Eight Miles High

Johnny P excuses himself while he kisses the sky

Johnny Pundit: Kaleidoscope eyes

Lino: Nonplussed

Baby eagle: Top right hand corner of the net

Funny old thing, Football. For instance, drug testing. You think things are bad now. The beatnik fifties were different again. I mean, LSD completely did for West Ham's chances in the Cup one year.

Good news from Grope

For a brief period I played alongside an outside right called Snubby Tomkinson. Snubby had this pal, Grope, who would supply him with little boosters from time to time; let's just say they were 'not quite so illegal' in those days. One evening, Grope slipped Snubby something new. "Give you great vision", he explained. Snubby downed four of these little blighters before our game against Man City in the fifth round of the Cup, and I have to say what followed was a little rum.

Suck on my fish

I should have clocked something was up when Snubby sashayed up to a linesman two minutes in, chucked him under the chin, asked "how's my favourite penguin?" and invited him to "suck on my fish". Fortunately the referee missed Snubby's fit of giggles, and the lineman himself was too nonplussed to report it. But even the ref couldn't have missed what happened next. As Tubby Thomas, our goalie, made to take a goal kick, Snubby sprinted up to him, whacked the ball straight into our goal and cried joyfully: "Fly, my little beauty, fly", apparently under the impression that the ball was a baby Eagle, and he was its mother. For an encore Snubby started to chew the pitch, believing himself to be trimming the beard of The Great Green Pixie, before spying Grope in the stands and shouting: "I'm on a journey to the truth planet, and you supplied the spaceship!"

Magic carpet

After that, Snubby's career not so much went downhill as vanished into the stratosphere as he made haste for infinity on a magic carpet of his own choosing. I only saw Grope once more — he was driving down the Kings Road a few years later. I've never seen anyone driving a psychedelic Rolls Royce look so focused. The whole episode was crazy. But not as crazy as our thinking we could ever progress in the Cup with that team. We were relegated the following year.



Turn on, tune in, drop off.

Johnny Pundit