‘This guy knows his stuff,’ I said. ‘That is, assuming it is all one guy.’
‘Oh, it is.’
‘What’s his name? Gaz?’ I said, peering at the screen.
‘His full name is Gary Morris and he lives in Hemel Hempstead.’
‘But who’s behind it?’
‘No one. Just him. It’s an unofficial site. He probably has a day job, but spends the rest of his waking life watching football and reading and writing about it.’
‘So what do we do?’
‘It’s our first corporate acquisition, Mr Bigshot. We’re going to buy Sick As A Parrot.’
‘For how much?’
‘I don’t know. A pint of lager and a packet of peanuts? We won’t find out until we meet Gaz.’
‘And when are we going to do that?’
Guy looked at his watch. ‘In about two hours.’
Number 26 Paget Close was a white pebbledashed terraced house in a row of white pebbledashed terraced houses. We opened the low wooden gate and stepped carefully through a tiny, immaculately kept front garden. A plastic ginger cat guarded the door. Guy rang the bell. It chimed sweetly.
A small but stout woman with tight grey curls appeared.
Guy hesitated for a moment, but he recovered quickly. ‘Mrs Morris?’ he asked with his best smile, which was generally recognized as a pretty good smile.
The woman glowed. ‘Yes.’
‘Is your son in?’
‘You’re the people from the internet company, aren’t you?’
‘That’s right,’ said Guy. ‘I’m Guy Jourdan, Chief Executive, and this is my Finance Director, David Lane.’
‘Come in, come in. Make yourselves at home. Gary’s still at work, but he should be back any minute now.’ She led us through to a small living room. ‘Can I get you a drink?’ And then hastily, to make sure we hadn’t misunderstood her: ‘A cup of tea, perhaps?’
Guy and I sank into a deep chintz-covered sofa while Mrs Morris busied herself in the kitchen. Then we heard the front door open and close and a male voice call ‘Hi, Mum!’
‘Those internet people are here to see you, dear.’
Gaz appeared. He was a thin man in his early twenties, dressed in light blue shirt and blue trousers with red piping. A postman. Guy was wearing black jeans and a lightweight black polo-necked jersey. I was in an old denim shirt and crumpled green trousers. We all sat down on the three-piece suite and the takeover battle began.
He was no fool, Gaz. Guy started on some spiel about how ninetyminutes.com was a leading European internet holding company, when Gaz stopped him.
‘You’re just two blokes with some bullshit, aren’t you? I know all the footie websites, and ninetyminutes.com isn’t one of them.’ He had a prominent Adam’s apple that wobbled up and down as he talked, and he spoke with a sub-cockney accent. But he was right. ‘So how much will you pay me for Sick As A Parrot? Cash on the table.’
Guy smiled. ‘I discussed this with my finance man this morning, and we’ve got an opening offer.’ He looked across to me. We had discussed a price on the way, but I thought it was far too early to put it on the table. I decided to give Guy the benefit of the doubt and nodded sagely.
‘A pint of lager and a packet of peanuts,’ Guy said, with a smile. ‘That’s just a down payment, of course. There’s more to follow.’
Gaz frowned, then returned the smile. ‘That’ll get you to the table. Let’s go and discuss this properly.’ He stood up and called down the hallway. ‘We’re just going out, Mum!’
Mrs Morris rushed to the door to hold it open for us, and fluttered her eyelashes at Guy.
‘Nice cat, Mrs Morris,’ said Guy as he passed the plastic mog.
‘Oh, thank you. I do like cats. We’d have a real one, but Gary’s allergic.’
‘Bye, Mum,’ said Gaz, escaping through the wooden gate.
We continued the discussion in the pub around the corner. Guy bought Gaz his promised pint of lager, and he got one for himself and his Finance Director as well.
‘Sorry about the bullshit, Gaz,’ he said. ‘It’s what I do. I’ll give you the real scoop in a moment. But before that, tell me about the site.’
Gaz was happy to talk. He was proud of his work, as well he should have been. ‘I started it two years ago. At first it was nothing more than a home page. Then it sort of developed a following all by itself. I adapted it into a proper-looking site, people told other people about it, pretty soon it had more or less taken me over.’
‘How many visitors do you get?’
‘About a hundred thousand a month, last time I checked.’
‘Wow. It must take a lot of time to keep it up.’
‘It does. I spend almost all my free time on it. I don’t get much sleep. But I enjoy it.’
‘It’s very good,’ said Guy.
‘I know,’ said Gaz.
‘I can tell you’re an Arsenal fan. Why didn’t you just do an Arsenal site?’
‘There are two types of people who like football,’ Gaz replied. ‘The tribal type, who are looking for a grouping to give them some kind of identity, and those who just love the game. I’m not writing for the tribal type. Sure, it makes it much more interesting if you support one team or another, but I’m just as happy watching and writing about teams other than Arsenal. More happy: it’s easier to be objective.’
‘And do you design the website yourself?’
‘Yeah. That’s no problem. I studied physics and philosophy at uni, so I can get my head around a computer. At first I did the whole thing from scratch in HTML, but these days you get packages like Dreamweaver that make it all pretty easy anyway. Don’t get me wrong,’ Gaz said. ‘I’m not a geek. It’s football I love. It’s just that I understand computers and that’s how I tell people about football.’
‘So if you’ve got a degree in physics and philosophy, how come you’re a postman?’ I asked.
‘I like being a postman,’ Gaz replied defensively. ‘It gives me time to do what I like to do. And funnily enough knowing about Wittgenstein and the theory of matter didn’t seem to impress the recruitment people.’
‘It should have done,’ I said.
‘OK, OK. But where did you learn to write like that?’ Guy asked.
‘I’ve always written, ever since I was a kid. It comes naturally, especially when I’m writing about football. It’s like I’m compulsive. I just have to get it down.’ He sipped his beer. ‘What about you? Tell me what your real story is.’
Guy talked about his plans for ninetyminutes.com and for its growth. He admitted Ninetyminutes would need a lot of money to get off the ground, and that we hadn’t raised any of it yet.
Gaz listened hard.
‘What do you think?’ Guy asked him.
‘You’ve read my site?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you know my views on the commercialization of football.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well?’
‘Do you like living at home?’ Guy asked.
‘It’s all right, I suppose.’
‘Wouldn’t you like your own place within walking distance of Highbury? Wouldn’t you like to write this stuff during the working day instead of at night or at weekends?’
‘Yes. But I don’t want to sell out. All the commercial sites are crap. They’re all pushing this TV station, or that football shirt. You can’t say the chairman is a wanker if he’s the one paying your salary. Or if his best mate is.’