Raquel Welch stood on the touchline at Stamford Bridge and shouted: Wooee, bye bye Ossie!
CHELSEA have never been bigger or more glamorous. They have Jose Mourinho, a fast- expanding global fanbase and a multi-national squad of elite footballers.
Then again, the club at the foot of the King’s Road in london has always enjoyed a sprinkle of stardust.
Take the day 43 years ago when during a game against leicester, screen siren Raquel Welch stood on the touchline trying to attract the attention of Chelsea’s star striker Peter Osgood.
It was a surreal sight even by the standards of the Seventies. Welch, chaperoned by none other than TV pundit Jimmy Hill, emerged from under a brolly dressed in an immaculate flared trouser suit and a pair of high-heeled platform shoes to start shouting at Osgood.
Former Chelsea player John Hollins takes up the story: ‘I don’t remember the game at all. I couldn’t tell you who we were playing or what the score was. I don’t think anyone was interested after that.
‘I do remember she was very tall and beautiful and wearing tight trousers and all the lads were all looking, thinking: “How the hell did she get into those?”
‘She walked out with Jimmy Hill and she was waving and shouting to Ossie and he’s going: “Do me a favour, leave it out, I’m playing here”.’
In his autobiography, Osgood wrote: ‘ She probably figured as I was standing there on the pitch doing nothing it was OK to interrupt. If I had been George Best I would have slipped her my number but then again if I was George Best she would have slipped me hers.
‘I don’t think she really understood football because when she left, the game had kicked off and she walked down the touchline next to the dog track to a cacophony of wolf-whistles and cries of “Get ‘em off!” Then the crowd joined in.
‘She saw me, waved and shouted to get my attention, “Wooeeee, Ossie, bye-bye Ossie”.’
Hollins is sure she didn’t visit the dressing room and she didn’t attend the ‘ tea-room’ where many of the A-list celebrities would go for postmatch refreshment and where, according to legend, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was once spotted among the likes of Michael Caine and Michael Crawford.
Popular myth claims the American actress was smitten by Osgood, but the reality is it was a stunt dreamed up by promoter Greg Tesser and celebrity photographer and Chelsea fan Terry O’Neill.
Tesser, who died last month after an illness, promoted the Yardbirds and Georgie Fame before he became involved in football as an agent for Osgood and QPR’s Rodney Marsh. On the King’s Road
scene, he became friends with O’Neill, who produced some of the most famous pop images from the era, including the pictures of Raquel Welch in Chelsea kit, taken in Arizona, also in 1972.
‘We were shooting in the middle of the desert but I managed to convince Raquel to put on a Chelsea strip for a kickabout on the Wild West set,’ says O’Neill.
In his book: Chelsea FC in the Swinging 60s: Football’s First Rock
‘n’ Roll Club, published in 2013, Tesser told how O’Neill had helped him boost Osgood’s showbiz profile by forging the connection with Welch during a shoot for an interview with The Times.
‘Terry told me Raquel was giving a major interview to a guy from The
Times and thanks to his prodding she was going to say a few very complimentary things about Os,’ wrote Tesser.
‘Wow! This was better than I expected — sensational stuff.
‘The interview raised more than a few eyebrows. Her compliments were unique in the sense that never before had such an international movie star — and an American one at that — raved about an english football star.’
As the story gathered momentum, at O’Neill’s suggestion, Tesser approached Chelsea manager Dave Sexton about getting Welch along to a game.
He described Sexton’s response as ‘positively Antarctic’ and yet, with the help of Hill ‘who smoothed the way with the club’, he made it happen. even compared with today
“She probably thought it was OK to interrupt”
when Samuel l Jackson and David Walliams turn up, this will go down as Chelsea’s real Hollywood period.
There were impromptu visits from film stars Steve McQueen and Clint eastwood, usually accompanied by lifelong Chelsea fan and future club president Dickie Attenborough, and time spent hanging out in cafes after training with Tom Jones and elton John, or ‘little Reg from Ruislip’, as he was known to the players at the time. Hollins said: ‘A few of us would often go up to Mills Music in Soho in the afternoons, and Ron Harris would come in and go: “Get us a coffee, Reg”. Then about three years later, Terry Venables is at one of his big dos when this guy comes over to say hello and Terry can’t recognise him because he’s turned into elton John. His hair was blue or green or something.’
When the Sixties were in full swing, players would begin preparation for games by meeting in Alexander’s on the King’s Road, which was run by fashion designer Mary Quant and her husband Alexander Plunket Greene, beneath the basement of their first shop, Bazaar.
The restaurant would attract star diners like Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier, Brigitte Bardot, Audrey Hepburn, Jean Shrimpton and Twiggy, and several of the Chelsea squad, especially on a Friday lunchtime.
‘We must have been one of the first teams to eat pasta ahead of the games,’ said Hollins. ‘We’d meet at Alexander’s and have pasta and thin, tender steaks soaked in olive oil.’
These days Chelsea have the finest food on offer to their players — but not many film stars shouting from the touchline.