The Great Imposter: How Karl Power became sport’s greatest hoaxer
Mia Morrison Karl Power made his Manchester United debut away to Bayern Munich on April 18, 2001. For a lifelong fan of the club, it felt surreal to pull on a United tracksuit and walk into the floodlit Olympic Stadium. As the Champions League violins reached their crescendo, Power marvelled at the 60,000 fans who had packed the stadium for the second leg of that quarter-final, and considered the seven million more watching on television. His hands trembled as he stripped down to his United kit. Kick-off, and his big moment, neared. But Power, 33, was not a graduate of United’s youth academy, or a new signing from a ritzy European team. He was a jibber — a ticketless pitch invader hell-bent on stealing the limelight.
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United had lost the home leg 1-0, and there were no smiles as the players assembled for a team photograph. Dressed in all white, they looked like ghosts of the team that had stunned Bayern with a stoppage-time comeback in the competition’s 1999 final, a feat described by one journalist as the greatest 120 seconds in sporting history. Among the 11 players in the line-up that night in Munich, nine had been part of the squad that won the treble two years before. Then, out of nowhere, a 12th man appeared.
Power, too, was wearing United’s all-white kit, but with a boxer’s nose and a limp, he didn’t look like a footballer. Perhaps it was the wrong logo on his shorts that betrayed him to Gary Neville, who pointed out the imposter as he joined the line-up. But it was too late. The pack of photographers lit up the team with their flashbulbs. The mystery man stood among the millionaires, chest proudly puffed out. The players broke their pose and Power melted into the night as the shrill peep of the referee’s whistle sounded the start of the game. United lost, 2-1.
It was not the defeat but the prank that led the news. The Sun newspaper printed the stunning team photo on its front page with the headline “WHO’S THAT MAN U?” The pitch invader had captured the public’s attention with a photobomb, years before the phrase would be coined. Sun journalists spirited Power away to a five-star German hotel to secure a world exclusive. “Me and my mates have been doing things like this for years, but this was the best,” he boasted. “We planned it like a military campaign.”
Power flew home on a private plane paid for by the tabloid, and, for a moment, was the most famous man in Britain. TV news crews built a temporary platform outside his house in the Manchester suburb of Droylsden. You could find him signing autographs before matches at Old Trafford. On the British television show “They Think It’s All Over”, a blindfolded Gary Lineker tried to identify Power in a “Guess the sportsman” game. A production company named Zig Zag snapped up the rights to film Power’s future stunts for a TV documentary. If he could stage five more infiltrations like the United caper within a year producers promised Power he would become a real celebrity.
And so the unemployed father-of-two planned to gatecrash five of Europe’s biggest sporting moments, all in less than 12 months. He would disguise himself as a cricketer and stroll out to bat for England. He would invade Wimbledon, the historic tennis championship held in London each summer. He would run onto the field with England’s rugby-union players, and even suit up as a Formula One race car driver. His antics would make him an affront to authorities everywhere, leading to fame, fraud and, finally, prison.
The real story, Power told me on the telephone, remained untold. It involved a machete-wielding gang and a twist of fate. Just months before the Munich stunt, Power said, he had been disabled: completely unable to walk. What happened in Munich, he insisted, was a miracle.
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I arranged to meet Power in Manchester in the summer of 2019. The flight from Los Angeles gave me plenty of time to review his marvellous résumé. I wanted to know what it takes to be a jibber — how to waltz into a stadium, and the history books, without a ticket. After 16 long hours of air travel, I arrived at Manchester’s Piccadilly train station. Power, 52, was late. It was a scorching Friday afternoon, and shirtless workers swarmed the city’s pubs. I called his cell phone 23 times in five hours. No answer. As I waited, I searched the face of every train driver, construction worker and policeman, hoping to find Power in disguise. But I had been ghosted.
On the long, angry flight home, I slowly realized that I was the fool for expecting Power to be in the right place at the right time. Maybe I was the victim of one of his hoaxes.
A week later, Power sent an apologetic text message and a half-baked excuse. Something about his car being impounded. He promised to reschedule the meeting, and he kept his word, though it took another eight months and a second transatlantic flight to make it happen. Back at Piccadilly in freezing February, I was relieved to spot Power’s distinctive boxer’s nose behind the wheel of a car idling in the taxi line, his old Toyota Rav 4 masquerading as a taxicab. He seemed to have a superpower for being somewhere he shouldn’t. Mancunians are born “chancers”, he explained, as we sped through the city. “We don’t get it on a plate, do we? We’ve gotta get out there and chance ourselves for it.”
Karl Power was born in 1967, the youngest of 11 kids in a Catholic family, in Ancoats, Manchester. “I was the last in the bath on a Sunday,” he later told The Guardian. By the time he was 10 years old, Power was locally famous for his stunts. Once, he pedalled his bicycle down a local landfill known as Death Hill. “I was in hospital for 12 and a half months just from two fractured femurs,” he told me. Power didn’t mind missing school. In fact, he often skipped class to spend the day at the local arcade.
“The reason why I didn’t go to school is because the headmaster used to take a few of us swimming,” he said quietly. “Little did we know back then — we was all 11 years old — he was a paedophile, d’ya know what I mean? Not just me, he tried touching a few of us. I knew it wasn’t right.”
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Power asked me to Google the teacher’s name, and I saw that John Mulligan, of St Anne’s Catholic School in Ancoats, had been accused of assaulting more than 20 former pupils. “I knew there was something wrong, but I couldn’t tell me mam and dad them things, so I just wagged (skipped) school,” he said.
He soon fell in with Tommy Dunn, a fast-talking kid who lived in neighbouring Miles Platting. Together they went “grafting”: committing minor scams for petrol money. With no education, a teenaged Power earned cash from demolition work and petty crime. He spent a short time in prison for driving a car while his licence was suspended. Boxing and weightlifting kept him on the straight and narrow, and friends nicknamed him “Fat Neck”. With his busted nose, Power learned he could slip into any prize fight arena without a ticket, simply by carrying a sports bag. “One of me first brilliant blags, that were,” he said.
It was now the 1990s, and Manchester was having a moment. Power’s mates, Shaun Ryder and Mark “Bez” Berry, had formed their band, Happy Mondays, and gone platinum in the UK. Their second group, Black Grape, named a song after Power: “Fat Neck”. Basking in their glow, Power skipped the line at The Hacienda, a nightclub that felt like the centre of that universe. He brushed shoulders with the stars of Manchester United, a team with a core of unstoppable schoolboy trainees. It felt like the city was drenched in magic. Mancunians walked with a swagger of invincibility and sang about living forever.
Then came the attack. It was one evening in 1996, and Power, 29, was running late to meet his girlfriend, a nanny. He stepped into a phone booth to call her. Two men appeared wearing ski masks. They pulled out machetes and started slashing, knocking Power to the floor. “I was trying to kick with me legs,” he recalled. “They macheted both legs very bad.” He staggered to a nearby park, where police officers found him bleeding to death. “I lost four and a half pints of blood and there’s only eight or something in your body,” he said. Power believes it was a case of mistaken identity: wrong place, wrong time.
After 12 surgeries, Power looked like the survivor of a shark attack. He recalled the moment a surgeon appeared at his bedside wearing a bow-tie. “He said, ‘Mr Power, we have some good news and we also have some bad news’.”
Power would survive, but life would be different. He stopped going to boxing gyms and nightclubs. He resented his wheelchair, and for years he stayed at home in bed, smoking weed. “Even just going for a piss — everything was murder. I went through hell,” he recalled. “I was struggling to wipe me backside, man.” If he couldn’t walk again, he thought, his life was over. Through his window, Power could see the green fields of Newton Heath, where United had played before they moved to Old Trafford in 1910. He asked his pal Dunn to wheel him down there.
Dunn was a busy man. He’d blagged a press pass and was travelling home and away with United, posing as a photographer. He showed Power videos he had filmed on the team bus, and from behind United’s goal. “Peter Schmeichel!” he’d yell at their Danish goalkeeper. It was the ultimate buzz. He talked his way into press conferences, asking manager Alex Ferguson off-beat questions, such as, “If you was managing England, would Andy Cole be playing?”
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“If I were manager of England, they’d be relegated,” quipped the Scotsman on footage filmed by Dunn and later broadcast in the TV documentary. It was Dunn who gave Power the idea to photobomb a United pre-match team photo. If, at 34, Power could learn to walk again, Dunn promised to get him on the pitch at a big European game. Power started to hobble around the field on crutches. Slowly, one foot before the other, he limped to recovery. “I say Man United was my physio, d’ya know what I mean?” Power said. “To do that stunt was what got me back on my feet.”
And so the two United fans found themselves in Munich in April 2001, counting down the hours before the Champions League quarter-final decider against Bayern. They’d heard the president of Germany would be attending, and that there would be snipers on the roof. Power abandoned the idea of wearing the Eric Cantona mask he’d packed, in case someone mistook him for a terrorist.
“We’re havin’ it, Tom! Havin’ it!” Power said, nervously, in their hotel room.
“If it comes off — big time,” replied Dunn, who filmed Power as he slipped into his United away kit.
Hours later, Dunn smuggled Power into the stadium with his dodgy press pass and “a bit of cunning, a bit of chit-chat”.
Their lives would never be the same.
As soon as the television crew came on board in the summer of 2001, Dunn capitalised on their certain degree of fame. He blagged a brand new Mini Cooper, telling BMW they were filming a TV show, even though he and Power were banned from driving. With an old friend from the council estate, Wayne, behind the wheel, Dunn started scoping out various stadiums across England and Europe. He knew they had less than a year to deliver the footage. “Without Tommy, I wouldn’t even know how many players there were in a football team,” Power told producers as the cameras rolled. “He’s the brains of it. Without Tommy, there’d be no show.”
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The camera crew legitimised their operation. “It started off a joke, and it’s not a joke anymore — it’s employment, that’s how it works,” said Dunn, a natural in front of the camera. But while Power’s long-term girlfriend put up with his antics, Dunn’s partner Karen demanded that he quit. “She just thinks (we’re) going out, getting pissed, filming… fucking going in places where we shouldn’t be going, basically doing wrong. It’s not wrong to us — it’s fucking great.”
The campaign started on August 17, 2001. Four months on from the Munich stunt, Power and Dunn arrived in Headingley, Leeds. England were playing Australia in a five-day cricket match there, with millions watching on television. On the first day, Australia had scored 288 runs off 66 overs, giving them a formidable lead, and now an upside-down Union Jack was flying on a neighbouring balcony, a signal of distress in maritime circles, “correctly reflecting England’s plight,” as The Independent’s Derek Hodgson noted.
Dunn worked his magic, slipping into the stadium without a ticket. Heavy-set and smartly-dressed, he carried the vague importance of a regional manager. “When you’ve got a suit on, and a phone, you’re invisible,” he would later say during an interview on YouTube. Dunn smuggled Power into a bar, through the press room and into a bathroom. There, Power pulled cricket pads and a full England kit out of a bag and slipped into his disguise. He accessorized with a cricket bat and a helmet. Then he crouched inside a toilet stall and waited.
Dunn was enjoying the cricket, waiting for the perfect moment to summon Power with three rings on his cell phone. Australia had just dismissed England’s Marcus Trescothick when Power’s phone rang. He trousered the phone and marched out of the restroom. Unfortunately, It was not Dunn calling; it was Dunn’s niece, Shelley, back in Manchester, wondering how the stunt was going.
“Adrenaline’s just pumping,” Power recalled of the moment he walked out into the sunshine and onto the lush grass.
England’s Nasser Hussain was already at the wicket, having replaced Trescothick moments earlier. The game paused as officials wondered whether Hussain or his batting partner Mark Butcher were injured and needed a runner. According to the Laws of Cricket, a “runner” can perform sprinting duties between the wickets for an injured batsman so long as they are wearing the same clothing and equipment. But Power was wearing gear from a local sports shop.
Power’s phone rang, breaking the silence. It was Shelley again. He removed his helmet to answer the call. Then, realising his error, he turned on his heel and strolled back to the stands. Seeing a player taking a phone call, the crowd broke into laughter and then rapturous applause. Even stewards and a police officer clapped as Power crossed the boundary and returned to the stands, waving his bat like he’d scored a century. Two stunts down, three to go.
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“I was on the balcony and I thought it was hilarious,” wrote The Independent’s Hodgson. “There are, it seems, more hoaxes to come, watch your favourite red top” — a reference to the red mastheads of British tabloids. On television a commentator joked, “He is not the only one to masquerade as an England batsman.” But England came back, pulling off an astonishing victory to beat Australia by six wickets. The result left everyone in high spirits about the hoax, including a television news anchor, who told the nation, “England’s sporting imposter does it again!”
Power showed me his press cuttings as we sipped coffee at his girlfriend’s brick home, which is full of children’s toys and Britpop memorabilia. Droylsden is a nostalgic, working-class town, with a tramway and a historic jam factory. Before Power, its claim to fame was the world’s first machine-woven rag, the Terry towel. Power’s hair is now greying at the temples, I noticed, and he still limps. Suddenly, he dropped his trousers, revealing his horrible scars. “I even met the guy who sewed me legs up,” he said. “I said to him that when he told me I’d never walk again, that was something telling me to make me walk.”
A miniature pug named Rocco licked Power’s feet as I told him about James Thurber’s short story, The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty. It’s about a day-dreamer, I said, who escapes his anonymous life by disappearing into a fantasy world, becoming a heroic surgeon, a devilish assassin and a fighter pilot. He asked me to write the title on a scrap of paper.
It was a tragedy in the United States that first put a stop to his antics, he said. In September of 2001, the shocking terror attacks in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania plunged the world into a state of paranoia. The organisers of sporting events ramped up their security, scrutinising every ticket and press pass, checking every bag for weapons. The idea of an ex-con smuggling a wooden bat and helmet into a sporting event suddenly seemed implausible. Power and Dunn spent eight months laying low. No stunts. No footage. Their television deal was in jeopardy.
“We said we was going to do five stunts after the Man United one. Then September 11 happened, and we thought, ‘We don’t want to be doing all that now’,” Power told The Guardian. “But George Bush said, ‘Everybody go back to work’, so we did.”
In April of 2002, they arrived in Rome for their third stunt, codenamed “the Italian job”. Power planned to run onto the field before an England Six Nations rugby clash with Italy. Dunn arrived at the media entrance of the Stadio Flaminio and, asked to identify himself, read a name upside down off the attendant’s clipboard. Pretending he was a photographer for The Sun, he snatched two press bibs. They were in.
But as Power suited up as an England player — wearing No 69 — he caught a case of last-minute nerves. He ran onto the field too early, and into the wrong half, far away from the players. No one even noticed as he performed the haka, the Maori ceremonial dance that is the pre-match trademark of the New Zealand rugby team. Their hoax was a failure.
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It was a long and tense drive home through the Alps. When Dunn arrived back in Manchester, partner Karen kicked him out. His 10-year-old daughter Robin called soon after to find out where he was. “I’m going to get myself a flat,” he promised her. “I’ve got no pennies at the moment. I love you.” He needed a new idea, but every plan to top the Munich photobomb seemed risky in light of the 9/11 attacks. Now more than ever, people wanted to believe that security was impenetrable. Hoaxers inspired fear, not mirth. The jibber faced extinction.
As long as there have been turnstiles and tickets, there have been jibbers. The term “on the jib” comes from nautical slang meaning to cruise with a strong wind in the sail. “A jibber is someone who takes a thrill from getting into an event without paying,” explained Martin Wengrow, 75, who pioneered jibbing in the 1960s. The unemployed Londoner waltzed into cup finals, boxing matches and even a Frank Sinatra concert without a ticket. “I developed a reputation,” Wengrow told me on the telephone from his home in London. “I wanted to attain more fame, or notoriety. Mainly it was a challenge… I got a buzz out of it.”
In 1967, two months before Power was born, Wengrow made headlines after crashing Tottenham Hotspur’s FA Cup final victory lap at Wembley Stadium. “I told Jimmy Greaves I was an Arsenal supporter,” he said. “I drank from the cup.” After a newspaper called him the “king of the jibbers”, copycats emerged all over the world.
Between 1979 and 1986, a novelty goods salesman from Detroit named Barry Bremen became infamous for posing as a player at Major League Baseball and NBA venues. He dressed as a PGA golfer, a referee for the NFL and NHL and even a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader. Once, while warming up with an NBA All-Star team, he caught the attention of Kansas City’s Otis Birdsong, who looked at him and said, “You’re on my team, and I don’t even know who you is.” The secret, according to Bremen and Wengrow, is simply to act like you belong — and never look over your shoulder.
A good jibber can breeze into any event on a strong gale of confidence. And by June 2002, Power and Dunn once again felt the wind behind them.
“Yeah, I’m on the way back in, OK… OK,” Dunn said impatiently, pretending to talk on his cell phone. The unemployed Mancunian marched past the security guards at the All England Lawn Tennis Club, home of the Wimbledon tennis championships. “There were people camping out there for days to get in, and we just got in with the old phone trick,” Power said.
Power had never watched a game of tennis, let alone played it — until that morning, which he had spent practicing at a nearby court, smashing balls at Dunn’s son, Tommy Junior. They were both hopeless, but hoped their foolhardy routine would bring some comedy to a serious security breach. It was now 11 months since their challenge began, and time was running out. The production company needed more stunts to fill an hour-long show. Dunn planned to pull off something remarkable, even by their standards. He wanted Power and his son to play on Centre Court, arguably the world’s most famous tennis venue.
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That afternoon, the stadium was packed to capacity. There were high hopes that British star Tim Henman would make it to the final. Dunn led Power and Tommy Junior through the arena. Wearing crumpled white tennis outfits and carrying cheap rackets, they weaved between posh fans who sipped champagne and scoffed Eton Mess, a dessert of strawberries and crushed meringue enjoyed by England’s middle class. They were a long way from Droylsden.
Dunn couldn’t get his imposters anywhere near the court. Security guards with radios manned the entrances to the players’ locker rooms. Dunn struggled even to find a seat among the spectators. Finally, they snuck past a security guard and squeezed into three empty seats not far from the net.
“That was plan Z,” admitted Dunn. They would have to emerge from the crowd and climb out onto the grass, he realised. This made Power feel especially nervous.
“Butterflies,” he said. “But it’s part of the game, innit?”
Luckily, their seats were one row behind a fan who had taken it upon himself to start a Mexican wave. Dressed in a Union Jack outfit, he started hollering instructions at his fellow spectators. The commotion diverted everyone’s attention from the ticketless trio. Power and Tommy Junior leapt over a barrier and jogged out onto the court with their racquets.
“Hold on. Oh, I think we have a couple of guest players out on the court at the moment,” chuckled Sue Barker, the former British tennis star and the BBC’s commentator. The program cut live to Centre Court, where Power and Tommy Junior were now engaged in a calamitous rally. “I’m not sure exactly where they’ve come from, and I’m not sure how long they’ll be allowed to be out there.”
It wasn’t just their lack of skill that stood out: Tommy Junior had committed the sartorial faux pas of wearing black socks. Yet police and security only watched as Power slugged the ball around the court, delighting the crowd. Spurred on by the cheers, Power treated the audience to a John McEnroe routine, taking off his hat and yelling, in a thick Mancunian accent, “The ball was in!” Watching on television in homes and bars across Manchester, Power’s friends and family shouted and screamed in delight.
Only when they ran out of tennis balls did Power and Tommy Junior jump back over the barrier. They dashed out of the court, trailed by a breathless Dunn. Up on the media balcony, Barker, the commentator, was enjoying the spectacle. “They’ve certainly achieved their dream — they’ve played on Centre Court, and they’ve been on telly as well,” she said. “I’m not sure who’s won. The style wasn’t great.”
Outside, a photographer snapped a picture of Power, and told him, “I just realised who you are!”
“I’m the one who did Man United,” Power replied as the three men leapt into a taxi, trailed by their cameraman.
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“Result and a half, man!” said Dunn.
Across Britain, news had broken that the nation’s most famous hoaxer had struck again. “Karl Power is no stranger to the big sporting occasion,” said one newsreader, “but he played the worst tennis the Centre Court has ever seen.”
Power was thrilled. “Being out at Wimbledon on Centre Court, having the Royal Box clapping, meant a lot to me,” he said.
Back in Manchester, Dunn had won the respect of his daughter. At school, Robin’s friends asked her about the mystery Wimbledon star with the black socks. “Duh, he’s my brother!” she told them proudly. Dunn’s partner was less impressed. “‘You’re 40 years of age. What are you doing running about like a fucking lunatic? Go and get a proper job like a proper man and feed your kids’ — that’s my Karen,” Dunn recalled.
Tennis officials shared Karen’s opinion, labelling the men “show-offs” and vowing to review their security procedures. The hoaxers learned that Monica Seles — the victim, in 1993, of a stabbing by a mentally ill fan during a break in play — had left the court moments before they appeared. When asked about the incident, which she did not see, Seles became “visibly tense”, according to The Daily Telegraph. The coincidence cast a shadow over the stunt. For Britain’s merriest prankster, the wind seemed to have changed direction.
Days later, a Daily Mail headline asked, “What is he playing at?” The article claimed Power had cheated on his disability benefits. “He gets £53.95 income support, £23 disability premium, and £42.25 severe disablement allowance,” the newspaper revealed. “Yet Power seemed unhindered by any medical problems during his unscheduled appearance at the first week of Wimbledon.” One of Power’s neighbours told a reporter that his case should be reviewed, saying, “He makes a mockery of the system.”
“The only reason they gave us a bit of stick is because we didn’t go with them for our exclusive story,” Dunn told me. The article enraged Power. “Do they want me to sit down and fucking beg and claim off ’em all my life, or do they want me to get up and try and do something myself? That’s the kind of guy I am, I won’t lie down if I can get up and do something.”
“That’s exactly what I done,” he told me.
Needing one last stunt to complete their television show, Power and Dunn targeted the British Formula One Grand Prix at the Silverstone circuit less than two weeks later. It was the biggest spectacle in motor racing, and one of the tightest security operations in sport. “This is the daddy of all of them,” Dunn said as they drove into the staff parking lot with a dodgy sticker in their car window. Dunn had acquired three official-looking sets of racing overalls for himself, Tommy Junior and Power. They planned to beat the drivers to the winners’ podium and spray champagne — the ultimate sporting photobomb.
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Power had heard that Formula One chairman Bernie Ecclestone spent £10 million on security. “We ripped that up in two minutes,” he said. Half an hour before the race ended, they slipped into a portable toilet and emerged as drivers. Dunn’s old accomplice, Wayne, was watching the race through binoculars, with orders to call when the cars crossed the finish line. But Wayne’s phone had run out of credit.
Knowing they had only a brief window of time, Dunn noticed a security guard looking the other way, and ushered his team up a metal staircase to the podium. Finding a gate unlocked, they burst onto the podium and performed — for some reason — an Irish riverdance. Down in the press pit, surprised photographers turned and shot the men as they uncorked fountains of champagne. Eventually, three security guards appeared and escorted them off the premises.
“Bernie Ecclestone couldn’t even get in there because he couldn’t land his helicopter, it was too windy,” said Power. “And we’re on the Formula One podium with the champagne… to me, it just felt like we’d done what we set out to do. Five world-class stunts… and we done it. Bloody hell! It’s an amazing story when you think of it, and the footage is there to prove it.”
It felt like a mission accomplished. They’d completed a quintet of audacious stunts that would live forever in the minds of sports fans. Karen even took back Dunn. When I asked him why they did it, he said, “For a laugh. There was never any money involved.” He insisted it was the challenge that spurred them on — pushing themselves further and further. “We got no failures on the record,” he said.
In October 2002, the UK’s Channel 4 aired the television documentary, Britain’s Favourite Hoaxer. Several million viewers tuned in. Power and Dunn revelled in their fame, but quickly developed a resentment toward Zig Zag, the production company. They’d only been paid expenses, and believed, incorrectly, that the production company had made a fortune from the film. Dunn threatened to “come down to London and sort things out once and for all,” a court later heard.
The hoaxers were starting to push their luck.
In April of 2003, Power, Dunn, and eight friends from the council estate were captured by police after invading the pitch at Old Trafford before a match against Liverpool. During a chaotic kick-about, Dunn, wearing a David Beckham-esque blond wig, scored a goal and celebrated in front of 40,000 fans. Afterward, they arranged themselves into a team photo formation. Power stood on the far left of the back row, just as he had in Munich two years earlier.
Deep inside the bowels of Old Trafford later that afternoon, Power sat brooding in a cell, listening to the distant cheers as United beat Liverpool by four goals to none. In years of pranking, it was the first time he had been held accountable for his actions.
That October, Power and Dunn travelled to London to pick up a “Spam Award” at a ceremony held by the canned meat brand, for mentioning their product in the television documentary. Afterward, they drunkenly gatecrashed Zig Zag’s headquarters, where Power told the staff, “You are dead.” (Power said he didn’t threaten staff and that it was just a drunken tirade). Dunn filmed Power as he overturned potted plants and sent a laptop flying. Police heard that throughout the incident, Power brandished a tin of Spam, the prize he’d won earlier that evening. Officers told Zig Zag staff it was the first time they had seen criminals film themselves perpetrating a crime. Power admitted two counts of harassment but avoided a prison sentence, despite appearing outside the court wearing a judge’s wig and gown.
He was hauled back into court in 2004 for his stunt at Old Trafford.
“You will be going into the dock if you don’t wipe that smile off your face,” the judge told him.
“And me, silly boy again, said to the judge, ‘Listen, you should be locking paedophiles up, not people who walk on football pitches’,” he recalled.
Jailing him for one day, the judge said, “He has an attitude problem. He can think about it overnight in Strangeways.”
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The night in Manchester’s notorious prison forced him to miss a boxing match featuring local hero Ricky Hatton.
“Worth it though,” he said.
Ever since the Daily Mail article raised questions over Power’s disability benefits, bigger troubles had been brewing. He had failed to declare a change of circumstances when he moved in with his girlfriend, authorities said, and continued to claim more than he should have. (Power told me his late mother had filled in the forms.) In 2005, he was back in court, accused of swindling the system out of £26,000 ($32,200).
A judge found Power guilty and sentenced him to six months in prison, telling him, “You were caught by your own vanity, by your addiction to self-publicity in outwitting security at sporting events.” As Power was led away to the cells, he gave a cheery thumbs-up to friends in the gallery. But Power was crestfallen when authorities cancelled his disability benefits. “They froze everything,” he said. “Not a penny since.”
“Joke over,” read a headline in London’s Evening Standard.
Power had thrown in the towel.
Today, Dunn is still a full-time prankster, masterminding stunts for an online outfit called Troll Station (1.5 million YouTube subscribers). “I do pranks on live events,” he told me recently on the telephone. He’s targeted the Miss World competition, music’s Brit Awards and even Crufts, the famous dog show. No prank has matched Power’s United stunt, though — an event he refers to as “Munich”, like a soldier talking of war. Still, Dunn can’t stop jibbing. “We love doing it,” he recently told the YouTube channel Full Time Devils. “It keeps you young.”
I asked Dunn what he considered his occupation. “I’m a carer for my son, he’s registered blind. He’s 35 now,” Dunn said. “He’s the one that was on Wimbledon. He was the one with the black socks on.”
“He wasn’t blind then,” I said.
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“He’s got Stargardt’s disease, it’s got worse as he got older,” he said. “He’s 90 per cent blind.”
Power lit a cigarette as we drove to a small school where, every weekday without fail, he waits outside the classroom for his 10-year-old son, Marley Bob. If, like Walter Mitty, Power’s adventures were an escape from the bleak reality of life, his terrible injuries, and those dark corners of his past, today he seems content in his anonymous life. It isn’t so much his prostate and the frequent urge to pee that stops him from hoaxing, I learned, but his acceptance of fatherly responsibilities. “Even now, when I let my son stay at places, I’m paranoid as fuck,” Power said.
In 2006, John Mulligan, the teacher Power accused of assaulting him, was charged with 12 counts of assaulting pupils in the 1970s. The case wasn’t heard in a criminal court because the former headmaster was deemed unfit to stand trial after having a stroke. Manchester City Council paid compensation to some victims. “You don’t know the ripple effect that’s had on people,” Power told me. “I think he’s dead now, I hope he’s dead now, the cunt.” Mulligan died in a care home in 2010, aged 84.
Over lunch at Nando’s in Ashton-under-Lyne, Manchester, Power said he still dips into his fantasy world. He counted his projects on peri-peri stained fingers: running the Marley Recording Studios (named after his son); managing an indie rock band called Antiblowbacktechnology; working on his acting career. He said he had a cameo as a traffic warden in the original UK version of comedy Shameless, which was set in Manchester.
Like many former sports icons, he is trying to parlay his on-field persona into a television career. On Power’s YouTube show, MMTVManchester, he introduces motivational speakers who warn viewers of the dangers of drugs. In addition to all of that, he has taken on the role of mental health advocate, spending time planning charity concerts, not pranks. Education is key in the Power household: At Nando’s, Marley Bob sat immersed in a children’s novel, and at home, while the boy does his homework, his father often huddles over a notepad next to him, writing his memoirs and reflecting on his legacy.
Power has watched a new generation of jibbers pick up his torch. In October 2016, two 21-year-old lads pulled on Team Great Britain tracksuits and fake plastic medals to pose as British Olympic athletes on an open-top bus parade in Manchester. Zac Alsop and Jamie Rawsthorne slipped onto the float by claiming to be champion fencers, and were photographed partying with the athletes. The boys told reporters they’d studied videos of Karl Power, calling him “the godfather of jib”.
“I thought it was a good one, really,” Power said. “They’ve put a bit of effort into it, like getting the tracksuits. That’s military precision, that is.”
(Top photo: Getty Images/Art by Adrian Guzman/The Athletic)
