Beastie boys

Squirrels and pandas and bears - oh my! Every Saturday during football season, hundreds of men climb into foam and fur costumes to spend 90 minutes cavorting as club mascots. But their antics are not always innocent, as our special investigation discovers

WE'RE in a boxing gym, a real old-school place, in a part of Glasgow that looks ready to throw in the towel. Outside, the sky is swollen with drizzle and the stink from the nearby sewage works. In here, it smells of testosterone and sweat. Deafening techno stutters from a stereo. Young men with short hair and shorter tempers slug bags or else throw feinting punches at their own undaunted reflections in the wall mirrors. Everyone pretends not to notice that I'm standing next to a panda.

I look at the panda. The panda looks at me. "Mmmmphhrrrmmth," he mumbles, through his hood. I can't make out a word - not everything in black and white makes sense - but I understand what he's getting at. We both know that any minute now a bright blue seven foot tall squirrel is going to come walking out of the changing rooms spoiling for a fight.

Okay, time for an explanation. My companion is Paisley Panda, the squirrel is Nutz; both are football mascots, for St Mirren and Kilmarnock respectively. The three of us are here for a photo shoot which is supposed to illustrate the fact that in these days of family- friendly football, the real bad boys of the beautiful game are the nerdy guys in the foam suits. Often violent, sometimes lewd, always furry, mascots prove that David Beckham may have the mohican but it's they who are truly punk rock.

In the aftermath of Hillsborough and Heysel, since the Taylor Report introduced all-seater stadia, it is generally agreed that football has lost much of its atmosphere. Once a male working class pursuit, it has become a family activity, and mascots are an attempt to put some of the fun back in. Plus, it gives the kids something comforting to look at while Dad's throwing coins at the ref.

Inspired by America, where being a mascot is a viable career, British clubs began introducing them in the Nineties and now every team worth their salty pies has one. But in this country, mascots are generally unpaid and there is a world of difference between throwing ursine shapes in front of a capacity crowd for the Chicago Bears and freezing your polyester bahookie off in a snell wind while Stenhousemuir draw nil-nil with Alloa.

So why do these guys - and it is almost always guys; few women are capable of dressing up as a purple baboon without worrying that their bum looks big in it (the exception to this being Laura Coltart, who does a fine job as Motherwell's Claret Bear) - turn up every Saturday and transform themselves into overgrown Muppets? Is it passion for the clubs, an avuncular desire to cuddle weans, some kind of fetish, or all three? When Ian Downie, normally a mild-mannered janitor, dresses up as Nutz The Squirrel and cheers on Kilmarnock, is it a cri de coeur or a cry for help? It's certainly not an elaborate ploy to attract the ladies. According to one Scottish mascot, "The few women that have been interested have been helluva disappointed when I took my head off. I don't know who they were expecting to be inside the costume. Brad Pitt?"

Stuart Cosgrove, presenter of Radio Scotland's football discussion programme Off The Ball, says that there are two kinds of football mascot. There are those that are essentially there to entertain children and then there are others who serve a darker purpose. "The mascots that get my respect," he says in the forthcoming Scottish TV programme Close Encounters Of The Furred Kind, "are the ones that are out there completely noising up the opposition. And the one that stands out above all the others in Scotland is Paisley Panda. I mean, the guy is a legend. He's more famous than any St Mirren player in the modern era."

Clearly, I had to meet this man.

Paisley Panda, known to his friends as Andy Duncan, is 39 years old and works in an architect's office in Glasgow. I visit him there to discuss a reign of terror, six years of creating Panda-monium at Love Street and beyond, which has only recently come to an end. "Yes, I've hung up the fur," he says, rather mournfully, before going on to outline exactly why he puts the bam! into bamboo.

"In the spectrum of mascots, I am at the bad boy end, the rock 'n' roll end," he admits. "I know there's probably some people laughing at that, but see, if Sammy The Tammy [the popular Dunfermline mascot] and guys like that are sort of Disney cartoon characters, then I'm more your Simpsons lover's kind of mascot. Bit close to the bone and on the edge. I try to appeal to adults as well as kids. I'm there for entertainment, whoever takes it. And antagonism."

I ask Andy to talk me through some of his infamous escapades. "Och, there's so many," he says. "Do you want just the ones where I've been warned by the police?"

Most of those incidents occurred when St Mirren played their arch rivals Greenock Morton. To St Mirren fans, Morton supporters are known as "soap dodgers", and the Panda has made much of this. Three years ago he taunted visiting fans with a giant air freshener. Later, in retaliation for the Morton mascot, Tonosauras, stringing up a toy panda with a football scarf, the Panda chased Morton players around with a giant scrubbing brush and a bar of Imperial Leather.

And then there was Aberdeen. "It got leaked out that I was going to take an inflatable sheep," says Andy. "The police soon put a stop to that."

But the Panda was not tamed. "I appeared at a friendly against Motherwell wearing a huge pair of paper pants," he confesses. "That was when there were reports that Andy Goram was caught wearing women's underwear. I did a wee pole dancing routine. Andy Goram thought that was brilliant, a lot of the Motherwell players were in stitches, and their fans were all clapping. But for some reason the police took exception, and for the next game - against St Johnstone - I was warned I wasn't allowed to go over the halfway line."

The worry for police is that unruly mascots could incite fans to real violence. South of the border, where Swansea's Cyril The Swan has become synonymous with mascot violence since ripping the head off Millwall's Zampa The Lion and booting it into the crowd, the Football League has introduced a code of conduct for these not-so-tim'rous beasties.

Even away from matches, mascots can be trouble. The annual Grand National at Huntingdon Racecourse, mascot Ascot, is a case in point. The event, in which mascots race each other over a series of fences, has been going for three years. The most recent, which took place last September, was particularly controversial. Freddie the Fox romped home miles ahead of the opposition but was later disqualified on the grounds that, while most mascots lumber along on gigantic foam paws, he wore spiked training shoes and was, in fact, the Olympic 400m hurdler Matthew Douglas, a semi-finalist at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. Even now, dark rumours about internet betting syndicates continue to circulate.

In the aftermath of the same race, Cyril The Swan was investigated by the police following a violent incident. A police spokesperson said that a man wearing a nine foot tall swan costume assaulted a 46- year-old woman dressed as a dog.

Being worked over by a man dressed as a swan is pretty unlucky but even that unfortunate woman is not as ill-starred as Oldham Athletic's Chaddy The Owl, a veritable Jonah among mascots. Poor Chaddy was once a wise and chirpy looking creature but a decision by Oldham to change his costume put an end to all that. On his first outing the new-look Chaddy proved so hideous that children burst into tears when he approached them. Given that a mascot's true role is to make kids smile, you will appreciate, gentle reader, that Chaddy's feathers were pretty ruffled by this. Think then how complete his humiliation was on returning home, still in full costume, and being attacked by his own dog. That's no hoot.

Costume design is a burning issue in Scotland too. First there is the question of heat. All mascots will tell you that the real drawback of the job is that after only a few minutes on the park their costume becomes a furry dungeon of sweat. In a recent study conducted at the John Hopkins University, Baltimore, it was claimed that poor ventilation is the real cause of violent behaviour. In other words, when mascots attack it is not because they are neds in silly heads, it's because they can't breathe, poor things.

But even on a more basic level, the heat is a problem. If you're nursing a hangover from Friday night it can be particularly unpleasant. You think that big orange lion looks cuddly? Well don't get too close; beneath the mane and the fixed grin there's a balding thirtysomething with ten pints of barfuplger and a chicken vindaloo pooling around his feet.

However, mascots are vain creatures and most will put up with heat exhaustion and their own stink if they look cool. But not all do. On the one hand you have Nutz The Squirrel, the Kilmarnock Mascot, three grand's worth of electric blue fur and a massive cartoonish head worthy of Rolf Harris.

Paisley Panda is less striking.

"My costume has got to be the worst ever," he laughs. "I think you'd be lucky to get (pounds) 3 for it in an Oxfam shop. It's manky, for want of a better word. It's shocking, it really is. Many's the time I've had to take it home and sew it up."

It's true. Andy's costume is rubbish. Saggy and worn, it looks as if someone has skinned a real panda and draped its pelt over a shop dummy.

But even the Paisley Panda looks good next to Harry Rag, erstwhile mascot for Partick Thistle. "It was meant to be a thistle but there was not a lot of money for making a costume and it was fairly cobbled together," says Chester Studzinski, the man who once filled Harry Rag's shoes. He hesitates, looking particularly grave, and finally brings himself to utter the shameful words. "A lot of people thought it was a turnip." He hands over a sepia photograph and, believe me, there's turnips reading this who would be outraged.

Chester, 55, has been mascot for the Jags since 1998. After a stint as Harry Rag, he was mericfully given a new costume and now stalks the touchline as PeeTea the Firhill Flyer, a psychedelic toucan.

He says he does it because he gets a lot out of making kids happy but I reckon that Chester, who works in Glasgow as an insurance loss adjuster, is simply an exhibitionist. Witness the sketches that he and a colleague perform at the office Christmas party.

"In the past we've dressed up as prostitutes, sumo wrestlers, belly dancers and ballet dancers," he explains. "I found out I enjoyed performing back in '83 when I was on Noel Edmonds' Late Late Breakfast Show as a whirly wheeler and did a somersault on skis live in front of 12 million people."

Chester is a very proper sort of mascot and does not approve of Cyril The Swan or his rowdy friend Wolfie The Wolf, who, in 1998, while Wolverhampton Wanderers took on Bristol City, exchanged blows with three little pigs.

"Personally, I think that's plain wrong," says Chester. "To me, a mascot should be there for your own support, not to rile up the opposition. If the players did that they'd be sent off. The police up here are fairly strict on that and next year in the premiership we're going to find more constraints."

Chester worries about this. He is concerned that the new atmosphere of strictness will make it difficult for him to wander over to the crowd and give children hugs. "At Hamden, during the Scottish Cup semi-final, I wasn't allowed to leave the park and go on to the track. And that was just totally alien. Still," he smiles, "I managed to have a good carry on with Broxie Bear."

But do kids even like mascots? Aren't they more interested in PlayStation 2 and downloading Eminem's new album from the internet than hanging out with some reject from Monster's Inc? Ian Downie, 54, who fills the fur of Nutz The Squirrel, doesn't think so. "Nah, that's definitely wrong," he says. "Kids go out of their way to come across and get a big hug from the mascot. And parents bring their kids to you. It's like the sermon on the mount; you're a magnet for kids."

Ian is given to using quite religious language when talking about his life as a mascot. And he's certainly evangelical about the job. To be honest, he'd have to be. When dressed as Nutz, Ian can only see through the squirrel's nose - I know, I tried the mask on - and that has a tendency to steam up. He once thought about fitting a fan inside the mask but then he heard about another mascot who had done that and whose head caught fire. Iain says that his ultimate costume would "probably be Jesus", which sounds a bit much, but it's clear that mascots can be martyrs too.

Talking of Jesus, at the moment the closest thing the mascot cult has to a religious leader is Stuart Drummond, a 28-year-old better known as H'Angus The Monkey. H'Angus is the Messiah of mascots, the king of the swingers, the Bungle VIP. Famously, he was elected mayor of Hartlepool earlier this month, parlaying a shock political triumph out of his status as cult hero at the local football club. His main campaign policy was free bananas for local school kids, and anyone following the bemused news coverage could be forgiven for believing that H'Angus was a cuddly and approachable figure, a simple simian with a heart of gold.

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. In the two years that H'Angus went ape around the Hartlepool pitch, he built a reputation as a singularly priapic primate, simply the rudest, lewdest mascot in British football.

However, since the election Drummond has emerged as a more serious figure, keen to tackle youth unemployment and the like, and has swapped the chimp suit for the chains of office. He now looks back on his past monkey business with a keen sense of revisionism. "I wasn't that badly behaved," he insists. "Cheeky, I would call it. Cheeky monkey. A couple of incidents were blown out of all proportion."

One of these was simulating sex with an unwilling female match official during a game in Scunthorpe. "All I did was stand behind her and rub my thighs like Vic Reeves on Shooting Stars," he protests.

At an away game in Blackpool, H'Angus danced in front of the crowd with an blow-up sex doll he had dressed in the opposition strip. Again he attempts to deflate the situation: "She was just under my arm all the time; I didn't actually do anything to her." The police took a different view, escorting the monkey from the ground and refusing to allow him back in. "The mascot appeared the worse for drink," said a spokesman.

Back in the boxing ring, the Panda and the Squirrel are posing for photographs, recreating the iconic 1965 shot of Muhammad Ali rearing, triumphant and enraged, over a floored Sonny Liston. Nutz's rope-a- dope strategy has clearly worked tonight, and this despite the fact that Paisley Panda kept hitting him in, well, the nuts.

So have we answered the question of why grown men spend their weekends in giant furry suits, turning cartwheels and goosing cheerleaders? Possibly not. All we know is that while most of us probably regard the men inside the mascots as rather pathetic figures, more to be pitied than scorned, they clearly believe they are touching people and getting something meaningful back in return. "It's a strange sort of phenomenon," says Ian Downie, remarkably understated for a giant blue squirrel. "You can almost feel the love coming through the glove."u This Scotland: Close Encounters Of The Furred Kind is on ITV, Tuesday, 10.50pm. Thanks to Morrison's Gym, Swanston Street, Dalmarnock (0141 554 7777)

Copyright 2002
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