You know when you go on a holiday and take your happy snaps and everyone's smiling, and then you get home and you're showing your family and a strange guy.
Who wasn't on your trip is photo Bombingham. Yeah, it ruins the whole vibe.
Next time it happens, you might want to make sure it's not a man named Karl Power. Hey, welcome to the poolroom, where we celebrate the winners, losers and the weird stuff between. I'm Tony Armstrong, and today we're learning professional sports careers are ten percent skill and ninety having the confidence to show up.
At first glance.
Manchester United's two thousand and one Champions League team photo looks pretty normal, but look a little closer and you'll notice there are twelve players, not eleven, and one of them, well, he wasn't on the team sheet. He was wearing the official uniform, and he wore the name and number of a real player, Eric Cantona, who had recently retired.
The team's right back.
Gary Neville was first to notice the man who's that? He asked, and the imposter shop back shut it, Gary Ugrass, I'm doing it for Cantona.
After that, Neville was silent.
Man United were meeting Bayern Munich in a Champions League semifinal in front.
Of sixty thousand fans.
Carl Power was one of them, and now he was going to be immortalized in the pregame team photo. In the UK, they call it blagging, deceiving your way into getting what you want, like a cartoon villain. Carl had been doing it since he was a kid, growing up on an estate outside Manchester. As a teen, he would trick his way into boxing matches by simply being convincing enough. A bag, a tower and the right attitude. He said, He's already broken nose helped too. Carl had an accomplice,
Tommy Dunn, the mastermind behind the pranks. He'd do the hard work of posing as a photographer and walking in, then nick some passes or bibs and bring them back to Carl. The two men had worked together to scheme their way into the Manchester United game and were already standing gleefully on the touchline.
Before their prank.
It was planned with military precision, Carl said. They brought three United kids with them in all the possible color options. They found out where the team was staying and convinced one of the directors to tell them whether they'd be wearing red, white or blue.
Serious rehearsals went on.
They practiced what they'd say and how they'd sneak in. They planned to pose as a TV crew and hope some unsuspecting security guards would.
Let them through. They did.
Tommy and Carl made their way to the side of the pitch to wait for the players spotting and opening. Carl slipped right around to behind goal and sat with real photographers to watch the warm up.
Then, when the teams walked out.
He simply went to the player's entrance and became one of them. Observers say Carl Power stood for the shot just like his hero Canton Are, with his chest out and arms straight. The camera clicked and the deception was complete. This laborer, a former inmate who was out of work, would briefly be the most famous man in Britain. Not bad for a bloke whose friends knew him as fat Neck. A man hunt began. The tabloids demanded to know more about the man who desecrated the sacred tradition of lining
up for pre match photos. A men's magazine called Front eventually outed him and discovered that prank Dunn. Carl had simply walked back into the stands and watched the rest of the match. The limelight agreed with him and his ambition grew. Later that same year, a cricket match was underway between the English and Australian Test teams. Tommy Dunn had once again made his way into the stadium without
a ticket, and he smuggled Carl in behind him. Fat neck, popped on his pads and helmet and hid inside a toilet stall to wait. A phone called distracted Carl and he was late heading onto the field. The gag was supposed to be Karl replacing Nasa Hussein, but the batsman was already at the wicket. Then Carl's phone rang in front of the Leeds crowd and millions more watching on TV. He removed his helmet to answer it. Like I said, Tommy Dunn really was the brains of the operation. Together
they went on blagging. On one occasion, Carl ended up on a Formula one circuit. Another time it was Wimbledon Center Court, where he and Tommy's son, Tommy Jr. Got stuck into a brief rally in front of a delighted crowd that let them play until they ran out of tennis balls.
I'm not sure who's one.
BBC commentator Sue Barker said the style wasn't great. Eventually their luck and the public's patients with their antics started to run low. In two thousand and three, they were finally arrested and held by police. As his profile grew, Carl Power attracted the attention of the British government, who charged him with scamming benefits and threw him in prison for six months. The judge said he'd been caught by his own vanity, by addiction to self publicity. As for
Tommy Dunn, he's a professional prankster now. He's racked up nearly one point five million YouTube subscribers on a channel called troll Station, where he just trolls people for a gag. Older videos have tens of millions of views, but it would be fair to say interests dropped off of late. One of the latest stunts has only twenty eight thousand. The jig, it seems, is finally up. Thanks for hanging out in the boolroom.
I'm Tony Armstrong and you've been listening to an iHeart production.
See you next time for another story from the wonderful world of sport.
Catch you then,