HELLO CHAPS, what s the matter?
Do you mind getting off that?
No, not at all.
We re going to do you for being drunk and disorderly.
Fuck off, you cunt, I m the manager here.
Well, I m Santa Claus, and you re nicked, mate.
In the unlikely event that you ve ever wondered what Mad Frankie Fraser would be like if he d gone into football management rather than gangland enforcing, let me introduce you to Barry Fry.
One of the game s supreme mavericks, the Peterborough boss has been involved in more rows, spats and public brouhahas than probably any other dug-out merchant.
This particular contretemps dates back to Christmas 1983 and the time that the Hertfordshire Constabulary were called to Barnet FC at two in the morning after neighbours reported seeing a beered-up maniac driving round the pitch on a tractor.
With it being Christmas Eve and all that, me and the wife had been out for a few pints and arrived home at our house in Dunstable at about 12 o clock, explains the Massey Ferguson fiend. As I got out of me car, I said it s going to freeze, Kirst, and that bloody pitch ain t flat. I ve got to go and get it done, love . Being a good girl, she agreed to come with me and half-an-hour later there I was, riding up and down and singing carols at the top of me voice. The local residents can t have liked my Good King Wenceslas cos suddenly all these coppers came over the fence waving their warrant cards.
Luckily, one of em recognised me and told the other geezers, yeah, that s Barry Fry . They made me stop, though, and the game we had on Boxing Day against Wealdstone was called off because the bit of the pitch I hadn t done was all rutted. If it s frozen and even, fine, but when it s like that it s too dangerous.
As anyone who saw the recent Channel 4 documentary about him will testify, the boy Fry is one of those people who talks first and thinks of the FA disciplinary charges later. While this don t-give-a-fuck attitude is as commendable as it is rare, it rather overshadows the fact that once upon a time he was the David Beckham of his generation.
There weren t any Spice Girls in my day, though, he rues. Regarding my own career, I d describe myself as a has-been who never was. I started out okay five goals in six games for England Schoolboys and four years at Manchester United but then, boom, I blew it. Gambling and boozing and womanising are all fine in moderation, but done to the extent I did em, they ll destroy you.
What I say to my players now is, don t be an idiot like me and piss it all away. Make a few sacrifices and reap the rewards because if you re halfway decent, they re out there.
It was while at Old Trafford that Fry first encountered Stan Flashman, the self-styled King of the Touts who was later to hire and fire him as Barnet manager a record twelve times.
He d say on a Tuesday, Fry, you re fucking finished , and then phone on Wednesday morning to see why I wasn t in for training. How I got to know him is that when United made it through to the 1963 Cup Final, all the first team were given 100 tickets. Being a cute old bugger, Johnny Giles got me and Eamonn Dunphy, who was an apprentice there, to knock his out for him and Stan was only too happy to buy.
Not content with being partners in profiteering, Fry and Dunphy were also in digs together for three years.
Eamonn was a right old lad, he chuckles. He was a tremendously gifted player and also had plenty to say for himself. Because he was so small, I tried to look after him and was forever getting into fights with Harry Gregg and Wilf McGuinness on his behalf. Matt Busby was in charge, of course, but they used to administer the bollockings.
Old Trafford in the 60s was a wonderful place to be, although everyone was obviously still in mourning over the Munich air disaster. I was a right country bumpkin when I went there for a look round but Johnny and Nobby Stiles took me under their wing and it was their enthusiasm that convinced me to sign for United rather than the other clubs that were in for me. Gilesy even used to give me his cast-offs because I didn t have anything decent to wear.
A year later saw the arrival of another young fellow by the name of Best.
He didn t know anyone in Manchester at first, so we used to buy his comps off him and sell em to Stan. From the word go, you could tell he was a genius. Sir Matt knew it. Whereas everyone else was told in training to pass the ball, George was allowed to keep it and invariably ended up beating four or five men before scoring an absolute cracker. He missed out on the reserves, going straight from the A team to the First Division.
Whatever about his later predeliction for the three Bs booze, birds and bugging the shit out of his managers Fry remembers Best as a terminally shy teenager who once got so homesick he did an overnight flit back to Belfast.
If George had a fault, it was that he wasn t able to handle the adulation that was suddenly heaped on him. To go from being a complete nobody to one of the most famous people in the country in, what, four years is bound to have a negative side and in his case he couldn t stay out of the nightclubs. If women were prepared to throw themselves at somebody like me, you can only imagine how many were chasing after him!
George gets all this bad press, he continues, but he s done me a lot of favours. My first job in management was with a team called Dunstable who d finished bottom of the Southern League for eight years and had a home gate the week I arrived of 38 people. He was pissed off because he d fallen out with Tommy Docherty and wasn t playing at the time so I said, Would you do me a favour and come and guest for me? I ve no crowds and need someone to get things going.
He was well into the idea so I went and saw Tommy whose attitude was, If you can get him to turn up, good luck to you . Well, he did turn up and in the two friendlies he played for us against Man U and Cork Celtic who had Bobby Tambling in charge drew crowds of 12,000 and 14,000. Using that as a springboard, we signed Jeff Astle, scored 105 goals that season and won promotion. There was another time he guested for us against Luton. Our chairman had been put away for embezzlement and thanks to Bestie we were able to pay our players for the first time in six weeks.
Fry s CV after leaving United makes for exhausting reading. Following a brief stint at neighbouring Bolton, he returned south to play for Luton, Gravesend, Orient and the mighty Bedford Town. When injury forced him to hang up his shinpads, he took the gaffer s job at Dunstable and from there went to Hillingdon, back to Bedford and on to Barnet, where Stan The Man made him an offer he couldn t refuse.
Yeah, two Cup Final tickets for fifty quid, Barry cackles again. I d actually been doing some scouting for Everton which was a cushy number but I missed the day-to-day involvement with players. It s a shame that people remember Stan for nearly bankrupting the club because, without him, Barnet would never have made it out of the GM Vauxhall Conference and into the League. Sure, he d walk into the dressing-room and tell a player to fuck off out of my ground because he d been crap but he was a complete soccer nut and, most important of all, he let me manage.
My philosophy has always been that it doesn t matter how many you let in as long as you score more than the opposition not that it always works out like that! Our first Saturday in Division Four, we lost 7-4 at home to Crewe. On the Tuesday we went to Brentford in the Coca-Cola Cup and drew 5-5. The following Tuesday we were away again and won 6-3. We may have been leakier than the Titanic at the back but we didn t short-change anyone on the entertainment front.
Fry s nine-year tenure at Underhill saw him become the Arthur Daley of the transfer market with his ability to talk players up , netting Barnet a cool #2.8 million profit.
Yeah, we did manage a few nice little earners, he agrees. We bought Gary Bull for #2,000 and packed him off to Nottingham Forrest for #500,000. Nicky Bissett and Robert Codner both cost us close to nothing and went to Brighton for #115,000 each. I discovered Andy Clarke playing Sunday football and, after scoring 39 goals in 85 games, Wimbledon gave us #350,000 for him.
My best bit of wheeler-dealering, though, was at Southend when we sold Stan Collymore to Forest for #2.2m. I knew he was going to do the business for them so written into the contract was an extra #250,000 if they got promoted, #250,000 if he scored 25 goals and #250,000 if he won an England cap all of which happened. They also got 15% of the sell-on which means by the time Stan went to Anfield, he d earned Southend #4m.
While banging em in goodo at the City Ground, oh-Stanley-Stanley s stay in Liverpool found him making the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Is he really the footballing equivalent to Viz s Spoilt Bastard, or have the boys from Wapping failed to understand his genius?
He was no problem at all, Fry reminisces fondly. When I arrived at Southend, we were seven points adrift at the bottom of Division One with nine games to play. It looked a fucking certainty that we d go down but thanks to Collymore scoring five and making another five, we did a Houdini act. At the time, his sister was dying with cancer so after every game on a Saturday I d say, Stan, take the extra day off and come in Tuesday . Monday morning would come around and who d be first to turn up for training? Stan Collymore. All that shit he was going through and he never let me down once.
What s rubbish as well is that stuff about him being big-headed. There was this time I phoned Alex Ferguson up and said, you ve got to have at look at this Fer, he s different class . He sent a scout and Collymore was crap. I went in the dressing-room afterwards and said, Stan, you were fucking hopeless. Man United came to see you and pissed off after 20 minutes , and he went, I know gaffer, I screwed up . He took the bollockings, he took the praise and never complained once.
The maverick also appears to be something of a masochist Fry guiding Southend the following season to a top three berth and then, as the final push for the Premiership came, buggering off to Birmingham where the best-case scenario was avoiding relegation.
Everybody thought I was barmy, he acknowledges. They d lost six on the trot without scoring and were fifth from bottom, but unlike Southend who ll always be limited by the fact that their ground only holds 11,500, Birmingham had the potential to become a big club. My second home game, we had 28,500 in to see us beat West Brom 2-1. Unfortunately, while he talks a good fight, I don t think David Sullivan has enough of a footballing brain to get the club out of the Nationwide. I ll always be grateful to him for bringing me in but I wish they d let me manage a bit more.
The Sunday Sport supremo will probably argue that Fry was given too much of a free hand with so many comings and goings at St. Andrew s that they had to invest in velcro shirt-lettering. Well, not really, but it would ve saved them a fortune.
People will tell you I went berserk at Birmingham and used 46 players in one season but what they forget is that since sacking me, my signings have made David Sullivan #10m. Steve Claridge came in for #200,000 and went for #1.3m. Gary Breen cost #150,000 and went for #2.5 million. The profit from Josi Dominguez going to Sporting Lisbon and Liam Daish going to Coventry was #2.8m alone.
Armed with a nice fat pay-off cheque and a degree in finance from the University of Life, Fry decided to do what any sensible out-of-work manager would do buy his own financially-strapped second division footie team.
I went home to the missus and said, Love, I m taking out a second mortgage. That s nice, she goes, are we putting on an extension? No, I m taking-over Peterborough United . Most women would ve been straight onto a divorce lawyer but, God bless er, she didn t make a fuss.
I went in there thinking we had a debt of #650,000 which could ve been taken care of with a bit of buying and selling but then I found out that certain people had been less than honest and we were in shit to the tune of #2.9m. When I tell you that we were having to find #110,000 a week just to pay the wages, you ll realise how serious the situation was. Worse still, we were losing left, right and centre and ended up being relegated which was possibly the single most depressing moment of my life. I m over it now but for three months it was like there d been a death in the family.
Thankfully, he brightens up, the geezer with the pizza chain came in and saved my bacon and we re going to do everything in our power this season to win automatic promotion. I ve signed Neil Lewis, a left-back from Leicester City who s played 22 games in the Premiership; Steve Carson who I had at Birmingham and has scored 105 goals in 394 starts; David Farrell who was at Villa and is a flying machine on the wing; and Jimmy Quinn, the Northern Ireland international whose just arrived from Reading. If they can gee up our younger players, like Niall Inman who was so outstanding for the Republic in Malaysia, I reckon we ll be there or thereabouts.
And if not?
I wonder if you can get third mortgages? n