The No.1 Fan began its life as a sketch on the back of a beer mat in the summer of 2003. I was a graphic designer who specialised in the letter A. The Automobile Association and Alcoholics Anonymous had failed to answer my emails regarding new logos so work was a bit thin on the ground.

I really like Action Figures and I had a feeling that as nobody had approached me to re-create my likeness in toy form, I'd probably have to get out there and do it myself.

This, coupled with the fact that I found it difficult to find gifts for football fans that were not just mugs and hats with the teams' crests on them, afforded me the opportunity to kill two birds with one, 23cm high, plastic moulded stone.

I needed a partner, someone foolish, opportunistic and unafraid of ridiculously high risk strategy. That's when my old mate the pop impresario and pickle smuggler Ian Clifford came on board. His latest pop act 'Brain Hammer', had sued him for pocketing 20% of their dole money so he agreed to get behind the project for an equal share and possibly claw back some cash. He'd also been instrumental in developing the 'man boob' so he knew a thing or two about copyright and so on.

My beer mat sketch was not good enough to excite the football/toy industry so we got a bloke called Richard to do a good drawing using felt pens. Ian paid him in onion relish and we were up and running.

Next up we asked a Gnome to do some 3D visuals and animation for us (or was that Noam?). For a Gnome he was pretty good at 3D visualisation and animation so Ian paid him in mango chutney and we had pictures made by computers which were even better than Richard's.

Now we had visuals, a name (the No.1 Fan) and a good idea of the movement (dance and sway). We also knew we wanted the fan to sing some chants to support his favourite team. All we needed now were some French blokes who knew all about making singing, dancing football gifts out in China.

As luck would have it, a silver haired gent called Phil (more about him later) knew some French blokes who knew all about making singing, dancing, football gifts out in China. We met them and showed them the animations done by the Gnome. They said 'why not ' in French which I think is 'Porqui Pine', or something. They told us how much it would cost and we all began to laugh and cry at the same time.

The silver haired gent called Phil (more about him earlier) had agreed to become our sales agent. He sold official prints and paintings of footballers to all the big teams and had made his fortune flogging replicas of the Queen Mother's remaining teeth as 'collectables' via full page ads in the Sunday Sport. He was perfect, and easy to spot in a crowd.

We recorded the chants for each team at a studio which was Jack The Ripper's old house in Shoreditch. Our engineer was a bloke called Steve who swore at us. We enlisted Arsenal FC, Man Utd FC, Liverpool FC and Chelsea FC fans to help us with the chants and also to help swear back at Steve.

One of Ian's friends, a pirate from Antigua, took control of a third of the company in exchange for a suitcase full of cash to pay the French who had refused Ian's generous offer of a lifetime's supply of spicy ploughman's pickle in 3 litre jars. There's no pleasing some people.

I flew to China to meet Matthias, Benoit and Barry, the factory boss. We told Barry to improve the shirts, make the gears more quiet and get the packaging right. Barry took us to a nice place to eat with balloon arches at the entrance. Someone forgot to remove the head from the chicken we ordered.

So, in a nutshell, that's it, only it isn't in a nutshell, it's in really nice packaging and will be in the shops and available from our website really soon. The No.1 Fan. The singing, dancing footie fanatic, probably the greatest gift in the world.


Paul Jeffrey