IN THE SNUG OF A PUB IN A SEASIDE town, Peter Marinello considers the new world of Theo Walcott. This middle-aged man with an artificial hip knows all about being the hottest teenager in town. In 1970 he was London’s answer to George Best, coveted by football clubs, record producers and international make-up artists. “I feel for him,” Marinello said of Arsenal’s latest child prodigy. “My advice is: don’t score on your debut at Old Trafford.”
In some ways the mesmerising start was the beginning of the end for Marinello. He stayed at Arsenal for three years, but the optimism of that first flush of success, coupled with guest appearances on Top of the Pops and an advertising campaign for the Milk Marketing Board, faded.
From top of the bill to end of the pier in rapid time. “I remember there was a huge billboard by The Gunners pub with me drinking a pint of milk,” he said. “Someone got a set of ladders, climbed up and coloured it in to make it look like Guinness. Bertie Mee (the manager) wasn’t happy.”
Marinello did not need any help in blackening his name and graffiti can rarely have been more telling. He now admits that he was a Jack-the-lad who realised only 60 per cent of his potential — a rebel without a get-out clause. If Walcott needs a reality check, he might want to consider the morality tale of the 19-year-old from an Edinburgh prefab who moved from Hibernian to Highbury for what at the time was a staggering £100,000.
“The London papers wanted their own George Best,” he recalled. “I scored in my first game against Manchester United and that was it. George’s agent got in touch and wanted us to team up to open boutiques. Within a couple of weeks I had my own column in the Daily Express, I was modelling and they were asking me to write an autobiography and make a record. It was a crazy rollercoaster.”
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He made a demo but told the producers to forget it when they asked if he could recite poetry. He was booked to hand Sandie Shaw a silver disc on Top of the Pops. He modelled suede suits and got a sack of mail from the gay community. “There were even these two Hollywood make-up artists who wanted to teach me to do faces,” he said. “They were millionaires and serious. They wanted me to be a make-up artist. I suppose I was a bit effeminate-looking with the long, black hair.”
All this and yet he would start only eight games in the next two seasons and would “chase the money” to Portsmouth in 1973. The writing had been on the wall before the billboard. “It was a different era then,” he said. “Up at Hibs you’d drink 20 Bacardis as an initiation test and the attitude was: win or lose, have some booze.
“I signed a contract at Arsenal that I didn’t understand and had no idea what I was on. When I went for my medical I remember the doctor saying, ‘F***ing hell, we haven’t paid £100,000 for you, have we?” Soon afterwards, Marinello gave an interview that highlighted the nature of teenage stardom Seventies-style. “My landlady is fantastic and so is the house, ” he said. “Colour TV, the lot.
His opinion of his landlady endures. “They were great digs, but they (Arsenal) didn’t check,” he said. “I hope they are careful with the young kid (Walcott) because I got carried away. “Looking back, I suppose I was a spoilt brat. The club had an arrangement with Barclays, so they knew how much you were spending. I was called in by Bertie and he said I needed to calm down. I wasn’t bothered. They told me they’d bought me for the future and my attitude was: if I had a bad game, someone else would buy me.”
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The turning-point came in a European Cup quarter-final against Ajax. Marinello said that a bad miss has never been forgotten, while George Graham’s own goal has been erased from all memories. “(Johan) Cruyff said Marinello and George Armstrong were the two players who caused us trouble, but that was it.”
He played for Portsmouth, who mortgaged their future for him, but was then driven to Motherwell in the chairman’s Rolls-Royce. He played in Scotland, England and the United States before he hung up his boots. He bought a racehorse called Go Go Gunner, which was ridden by Lester Piggott before it faded to footnote status. Not for nothing is the biography, due out next year, called Whatever Happened t o Peter Marinello? What happened was bankruptcy in 1994. Two years ago he had a hip replacement, part-funded by the Professional Footballers’ Association. Now he coaches in Soutbourne, Dorset. Nobody in the snug knows that he was once the new George Best. “George was my idol but I felt I was going to be as good as him,” he said. “I had the talent and was quicker, but he had better close control. I could turn it on but didn’t do it often enough.”
He trained with Best at Fulham, the pair no longer teens but still tearaways. “George was shy and I was, too,” Marinello said. “The drink made me confident.”
He wishes Walcott well. “The difficulty will be if he scores in his first couple of games, but Wenger is well clued up.” His one regret is that he pushed to leave Arsenal. “I wish somebody had got hold of me and shaken me,” he said.
Not long ago he bumped into Don Howe, the Arsenal first-team coach under Mee. “I told him the message had finally got through. Don just said, ‘You were never any trouble, you just enjoyed yourself.’ And I did.”