IF you’re going to pick a sporting hero then you are not going to be short of stories with Gazza.
BBC football commentator Guy Mowbray admitted that his true sporting hero is Sir Ian Botham but he felt he should stick to his own sport when choosing a subject to talk about at the Lord’s Taverners Balloon Debate in Leeds on Wednesday evening.
And it proved a good bet with Guy carrying the day on a wave of nostalgia from an audience with high hopes for England at the World Cup in Russia this summer and bittersweet memories of Paul Gascoigne crying and a Chris Waddle missed penalty at Italia ’90 and more missed penalties but that spectacular goal by the flawed Geordie genius at Euro ’96.
Up against stiff competition from former Yorkshire and England cricket Ryan Sidebottom, Leeds Rhinos rugby league international Danika Priim and double gold medal winning Paralympic cyclist and adventurer Steve Bate MBE, Guy performed brilliantly.
Not content with delving into Gazza’s autobiography for stories, he had spoken to Chris Waddle, for so long Gazza’s room mate when they both played for England.
Waddle remembered the time the players were given access to the hotel kitchen to get snacks after training. Gazza appeared back in the hotel room with a dozen fresh eggs and proceeded to throw them out of the window at people using a cash point across the road.
Then there was the time a bored Gascoigne was sitting on the end of his bed in a hotel room in Tirana, Albania, the day before an England international match and he bet Waddle that he could land a disc of the hotel soap in the middle of a chicken coop 100 yards away from their hotel room.
“Not only was he a brilliant footballer but he had a great throwing arm too,” Guy informed the Balloon Debate audience at the Queens Hotel.
Gazza succeeded with the feat and other players arrived in the room and tried to equal it but failed. Eventually manager Bobby Robson was called to watch his fellow Geordie repeat the soap throw watched by the entire England squad, the management team and some startled Albanian chickens.
Ryan Sidebottom picked his former team mate Darren Gough as his subject – a man known for his competitive nature, loyalty, generosity…but not intelligence.
On board the aeroplane on an overseas trip with England, Goughie turned to a fellow passenger and said: “Doesn’t a plane get really close to the ground when it lands.”
Danika Priim is the vice captain of the Leeds Rhinos Women’s Rugby League team and took unpaid leave from her job as a PE teacher to play for the England team at the World Cup in Australia last year.
She previously played for the Bradford Bulls, winning the Challenge Cup, Grand Final and winning the league unbeaten – and is a classicly trained dancer too!
She picked former rugby league player Jimmy Lowes as her sporting hero and won over the audience early by saying she wanted to dispel a few myths about all women rugby players being lesbians.
And while she joked that the audience should vote for her because she was the only woman, she got through to the second round of the Balloon Debate without any need for a sympathy vote and just because of her enthusiasm, wit and bright personality.
Steve Bate MBE picked a climber from Hull called Andy Kirkpatrick as his sporting hero. Andy accompanied Steve on one of his climbs up the frightening El Capitan peak in Yosemite, California.
Steve was registered visually impaired in 2011 – “but I am definitely guaranteed to go blind in the future” he cheerfully told me before the event – and what he has achieved since, alongside three medals and a world record at the Rio Paralympic Games, include a whole variety of athletic, endurance and adventurous experiences.
Born in New Zealand, he has lived in Scotland and is now based in Yorkshire and is a really engaging and inspiring bloke.
But the Balloon Debate – in which the audience vote for the sporting hero they want to hear more about – is a ruthless competition and up against Gazza, Goughie and a maverick rugby player, Andy Kirkpatrick didn’t make it past the first round.
One thing we learned from the event was that Ryan Sidebottom doesn’t just have the nickname Sid.
During the heads and tails game at the start of the evening, the Lord’s Taverners Yorkshire chairman Jeremy Thomas asked a series of questions for the audience to try and answer.
One of them was what other nickname is Ryan known by – White Lightening or Sexual Chocolate.
It turns out it is Sexual Chocolate – which Ryan insisted is because his team mates thought his hair resembled the greasy curls of the band that plays in a scene in the Eddie Murphy film Coming To America.
However having seen the way that some of the women looked at Ryan on the night, I’m not so sure.
Another of the questions involved me.
Jeremy asked which politician did I replace at short notice at the first Balloon Debate six years ago?
Was it Nigel Farage or Edwina Currie?
The answer, said Jeremy, was Nigel Farage.
But I’m sure they told me I was a replacement for George Clooney.
And apparently I proved more of a crowd pleaser.
:::
WITH the theme of the evening being sporting heroes, I was able to reveal to the audience that my sporting hero was sitting among them.
It is Neil Muffitt of Woodrow Mercer Finance, the fast growing finance recruitment specialists who were sponsors of the event.
Last year, during the Lions’ tour of New Zealand, Neil and some rugby club pals took part in a performance outside a bar that went viral on the internet and even made the national TV news.
They performed their own version of the All Blacks’ Haka, called the Yorkshire Haka.
It’s been something of a YouTube sensation and it is fair to say that it went down well when we played the clip at the Balloon Debate.
Some of those who had seen it before didn’t actually realise that Neil was involved in it.
When sport and culture collide it can prove very entertaining.
:::
RODNEY Dalton of law firm Lupton Fawcett was one of the people sitting at my table at the Balloon Debate.
He told me that he was heading off to Lords early the following morning to attend the first day of England’s Test Match against Pakistan as a guest of Colin Graves, the founder of convenience store chain Costcutter who is now the chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB).
Rodney, who already knows his way around the home of cricket as a member of the MCC, was unsure who the other guests might be in the box but was looking forward to the experience.
Shortly after 10am yesterday I received the following text message: “Great night last night. I have just arrived in the box and seen the guest list. I may not be the best known person here. There is a chap called Mick Jagger on the list.”
Later on in the day another text was received from Rodders: “Sir Mick has arrived. We had a long chat about sex, booze and a rock n’ roll life and I asked him what he had been doing.”
Have a great weekend.