Firstly, don't panic if you know nothing about football, while it would enhance your enjoyment of this post you'll still get it if you think the offside rule is something to do with measuring things
Let us begin...
In my previous pampered existence as a director of the UK
Because I was personally responsible for spending around £90 million on advertising a year, media owners (newspapers, TV channels etc) would wine & dine me and invite me to fabulous things I could never hope to attend or do for free & spoil me while I was there.
The extreme end of the scale was:
3 all (yes ALL nudge, wink) expenses paid 5 star days in Amsterdam for Queens Day with chauffeurs, dinner & Supperclub etc & 4 days skidooing across Lapland staying in luxury lodges on the way.
Before you start….
a) Yes…. I know. I think it’s obscene too, & did at the time, but would you honestly have turned it down?
b) I’m now an struggling artist making, in a good year, about the same as a teacher (but I’m much, much happier).
c) I did some Really Good ThingsTM while in advertising. I reduced deaths by kitchen fires by 30% with the work I did on Fire Kills. That means I saved about 200 lives & I personally, on my own, bullied people into donating around £32 million worth of free advertising space for Breakthrough Breast Cancer’s Fashion Targets Breast Cancer campaign across three years – They were my pro bono client. I always felt that, because I was helping to safe guard the nations breasts, I should have been given a little card that, on production, would mean that women would have to show me their breasts by law. Oddly no one else did.
Anyway. One of the more down to earth (relatively) perks was that, as all the major media owners maintained hospitably boxes at all the other London clubs & literally no one else in the advertising industry supported them, I would get taken to see my beloved Charlton Athletic get humiliated at all the London away matches.
They’d struggle to fill all 10 places (because it was Charlton…) so I’d always be able to take Soph with me.
Despite what she may claim, Soph knows less about football than the average Tescos trolley boy knows about Sanskrit & actually cares less – but she does like a nice day out.
So…. One of the very last jollies I had, just as my mind reading business had got to the point where I was just about earning enough to live (frugally at that stage) on, I got taken to see Charlton play Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on 22nd Jan 2006.
I remember the date because I handed in my notice the next day & went full time as a performer.
The way these days worked was like this:
- 11am – Arrive. Get taken up to dining room thingy with view over the ground where bacon butties, fancy pastries & coffee etc would be waiting for us.
- 12pm – Start drinking for free.
- 1pm – Sit down for fancy assed dinner. More drinking. The “Ladbroke’s Girls” come round the tables collecting your betting slips
- Kick off – Take your seat in the stands, next to the directors.
- Half time – Go in for cheese, biccys & more alcohol
- Second half – Back in the stands.
- Full time – Go in for more free alcohol & collect any winning bets you may have made.
Fucking ACE day I think you’ll agree.
For me as a young lad growing up on a council estate in East London this would have been beyond my wildest dreams.
As a spoilt adult – I still thought is was bloody amazing & was very, very grateful.
This then is our, very high, base line for Best Football Day Ever. It get’s soooooooo much better :)
Some context for those of you who are not football statto’s (me included).
a) At this point no one had taken a single point away from Stamford Bridge Chelsea
b) Charlton are rubbish. We had lost 9 or our last 11 games home & away.
c) But…. Darren Bent had scored in the last minute of 6 of them.
d) It was Marcus Bent’s debut for us.
We are sitting there before the game debating what bets to make & I persuade the entire table of 10 people to put a tenner on Darren Bent scoring the last goal of the game at odds of 14/1.
In the first half we play quite well & although we conceded a goal at 18 mins (Eidur Gudjohnsen 18yrds out on the volley) as a Charlton fan I was quite pleased with 1-0 at half time away at Chelsea – For us, that season, the fact that we weren’t 3 down was cause for celebration.
I should also say that we took the ever disappointing Rommedahl off, put on Marcus Bent & went from 4-5-1 to 4-4-2 with both Bents up front at 39 mins.
Our seats shared the same aisle as the Directors seats so I was sitting at 10ft away from Abramovic, Ken Bates and all their guests and as I turned to go back to the dining room I find myself face to face with Pele.
Let’s just revisit that last sentence. I WAS NOSE TO FRICKKING NOSE WITH Pelé!
- 3 time World Cup winner.
- The only man to ever score 3 goals in a World Cup Final.
- A candidate for Greatest Player of All Time (Maradonna or George Best shade it for me but….).
- Voted Athlete of the Century by the International Olympic Committee.
- Time magazine listed Pelé as one of the 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century.
MUTHA FUCKING PELÉ has actually bumped into me.
Now I have met & worked with many (real, not reality TV) celebrities in my time & I pride myself on staying cool, even when I met Tim Roth who is a big hero of mine – We just had a beer & a chat and I kept all my screaming fandom locked up inside.
But this was Pelé.
I am ashamed to say that I seized his hand & started gushing about how amazing he was & what an enormous honour it was meet him – I dunno how much he understood because his English is rubbish but he eventually had to pry his hand out of mine.
Now lets just recap the day so far:
I’ve been taken on a massive jolly.
Charlton have played quite well
I’VE SHAKEN PELÉ’S HAND
You’d think this would be enough to qualify as my best football day ever but oh no, it got even better.
After the half time break we go back to our seats and Pelé waves and grins at me – Cool huh?
Second half we play well again & on the 58th min Marcus Bent makes a well timed 15yrd run to get on the end of a Darren Ambrose though ball and delivers a looping header over the top of Cech.
1- 1!
On his Charlton debut Marcus Bent scores one of the few goals Chelsea
W00T! That’ll do me right there.
Unbelievably, we hang to on the end of the match.
DRAW! Charlton have taken the first point at Fortress Stamford Bridge
Awesome!
As we go back for more drinks Pelé smiles and waves again.
The top of my head threatens to fall off as my widening smile nearly meets at the back of my head.
We need to recap once more:
- Great, luxury day out at someone else’s expense.
- I met Pelé, shook his hand & he smiled & waved at me.
- Humble Charlton took a point away from invincible
- Marcus Bent scored a corking goal on his debut.
How can it possibly get any better than that?
It does….
The Ladbroke Girls return & hand us all our betting slips & £140 each!!!!
You’ll recall we all placed £10 on Darren Bent to score the last goal of them game, Marcus Bent actually scored the last goal.
Because the players are listed alphabetically they have scanned down the forms looking for “Bent” seen our bets next to “D. Bent” and paid out ON THE WRONG BET!
Have you ever even heard of that happening before?
We drank up and left as swiftly we could before they realised :D
So there you go:
- Treated to a luxury day out.
- Met Pelé.
- Drew the first blood of the season at
- Had a player score on his debut
- Got paid out £140 (£280 between Soph & I) on the wrong bet.
If you’ve heard of a better football day out I’d love to hear about it.
