NawtyBlog Number 1 - Danny Dyer´s Friendliest Men
30th July 2009
Danny Dyer’s Friendliest Men
In a series exclusive to The Football Ramble, acting’s Danny Dyer meets those who dwell in football’s underworld and reports the facts back exactly as they happened...
Today The Football Ramble boys have sent me to meet a fella who’s the top dog of a powerful city firm. To be honest I’m bricking it a bit as the geezer’s obviously tasty, and a little bemused as he wanted to meet me in a French restaurant. Some gangsters and thugs take it upon themselves to refine a sense of taste and I’m in no position to suggest a change of venue. As I bowl in I’m expecting to end up eating snails’ legs when a geezer sitting in a corner clocks me and pushes a bowl full of manky grapes towards me. “Hi, Olive?” he says. I haven’t got a Scooby clue why he thinks I’m called Olive, perhaps this is a normal name for a man in these circles. I wouldn’t know, I’m so far out of my manor it ain’t even true. This must be my man and he spares me blushes when he extends his palm and introduces himself as Sebastian. I tell him that I’m Danny and the embarrassment of his faux pas doesn’t even register on his face. This is one seriously polite man.
Sitting on the far side of the room is a heavy set, bald man with a scar running down a head that’s buried in a newspaper. He’s wearing a sheepskin jacket and keeps looking at his watch with impatience. I figure he must be Sebastian’s heavy, here to put the screws on me should I try anything funny. Luckily the restaurant is laid out in such a way that he can’t see me from where I’m sitting.
Coming from the streets of Sun Hill I’ve encountered plenty of hardened criminals but Sebastian doesn’t look how I expect him to. He has an air of the upper class gent to him. He’s clearly minted so what I’d been told about his status as the boss of his firm looks to be the real deal.
Sebastian Price-Waterhouse-Cooper is a Gooner. This strikes me as odd as I’d been told I was meeting a Millwall fan who’d gone to ground. Supposedly he didn’t want to reveal his hideout but was willing to come out in the open to meet me and get his side of the story across. Probably them Ramble boys mugging me off on the old dog and blower. Sebastian has been a season ticket holder at The Emirates for over two seasons. He regularly attends matches with his wife Sophia and their 3-year-old twins Sebastiano and Sebastiana when he isn’t away on business. “Which frankly isn’t that often,” he sighs, flicking back a floppy, school boy fringe. Sebastian, or Seb as he likes to be called, was born in a hospital in Bucks, apt as he’s clearly not short of a few bob. I too was born in a hospital and it strikes me that if I didn’t have the acting it could so easily have been me.
He asks me if I want a starter. To be honest with you if I ever have a starter before me dinner it’s usually a folded up bit of bread while I’m cooking the ol’ beans on toast. Wanting to appear cultured I have a butchers’ look at the menu and order something called a foie grass. I assume it’ll be a salad but I’m not even sure what it is when it turns up. I’ve made a right pig’s arse of me order but Seb doesn’t seem to notice. “Some of the employees in my grandfather’s insurance company were from Woolwich back when the old Arsenal were called Dial Square you see. I inherited the lot and I suppose that you could say my blood runs red!” He says this as if it’s a joke and I’m not sure whether to laugh or not for fear of offending him either way.
The bald bloke is now looking even more frustrated as he looks at his watch. He puts his palm flat on the table and pokes a knife between his fingers with increasing speed. I wouldn’t like to be the bloke making him wait around. The guy’s clearly a nutter so Seb must command some serious respect to be able to control such a man. I’m getting nervous so I decide to get down to brass tactics and ask Seb what the atmosphere’s like at the stadium when the boss of a big firm turns up with his kids. “Oh you know, it’s very child friendly. At first we worried a little about there being some rude or boisterous singing but there doesn’t seem to be any of that, I think it’s just something away fans do mostly. Half the time I think they must dub it on when they show other teams on TV! We bring our own salad for the half time lunch break and all in all it’s a lovely place to spend a quiet Saturday afternoon.”
He goes on to say that he thinks Arsene Wenger should never have let Patrick Vieira and Thierry Henry go and that he should buy them back. “I tell you what we need: another defender and a strong midfielder,” he says as he tucks into some salmon thing he’s ordered as his main course. “Maybe even another striker, though the Russian fellow seems to be quite good and they’re only a young side after all. They’re underdogs but they’ll come good. Arsenal know.”
I’m munching on the steak and chips I practically begged the chef to do me as Seb talks about his holidays. Out of the blue he offers to take me away to his villa in St Tropez, just the two of us. My noggin starts to spin, I’m not sure I can handle it. I swig me beer and notice he’s drinking water with his dinner. He’s just so...nice. Water, with dinner.
The big goon’s gone outside for a crafty fag. I freak out, make my excuses and head to the lav to get me head right. I’d never expected that the boss of a big city firm could seem like such a loving, educated family man. Everything about him screams of a good, well off upbringing. He seems more like a suit than a thug, yet there’s something about him I can’t quite place. I sit back down and Seb has already paid for dinner before his muscle comes back in, looking more furious than ever. Seb says it’s been a nice surprise to have some company over dinner while the wife and kids have been away skiing and that he’d love to do it again. He asks if I want to come back to his place but I think I’ve had enough of the underworld vibe for one night. He looks oddly disappointed, but he gives me his card and says we should go for a drink before his family get back. I say yes but I have no intention of doing so, the contrast between our lifestyles is too much for me to handle and I bid him farewell before he jumps into a black cab. Just after he leaves, the old bill turn up, storm the restaurant and grab his back up guy. He clocks us and starts screaming blue murder at me about setting him up when I didn’t even do nothing. My nerves are all over the place and this weirdness is the last thing I need.
I jump on the tube and feel both relieved and elated that I’m going back to me yard without getting meself into any bother.
After tonight there’s a lot of things in this world I feel I don’t understand. Look after yourself, good luck to ya.
Danny Dyer
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Luke
:::2009-08-14 17:36:10
Lovely
Sam Marks
:::2009-08-15 13:38:17
Cracking...what a geeza
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