FOOTBALL

🤑 Eating with his hands like a toddler

As pantomime villains go, Robert Maxwell is up there with the best.

The eccentric Oxford owner was rumoured to be a spy, tried to merge his club with their local rivals, and flogged the team’s star striker to another club he owned.

In 1982, Oxford United fans were perplexed when the billionaire media mogul took over their struggling club.

But money was money, and Oxford needed it badly. That’s what Maxwell told them anyway.

A year later, he announced plans to buy their hated local rivals Reading, and merge them with Oxford to form a new club: Thames Valley Royals.

Everyone involved was aghast, not least the managers. But Maxwell was quick to put them at ease, promising both gaffers that they could take control of his new outfit.

Somehow the players were assured they’d keep their contracts too, but it didn’t take long for them to realise that a 50-man squad in the Third Division was unlikely.

Protests in both camps were vociferous, and eventually the merger was blocked.

So Maxwell threw his toys out the pram and threatened to liquidate Oxford.

He never followed through, and somehow things on the pitch got better than ever. Oxford rose to the First Division and even won the League Cup in 1986.

Meanwhile, Maxwell used the club’s old grounds as a helicopter parking spot, and busied himself trying to buy Manchester United.

But the Czechoslovakian oddball was still keen to exert his influence over Oxford.

Defender Dave Langan remembered how he’d pop into the dressing room at half-time when the team were losing, enquiring, “What’s the matter today, chaps?” in a menacing tone.

Manager Jim Smith would send Maxwell packing, then tell his team, “I wish he’d fuck off”.

Eventually, Maxwell decided the O’s weren’t glamorous enough and snapped up Derby County in 1987.

He transferred ownership of Oxford to his son and daughter Kevin and Ghislaine (less said about her the better), but it was clear who was still really in charge.

In 1988, with Oxford back in the second division, Derby manager Arthur Cox was keen to sign their star striker Dean Saunders.

Oxford boss Mark Lawrenson was adamant Saunders wasn’t going anywhere. But before he knew it, Saunders was signing for the Rams.

Incensed, he visited Maxwell’s offices at the Daily Mirror to give the billionaire a piece of his mind.

After listening intently to the Liverpool legend, Maxwell calmly replied: “I quite admire what you’ve said to me, but I don’t give a shit,” and sacked him.

Derby were now Maxwell’s new footballing priority. But finding himself under investigation for both fraud and espionage, he resorted to some unique tactics to sign new talent.

Two supposedly unknown, promising Czech amateurs arrived at Derby in 1989, with Maxwell claiming that they were refugees from behind the Iron Curtain.

The only thing that kept them going was “the dream” of playing for Derby, he waxed.

But it turned out the players were full Czechoslovakia internationals, and Maxwell just didn’t fancy paying a transfer fee.

Eventually, the media mogul put all of his footballing interests up for sale as he descended further into eccentricity.

He decamped to a Mayfair hotel and spent millions of his fortune in a matter of months, gorging on Chinese takeaways and “eating with his hands like a toddler”.

Maxwell even decided toilet paper was beneath him, and took to wiping his arse with towels.

He died in mysterious circumstances after going missing from his yacht in 1991, before being pulled naked from the sea.

Maybe Mark Lawrenson had finally caught up with him.

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