IRAN BANKED ME £250,000!
In 1998, I had the summer of my life, helping Iran in their World Cup journey. It’s a strange story, which is all on film. We’ll start with the day I had £250,000 riding on a football match. After England’s passage to the semi-finals in 1990, then having failed to reach the 1994 finals, everyone in the media was desperate for a free trip to France once Glenn Hoddle’s England qualified for1998. Hundreds of documentary ideas were submitted to all TV stations for shows following England with another 20 submitted charting Jamaica’s progress. So, Nick Hancock and I decided to put one in to the BBC to follow Iran! Nick’s wife Shari is Iranian and, as a Farnborough Town supporter, I was well used to supporting the underdog! Unbelievably, they said yes with a £250,000 film commissioning fee guaranteed to follow the team’s French adventure! There was just one small problem, Iran had not yet qualified. They had come second in the Asian Qualifying Group, and had a play-off in November 1997, against Australia, the winners of the Oceania Group. There were to be two legs, the first in the Azadi Stadium, Tehran, the second in the MCG in Melbourne. I managed to watch the first with the producer from October Films (who were making the film), Adam Bullmore. It was played in an intimidating atmosphere in front of 128,000 on the outskirts of Tehran.
Harry Kewell scored first for the SoccerRoos but then Khodadad Azizi, equalised. That was that. The second half was a cagey affair, with too much at stake for either team to attack.
Tatters
The second leg was played on Saturday November 29 at 11am GMT. That weekend, I was in Glasgow, at the Kings Theatre, with the Paul Merton Impro Chums, as part of Glasgow Comedy Festival.
The Friday show was a stormer and, after a few drinks, I went to my hotel room but couldn’t sleep. If Iran qualified I would not only be going to a World Cup, but also to a country rarely seen by westerners since the fall of the Shah.
At 5am, I sat up in a cold sweat and frantically checked the hotel TV channels, only to find that they didn’t have the one showing the match. So at 10.30 that morning I headed to the centre to find a pub to watch it in. Eventually I found one, approached the barman and asked to speak to the manager. He informed me that he was the manager. I said, “This is going to sound strange, but could you put the Australia v Iran game on the telly please?” “Why? We normally have the preview show on at lunchtime on a Saturday. No-one is going to be interested in that match.” “Well, I have £250,000 riding on it,” I replied. He ran and fetched the remote and pointed it at the box, eventually finding the channel. I bought a pint and sat right in front of the screen. The match was hectic. Australia, feeding off the 85,000 crowd ,were in control and Kewell again scored the opener on 32 minutes. Then, at the start of the second half, Aurelio Vidmar scored a second. It looked like my dream was in tatters.
Hectic
The bar was filling up now with lunchtime clientele and every person asked the landlord why the match was on? Every time, he would point at me, and say, “That bloke has got a quarter of a million riding on this!” They would then sit down and start cheering for Iran.
Some of them even bought my drinks. Then, on 75 minutes, Karim Bagheri, Iran’s best player over the two legs, popped up to score (from what looked like an offside pass, as any Aussie will tell you). The pub went crazy, people were hugging me. People were coming in off the street to find out what was going on. It was chaos. We were still celebrating when that little wizard, Khodadad Azizi scored from the edge of the six yard box, to level the scores. This meant that Iran would go through on away goals.
The pub looked like it was midnight on New Years Eve, not a grey Saturday at 1pm. The Australian team threw everything at the Iranians but could not score. Iran had done it! The group-stage draw was held on December 6. Nick and I, took a film crew down to watch it made, outside an Iranian deli in Kensington. They came out of the hat with Germany, Yugoslavia, and USA. The stand-out game was the US versus Iran. Two ideologies clashing! And we were going to be there! First, though, we had to fly to Tehran and secure the TV rights from the Iranian FA, and meet the coach, and players. But that is for next time.