Too Many Crooks

Christmas party 1992

After beating off The Sun in a vicious bidding war, The Gaffer is proud to announce our serialisation of Ian Crook’s autobiography, ‘Too Many Crooks’. The ex-Norwich hero’s book promises to lift the lid on a tumultuous career, and a much-anticipated chapter will unveil “John Polston and that pair of trousers”. This week, Ian reveals all about a very messy Christmas party

In the 92/93 season we knew how to win games at Norwich, and we also knew how to celebrate. After a big performance at fortress Carrow Road it would be no surprise to find a few of the lads propping up the bar in the city centre Club Med till gone midnight, chatting to the local senoritas. Let’s just say that by that time most the lads would have had one sangria too many and were south of the border down Mexico way. Drunk. As Ian Culverhouse said once “At this club we have a play hard, play hard mentality”. We all ricked him for weeks about that one. What a prat.

Every Christmas we would have a big old Xmas bash at the club. The manager suggested a quiet meal as we had to go to Highfield Road for a six-pointer three days later, and Roy Wegerle was on fire around that time. But then he put Ruel Fox in charge of organisation. I mean, when you’ve got Foxy in charge of the ales you know you won’t be tucked up in bed in time for Clive Anderson All Talk. We decided to make the whole thing a bit of a laugh and Gossy came up with the idea of us all coming in fancy dress, the theme was our favourite TV shows. Classic.

Anyway, I arrived at Pizza Express to find I was sat between Chris Sutton and Mark Bowen (dressed as and Gordon the Gopher and Gabby Roslin respectively), this was going to be a messy one. Before I had even ordered my dough balls we were on our second bottle of house red, and it’s safe to say I’m not the only one who doesn’t remember the desert course. And then it was time to really get the party started as we headed next door to Octives, a karaoke bar!

I’d never done karaoke before, sure I’d sung into my hairbrush while listening to But Seriously, but this was a different kettle of fish. Gossy (dressed as Danny Baker from Pets Win Prizes) was the first up of course, and my God he had a fair set of pipes on him. It turns out he was in choir at school and he really could belt out a tune. I’d go as far as saying his take on Wuthering Heights surpassed the original that night.

As the night wore on I was finding it more and more difficult to avoid doing a number and then from nowhere the DJ called my name out. It seems that Robert Ullerthorne had signed me up without my knowledge, too clever for his own good that one. The opening chords to Bohemian Rhapsody kicked in and I had no choice. In the end it went ok, I even managed to change the words from “put a gun against his head, pulled the trigger now he’s dead” to “If Bryan Gunn gets out of bed, our chances in the cup are dead”. It got a big laugh because Gunny had just come back from injury and dropped clanger in the Rumbelows Cup at Gillingham. The lads were repeating it around the training ground for weeks.

The next morning we all rolled in for training with headaches the size of East Anglia. “Enjoy your meal last night boys?” said the Gaffer. “Yeah, but who’d of thought we’d have to sing for our supper?” said Gossy. That’s when the Gaffer twigged we’d had more than a few slices of pizza and made us do an extra long cross country run. Little did he know the new route went past the Duck and Partridge and we all stopped in for some hair of the dog, only getting back to the training pitch gone dark.

Needless to say the Gaffer was livid.

Next time Crooky discusses apartheid.

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