A big build-up for joker Fletch

Ripping into the joint of beef as if with a black and decker chainsaw, the chef made a slice, let it slip through his fingers to the floor, picked it up and slapped it between Mr Mansell's spuds and his vegetables.

At this point it was difficult to decide which was the former Formula One world champion's most telling feature: the bushy eyebrows or the gaping hole where his mouth had once been.

The chef - who days before was Pierre from Paris (pronounced Par-ee), the internationally-renowned hairdresser - cried, "Next," and colourfully furnished the next client's plate.

He had made a similar impact in the barbershop where customers were reminded more of Freddy Kruger than Vidal Sassoon and were fortunate to emerge with their hair on.

But wherever Paul Fletcher has been - and in whatever guise - hair-raising or hilarious incidents are guaranteed accompaniment.

Just ask Doug Collins, Fletcher's former Burnley team-mate, who on the day he shook hands with special guest Ted Heath at Turf Moor grimaced as if a fire was raging in his underpants - which it was after Fletcher had treated them before the game with Deep Heat.

Or consult Jimmy Adamson, the former Burnley manager, who instructed Fletcher to lead the players on several warm-up laps.

"Wherever Fletch goes, the rest of you follow," he said. They did, out of the training ground and all over the back seat of Adamson's parked car.

When it comes to pranks, Paul Gascoigne is to Paul Fletcher what Rolf Harris is to Rembrandt. When it comes to what 46-year-old Paul Fletcher does now, working in the commercial side of football where his acumen is currently being deployed on the imminent completion of Bolton Wanderers' futuristic Reebok Stadium on an isolated site at Horwich, he is unsurpassed.

His small office in a fluorescent green portacabin in the shadow of the stadium is the hub of operations, some of which are not even part of Fletcher's bulging brief.

Throughout our conversation late on Thursday afternoon the Reebok Stadium chief executive was continually interrupted by the phone, a distraction that made our meeting no less interesting.

In fact, it gave rise to an enlightening moment when he took a call from a Mrs Richardson whose query concerned the provision of car parking space on a one-off basis for disabled supporters ahead of Monday night's historic encounter against Everton.

"All I can guarantee is that the provision will have to be in place, no doubt about it," Fletcher told her.

"Whether it will be for the first match, I don't know if anyone's thought about it."

He closed their discussion with the subsequent guarantee that she would get a car park pass for a space within 20 metres of the ground in the next day's post, that she should certainly send a gin and tonic marked for 'P Fletcher' in reply and she should get in touch again next Tuesday to examine the possibilities of more permanent arrangements.

"You have got to make decisions," said Fletcher on replacing the handset.

"The person who should have dealt with that didn't give her an answer so she gets passed on and nobody makes a decision.

"But her pass will be in the post tonight. My secretary, Natalie, will put it in because I said she'd get it."

It is with the same hands-on approach that Fletcher helped mastermind the magnificent McAlpine structure in Huddersfield which in 1995 was named 'Building Of The Year' by the Royal Institute of British Architects and in 1996 hosted an REM concert.

"The local paper did an article saying that I'd gone off my rocker. How could you have rock concerts in Huddersfield?" recalled Fletcher contentedly.

"Well I did the REM deal in 1993, we sold 35,000 tickets in five hours and the best rock band in the world played two nights.

"Two weeks later I was flicking through the programme and my eye was drawn to the band's tour dates which read: Rome, Paris, San Francisco, Huddersfield, Milan ...

"That was some sense of achievement, to see that we had put Huddersfield right up there among some of the most glamorous cities in the world."

Uniting Huddersfield FC with the local authority and Huddersfield Rugby Club - the equivalent almost of integrating Protestant, Catholic, Arab and Jew - to make the venture viable was no less an achievement, especially considering that when Fletcher and dour Yorkshireman George Binns unveiled their plans to the council they produced a sheet of paper illustrated solely with a green field.

"All we want is a football pitch, we told them, you put what you want around it," said Fletcher, who proclaims that Dale Carnegie (the American steel manufacturer who funded public libraries, education and research trusts) is his bible.

"Within three weeks they had promised us £2m."

In 18 months Fletcher and Binns had raised over £14m, £m of which came from Lawrence Batley, an 80-year-old businessman whom Fletcher tracked to a restaurant where he waited on him for four consecutive Wednesday mornings.

"Of course, he never turned up because he was in hospital having an operation!" said Fletcher.

"Eventually, we did catch up with him after noticing a car parked outside a hotel bearing the numberplate, LB1. I thought it had to be him.

"We walked in, sought him out and asked him for £m to put his name on one of our stands.

"We then spent two hours listening to him tell how he had built his empire and at 5.45pm he said - I'll never forget - 'How do you want your money, over two years or three?'"

It is reassuring to know that despite the high-powered position he now holds within his hometown football club - a position which doesn't prevent him wearing hard hat and yellow tunic over jumper and jeans, just like any other worker I noticed on Thursday - he has not forgotten where he comes from either. "I spent the first 22 years of my life on a council estate in Bolton," he said, the simple poignancy in the statement increased by the fact that his mother, Lillian, has been quite ill for the last year. His father, Frank, supported whichever team his son played for, Bolton from 1968 to 1970, Burnley until the end of the decade and then Blackpool until his retirement because of ankle and knee injuries in 1981.

He married Sian, with whom he went to school, and for the past 24 years they have lived in the same house in Rossendale where they have raised Claire, a 23-year-old marketing manager for a hospitality company principally concerned with motorsport and golf, and 21-year-old Daniel, director of a business travel company.

In Burnley, he is a cult hero, their record buy in 1970 at £66,000, a fierce header of a ball and scorer of an overhead bicycle kick against the then all-conquering Leeds United in 1974 which, according to Burnley, A Complete Record by Edward Lee and Ray Simpson, "was so spectacular it had to be seen to be believed".

In spite of his almost 100 goals for the club, he says his greatest attribute was that he was a team player.

"In 1974 when Liverpool were top of the table you could have named every last one of their players," he said. "We were second and you couldn't name more than a couple of us. We were common people achieving uncommon results."

When he left Bolton in 1970, it was the distinguished Nat Lofthouse - then manager - who came to his door and, over Fletcher's protestations, told him he would have to be sold in order for the club to avoid bankruptcy.

It is ironic that the man whose financial value saved Bolton from oblivion then is now so heavily involved in the club's future commercial strategy.

And the future for Fletcher is Bolton Wanderers "unless Nat Lofthouse calls on my door again and asks me to leave".

If Nat Lofthouse calls on Fletcher's door again, he should give him a handshake and a hug. But he should check that the original joker in the pack hasn't planted a "Kick Me" sticker on his backside before he leaves.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.