I’m about to read out a list of four names. Please concentrate for a moment while I read them to you. Put down your coffee or tea; stop what you’re doing, and listen.
Stop watering the geraniums and stop wondering what’s for supper. They are names you’ve likely heard before. They aren’t strange. Bar one, they will either be well-known, known, or vaguely familiar. The odd name out, I’m guessing, will be unheard-of.
The names are: Power, Cole, Butt (with two t’s) and Giggs. I’m sure many of you recognise three of the four names but I’m not sure you’ve quite placed the fourth and neither are you, so I’ll read the list of names again. Power, Cole, Butt and Giggs.
The names Cole, Butt and Giggs are, I’m sure you’ll agree, pretty familiar. They might not be household names, but you’ve heard them before. They belong to Andy Cole, Nicky Butt and Ryan Giggs, all of whom played for Manchester United in their days of pomp and glory.
The name of Karl Power, however, is an anomaly in the list, the name which shouldn’t be there. His name doesn’t appear to belong with the other three – at least not at first. It doesn’t appear to belong to the other three because he never played for Manchester United, or anyone else for that matter. So, then, what is the name Power doing with the other three?
Power was linked to the other three because he infiltrated a Manchester United team photograph and became famous for it. Before kick-off in a Champions League (second-leg) quarter-final against Bayern Munich in Munich in 2001, he stole in to the frame and pretended to be a Man U player. He did it for a dare and a laugh, standing alongside Cole, Butt and Giggs, and was momentarily loved for it.
Next to those four – in case these things are meaningful to you – were (in order from left to right) Mikaël Silvestre, Jaap Stam, Wes Brown and Roy Keane.
The 2000/1 season was a promising one for English clubs in Europe. Leeds United and Arsenal were also in the Champions League quarter-finals and United were hopeful that their group stage form would sweep them through the knockouts.
They had finished second behind Valencia in the group stage only because they had conceded a goal less with three wins and three draws in their six matches (the other teams were Panathinaikos and Sturm Graz) and there was hope in the air that night in Munich.
The memory of United’s famous come-from-behind victory over Bayern in the Champions League final in Barcelona two years before was also still fresh in everyone’s mind and, although Bayern were a tricky proposition, nothing was impossible.
While there was hope in the air, there was also tension. United had lost their home tie at Old Trafford to Bayern 1-0, and now they were required to come to the Olympic Stadium and burgle a win. A draw wouldn’t do.
The tension of needing to win the tie against Bayern perhaps accounts for why the United players in the team photo seem strangely oblivious to Power, who has sneakily joined the back row. Although team photographs show him standing next to Cole, he is not standing right next to him, but, say, a metre to Cole’s right, as Cole would have seen it.
Cole clearly had other things on his mind, because he didn’t seem to be too concerned by this late diversion from the team sheet. He looked at the photographer, as most of his team mates did, perhaps hoping that if he didn’t look to his right, he wouldn’t have to acknowledge the presence of someone he didn’t know standing there in the same white Manchester United away kit.
For Cole, and those next to him, like Butt and Giggs, it’s what we might provocatively call the “beggar or panhandle moment”. We all know the beggar moment, that moment of acknowledgement where, out of pity, or compassion, or curiosity, or a strange and humanly awkward amalgam of all three, you turn to confront the beggar.
The beggar sees this, and steps forward, mumbling his spiel. You have tried to avoid this moment but you have been strategically unwise. You have opened the door.
Cole does not open the door. He looks the other way or, more precisely, he looks the other way by looking forward, so he doesn’t have to see the slightly goofy guy – Power’s shorts are slightly too big, and he’s wearing Adidas trainers – standing next to him. He, therefore, doesn’t need to ask the uncomfortable question of what the guy is doing there.
Not all United players were as accommodating as Cole. In some of the team photos you can see Keane – who is directly opposite Power on the back row – taking a step forward and gesticulating with his left arm. You can imagine Keane thinking: “Hold on a minute, there’s something not quite right here.”
Photography, however, is not about minutes. It is about seconds and fractions of seconds. So while Keane is thinking, “Hold on a minute”, it is a minute he doesn’t really have.
No-one else has a minute, either. This isn’t a minute-moment. The game needs to start on time, which is a commodity no-one present really has. The photographer doesn’t have a minute. But, then again, he doesn’t need a minute. He only needs a second. Or two.
And that’s all the time Power needs. He just needs a second in which to become the knock-kneed photo-bomber who successfully managed to infiltrate his way into a Manchester United team photo.
Gary Neville also objected. He knew that Power wasn’t part of the United starting X1 and told Power so. Power told Neville that he was doing this all for Eric Cantona and Gary was to shut up, which seemed to buy him the time he needed to sneak into the photograph.
Neville surely didn’t buy Power’s explanation, although he might have been confused in ways he couldn’t quite put a finger on. Power, you see, has a passing resemblance to Cantona and was wearing Cantona’s famous number 7 shirt. Power might almost have passed for “King Eric” except that Cantona hadn’t played for United for going on for four years by the time of the Bayern quarter-final.
Perhaps, like Cole, Neville reasoned that this would all become irrelevant because whomever this Cantona-lookalike was, he and his baggy shorts would soon be on his way, walking off the pitch and out of history.
In subsequent interviews Power has told reporters that the ruse was planned with “military precision.” He and his friend, Tommy Dunn, had been doing similar such larks and scraps and scams since they were schoolboys bunking school in Manchester.
For this jape, though, the stakes were considerably higher, the stage considerably larger, the TV audience larger still. They didn’t, for instance, know what colour kit United were going to wear for the tie, and only found out they were wearing white on the night by getting the snippet of information from a United director in the team hotel before the game.
How, though, were they going to get into the stadium? Apparently they posed as photographers (some reports say journalists, others say a TV crew) and sweet-talked their way in, avoiding the stewards, who were clearly bored out of their minds, and not really paying attention.
Had they been paying attention, they might have noticed that Cantona (with entourage) was making a long-overdue comeback and would have asked for his autograph.
At first, Power stood behind the goals, but as the pre-match preliminaries wound down, he moved as unobtrusively as possible to the side of the pitch. When the teams had finished shaking hands, Dunn, watching it all from the stands, waved Power onto the field itself. It was now or never.
Whether it was because of his walk-throughs back in their hotel room before the game, or because of an instinctive appreciation of the moment, Power understood this was no time to hesitate. He had to own the moment.
So he marched on to the pitch like a late-arriving player; he took off his tracksuit with purpose and wandered across to where the team photograph was about to be taken.
Adrenaline was surging through his body. He felt he was a Manchester United player, not just someone who was pretending to be a Manchester United player.
Matters might have ended there, except for the smarts of an English photographer. Shaun Botterill was one of several snappers taking the team photographs that night, and he thought something vaguely amiss.
He shot the team photo, as did other photographers, but afterwards was quick to alert his sports desk to the fact that a usurper had infiltrated the frame – and he the sequence to prove it.
An unemployed 33 year-old labourer when he and his mate Dunn flew to Munich, Power was a minor celebrity by the time he returned to Manchester. His flight was paid courtesy of the tabloid newspaper, The Sun, who now believed Power was their exclusive property. In the wake of United’s 2-1 loss in the tie, news and sports editors were keen to inject a little levity into what had been a disappointing away leg. Botterill’s team photograph, with Power in it, was widely syndicated across the tabloids.
Television crews set up on temporary scaffolding outside of Power’s house in Droylsden and Zig Zag, a London production house, promised Power that if he could perform four more similar hoaxes within the year, they would ensure he became a “real celebrity.” The big money and lasting fame Power had always craved was sure to follow.
Power rather liked the idea of being a celebrity. He was one of 11 children born into a Catholic family and he had always needed to scrap for a crust. Perhaps the hard-scrabble existence was coming to an end? Maybe he could finally turn himself into the star he dreamed of becoming?
Summer was on its way and summer was unimaginable without cricket, so stunt two happened at Headingley, in the middle of August, during the fourth Ashes Test between England and Australia.
With England batting after lunch on the second day, Power decided to make his play when Marcus Trescothick was second out, caught behind off Glenn McGrath. His mobile rang three times, it was Dunn as planned, and, in full England kit, Power left his hiding place in the toilets adjacent to the players’ tunnel. He marched down the tunnel and onto the ground, blinking in the sunlight.
But there was a problem. The next batsman in, Nasser Hussain, was already at the wicket, having joined Mark Butcher in the middle. What was Power to do? He carried on walking towards the pitch. To do anything else would be to admit defeat.
As he walked towards the not out batsmen and umpires with increasing trepidation, Power did a couple of arm-revolutions of the bat in his left arm. He was clearly feeling his way into being the batter he knew in his heart of hearts… that he wasn’t.
Those paying attention on assumed that with two batters already out there, Power was a runner for Butcher. The watched it all keenly and sipped on their pints.
With the square some way off, Power’s phone rang. He was momentarily confused. He stopped, turned around, raised his arms as though he wanted to be cheered, took off his helmet, and answered. It was his niece.
She had phoned him a couple of moments before, when he was waiting in the toilets, but, assuming the call was the signal from Dunn for him to walk on, Power hadn’t answered. Now she was trying again. What did she want? Oh, nothing, she just wanted to know how the stunt was progressing and wish her uncle well.
By now the crowd was watching the action more carefully. Some realised that this was the same guy who’d photo-bombed the Man U team photo in Munich a couple of months back. So he was up to his tricks again, was he?
If the stewards and ground security had reached the conclusions as many in the crowd had, they were slow to show it. Instead, images of the incident show them warming to Power’s chutzpah and clapping him off. They patted him on the back as if he’d just scored a century. The crowd went beserk. It was the best passage of play they’d seen all afternoon as England struggled to reach the follow-on target.
A month after the Headingley stunt, the Twin Towers collapsed in a heaving mass of steel, glass and flame during the 11th of September terror attacks. The world was horrified.
Security at concerts and sporting events was ramped up. Power and Dunn lay low. It was no time to be sweet-talking your way into stadiums, pretending to be international sportsmen and having a bit of fun at the expense of what exactly? That was a question best left for another day.
At one point shortly before the Munich stunt according to an excellent long-form essay by Jeff Maysh in The Athletic, Power and Dunn were concerned that there might be German snipers on the roof of the Olympic Stadium. It didn’t come to pass, with Power never being in anyone but the tabloid’s cross-hairs. In the post 9/11 hysteria, now you really could get shot for your troubles.
After a long winter lay-off, Power and Dunn’s next stunt happened in Rome in April, 2002, and featured a sport that had hitherto been removed from Power’s pranks.
It was the final round of the Six Nations and Italy were hosting England at the Stadio Flaminio in a match of no consequence. Surely it would be the ideal time for another hoax? Guards would be down. Maybe all the guards would be down, you never know those Italians. It would be grand.
The lads managed to inveigle a red Mini Cooper for the drive across the Alps from Manchester to Rome. With heart-warming predictability, they dubbed this phase of their long walk to celebrity, The Italian Job.
But the mood had changed. Power had no particular feel for rugby, he was a football man down to his Adidas sneakers. Up in the freezing Alps, he got cold feet.
Somehow the thought wandered into Power’s head that because it was rugby union, once way of drawing attention to himself was to do a one-man haka as the England team ran on. It was of no consequence that the ritual was in no way associated with English rugby and would be bizarrely out of place. He paid such inconvenient cultural details no mind.
Come the fateful afternoon, Power and Dunn sweet-talked themselves into the stadium and onto the pitch perimeter without paying, but there was a problem. The pair’s intelligence-gathering hadn’t been of Munich quality: they didn’t know who had won the toss and, therefore, which way the teams were going to play. Power found himself in the Italy half, with the England team limbering up some way away.
Although he was on the wrong side of Europe, a long way from home, Power wasn’t deterred. In front of a small section of the crowd he did, I think it is fair and journalistically accurate to say, an extremely poor approximation of the Maori war dance. The Italian crowd laughed and clapped. What a nutter. And English, too. He had to be, didn’t he? After all, he was in England kit, although with his slightly squashed in face, he looked more like a boxer than a rugby player. Maybe he was a front-row forward?
Dunn was pretty put out by the Rumpus in Rome, arguing that Power had cocked things up. Recriminations flew, although Power clung steadfastly to the belief the spectacle was a success. Dunn disagreed, but they buried the hatchet and returned to Manchester in the red Mini Cooper. Rome was over-rated. And all you ate there was McDonalds. The Manchester of the Happy Mondays and Oasis, a city that, according to Maysh the journalist, “was drenched in magic”, was a far better place to be.
Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to stray too far from home. Surely there were enough events in England to consider. And summer was coming. There would be no shortage of events to infiltrate in the summer. How about Grand Prix? Or golf? Or tennis?
Power and Dunn’s next two stunts were at Wimbledon and Silverstone, respectively. In the first, Dunn, Power and Dunn’s son, Tommy junior, managed to fool officials into letting them onto centre court without tickets. They grabbed three seats close to the net, convinced they were about to be nabbed. When a fan dressed in a Union Jack suit got up to start an impromptu Mexican Wave, Power and Tommy junior, his partner, could dither no longer.
They rushed onto centre court in their mis-matched outfits and ramshackle racquets in the pause between matches. With security frozen, partly in delight, partly in confusion, they played some atrocious tennis, much to the hilarity of the crowd and the TV commentators.
Warming to his role, Power even managed to find time to stage a John McEnroe-like tantrum. The crowd loved it. It was a good wheeze, possibly one on a par with the photo-bombing episode in Munich. The haka in Rome had been left behind. Power and Dunn were back to winning ways.
By now Power, Dunn and Tommy junior were developing a routine. They’d swan in to a venue pretending to be the press, talking loudly on their mobiles, and waltz past security often without tickets. For the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, they borrowed some drivers’ overalls and changed in a portable toilet near the podium. At the appointed time, they rushed up the podium stairs and opened their bottle of champagne, spraying the bubbly on each other.
Intrigued at the spectacle, the press photographers nearby snapped away, vaguely confused as to whether the F1 race was over. Was this their best escapade yet? It was a decent one, sure, but it probably didn’t compare to Munich. Or to Wimbledon for that matter.
But public and media tolerance for Power and Dunn was beginning to wear thin. The Daily Mail revealed that Power, who had been so badly knifed in an attack many years previously that it was feared he might never walk again, was cheating on his disability grants. It was a claim he put down to sour grapes because he had sold his exclusive to the Daily Mail’s rival, The Sun.
Matters with Zig Zag, the production house in London, soured considerably when Power and Dunn discovered that the deal Zig Zag had proposed wasn’t as sweet as they’d originally claimed. Power and Dunn never became a Power Couple because, despite a Channel Four documentary, true celebrity status somehow passed them by.
Power and six or seven of his mates, one of them wearing a blonde wig, tried a stunt at Old Trafford a couple of years later. This time security was wise to their nonsense. Power became a prisoner of his own mythology, and he spent a brief period behind bars.
Perhaps what people really became tired of what the persistent shallowness of Power and Dunn’s exploits. Hoaxes traditionally take place in public (you can’t have a private hoax) and they must involve a deception, and Power and Dunn’s exploits did both.
There is another tradition in hoaxing, however, and that’s to use the hoax to identify or magnify some social wrong or hypocrisy. Benjamin Franklin, for example, was a famous hoaxer, as was Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver’s Travels, and Daniel Defoe.
Neither Franklin nor Swift liked dooms-dayers, those who looked into the future, in other words, and saw the end of the world. Some of Franklin and Swift’s hoaxes, therefore, were designed to draw attention to these charlatans. Swift wrote a famous satirical pamphlet entitled “A Modest Proposal for Preventing the children of Poor People in Ireland from being a Burden to their Parents or Country” which advocated that poor Irish children should be fed to the rich of England. What was Swift on about? He was drawing attention to the inhumanity of the English rich.
Fun as they were – the United hoax was very cheeky – Power and Dunn drew attention to nothing but themselves. Their hoaxes all collapsed inward, rather than opening outwards into the world. This is why their hoaxes were finally so sad. They were finally so transcendentally sad, because, like children, they couldn’t stop looking at themselves in the mirror.