When it came to footballers in the 1980s, its fair to say Pat Nevin stuck out like a sore thumb.
Prefering culture to Carling and more likely to be listening to Joy Division and the Cocteau Twins than the eras dressing room staples of Phil Collins and Lionel Richie, Nevin was dubbed the first post-punk footballer.
So when Nevin crossed the border to join Chelsea from Clyde for a fee of �95,000 in the summer of 1983, was his love of culture ever held against him?
Pat Nevin on his Weirdo nickname
Id say so, but not as often as youd think, he tells FourFourTwo. Nobody really cared. They tried to take the rip at Chelsea but Id give it back. Perfect example: my nickname quickly became Weirdo.
I just said to them, 'Im normal, youre a bunch of weirdos.' They respect you for it when you take on a whole group. Football is as near to a meritocracy as there is.
Nevin, who was ranked at no.23 in FourFourTwos list of Chelseas best-ever signings, quickly settled in at Stamford Bridge, netting 14 goals in his first season as the Blues won promotion as Second Division champions.
Another trophy followed in 1986 when the Blues lifted the Full Members Cup and Nevin has recently caught up again with his former team-mates.
Youre in the trenches with these guys week in, week out and suddenly thats over when you leave. The last five or six years I bumped into a lot of them when I was working at Stamford Bridge, but recently we had a reunion even the chairman Ken Bates, then 92 years old, came.
Every player came except one. It could only be described as magical. There was bad blood between David Speedie and Paul Canoville that had festered for many years.
It wasnt easy, but Speedie walked into a room before the actual reunion and said, 'I want a word with you' to Paul. He said, 'Im sorry, everything I said back then was wrong. Can you forgive me?' Paul, being the absolute dude he is, said, 'Thats all I wanted', and gave him a big hug.
I told them we do that on stage later in front of everyone and we did!
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