Peter Varney diaries: The best April Fools' Day pranks that left some Charlton Athletic fans fuming, the half-cut football club owner and rebel who came into boardroom wearing flip-flops
Pretend badge change article in matchday programme sparked plenty of anger
Every month South London Sport: Charlton Athletic Edition is catching up with Peter Varney, the club’s former chief executive and a boyhood fan of the club, to get his tales and inside info from when he was in a key position of responsibility in SE7.
In this eighth instalment, Varney talks about some of the April Fools’ Day pranks played while he was working for the Addicks as well as some of the famous people, including dignitaries, that he met while employed by the football club.
Peter Varney with Alan Curbishley as they promote season tickets in June 2004/Picture: Tom Morris
EVEN NOW I BUMP INTO PEOPLE WHO SAY: ‘YOU TRIED TO CHANGE THE BADGE!’
Peter Varney remembers a number of classic April Fools’ Day capers and when Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern sunk too many ales in The Valley boardroom before a meeting with Tony Blair at Chequers.
There were some really good April Fools’ Day pranks that we played while I was chief executive at Charlton Athletic. And you would be surprised at how many people fell for them.
We put one out in the programme before the Leicester City match in 2001 - the game fell on April 1 - saying that regrettably, in the week leading up to the match, we had needed to open up the sewer that runs underneath the north-east corner of the stadium as part of soil clean-up work.
We told supporters that the resulting fumes were not harmful and there was no need to panic. We also claimed there was a voucher which allowed them to buy air fresheners and deodorants in the club shop.
Reception rang me up on the day of the match and said: ‘There’s a woman here, she sits in the East Stand and she is demanding to see you’. I went down and she was almost coughing her guts up in the corner of reception.
‘I can’t breathe. I need medical attention - it’s the sewers. I smelled it the minute I walked in.’
There was no smell - at least not from the completely fictitious story that was published. If she was dying on the spot then it had nothing to do with a sewer issue.
I also remember that we pretended to change the badge in April 2002, and again that went in the programme, this time when we hosted Arsenal. The ruse sort of originated from the fact the Gunners had changed their badge a couple of months earlier, a move to secure intellectual property rights and enable copyright protection.
We claimed that Greenwich Council had “asked us to consider whether the sword in our current badge is appropriate to the welcoming environment we wish to maintain at The Valley”.
