Video transcript
H'Angus the club mascot was introduced in October 1999 at the Pools, in a blaze of
publicity and the first guy that got in there was, I think he was a drama student. The idea
was to give the mascot a bit of character and a bit of colour and stuff but I don't think he
was really a football fan and he certainly wasn't a Pools fan. It was OK but he got sick
quite quickly and left just before Christmas and I just happened to be in the right place
at the right time. I travelled to an away game with the Press Officer at the time and they
were stuck for the next home game and I said, 'well I'll give it go, just help you out', and
the home game was against Carlisle, I remember, I think it was a Tuesday night and it
was pouring down with rain and I think we won about 4-1 or something like that and I
did a few funny things and got the crowd going a bit and I loved it, completely loved it
and from then on they said, 'do you want to do it regularly?', so I bit their hand off
basically.
I think the character of the mascot was always a bit of a cheeky monkey, always has
been and so I was always looking for something new to get involved in and something
to make the crowd laugh. I got into a few scrapes along the way. I used to try to get to
quite a few away games and got thrown out of about a dozen grounds I think for various
shenanigans. I think at Rochdale they had a half-time raffle draw and brought in a big
bucket of tickets and asked me to draw one out but I just proceeded to empty the bucket
of tickets all over the pitch, which I don't think they were too pleased about and then
ended up having a bit of a scuffle with their mascot, which was a dragon. It had a big
nose sticking out and I couldn't resist the old left hook and it swung its head 180
degrees facing the other way, which the full crowd actually loved even their fans were
laughing about it.
I entered two of the Mascot Grand Nationals at Huntingdon Racecourse and I come
34th both times, which I was really proud of, especially in the first one. I ended up
running the wrong way so I managed to get back on track with that one and the second
one I ended up chasing the Mansfield mascot because he'd upset me a couple of weeks
before so I got chucked out of Mansfield so we had a bit of scuffle after the second
fence but I recovered to get 34th position.
I think one of the funniest times was we all went down to Wembley to film for the F.A.
Cup adverts. I think it was AXA who were sponsoring it that year. The Man United
mascot was a red devil and just, I suppose like all Man United fans are, he loved himself
a bit, thought he was the bee's knees and thought he was the big I am. So we all
decided to steal his tail without him knowing. Obviously he was looking round for it,
couldn't find it, nobody give it him back and I think the guy from Preston, the Preston
duck took it back with him and held it to ransom. Wrote a letter to Man United and said,
'you've got to give fifty tickets to the local children's home and you can have the tail
back', and to be fair to Man United, they did and so that was quite a good story.
what a fantastic story.....and from the mayor himself!Posted on 02/11/2009 at 01:22:10