Cod Almighty | Article
by James Thundercliffe
1 December 2003
Those fleeting brushes with someone vaguely famous we've all had them. 80s uber-cow Nina Myskow once waltzed past me at Larnaca airport. Waiting for a bus in the middle of Leeds the last thing I expected was Paul Whitehouse walking past. Terrorvision have pushed-in ahead of me at a Bradford pub. Fame, fame, fatal fame.
And then there are the times when you have had a close unexpected encounter with someone linked with Grimsby Town Football Club. No, not those times you bumped into Tony Gallimore down the Pier. Or you worked at Nisa and your boss was Dudley Ramsden. No, no, none of that. They're all predictable circumstances. We want tales of the unexpected. Chance meetings.
In the summer of 2000 me and my mate Brownie started living in one of those posh flats near Deansgate Bridge and sometimes post would arrive for a Mr S Coldicott.
In my heart of hearts I really wanted it to be our midfield mouse Stace, so i could say things like: "Me and Stacy are dead close - we used to live in the same flat on totally separate occasions" or something.
To be honest I thought it would be just a fantasy until one day, a guy from the Wolverhampton Wanderers official programme rang me up.
"Is that you Stacy?" he asked.
"Yes it is, who is this?" I replied, not really knowing what I was saying.
Basically Town were due at Molineux in a few weeks' time; and the season before, Stacy had helped them with the profile of Town in the programme.
As the conversation wore on I thought: "This guy is gonna ask me about the Town squad and I'm going to have to tell him all about Mr Gallimore's problems." In the end he wanted Kevin Donovan's number and I said that I didn't have it at hand and I would ring him back.
I never did and the world didn't get to hear about our amazing drunken left-back. Shame. I did get to tell my friends that a 'professional' footballer used to sleep where I slept. No-one was as impressed as me.