Godfather Of Champions

When Carl Spicer’s book was on sale, Twain received a signed copy. On the book, Spicer wrote, “To my closest friend Tony Twain, wishing you all the best.”The inscription wrote, “Your life-long partner, Carl Spicer”.

When Spicer had gifted the book to Twain, he brought this matter up to the media. He was showing off about this incident on his own column. “I really want to see his reaction upon receiving the book… Haha!”

The relationship between Carl Spicer and Twain had always been tricky. In the past, the Twain’s hatred for the media had always been generic and not specific to a person. Now, Spicer had bravely stood out and raised a flag indicating “Twain being bad”. How could Twain stomach such a brazen provocation? 80% of the people thought it would be uncharacteristic of Twain to not respond to this. Spicer thought so, too. He was well-prepared to deal with Twain’s revenge. For example, having a verbal warfare on the column, using Nottingham Forest’s recent unstable results to criticize Twain… Since the start of the provocation, he was starting to be impatient for Twain’s inevitable revenge.

Since there was still half the day left, Twain drove around the whole of Nottingham to all the bookstores and newsstands, maxing out his credit cards to buy all the copies of <The mysterious aura of Tony Twain—the man he is> in Nottingham.

Since the book was essentially mindless gossip, it was not selling well in Nottingham. Other than a portion of Notts County’s fans who might buy the book, almost all of Nottingham Forest fans did not care about it at all.

As such, Twain bought so many copies until he could not store any more in his jeep. In the end, he had to tell the bookstores, “Pack the books the exact way they were sent to you, and wait for me to call a truck to haul these.”

※※※

BBC aired a programme preview on television. In the new episode of Match of the Day this coming Sunday, they were going to invite the popular soccer journalist, Carl Spicer, as a guest and discuss with him about his thoughts on <The mysterious aura of Tony Twain—the man he is> , interesting episodes during the creative process, and his personal opinions on Tony Twain as a person.

<Match of the Day> producer Lineker predicted that this week’s programme would attract widespread attention, and sure enough, two days before the recording of the programme, he received a bill of lading.

“What is this?” Gary Lineker looked confused as he held onto the bill. The bill was attached with a letter which wrote, “For my dear friend Carl Spicer”. The inscription made Linekar laughed. It was signed “Tony Twain”.

The letter opened with a greeting for Lineker, thanking him for speaking on behalf of Nottingham Forest several times. At the end he raised a small request —

“I want to thank someone very important who spent close to half a year writing a book to log my achievements. To express my respect for him and my gratitude for his efforts, I have a presumptuous request: while interviewing this book’s author, please ask the respected Carl Spicer to sign my copies. All of the books have to be signed; I want to gift the book to a few of my friends so I hope he can sign them. Of course, I’m not asking too much from him with this small request, right?”

Following that, Lineker ran out of the BBC building while holding onto the bill, and he almost fell when he reached the car park.

What was it that he saw? Four trucks, weighing five tons each, were parked neatly. The containers were covered by canvas and secured tightly by the rope. The truck drivers who were huddled together and smoking saw Lineker. One of them frantically ran over and shook hands with him. “Gary Lineker. I’m a fan!”

Lineker did not care about him, he was only blankly staring at the four trucks. “This is…”

The four truck drivers gave each other a look, and broke out into laughter. The leader said. “Heh, we delivered props for your programme on Tony Twain’s request.”

“Props?”

The driver pulled Lineker to the back of one of the trucks and pulled up a corner of the canvas. “The three trucks behind contains the same thing.”

A chill ran up Lineker’s spine when he saw what was in the trucks.

※※※

Adrian Chiles was a well-known BBC talk host. He was the host of Match of the Day: Sunday Edition, but this episode where they interviewed Carl Spicer was also his job, and it was a lot better compared to Lineker’s.

Carl Spicer was absolutely delighted during the show. He answered several questions, and both parties seemed to be able to talk a lot. Even though he was criticizing Tony Twain on the show, this host did not comment much. On the contrary, he incited Spicer to say more groundbreaking words. They spoke about the motive behind the production of this book; Spicer thought researching on Tony Twain had a lot of purpose for the society.

“… on a road interview, those who picked ‘I hate Tony Twain, he is a b*stard’ made up 93% of the whole group, and those who picked ‘I like this guy, he is not bad’ were only a pitiful 7%. Worth mentioning was that no one chose the option of ‘Tony Twain? Who is that?’ Adrian, did you know why Twain would think our research was lame?” Once they got to badmouthing Twain, Carl Spicer became overjoyed. He liked to see a strong figure being beaten up in front of him as it gave him a sense of achievement.

In this episode, there were many topics similar to this one. Before the end of the program, the program director had already received several calls protesting from Nottingham. The only position opinion towards Twain was the sentence of the title, “He is a phenomenon.”

Towards the end of the programme, Adrian Chiles told Carl Spicer cryptically, “Since the start of the programme, the bottom of the screen was constantly showing that we would give you a mysterious gift at the end.”

“I know, you brought it up to me.” Spicer nodded.

“We can guarantee to the audience that this is definitely a mysterious gift, and that we did not discuss this with you before the filming. This is a live broadcast.”

Spicer nodded continuously to confirm that Adrian Chiles indeed did not arrange anything with him beforehand. He smiled, as if he were also looking forward to it.

Lineker and his colleagues hid in the production room, sheepishly laughing while preparing for the good show. Mark Hansen leisurely said at the side, “This programme is becoming more and more like an entertainment show…”

Alan Lawrenson turned his head towards his colleague with the sharp mouth and grinned. “Isn’t this great? We need to relax from time to time.”

Back to the live broadcast. Adrian Chiles smiled like he knew a prank was about to unfold. The lights shone on his face, lightening up his face till it seemed vibrant.

“Here’s the thing, Carl. You have this extremely loyal fan. He keeps up with your various columns in the newspaper and is very supportive of your book. It sounds quite extreme, right?”

Carl Spicer acted surprised, but he actually loved it inside. “What? There is really such a reader? I didn’t know about this.”

Adrian Chiles nodded profusely. “Yes, there is. To show his support and love, he used his own money to buy a lot of copies of this book.” He waved a copy of <The mysterious aura of Tony Twain—the man he is> in his hand. “He has a small request. He hopes that you can sign on every copy of his book for his collection.”

This boosted Carl Spicer’s ego so much he might even have forgotten what his surname was. He then waved. “No problem, I am never stingy with satisfying other people’s requests.”

Adrian Chiles snapped his fingers and a worker from the back of the live broadcast room pushed a trolley that was specially for goods out onto the room. Loaded onto it was a stack of neatly arranged books, almost one meter tall.

“Ha!” Carl Spicer laughed a little, “he bought all of these? Should I say if he is hardcore or crazy?”

He reached into his pocket to fish for a pen, but as he reached in, his hand stopped. Just now, he had been grinning so widely he could not close his mouth, but now he was so frightened that his jaw dropped.

Following behind the first trolley came a second which had another load of books neatly stacked into a metre-high column. Then came the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh… There were 10 exact same trolleys were placed right in front of the stunned Carl Spicer. The front of the recording studio was completely blocked.

The screen panned from the top to the bottom. Adrian Chiles applauded, then he took one book from the first trolley and placed in front of Carl Spicer, flipping to the title page, “You must satisfy this small request of your hardcore fan, Spicer!” Upon finishing, he turned and carried another 10 books over, placing them beside Carl’s hands. Spicer knew he had been had, but there was nothing he could do but reluctantly pick up his pen and start signing his big name on the first book.

At the same time, the screen started rolling the credits — Special thanks to Tony Twain providing 11038 copies of <The mysterious aura of Tony Twain—the man he is>

After came the normal namelist of the productive crew.

Under the credits, Adrian Chiles said something that devastated Carl Spicer. “Sign slowly, Carl. This is not even 1% of all the books, there are still four more full trucks downstairs! Your reader is really both hardcore and crazy, but I don’t envy you one bit…”

The pen slipped out of Spicer’s hand, and he was not unaware of it at all. He only raised his head and gasped while looking at the host Adrian Chiles who was holding in his laughter. At the same time, in the productive room, Lineker and his crew could no longer hold it in and broke down into laughter.

※※※

“This is the most exciting episode of <Match of the Day>! Hahaha!” Before the start of training, Nottingham Forest coaches were still excitedly discussing yesterday’s television programme. At the start when Adrian Chiles signaled the crew to bring out the books, everyone had been as confused as Carl Spicer, not knowing what had happened. Only when the credits with the special thanks started rolling then they started breaking into laughter in front of their televisions.

“Tony played this beautifully! Did you all see the expression on Spicer’s face? It was simply too exciting!”

What happened in Wilford was not just an epitome. After that day, discussions about how Tony Twain made Carl Spicer admit defeat spread like a wildfire. It was phenomenal; as the story spread, Twain sending Spicer four trucks of books eventually exaggerated into him sending ten trucks.

Carl Spicer also admitted on his own column that he was utterly defeated by Tony Twain this time. However, he would not give up on this promising career in going against Twain. “Despite being played by him, he still insisted that going against Twain was an interesting matter. Undeniably, people do look forward to what other ridiculous tricks Twain could possibly resort to.”

Towards this, Twain’s private evaluation was only a word — cheap. But Twain did feel that everyone started to get busy near the end of the year, including those reporters, because news relating to him suddenly skyrocketed.

※※※

Once, Shania’s news had been on a film magazine.

These magazines were booked for Shania, because of her interest in movies. Since it was her hobby, she would naturally want to learn more about movies. However, she went to the United States afterwards, and there was still a year before the subscription expired, thus Twain just took over and occasionally flipped through it to see if he could find any new good movies. Soccer coaches were human. too, so they needed to rest and relax as well; forgetting about all his worries and just letting his eyes flit about the pages of the magazine was naturally a good way to let loose. He was not some film critic who needed to search their hearts and use their brains to uncover a hidden meaning while watching the movies.

He discovered Shania’s whereabouts in the latest magazine issue. She appeared with Tom Cruise on the cover page. This issue introduced the new movie produced by Tom Cruise, <Florida’s Summer>. In the movie, Shania acted as a beautiful lady who participated in the stream party who had a one-line dialogue with the main character. Afterwards, she had another appearance without dialogue but a 5 minute close-up. This portion did not have screen time and had almost no bearing on the plot, so one could say her role was just for the sake of appearing with the other main characters on the cover page of the magazine. It was evident Cruise had other intentions for partnering up with this new friend of his.

There was a paragraph in the magazine allocated specifically for an interview with Shania. The paragraph was not long, it was almost as important as the other main characters’.

Actually, all this attention Shania was getting could be because of her relationship with Cruise, but it was also because of the reputation she had already been building up in the modelling industry. Before she started acting, Judy Shania Jordana had been famous in the global modelling and fashion world. She had been a global supermodel at a young age and a spokesperson wanted for many big international brands. It was natural for people to pay attention to such a personality when she started acting.

Shania’s interview were no different from others. Other than being asked for the issues in her work, she was also asked for the difference between catwalking and acting in a movie, if there were any conflicts, and what she thought of the cast. Shania was a smart girl. When reporters asked for a male Hollywood star she liked, she immediately blurted out, “Tom Cruise”, with a vibrant smile. The reporter continued to ask, “Is this because of the intimate relationship you two shared?” Shania shook her head, “It is not that. I have rewatched every one of his movies several times, I do like him a lot.”

Twain pouted upon seeing “I do like him a lot.”

Then he thought back to when Shania told him, “Uncle Tony, I love you.”

Liking and loving are two different emotions, but Shania also started with liking Uncle Tony which then developed into love too right?

He continued reading. In the final portion of the interview, the reporter started to pry into Shania’s private life, asking, “From what the public knows, you have no other boyfriends save from the few rumours that have spread in the past. Since you’re still single, could you reveal your ideal type?”

“Yes, my standards are very special.”

“Exactly how special is it?”

“I like… older men.”

The reporter was a little shocked. He wrote on the back of his handbook that he was indeed shocked by what Shania said, where he only responded after a long while. Thinking that revealing those emotions was ill-mannered, but he still emphasized, “It is … very unique.”

Shania jokingly disregarded the emotions of the reporter.

Twain stared in shock at this final conversation. Uncle Tony counted as an old guy right?What was she trying to do, revealing her preferences so brazenly? While he was still stunned, he received a call from Shania.

“Uncle Tony! I’m going to come visit you the night after tomorrow. Help me tidy up the room ok?”

“Ah… the room has always been tidy, you can come anytime…”

“Ok, thank you Uncle Tony! See you on the day after tomorrow!”

Hanging up, Twain then reacted. Why was she suddenly coming back to England suddenly? There were no other words exchanged, saved for that redundant greeting. Was it possible that she still felt a little distant after that incident at the airport?

Indeed, he said he owed her an answer, but it was almost December now and this answer was not given to her yet. On top of that, the results of the team, the financial crisis and Chen Jian’s issue had made him so busy that he could not think it through properly sufficient times.

All of a sudden, they were to meet so soon. When that time came, how could he face Shania? What if she asked him for that answer he owed her? What should he tell her then? What a pain. On and off the field, there were issues giving him a headache.