Bend It Like Bullard Read online

  ‘If you don’t fucking shut up, you’re going straight out of that window, goalkeeper or no goalkeeper.’

  Nobody was saying a word now. Polly looked at me for help, as if to ask if my mad mate was actually being serious, hoping that I’d burst out laughing to break the tension. No such luck.

  ‘He will do it Polly,’ I told him.

  ‘Do I make myself clear, Polly?’

  ‘Yes. I won’t talk to you again,’ said the keeper.

  ‘Thank you,’ said my mad mate, before walking back to his seat and carrying on as if nothing unusual had happened.

  I’m still not sure that Polly realised just how lucky he was with that particular incident. Had he not taken my mad mate seriously at that moment, or said the wrong thing at any time for the rest of the night, he would’ve ended up with a fork in his neck, or going straight through the window. And that was by no means the end of the nutcase’s antics for the night either. If anything, he was just getting warmed up.

  A few hours later, he had de Zeeuw in a headlock and I didn’t know where to look. Arjan was a huge presence; more than 6ft tall, a strong leader on the pitch and a real colossus of a man, but there he was in the vice-like grip of a total nutcase, who was screaming ‘It’s Arjan de Zeeuw! Arjan!’ as if he was his biggest fan.

  The longer I looked away, the longer my mad mate seemed to keep hold of de Zeeuw. Some of the boys were pleading with me to call him off, but there was nothing I could do. He pays as much attention to me as he does to anyone else – which is not one fucking bit.

  Eventually, he let go of him and, not long after, we managed to sneak off and leave my mad mate to his own devices. There was only so much apologising I was prepared to do and there would’ve been trouble if we’d stuck around with him any longer. So, one by one, we each pretended we were going to the loo, but instead headed straight out of the bar and legged it down the street, pissing ourselves laughing.

  After a stint at another bar in Wigan, I finally got back home at about two in the morning and, to my horror, there was my mad mate – who would’ve had no idea where I lived – sitting on my sofa with three empty Champagne bottles surrounding him, and my Diane looking utterly pissed off. He’d been driving her mad for hours and my phone must have died so she couldn’t get hold of me.

  A few days later, there was a knock at the door and it was my next-door neighbour asking me if I’d seen the aerial from his new BMW 7 Series which had gone missing. I had no idea what he was talking about so told him I couldn’t help him, but when I stopped to think about it, I knew it had to be connected to you-know-who.

  I did some investigating and found out that my mad mate had kept my address on a piece of paper in his sock that night which explained how he’d found my place. When he’d first tried knocking, Diane hadn’t answered the door and he couldn’t get in. Naturally, he decided that breaking in was the best option and, in order to do that, he’d better snap off my neighbour’s brand new car aerial to pick my lock. I also discovered a load of 2p and 50p coins underneath all the big, sash windows outside my house as he’d been using them to try to force one open.

  Fortunately for Diane, Polly, de Zeeuw and all the Wigan boys, he never visited the north west again – at least not to my knowledge anyway – so they never had to deal with him. But they still had to deal with me and any number of non-life threatening, daft japes. Away trips were usually primed for that kind of nonsense and everyone got involved.

  Standard fare included finding out the room numbers of your team-mates just before dinner, then waiting outside their room with a bucket of water. As soon as they opened the door, all ready for their din-dins, bosh! That bucket of water goes all over them.

  Better still, we’d burst into someone’s room when they were still in bed and muller them with a bucket right there. Try sleeping in a soaking wet bed. Hotel housekeeping staff hated us, but we always left them decent tips to make up for the carnage. Alternatively, we would wait by an open first-floor window, below which everyone was walking to dinner, and then soak them with a bin full of water.

  If you weren’t getting drenched, there were other more old-school, low-rent wind-ups that went on. Filling trainers with water – or worse, wee – happened a fair bit: ‘Bit squelchy in there is it, boy? You didn’t check that!’ And if you did remember to check the inside of your shoes, you’d probably have missed the fact that your laces had been cut to pieces and you couldn’t tie them up. Either that, or the toes would have been cut off your socks so you put your foot straight through them.

  I always found mealtimes particularly boring and we were often left to our own devices so I took full advantage by doing childish things like hiding under the table as the poor waitress was coming with food, and then leaping out like a dog, barking, and pretending to bite her arm. The food would always go everywhere, except on the table.

  One of my favourite away trip pranks was buying a Pritt Stick and then covering someone’s bathroom towel with glue. When they tried to dry themselves after a shower, they would become covered in sticky white fluff, which was really hard to remove. A few hours later, we’d all be getting changed before the game and we could all see the Pritt Stick victim straight away: ‘He’s been Pritt Sticked; he looks like a fucking sheep!’

  That was funny, but not a patch on the time my Wigan team-mate Alan Mahon suffered a very smelly night’s sleep, thanks to the handiwork of me and Michael Flynn. We, ahem, had a crap into a bag, which we then slipped underneath Alan’s pillowcase. Horrible. But hilarious.

  ‘Someone’s had a shit in my room and whoever’s done it has not flushed the chain properly,’ he complained to everyone the next morning, as Flynny and I started wetting ourselves.

  ‘You wanna check your pillowcase son,’ was all I could say in between my fits of laughter.

  I would also do stupid things on matchdays, which was quite daft looking back on it now. Once, at Wigan, I chucked all of Polly’s gear in the team bath and turned the shower on. Kit, boots, gloves – the works.

  He was standing in front of his changing area half-naked, looking around for all his stuff. ‘Where’s my kit?’ he yelled.

  ‘I think it’s in the shower!’ was my instant reply, as if it had a mind of its own and had innocently wandered in there.

  ‘Fuck off Jim, you can’t do that,’ he said.

  Even the gaffer, Paul Jewell, who would normally stay out of all the nonsense that went on between the players, was pissed off with me but I explained that I was getting Polly back for something he’d done to me.

  ‘Have you got spare kit?’ the gaffer asked Polly.

  ‘No, I’ve done that as well,’ I answered immediately before Polly had even had a chance to work out where it might be. ‘I’m not that soppy!’

  From the moment I turned up at West Ham’s training ground in my dad’s Granada Ghia, everyone knew I was a bit different. You need the confidence to deal with the abuse you’re going to get for that and I had it. And if you can show you’re prepared to give as good as you get (or, in my case, way more than you get), most people will leave you alone. If not, you will get picked on and you’ll always have squelchy shoes, a wet bed and socks with holes in.

  It sounds ridiculous for grown men to behave like that, but that’s what the football environment is like. I didn’t make the rules, but because I was prepared to go the extra mile when it came to the daft stuff, I made sure I was never that victim.

  In football, your reputation goes a long way. Once I’d established myself as that bloke who would go to any lengths, the stories travelled round and became embellished. Then I would turn up at a new club and there would be an instant respect for me.

  ‘Did you set fire to a player’s car?’ my new team-mates would ask me, referring to TJ Moncur’s motor that I filled with water.

  ‘Yeah, I did,’ I’d reply. ‘You don’t want to fuck with me, I’ll take your wheels off.’

  And, just like that, I’d be left alone.

  Th
ere was one time when one of my pranks backfired spectacularly. I’d discovered one of those numbers you could ring up, where an automated voice answers and waits for you to respond which triggers it to talk again. I was on the Wigan team bus when I called a mate, connected them to this prank number then listened in.

  ‘Hello,’ said my mate.

  ‘What do you think you’ve been doing messing around with my wife!’ says the automatic hard man’s voice.

  ‘You what?’ said my mate.

  ‘I know what you’ve been up to; my missus has told me everything.’

  ‘What you on about, I’ve not been doing anything,’ said my mate, starting to panic as me and a couple of the Wigan boys pissed ourselves laughing.

  And so it went on, until my mate realised he was being wound up.

  It worked so well that I thought I’d try it again on my brother John, although this time I was on my own as my team-mates had fallen asleep or something. No staying power, those boys.

  It was the same scenario as the voice started to wind my brother up, except he continued to believe it was real.

  ‘Look mate, I’ve not been shagging your wife,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t come the innocent with me, I know what you’ve been up to,’ said the voice.

  ‘It wasn’t me, I swear to you,’ said my brother.

  ‘I’ve seen you at it,’ said the voice.

  I was cracking up again on the bus, until my brother said: ‘Look mate, it wasn’t me because I’m gay! G-A-Y, gay!’

  Bloody hell. My brother had come out to an automatic prank answerphone and I heard it all. I didn’t try that gag again in a hurry. I was in complete shock although on reflection it didn’t come as a massive surprise. Over the years, a few of my mates had mentioned that they’d seen my brother hanging out with an alternative crowd but I didn’t really think much of it. It didn’t bother me at all as I’m all about live and let live, but I never really discussed it with John until recently, as our family don’t tend to talk about things like that so openly and I also felt quite bad about that phone call. John wasn’t that fussed about it though and that was that.

  There was one phone call I received which I was convinced was a prank, but turned out to be completely genuine – yet to this day it remains the most bizarre phone conversation I’ve ever had.

  It all started when I went to Wimbledon to watch some tennis and I bumped into this bloke who told me he was Alastair Campbell’s son and we had a bit of a laugh. It was while I was playing for Fulham, probably at the peak of my career and his old man was still a bigwig in the Labour party.

  A couple of weeks later my phone rang, and it was a bloke telling me he was Alastair Campbell. I would’ve fallen off my chair in surprise if I had been sitting on one at the time.

  I thought it was a joke at first, but it was definitely him and he started telling me how his boy had met me at the tennis and how it would be good for the two of us to meet up one day.

  ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ was the thought going through my head, but I just went along with it.

  ‘Yeah, that would be good,’ I said, and that was the end of the conversation.

  And I never heard from him again.

  Eh?

  Thinking about it, it wasn’t far off an election and I reckon he was trying to tap me up to ‘come out’ as a Labour party supporter. He loved his football, he’d probably seen me messing around on Soccer AM – his kid certainly had – and he might have thought I’d be a good person to have on board. But me and politics? I don’t think so.

  I didn’t need to get involved with that as I was far more comfortable making a fool of myself in the football world where I’d built up a reputation and continued to play on it.

  And that’s why when the Sky cameras turned up at Hull one pre-season to film us, there was no way they were leaving without another set of outtakes of me being a dick for Soccer AM, YouTube and who knows where else.

  They turned up one Monday morning to film those bits you see when they do the team line-ups before a game, and all the players take a few steps towards the camera, looking all serious and professional.

  I must admit I was feeling a bit lively that morning as I’d had a couple of coffees so I was buzzing about and acting up for the cameras – business as usual, really. When it was my turn, I stood with my back to camera in front of the green screen they use to film these things, turned around and strolled up to the camera doing a bit of a funny walk and grinning like a buffoon.

  The boys behind the camera loved it and I saw that as my opportunity to entertain them. For the next take, I hiked my shorts right up past my waist, halfway up my torso and tucked my shirt in too for good measure. I then walked up to the camera like a total donut, playing it as straight as I could while the Sky crew in the room fell about laughing.

  Take three and it was time to perfect the hard man routine I’d been developing just in case Hollywood ever came calling – if Vinnie Jones can do it, why can’t I?

  So I walked up to the camera in a slow, deliberate and menacing way, full of swagger, with an expression on my face which said I was the don, a no-nonsense, mean son of a bitch, not to be messed with. Once again, everyone was in stitches.

  Finally, fourth time lucky, I managed to play it straight but even then I still had a big, cheesy grin on my face and had to work so hard not to completely lose the plot laughing. When they called cut, I broke out into some of my best dancefloor moves by way of a celebration. Job done.

  Footage of my entire performance made it on to Soccer AM the following weekend and was all over the internet straight after that. Even now, I still get the odd person coming up to me with their shorts or trousers hiked right up yelling, ‘Jimbo, wahey!’

  People were clearly into this sort of larking around, especially on the internet and, a while later, some bright spark at the shampoo brand Wash & Go called me up and asked me if I wanted to make an advert for them.

  I was well up for it and told them a telly advert would suit me right down to the ground.

  ‘No Jim,’ they said. ‘It’s not on the telly, it’s a viral.’

  ‘What the fuck’s that?’

  A viral didn’t sound like a good thing to me but they explained that it was a short ad designed to be spread around the internet.

  This was definitely the next best thing to being the Milkybar Kid. And where was that bloke now, eh?

  It was a full day’s filming, but when I turned up early one morning expecting that I’d have to dress up a bit and wash my hair in front of one camera, I couldn’t have been more wrong. There must have been about ten cameras and fifty people in the room.

  ‘Oh shit,’ I thought. ‘I’d better do this properly.’

  So I started following all their instructions really conscientiously, doing everything I was told and taking it all really seriously. But it didn’t seem to be going so well, judging from the muted reaction I was getting. The director pulled me over to one side to have a word.

  ‘Er, Jim, we’ve got you here to mess about!’

  ‘Gotcha!’

  What a dope I was. The only reason they wanted me there was to play the fool. But it wasn’t so easy to walk into a room full of strangers and start being funny. I wasn’t a stand-up comedian. I bet the Milkybar Kid never had to tell jokes.

  Anyway, we bonded a bit over a cup of tea and a bite to eat, I started to loosen up and we were away. I think it ended up being pretty funny and I enjoyed doing it, but it was a hell of a long day. I was in there from 7am until 8pm to film a one-minute ad. I definitely made the right call being a footballer – ninety minutes and you’re done.

  The ad itself was to celebrate the shampoo’s twenty-first birthday and saw me sporting a variety of retro hairstyles before having my hair done in a ridiculous, salon-fresh style and parading around a locker room, shaking it all over the place in a deliberately cheesy way.

  Half a million hits on YouTube later, it’s still going strong; that’s one virus n
obody can shake off. There was also some great coverage of the ad in the papers at the time so I was happy enough. That, coupled with the rest of the tomfoolery, were more small steps in my evil plot to take over the internet and make those Milkybar Kid ad people rue the day they spurned me.

  But for all those internet hits and pranks, the Spanish police will always be able to lay claim to pulling the ultimate scam on me.

  Polly, me and a few others had gone on holiday to Marbella for a long weekend during the close season, to live it up and get right on it. We had a suitably mad one which started badly for Polly when his case didn’t come through from Manchester so he had to spend the whole trip begging us for clothes and toiletries. But much worse was to come for me.

  We’d done our partying and were walking back through Malaga airport to catch our flight home. Polly was in front of me in the passport control queue and when he walked through, it was my turn.

  I looked at the official, flashed him a smile and worked the old Bullard magic, but then I saw a red light flashing on his screen and a worried look appeared on his face. He kept looking at my passport then looking at me and, each time, his face grew more concerned.

  Suddenly, he got up and opened the door of his little booth, grabbed my hands and said: ‘You must wait here.’

  There was a slope leading up to where the passport control booths were and suddenly I could see a few policemen running up it, heading towards me although I kept thinking and hoping that they’d go straight past because they were after someone else.

  What the fuck was going on and what the fuck had I done while I was out there?

  One of the policemen called out ‘Mr Bullard!’ and then I really started to panic.

  ‘Polly!’ I called to my mate. ‘Come back through!’

  He’d been watching the scene from a distance and tried to help. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked the old bill. ‘We’ve got a flight to catch.’

  ‘He will not be getting on the flight with you,’ replied one of the policemen. ‘You must go.’

  He pleaded with them but it was no use as they forced him to leave us alone and move towards the departure gate.