Richard Bath - Notorious - The Maddest and Baddest Sportsmen on the Planet

When the Ukrainians led 3-1 at half-time, they were visited by another SS officer. ‘You have played very well,’ he said. ‘And we are very impressed. But you cannot expect to win. I want you to take a moment to think of the consequences.’ They did, winning 5-3, with defender Klimenko running almost the whole length of the pitch, through several tackles, to the goal line, but instead of putting the ball into the goal he stopped it on the line; toying with the Master Race and humiliating them in the process. Then he ran into the goal, turned, and kicked the ball back up the field. That’s when the referee blew for full-time, more than fifteen minutes early.

Very few Start players escaped, and most were tortured before being dispatched to the great clubhouse in the sky. On the day when Trusevich was finally killed, two Start teammates in his labour camp had already died of wounds inflicted in the torture chamber when he was instructed to line up. A guard, approaching him from behind, tried to use his rifle butt on the back of Trusevich’s head but, defiant and agile to the end, he dodged the blow and leapt at the guard screaming: ‘Red sport will never die’. Three guns barked: he was dead before he hit the ground.

Forced to retire from football at 21 (‘three sevens, an important number in my view’ he said mysteriously) because of premature rheumatoid arthritis, Hereford goalkeeper David Icke went on to become a household name as a soccer TV presenter for twelve years. Then, in 1990, he went mad. Absolutely bonkers, in fact. Declaring that he was ‘the son of Godhead’, he went on to outline quasi-religious beliefs that were more Ron L Hubbard than Glenn Hoddle.

His epiphany was nothing if not amusing. He went onto Wogan , dressed from head to foot in turquoise, and told the genial Irishman that: ‘in the 1980s when I was a BBC presenter there was this presence close to me. I thought someone else was there. I went to a psychic and she said I would be world famous and was the Son of God—and there I was, presenting the snooker.’ Not surprisingly Wogan was a little sceptical and pointed out that the audience were laughing.

‘The best way of removing negativity,’ Icke said, ‘is to laugh and be joyous, Terry. So I am glad that there has been so much laughter in the audience tonight.’

‘They’re not laughing with you! They’re laughing at you!’ replied an incredulous Wogan.

Among Icke’s more choice utterances was that he had received ‘channelled messages’ from both a Chinese mandarin, Wang Yee Lee, and from Socrates. He also reckons that the world had been taken over by 12ft blood-drinking, child-abusing alien lizards (the Queen is one, so was her Mum, and so are George Bush, Tony Blair, Hillary Clinton, Kris Kristofferson, and Boxcar Willie). So convinced is he of this that in the wake of the World Trade Center bombings he published a book called Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster: Why the official story of 9/11 is a monumental lie in which he outlined an elaborate conspiracy theory about the events of that day, arguing that it was carefully staged by high-ranking members of the Illuminati (reptilian bloodline), including George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Tony Blair. ‘Reptiles run the world. I have had dozens of people telling me they’ve seen important people turning into reptilian humanoid figures. They have nodules on their head and drink human blood, mainly of blonde-haired, blue-eyed people.’ When asked about his claim that the Queen is a lizard who drinks human blood and enjoys child sacrifice, he replied: ‘If it’s not true take me to court. Let’s have it out.’

Other nutty pronouncements include the revelation that the planet earth vibrates at the same velocity as turquoise; that Arran, a small and perfectly respectable island off the west coast of Scotland, would fall off the end of the world and into the sea in 1997; and that the Sahara would blossom once more. Not surprisingly, Arran is still as dry as a temperance meeting and the Sahara’s still fairly sandy.

Icke’s work has involved a great deal of travel in which he has been ‘leaving stones and pieces of wood in different places to help unlock the combination set up by Arthur, Avola, and Merlin and so release the Green Dragon energies to the heart chakras of the planet’. We may not know what he’s talking about, but the Muans did—they were our predecessor race, who had thin bodies with ‘little hair’ and long, white soft gowns, and who ‘did away with themselves by getting overawed by the spirits of rocks.’

Icke has grown increasingly potty since 1991, setting up a cult on the Isle of Wight and issuing eye-wateringly amusing edicts. As with all sensible latter-day yogis, most of his followers seem to be young, blonde, and female. So maybe there is a method in his rather extreme form of madness. The turquoise-clad one was last seen presenting Headfuck , a late night session of weird film clips and music videos on the Sci-Fi channel while simultaneously pretending not to exist any more. ‘David Icke does not exist,’ said David Icke. ‘My name is just a name for what my infinite consciousness is experiencing.’ Quite.

The LA Rams defensive back was never a man to let the grass grow under his feet—well, not without wanting to sell it on. When he began to get a little fed-up with a career in American football that seemed to be more about the taking part than the winning—‘in six seasons we won just thirty-four games; losing became okay and accepted’—he decided that it was time to set up a second career for the time when his $600,000 a year salary dried up.

Being the product of an exclusive private Catholic school and UCLA university, Henley knew how to live the American dream, and also needed to prove he was a leader of men. What better way to combine the two, and to liven up life a little, than by setting up an America-wide drug-smuggling ring with himself at its head.

Things started to unravel in 1993 when Henley’s accomplice, a pretty 19-year-old former cheerleader called Tracey Ann Donaho, was arrested by the FBI carrying 12 kilos of cocaine in her luggage. The dealers for whom the coke was destined soon came after Henley, armed with malice aforethought and AK-47s. Rams administrator Jack Faulkner later testified that he saw two ‘short, chunky black males’ with guns and several kilos of bling jewellery chase Henley across the Rams parking lot before their intended mark sped off in his sportscar.

‘It was a very, very difficult time,’ Henley said later. ‘I was kidnapped one time in training camp, just thirty minutes before bed check. They forced me into their vehicle. They finally let me go at 12.30 a.m. At practice, I had the whole OJ thing. I had secret police there. Private investigators. I was picked up and taken back and forth in a bulletproof Ford.’

None of that was enough to keep him out of prison though, especially when Donaho started singing. On March 28 1995 in Santa Ana, Henley was convicted for selling 50 pounds of cocaine and was placed in the Metropolitan Detention Center to await sentencing. Henley, though, was nothing if not determined, and displaying his three salient characteristics of charm, stubbornness and extreme nastiness, he befriended warder Rodney Anderson and then used the gullible guard’s cellphone to arrange deliveries of $1m shipments of heroin from his cell.

Perverting prison warders and peddling drugs obviously didn’t take up enough time, so Henley filled up the rest of his existence by plotting to kill Donaho, who had turned State’s witness against him, and US District Judge Gary L Taylor, the Santa Ana trial judge who had found him guilty.