427: Chris Waddle, Sheffield Wednesday, Merlin’s Premier League 95 Sticker Collection

Richard Allinson channels his inner music critic today with a look at when the worlds of football and pop music collide. Yes, we may have touched on this once or twice before but when has that stopped us? It’s also worth your time to read this purely to justify Rich’s research to the long suffering Mrs Allinson who I’m quite frankly amazed hasn’t channelled her inner Geordie wing wizard and told Rich “It’s Goodbye”. Over to Rich.

The other week I wrote about how Paul McGregor (the Kula Shaker looking bloke that used to play up front for Nottingham Forest) had twinned his career as a mildly successful mid-nineties footballer with being a slightly less than successful mid-nineties indie front man. At the time this dual shot at glory seemed absolutely normal, but on reflection it has to be said that Britpop and the nineties in general were completely batshit. Of course it wasn’t logical that someone would be simultaneously trying to impress those peas from the same pod Frank Clarke and Alan McGee. Ian Woan once said of McGregor “The way he plays on the pitch, he should pack the footy in and give music a go” and this got me thinking, which other professional footballers have turned their hand to music? It turns out quite a lot, and we’re not talking FA Cup final team songs either.

Let’s start in the most logical place: Diamond Lights by Glenn Hoddle and Chris Waddle. Obviously having become bored of playing for Tottenham Hotspur and England, football’s own Simon & Garfunkel launched an assault on the charts in 1987 with this synth-pop belter. For a start off, it genuinely isn’t that shit, if a band like Hurts released it nowadays people wouldn’t really bat an eyelid. Secondly, a Top of the Pops performance highlighted that Chris Waddle basically does nothing other than wear an oversized dinner jacket and sing the odd line of depressed backing vocals, a bit like a Geordie version of Gordon from Bloc Party. Thirdly, it has the best OTT guitar solo this side of the Top Gun soundtrack - sadly not played by Hoddle, Waddle or a Spurs teammate like Clive Allen. The video that accompanied the song is also worth a mention. It obviously opens with some kids playing football, just in case you had forgotten about Glenn and Chris’s day jobs; the pair then do a bit of singing whilst a woman in a floaty dress dances theatrically, before finally exiting what looks like a working men’s club (but is apparently ‘Diamond Studios’) to be met by a bunch of autograph hunting kids as the dancing lady turns to the camera with a look of “what the f*** was all that about?” In short, it is exceptional. However, I can’t help but feel they missed a trick by not calling themselves the Club Shop Boys.

Next up is Emmanuel Frimpong and his verse on the genuinely excellent Leave It Yeah by Lethal Bizzle and a few of his mates. TWO TWOS NAH. Like Hoddle and Waddle, Frimmy opens up the video with a bit of football. That is where the similarities end though as he goes on to advise people to “stay Dench or get Frimponged” and then clarifying “you don’t want to get Frimponged.” He then launches into the following “Man's a midfielder, tackler, scary on the pitch, Dracula, pass the ball to Van Persie, dench goal oh Lord ah mercy, Gooners we fight to the end, Dench guy, leave it leave it, if you wanna tackle tackle then, soft with the ladies, hard with the men, Dench!” Frimpong’s guest spot on this 2012 track was probably aided by the fact that Bizzle is his cousin but even so his verse is, well, Dench. I did always wish there was a second verse by Frimpong with the line “pass the ball to Bendtner, shot sails high, over” but I guess you can’t have everything in life.

And the best of the rest? Paul Gascoigne was unbelievably in the charts twice in 1990 in addition to World in Motion. Firstly and famously, Fog On The Tyne (Revisited), his collaboration with Lindisfarne, reached number 2. C’mon! Obviously Jimmy Five Bellies saw a potential goldmine and Geordie Boys (Gazza Rap) was hastily released, reaching number 32. And that was the end of Paul Gascoigne the solo artist.

Next up we have Andy (sorry, Andrew) Cole with his song Outstanding. The public clearly disagreed with this title, it spent one week at number 68 before disappearing out of the charts completely. In the video, Cole shunned the ‘booting a ball about’ approach to hit making and instead drove around in an Aston Martin looking really happy. However, not wanting people to forget why he was famous he opens with “Tell the world my name, who’s that? Andy Cole. I blaze the scene, score the goals...” It is genuinely really bad.

We then have (and this is really bloody random) old mister sexy football himself Ruud Gullit who released a reggae song in 1984 called ‘Not The Dancing Kind’. Being generous, it sounds like a Boney M album track. Being honest, it sounds bloody dreadful. Unbelievably this wasn’t Gullit’s only shot at the charts. In 1988 he released anti-apartheid track ‘South Africa’ with some band called Revelation Time. Noble cause, shit song. Given we’re in the ‘absolutely nuts’ section of the post I also have to give mention to ex-Blackburn Rovers wide man Morten Gamst Pedersen. He teamed up with four other footballers that I have never heard of and started a band called, imaginatively, The Players. Dressed all in white like a Scandinavian Westlife, they released a song called ‘This Is For Real’. I, for one, wish it wasn’t.

Disgracefully, a lot of these songs aren’t actually available for download nowadays but trust me, having spent the last two hours researching this, I can say with a great degree of certainty that you aren’t really missing out. Plus the lack of availability saves your wife from the “really great new playlist” you made...