By George - Hilarious Tales from England's Most Fanatical Football Supporters. David Stanfield
singing. ‘You’re simply the best!’ I think he was singing it about England, but may have been directing at me (if it was, thanks Bruce, I love you too). It was shortly after Bruce almost falling off the van for the tenth time, that Ian, Dave, Lee and Paul returned, it was time to go to the match and time to George up again, I can’t even remember getting into my suit as I was that pissed.
With Bruce, Paul and me Georged up, we eventually reached the ground after the usual thousands of photos. We met up with several old friends who we had met on previous England trips, including the lads from Yarmouth who were part of the famous ‘Yarmouth Yellows’ and our old friend Bully. Bully was a top bloke who had been with us in Switzerland when England beat Argentina. We took our seats, front row behind the goal, and Bully joined us.
Sometime in the second half I went to get some drinks, and all the drinks staff were tapping each other and pointing at me. They all wanted photos with me. They told me I was very famous in Germany and that I’d been on all the TV stations. One little photo shoot got me four free beers! I got back to the lads and gave out the drinks. I looked up and saw I was on the stadium’s big screen – the match camera had picked me up. The boys bundled on top of me to get themselves on the telly, Bully covering virtually everyone with his Bromsgrove flag. At last we had seen ourselves on telly, but what I didn’t anticipate was how many others had also seen us.
As we walked away from the stadium, after seeing England beat Trinidad & Tobago 2-0, we had to once again go through the madness of hundreds of people wanting to have their photo taken with us. After what seemed endless photos, I started to feel really rough, like I was going to collapse at any minute. I never told the boys how I was feeling and just carried on trying to smile for the cameras, but inside my whole body was aching and felt wrecked.
We got back to camp and everyone cheered and Dave said, ‘Here he is – the most famous George of all! Stan, I’ve been telling these boys all about you here in Germany and they can’t believe that someone could drink as much as you have and still be alive to tell the story. You want a beer?’ I looked at him and said, ‘I just want a cup of tea, I’m fucked!’ I walked into the camper and collapsed on the sofa. I was completely dehydrated but after reviving myself with two cups of tea, I checked my mobile. I couldn’t believe it – I’d missed 230 calls and texts from people back home who’d seen me on telly. I dived out of the van and said, ‘Right, now I’m ready for a beer!’ A stranger and handed me a beer like my life depended on it and said, ‘Hello mate, I’m George, nice to meet you.’ I said, ‘I’m George as well, but I’m off duty now. Cheers for the beer mate!’ ‘Right, come on boys. England just won, so let’s go and have a party!’ I screamed.
When we got to the town, all the boys went for a Chinese and I went to an off-licence to get some desperadoes. When I walked in, I spotted Scouse Jamie and his mates. Three of them were shouting like mad at the Indian guy behind the counter, while the others were filling rubble sacks with beer from the fridges. ‘Eh, alright Stan? We owe you one, what you drinking?’ Jamie said. ‘Desperadoes, mate.’ I answered ‘Any Desperadoes in the fridge, Steve?’ Jamie asked, and Steve filled a sack with Desperadoes for me. Jamie handed me the sack and said, ‘Enjoy, Stan, have a good one mate.’ I took the sack, threw it over my shoulder almost Father Christmas, and went back to my mates.
On my way, I bumped into the Man City boys and I told them about the Scousers robbing the beer from the shop. ‘Fuck me, do you Cockney fuckers pay for anything?’ they said, ‘We’ve just seen all your mates running away from that Chinese restaurant, they had their food and then all of them fucked off without paying!’ I just laughed and eventually caught up with my lads, who when I found them were dancing in the street throwing beer all over the place.
That night in Nuremberg there was a fantastic atmosphere and we partied long into the night with the Trinidad & Tobago fans, who while they hadn’t brought the greatest football team had definitely brought some of the liveliest fans, who were all well up for it.
The following morning, which happened to be Kev Mark’s birthday, we packed everything up as we were heading to our next destination – Cologne for the Sweden game. We all agreed that rather than drive to Cologne we’d go back to Frankfurt, park outside the campsite and have a party that night by the river bank. We decided to be a bit cultured and visit the place where the Nuremberg Trials for Nazi war criminals were held. As we walked in, we were met by a load of English radio reporters looking for comments from England fans. They approached Ian and said, ‘Hello mate, want to do an interview for Radio Four?’ Ian swiftly replied, ‘Fuck off, talk to him!’ pointing in my direction. The interviewer got the comment he wanted – I talked for about ten minutes about the education of future generations, never forgetting the atrocities that had happened during World War Two. I knew who the listening audience would be and made my interview as serious as I could, and when I finished the lads gave me a round of applause and the interviewer couldn’t thank me enough.
We all did the tour, some a lot quicker than others. Paul and I took our time as we were both interested in the Second World War; we even tried to get down to where the gallows were to get the ultimate photo – a St George about to be hung – but we couldn’t figure out how to get there, which was probably a good thing, because if you give Paul enough rope, he will hang himself.
We arrived back in Frankfurt and made our way to the campsite where we had started. We all got showered and changed and were just about to set off when Steve said, ‘Is that guy watching us? He’s been walking up and down that bank for ten minutes looking at us.’ A few of the lads approached this strange-looking guy and asked what he was up to.
The bloke watching us was a 23-year-old Bulgarian living in Frankfurt and he was infatuated with everything about England, especially the fans. He was very badly dressed with a shirt that was way too big for him and dodgy chino trousers on with trainers. His name was Michael. We asked Michael to join us for the evening but he said no as he hadn’t any money. We then offered to buy drinks for him, and he excitedly agreed. We went to walk into town as we’d always done, when Michael said, ‘Why don’t you take the Tube?’ We followed him around the corner and there it was; the Tube station. We all glanced at each other, especially me, Steve, Dave and Paul, but said nothing.
Once in Frankfurt square, Kev needed the toilet – big mistake, especially on your birthday. As he locked the door, we listened as he started pissing and then we all started kicking and rocking the portaloo to fuck with poor Kev in it. When he got out he had piss all down his trousers – the only reason we’d stopped was that the police thought that we were mindlessly vandalising the loo, but they just laughed when they heard that someone was in it.
After Kev and his Tardis incident, we went to the riverbank and the Brazilian bar. I asked Michael what he wanted and he said, ‘I don’t drink alcohol, could I have a Coke?’ I told him they didn’t sell Coke but they did do non-alcoholic cocktails. I got the barman to do a cocktail with orange in it – and alcohol, of course – and gave it to Michael. His eyes lit up, ‘That’s wunderbar,’ he said and quickly started sucking at the straw as if the drink was going out of fashion. Jimmy then said, ‘Michael, you can have mine – I don’t drink cocktails unless they’ve got alcohol in them.’ He gave Michael a lemony cocktail. This boy was drinking for Bulgaria and I was impressed. Dave left early as he had to pick his girlfriend up from Düsseldorf airport in the morning, leaving the rest of us to carry on the party with our new friend Michael…but where was Michael?
As I looked around, I spotted him lying face down with his arms and head hanging over the edge of the concrete bank. At first I thought he was throwing his guts up, but no. My new sidekick stood up holding a lilo in his hands and shouting, ‘Stan, I have found my bed for the evening!’ Then he proceeded to start imitating shagging movements on the lilo. The whole crowd, which was mainly English, were pissing themselves at the sight of this drunken little man from Bulgaria shagging