haven’t put myself up for election?’
‘Roy proposed you and Tom seconded you. It was unanimous.’
I was trying not to laugh it was so ludicrous. Truth be known I was really warming to the idea. I started thinking to myself that their situation surely couldn’t be as bad as they made out.
‘Surely though,’ I said with the best air of company and corporate authority that I could muster, ‘I should have had some sort of vote in all of this?’
‘He’s got a point,’ another old boy agreed.
‘All right,’ said Roy. ‘We’ll vote again. All those in favour of Rick Wakeman being chairman of Camberley Town Football Club, raise your hand.’
Every hand in the room except mine was lifted.
‘All those against.’
My lone hand went up.
Tom, who was taking the minutes, reached for his rubber and appeared to be erasing something in the notes he had already written.
He started writing on top of what had been the vote count of 5–0.
‘Five to one’ he said as he wrote.
Roy then proudly said, ‘Rick Wakeman, you are now officially the chairman of Camberley Town Football Club.’
I’d only been looking through the club’s accounts and paperwork for a few minutes when I realised they were in all sorts of trouble. They owed money to everybody: the brewery, the VAT man, the electricity supplier, water, phones, everything. Then as I pored over the papers some more, I realised that despite the club not having paid an electricity bill for months the lights were still switched on and working.
‘Er, yes, well, our goalkeeper is an electrician.’
‘He’s crap too,’ I interjected.
‘He’s crucial to the team though.’
‘Why? He let in nine on Saturday!’
‘He’s the only one who knows how to hot-wire us to—’
‘I don’t want to know . . .’
It transpired that their downfall had begun during their most successful period. They were once a great side but as they had progressed through the divisions their costs had spiralled and when the money had began to run out the best players left and the upward trend was rapidly and fatally reversed. The club’s gates and income didn’t rise with what was happening on the pitch and the inevitable debt simply caught up with them.
Fortunately, my accountant at the time – David Moss, who is sadly no longer with us – had been involved with a few football clubs at a semi-professional level. He went to the VAT man and bought the club some time, and he also spoke to all the club’s creditors and started to get a little room for manoeuvre.
Then we had two fantastic slices of good fortune. I managed to arrange a charity football game to raise funds for the club featuring a host of stars and we packed three thousand people into the ground and earned enough money to pay off the VAT. Then, a short while later, one of my friends who I knew through Olympus Cameras sponsored the team to the tune of £5,000, which was unheard of at the time in those lower divisions.
So between that and some other monies we’d suddenly brought the club up to date and had even started attracting new players. The following season we got through to the quarter-final of the FA Vase, which we lost at Halesowen. But that cup run was great for the town and great for the club.
I’m told that if you know the right faces at the club you can still get some of the best home-made wine in the south of England and duck eggs are aplenty.