"Soccer comedy should score a winner"

Taken from "The Birmingham Post" 25 May 1999, by Graham Keal

It's a good way to make sure Des Lynam doesn't sue. TV heartthrob Neil
Pearson plays a silver-haired, silver-tongued sports anchor man with a
rakish moustache and a disreputable past that is about to catch up with him.
Neil's character is called Gerry Tudor but he could be Des's long-lost
brother, or his wicked alter ego.

The action switches from the present to 1974, when Bostock Stanley - Third
Division strugglers heading for the drop into the old four-division League's
bottom rung - miraculously vie for the ultimate domestic trophy, the FA Cup.
Gerry Tudor was in the right place at the right time, making a
fly-on-the-dressing-room-wall documentary. It's the present-day Gerry that
could pass for Des's double.

"That's just luck really," says writer Chris England. "You'll find it hard
to believe but when they made Neil up to look 25 years older, that's what he
looked like."

Even down to the moustache? "Well, they tried it without and they tried it
with, and once it was on they had to have it. But I wouldn't want you to
think it's a horrible satire about Des Lynam. It's really a bit of Des, a
bit of Dickie Davies, a bit of all them."

Chris, who co-wrote An Evening With Gary Lineker, devised this latest soccer
saga with old mate Nick Hancock, who co-stars as Mike Tonker, another TV
sports presenter whose career has been eclipsed by his well-groomed rival.
"I should have been one of the players really but I didn't think I was up to
it, fitness wise," says a slightly tubby Nick, who puts his condition down
to "not exercising much, and smoking."

At least Nick made the cast this time. The lead role in An Evening With Gary
Lineker, all about a Stoke City fan whose soccer obsession makes him lose
sight of the ball in his relationships, was based on him and created for
him.

Nick played the part on the West End stage for nearly a year but Martin
Clunes was cast in the TV adaptation and Nick was left on the substitute's
bench.

"I was very keen for the original cast to do the TV film but it got away
from me," laments Chris.

"No one's ever done it as well as Nick in the productions I've seen but at
the time he wasn't as well-known as Martin Clunes.

The new film is an amusing but affectionate evocation of a golden age in
football, "when it wasn't all about money and football players weren't all
pseudo pop stars," says Chris, who also appears on screen as George Best,
not the George Best, just another, lesser player with the same name.
He and Nick had been kicking around the idea ever since sharing a flat
together in Streatham, south London, years ago.

But when ITV bought the rights to the FA Cup last year, suddenly the time
was right to pitch it.

It makes a perfect postscript to the big match and filming at Wembley gave
the cast a notable frisson: "We were all quite blase about it beforehand but
going up the steps was something else. It was a shame they wouldn't let us
on the pitch," says Chris.

"It was the day before Keegan's first England game (against Hungary) and
just after the Worthington Cup Final. The pitch looked indestructible but
they wanted to give it time to recover."

The project has attracted a great team of actors, including Tim Healey
(looking like Ron Atkinson on a bad hair day) as a wonderfully inept soccer
manager, and three ex-Coronation Street stars - Roy Barraclough as club
chairman, Phil Middlemiss as the coach and Glenn Hugill as team captain Alan
"Ponce" Hardy.

Neil Pearson had no regrets about not being cast as a player: "I'd probably
have broken my neck wearing the platform shoes they gave me," he says. "And
I didn't want mud over my delightful flares and sheepskin jacket." Once a
smoothie, always a smoothie.