The man who sold his Sol

Sky Andrew, football agent extraordinaire, is standing next to the sporty blue Mercedes parked in the mini-driveway of his moderately-sized Hertfordshire house. Contrary to expectations, the scenario could not have been transplanted directly from the opening sequence of Footballers' Wives. There are no elaborate gazebos in the garden, no ostentatious water features. From the outside at least, Andrew's home could belong to a well-to-do bank manager.

Andrew is broadly celebrated as the first of an entirely new breed of football agent. Young and black, he's a billion miles away from the caricatures who brag about their cash and the fact that you can't trust them an inch. Andrew might have football-agent money and football-agent instincts, but he's not football-agent flash. His ethic is all about a small client base and an enduring relationship with his charges. His outfit is more low-key Armani than high-octane Versace. And he isn't always happy dealing with the limelight. For example, right now, the photographer wants him to pose with his Merc, but he's visibly uncomfortable about having his picture taken next to the vanity plate which spells out his name. 'My mates will never forgive me if I agree,' he says.

None of which means he's any less capable of brokering the major deals of the moment. Last summer, following months of speculation, his client Sol Campbell made the controversial move from Tottenham to their bitter rivals Arsenal. The news that the England defender was defecting incensed the more extreme Tottenham fans, who cried 'Judas' and hung an effigy of Campbell from a lamppost outside White Hart Lane. In November, when Campbell returned to Tottenham with his new team, bottles were thrown at him on the pitch and insults hurled from the stands. And Sky Andrew began to draw attention.

The highly developed social skills that helped ease the Campbell deal through are immediately apparent in Andrew. His charm is instant, and of the most flirtatious variety. Those who coordinated the day's shoot are already more than familiar with it - Andrew has been working them over the phone for the past ten days. What do they look like? Do they have boyfriends? Would they like tickets to a match? He greets one member of the crew by hugging her and introducing her to the assembled company as 'my future wife'. Yet his patter and attitude lack the aggressive edge that would otherwise make Andrew lecherous. He's clearly more eager to be liked than anything else.

After the Merc shot has been abandoned, Andrew ushers us into his house and goes a bit suburban housewife about the floor. 'Wipe your feet carefully, please,' he says. 'I've just had new carpets put in downstairs and I've got builders working upstairs.' He then launches a campaign to ply us with food and drink. Do we want tea, crisps, biscuits? Anything?

Despite making an alleged £3m from Campbell's transfer, Andrew has always insisted that he wants to be thought of more as Sol's mate than his high-flying agent. The story of Skylet Andrew and Sulzeer Jeremiah Campbell is the sort of old-fashioned tale which appears all too rarely in modern football. Both grew up in the East End, sons of West Indian immigrants. Their families lived within streets of each other in Stratford, but the two lads didn't meet until they were teenagers. Campbell won a scholarship to Lilleshall, the residential School of Excellence in Shropshire, and Andrew attended the school one day a month as one of Great Britain's most promising table-tennis players. They got talking in the canteen one day - bonding, presumably, over their curious names - and built a relationship on such firm trust that, when Campbell signed to Tottenham in the early Nineties and needed an agent, he turned to Andrew.

Andrew wasn't exactly a maverick, but he certainly had no formal training as an agent. However, he had years of experience dating back to his table-tennis years. Although his mother kept two jobs going in order to help finance her young son, it was still a struggle even to afford the £5 bats. Determined not to give up, Andrew spent hours writing to companies asking for sponsorship, knowing that most would show no interest in such a minority sport. (Such initiative finally paid off; he went on to win three Commonwealth golds, 14 national titles, and European and World Cup silvers.)

At the beginning of the 1993-94 season, Andrew went to White Hart Lane to see Tottenham manager Ossie Ardiles, to negotiate a deal for Campbell. He felt 'really, really sick' but within an hour, he had closed his first deal. Most significantly of all, he took no cut. Andrew could not have guessed that by the summer of 2001 he would be the most talked-about agent in the country. He was willing to sit back for a few seasons and see what happened to his friend. As Tom Cruise's mentor taught him in Jerry Maguire: 'the key to this business is personal relationships'.

In his compact kitchen, Andrew fills the Siemens Porsche kettle and offers me a tour of the house. He shows me the study where an Arsenal shirt, signed by the current squad, sits in a frame next to the computer, and then leads the way upstairs to a small bedroom. On the floor lies a pile of interior-decoration magazines. 'This is my bedroom, where no action happens,' he says, flashing a rueful smile.

Gratifyingly, Andrew's interiors ethic occasionally meanders into high-camp footballer-chic territory. He opens a bathroom door and points proudly to the new Jacuzzi. The ceramic is spotless, the whole room is exceptionally tidy. I wonder if he had it cleaned for our benefit, or if it's always like this. I get the impression it's always like this.

Andrew introduces the builders and explains that he is having a new bedroom created with en-suite bathroom and walk-in wardrobe. He seems particularly keen on the en-suite concept. Finally, we sit down on a beige sofa in the yellow living room, and Andrew immediately turns on the widescreen TV. 'Don't worry, I'm not going to have the volume up,' he says, smiling. 'I just want to see the sports news on Teletext.' I spot a copy of The Sun lying on Andrew's glass coffee table, and he notices me looking. 'I don't normally get that paper,' he says quickly.

I begin to ask about the Sol Campbell deal, but Andrew simply smiles; he is way too smart to give anything so direct away. I mention the deal being reputedly signed in a Hertfordshire restaurant, with Campbell and Andrew leaving Arsenal manager Ars?ne Wenger sitting on his own while the player and his agent drove around the countryside till the small hours making their decision. He raises an eyebrow, winks and says, 'Well, maybe, or maybe not.'

He is, however, willing to acknowledge that his approach to football agenting is completely unique. 'For a start I only have a dozen players on my books while other agents might have up to 200. I'm very careful about who I take on. To me, when you sign someone, it's almost like signing an oath.'

In the flesh, Andrew is warm and affable and surprisingly soft-spoken. Sitting on the sofa and sipping tea, it is difficult to imagine him brokering a multimillion-pound deal with Arsenal. Can he easily turn from pussy cat to ruthless agent? He laughs. 'Yeah. I'm just a bit of a stickler for doing things right. I'm responsible for the length of a player's contract, for his wages, for his sponsorship deals. A lot of trust is put in me, so I have to get it right. Sometimes people may be surprised because I seem quite easy-going, but I will always stick to my principles and I can be very, very tough. I've realised over the years that I am a bit different to other agents.'

How exactly? He laughs. 'I couldn't possibly tell you that! Well... I don't believe that you have to be nasty or heavy-handed. You can conduct yourself in an honourable and decent way and still negotiate with people, regardless of how they act with you.'

Andrew is the first black licensed football agent in Britain, but he maintains that he's never experienced specific incidents of racism because he's never looked for it. 'I've always been a really positive person and I hope that when people see me, they don't see my colour. It's not an issue for me. But, you know, if you look for things hard enough, you'll always find them.'

Being a high-profile football agent does have its difficulties, though. He insists that he's trying his best to ignore his recent appearance in The Sunday Times Rich List, at number 227. Still, he scuttles off to find the magazine, which he's kept in pristine condition in a drawer in his study.

'Things like this you have to take with a pinch of salt,' he insists. 'I've got to keep my feet on the ground. My mum was on the phone straight away, asking [he does a West Indian accent], "You would tell your mummy if this was true, wouldn't you?" Yes, Mum, of course!'

While he continues to feature on Tatler's Most Eligible Bachelor list ('It's getting harder to meet girls now that I have a high profile, but I'm just getting on with life and fate will show its face'), the main woman in Andrew's life is his mother. She has never left Stratford, never wanted to be away from her friends in some posh house and she still expects her son to put her first.

Andrew shakes his head. But he is smiling, too. 'Last Christmas I bought my mum a little radio for the kitchen. A few weeks later I was in a meeting and my phone rang - whenever I see her name flashing, I always answer, because she's not well. She said, 'Hello, it's Mummy. I can't tune in talkSPORT. I'm getting upset.' I tried to explain that I was in a meeting, but I had to leave and go round to see her.' He stirs his tea. 'So there's not much chance of me living with my head in the clouds. Not much chance at all.'

We go into the kitchen and Andrew rummages around in the cupboards. Finally, he finds a crumpled copy of the Daily Star under a colander; I ask why he was keeping it in such a strange place, but he ignores me.

'Sol was on £250-a-week but now Sky's the limit' reads the headline. But it's not the feature which interests him. 'Look at that photo! I look gay in it! What a nightmare!'

He opens another cupboard. 'Would you like some crisps for the journey?' he asks. Then he insists on walking the whole group back to our car. 'Can't you stay longer?' he pleads, boyishly. 'It's been such a pleasure to meet you.' He says I'm the nicest journalist he's ever met. And then, without warning, he picks me up and twirls me around. I can't help wondering what his mother would make of that.

Beckham's barnets