Too Many Crooks

Wogan

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 “The truth about Daryl Sutch”. This week, Ian reveals all about the star-studded aftermatch of Norwich’s finest hour in the UEFA Cup

After the victory over Bayern Munich in the UEFA Fairs Cup the world changed for us at Carrow Road. We quite literally became stars overnight, once we’d closed the game out with a hard-fought 1-1 draw in the second leg of course. The day after the victory we were invited to guest on Terry Wogan’s chatshow Wogan. We later found out that we had only got the call when Trevor and Simon had cancelled at the last minute, but it was still nice they thought of us second. It’s lucky we had won really, I doubt the Bayern Munich players would have been such good value to the genial Irishman, Rob Newman reckoned that Mehmet Scholl was a notoriously bad anecdotalist.

We were sandwiched (not like that!) between Marti Pellow from Wet, Wet, Wet, and Guy Siner, who played the fruity Nazi in ’Allo ‘Allo! (oo-er!). Having had a few victory Blackthorns the night before we weren’t feeling too clever, in fact only three of us actually managed to make it to Television Centre in time for filming: Me, Ian Butterworth and Gossy. Boys will be boys! Needless to say the researcher was livid.

The show started with Guy, who talked about an upcoming appearance in Dick Whittington at the Tavistock Theatre Royal, while we sat nervously in the green room. It was a lot like before a big match, with Butters psyching himself up by listening to Money For Nothing on his walkman and Gossy babbling incessantly about tactics. Then we were called on, and always the superstitious one, I had to be the last to leave the green room.

It was a disaster from the off, Wogan had been given the wrong notes and asked us “So which one is Trevor and which is Simon?” Gossy, who loves a laugh, said he was Trevor, I was Simon and Butters was “and”! Terry didn’t know what to do, but someone obviously got the message to him and he tried to salvage the interview.

Sadly, in the confusion he had come to believe that we played for Northwich and he asked us how we had got into the UEFA Cup (this was in the time before the Intertoto). I could see that Butters was seething, it was his big moment and he’d even got the Mrs to set the video so he could show the grandkids, but I lightened the mood by asking Terry if he played for WIG-an. He was fuming.

After the show we decided to have some fun and went for a wander around the Beeb. Before we knew it I was giving Gossy a leg-up over the wall of the Blue Peter garden. It’s funny how things look bigger on TV, I’d say it was about the size of the centre-circle at Oldham’s Boundary Park at best. Gossy carved “Canaries do it all around Europe” on the bench and then we all did a runner and caught the ten past nine train from Kings Cross back to Norwich via Ely.

The next day we came in for training and Mike Walker called us into the office. Apparently he’d had a call from Alan Yentob, who is a huge Ipswich fan, about the bench incident and a replacement was going to come out of our wages. Because of our actions Norwich City staff and players had been banned from BBC light entertainment shows for six weeks, including MW’s scheduled appearance on A Question of Sport.

Needless to say, the Gaffer was livid.

Next time Ian lifts the lid on Chris Sutton’s less-than-happy reaction to City’s classic “bird poo” kit.

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