Peter Storey: Arsenal's smut smuggling midfielder

Even in the borderline homicidal days of 1960s football, Peter Storey was famed for his bloodthirsty approach to tackling.

“The trick,” he explained, “was to get in as early as possible, hit them hard, give them a good wallop, and make them feel as if they’d been in a car crash or hit a brick wall.”

The Arsenal man’s agricultural methods earned him the nickname “the assassin” as he made more than 500 appearances for the Gunners, but he was inexplicably dropped from the starting XI for the 1971 FA Cup final.

“It was as if I had spent ages making love to the most beautiful woman in the world only to be kicked out of bed five minutes before the climax”, Storey recalled.

Pete won the double with Arsenal, and got 19 caps for England, but it was off the pitch where things got really unhinged.

By the time Storey retired in 1977, he’d been married four times: his first wife blamed their divorce on his “boozy, carefree ways”, while his second (who he met in the Playboy club in London) ditched him because he spent more time at the pub than with her.

Although he did have a decent excuse for that…

Two years before retiring, Storey bought the Jolly Farmer’s pub near Highbury, and after hanging up his boots he became a full time landlord, enjoying ”the attractions of drink and women”.

But it wasn’t long before Pete fell in with some of the boozer’s more unsavoury characters, namely North London gangsters the Barry brothers.

The former Arsenal man lent the pair money to set up a fake jewellery and counterfeit cash factory, but their plan was foiled and all three were dragged to court.

But while out on bail, Storey had a brainwave: he’d flee the country.

So he set up a seedy brothel called the Calypso Massage Parlour on Leyton High Street to raise funds for his escape.

But before Storey could slip over the border with a suitcase of bogus cash, the Old Bill shut down his sleazy venture and slapped him with a £700 fine, then threw him behind bars for the counterfeit money scheme.

Pete was released in 1982, but he didn’t stay out of trouble for long.

After losing his job on a market stall on Portobello Road, he started a minicab firm, but was handed a 12 month suspended sentence for nicking two of the company’s motors.

There was another suspended sentence for swearing an over-zealous traffic warden, before Pete’s luck finally ran out.

In 1990 he was thrown back in the slammer for 28 days after being caught smuggling hardcore German porn into the UK hidden in his spare tyre.

After being released, Pete worked as a minicab driver at a firm run by Terry Adams, head of the infamous Clerkenwell Crime Syndicate, before somehow bagging a job as the chauffeur for a Qatari sheikh in Istanbul.

These days you’ll be glad to hear Pete is enjoying a more serene existence, soaking up the sun in the South of France with his fourth wife Danielle.

And their beloved goat, Valentin, of course.