How Fash got his cash

Whatever the nation's television viewers learn in the coming weeks about the inexplicably eager contestants on the second series of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!, regular watchers will become appraised of at least one fact. John Fashanu talks a good game.

Indeed, talking may be what 40-year-old Fashanu does best. There is a lot to tell. A quick resumé of his life might take in the fact that he was a Barnardo's boy who grew up to play for Wimbledon in its FA Cup winning pomp, and was capped twice for England too; then there was his co-presenting of the television phenomenon Gladiators, alongside Ulrika Jonsson, herself so very popular among football's finest; and now he is - according to his business card - Ambassador John Fashanu, Sports and Tourism, Federal Republic of Nigeria.

He has also been: a Unicef spokesman; a director of Kiss FM; a consultant behind Nigeria's Miss World fiasco ("that was a big blow''); the front man for that country's bid to stage the 2010 World Cup; a football agent; and, in his spare time, it is said he works to repatriate Nigerian prostitutes from this country.

He has also bought a controlling interest in the League of Wales club Barry Town, where he is "proud to be the youngest chairman of a professional league club'' ( unfortunately he has overlooked Simon Jordan, who was 32 when he took over Crystal Palace three years ago).

Above all, let us not forget the match-fixing court case in 1997, featuring former Liverpool goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar. Even before their trial began Fashanu, who was eventually acquitted, was questioned over allegations he might interfere with a key witness but no charges were brought. Fashanu's girlfriend Melissa Kassa Mapsi, the daughter of a wealthy African diplomat and niece of a former President of the Ivory Coast, was also arrested and accused of match-fixing. Shortly after, the accused pair were married.

At the trial the court heard that Melissa was "staggeringly'' wealthy in her own right. On their marriage her father gave the couple a £200,000 home in Gabon, West Africa, along with £261,000 for "day to day'' expenses. They have since had two sons, Amir, seven, and Akin, five. Fashanu has a 14-year-old daughter, Amal, from a previous relationship.

Meanwhile the trial ended when the jury was unable to reach a verdict. At a second trial Fashanu was acquitted of all charges after declining to give evidence. His legal costs of £650,000 were refused by the trial judge. Mr Justice McCullough said Fashanu had only himself to blame after heaping suspicion upon himself. Ah yes, Fashanu has much to discuss.

Just a month ago, he publicly insisted that he was giving his all to his new job at Barry Town, adding helpfully: "ITV offered me a very big show with Samantha Fox but I couldn't do it because I had to commit myself for seven weeks.''

Ms Fox is not among his companions in the Australian jungle but it seems Fashanu found time to do the show after all. And it was no surprise to discover he was the first of the contestants to feature, suffering all manner of creepy-crawlies being stuffed into his pants. Ants, maggots, insects and crayfish he endured, only baulking at rats.

Last December I received an unsolicited telephone call from Fashanu after making enquiries into his failed attempt to be elected chairman of the Nigerian Football Association. Having never previously laid eyes on me, his opening words without preamble were: "Katy, Katy, Katy, Kateeeeee.'' After that he spoke for an age about why he was so tremendously pleased not to have been elected to a post he sought. He then became agitated once it became clear that verbatim publication of his speech was not awfully likely.

"I smell this is a set up,'' he announced cryptically of his own unsolicited telephone call. "I've been around a long time.''

That much at least is accurate. Back in the Eighties Fashanu played for Norwich City, Millwall and Aston Villa. But it was as one of the "Crazy Gang'' at Wimbledon that he became best known. A team-mate was footballerturned-sort-of-actor Vinnie Jones, who still calls Fashanu "my best mate in football''. Their greatest triumph was the shock defeat in the 1988 FA Cup Final of then all conquering Liverpool.

According to another Wimbledon team-mate and now Standard Sport columnist Robbie Earle, Fashanu made it a habit during the formalities before each match to make nice with that day's referee. Having carefully researched the names of the ref 's wife and children, Fashanu would enquire whether they were well.

Such cosiness sat oddly with the notorious ugliness of his game, which earned him the misleadingly comicbook nickname "Fash the Bash''. Ten years ago, playing Tottenham, he delivered one of the most reviled fouls in living memory, elbowing Gary Mabbutt in the face and almost blinding him. Even now Mabbutt's face is still numb. Fashanu said the incident "was blown out of all proportion''.

Fashanu, though, was not the only member of his family to play in England. His older brother Justin - like John, a Barnardo's boy - also played for Norwich City. But a big money move to Nottingham Forest in 1981 - he was Britain's first £1 million black footballer - proved disastrous when he fell out with manager Brian Clough. His career soon drifted into oblivion and he moved to Canada.

In 1990, wanting money to open a gay bar in Toronto, he became the first and only professional footballer to come out as gay, by selling his story - John offered him £70,000 not to do so.

Never able to reconcile his homosexuality with his Christianity, Justin, 37, hanged himself in a Shoreditch lock-up garage in May 1998, seven years after John last spoke to him. The fifth anniversary of his suicide falls next Sunday. Whether John will discuss it on screen with his fellow celebrities remains to be seen.

Usually he is not backward in coming forward. Three years ago Arsenal's Nigerian forward Kanu was unsure whether to play for his country at the Sydney Olympics because several crucial matches coincided with the period he would be away.

Fashanu opined that Kanu had better not go on holiday in his homeland for the next 20 years if he failed to play at the Games.

Kanu splendidly replied that he could live without any lectures in patriotism from a player who was qualified to play for Nigeria but opted to play for England.

Fashanu has dual nationality. His parents are Nigerian but he was born in England. His father abandoned them in infancy and his mother Pearl put John and Justin in a Barnardo's home when John was two, although she kept their three elder siblings with her. The boys were fostered by a Norfolk couple, Betty and Alfred Jackson, and began playing football.

"I never wanted to be like other players, who would finish training and go to the cinema or up to the West End, or home to the wife and the little ones,'' said Fashanu. "I desperately needed to be at the centre of things. Working. Working. Everything for the future."

One way or another Fashanu has done well with his money, although in 1991 he lost £600,000 to a fraudster. Nonetheless, these days the player formerly known as Fash the Bash has become Fash the Cash.

In 2001 Fashanu was in talks to take over Second Division Northampton Town through his sports marketing company, Winners Worldwide. The £3 million deal came to nought when the collapse of ITV Digital persuaded Fashanu and his associates the time was not financially ripe for such a purchase.

The same year Fashanu wanted to purchase one of the multi-millionpound apartments about to be released in a Knightsbridge development, adjacent to Harrods. Alas, the properties were so popular that securing the flat of his choice would necessitate an overnight queue on the pavement.

So he drove to Kings Cross in his black Mercedes 500 and offered a tramp £300 to perform the task for him. Fashanu then draped polythene over the rear seat upholstery before chauffeuring the obliging vagrant back to begin his shift.

Yet, despite the wheeler-dealing, Fashanu operates out of an office in the back of a light shop on the Finchley Road in Golders Green. A piece of paper reading "Fash Ventures'' is taped to a grubby groundfloor window. Inside, the office is festooned with pictures of Fashanu, one with the notorious boxing promoter Don King, another with United Nations chief Kofi Annan.

"Am I a rich man?'' he parrotted back at me coyly when I asked. His wealth, after all, has been estimated at around £6 million. "Katy, Katy, in Richard Branson's eyes I'm a poor man but in your eyes I'm probably a rich man, Katy. For every penny I have, I can justify what I've got. I've been in football 20 years, Katy. I love it. I play it. I represent it. I eat, sleep and drink football. I'll die football.''

But Robbie Earle, whom Fashanu described to me as "my good friend'', disagrees. "Fash is neither a fanatical lover nor student of the game,'' said Earle. "He would see football as a means to bigger and better things.''

Certainly Fashanu has never shied away from a high media profile. In January last year he joined Government ministers at the funeral of Damilola Taylor, the 10-year-old Nigerian boy killed on a North Peckham Estate. Fashanu explained afterwards that he had merely complied with a request from Damilola's father Richard, asking as many Nigerians as possible to come and mourn with the family.

Earle insists Fashanu is "difficult to dislike'', citing his ploy of addressing everyone as "baby'' as indicative of his personal charm. What his TV show companions will make of him remains to be seen. They may wonder at his curious need to sleep high off the ground ("I have a phobia about being low down - I always want the top floor'') and his desire to prove his own importance, which Earle remembers as "comical''. But there can be little doubt what Fashanu is seeking to gain from the programme.

"Unlike being a footballer there's no time-limit in the TV world, as long as you maintain a high profile,'' he said once. "There are other articulate footballers out there. The difference is that they haven't hustled their way on to the platform. Even if you're only on TV once a month, it can help a business ninefold.''