Meat pie oligarch in Premiership face-off

Wiggin Athletic unveil entrepreneurial war chest

by Bob Wallet

Pie eaters in the north west hamlet of Wiggin are celebrating after their local football team finally won promotion to the top flight of English football. A 3-1 trouncing of fellow sugar daddy financed Reading saw them pip the Tractor Boys of Ipswich to the second automatic promotion place. All eyes will now be on Wiggin's ephemeral moneybags backer Dave Whelanovich.

Whelanovich's rags to riches story is compelling, as the small boy from Bradfordostok (real name Davidovich Ilyevich Whelanovich) progressed from selling soap by the dozen to Subbuteo figures by the billion. Estimated now to be worth £4.7 trillion Whelanovich never forgot his roots as the immigrant who came to Lancashire and bankrolled a football team in a hamlet notorious for rugby league domination.

"It was a struggle," Whelanovich told The Rockall Times, his Russian brogue all but gone and replaced by the nasally whine of west Lancashire. "I sold my first bar of soap for three pence. I put one pence into my account in the Trustee Savings Bank, and with the other two pence bought two more bars of soap. I sold those for sixpence and so it went. Finally, after forty-eight years I bought my first bottle of shampoo."

Such was his success from exporting shampoo to the Middle East and carbolic soap to Australia, Whelanovich made his lucrative move into the sports retail market. "I saw the shop in the centre of Wiggin and I said to my father Jorge: 'one day I'm going to own that shop.'" That shop, as it came to be known, was the JJB Subbuteo Emporium. Whelanovich sold off the haberdashery department on the second floor, brought in new management and sold his first Subbuteo accessory — a set of police figures with barking Alsatian dog — on Saturday the 4 June 1829. The JJB empire was born.

"Success breeds success," Whelanovich says, and reminisces on his later conquests. Local pie makers Poole's were soon swallowed up in the expanding JJB empire, followed by Darcy's Petrol Driven Lawnmowers Ltd, Albinoni Discount Stores, Fockes Milk Stout (a micro brewery located inside a disused chimney on the Swan Meadow Mill estate) and the Hurley Stud and Bull Semen Company, a mail order company operating out of Lower Ince. Whelanovich's combined turnover began to swell alarmingly from £125 a year in 1938 to £1.8bn in 1992. Then he discovered football.

"I had been a professional footballer myself before an injury, ironically in injury time of the 1858 FA Cup final, forced me to consider a career elsewhere. Back then there were no sponsorship deals with razor blade companies so I knew I had to look after myself. I spoke to the bank manager at the Trustee Savings Bank and he lent me £4 to get home. However, I only spent £3 and invested the other £1 in soap. But football was still my main interest." Such was the strength of his interest that when Whelanovich made his first million he started to look round for a suitable club to buy. Manchester United was already owned by Martin Edwards, Liverpool had just been bought by Ken Dodd, later Sir Ken Dodd, and the Oozum Brothers were just finalising the accounts in their takeover of Tranmere Rovers. "For a while I felt like nobody wanted me. It was that rejection which hurt and drove me back to my own hamlet of Wiggin," he admits.

Back then, circa 1986, Wiggin Athletic were still playing in the Spear and Jackson Shovels Division 3 North West. Managed by local hero Sammy "Knobslicer" Heron, Whelanovich turned up one day and offered the aghast club official five million pounds. "To get lost," said an ageing Heron who now runs a miniature railway at nearby Leigh. "I thought, hello, he looks like he's worth a bob or two, and he was, and he used it. His first words to me were 'here's five million quid, now fu*ck off.' You've got to admire a man as straightforward as that."

Wiggin, flush with their new money, rose rapidly from non-league obscurity to the doormat outside the Premiership. Whelanovich recalls the moment when he thought his dreams had come true. "It were the last game of the season against West Ham United and a very tired looking Trevor Brooking had just floated a free kick into the Wiggin penalty area. Of course they scored and we missed out on a play-off place." Crystal Palace went up that season instead. "I knew then that one last heave would bring up a bit of pie crust that had lodged in my throat, and after that it was back to the boardroom. Monday morning I had Paul Jewell in my office. I offered him five million quid and told him to fu*ck off, but God bless him, he refused. And here we are."

I ask him how does it feel to be compared to that other oligarch of the Premiership, Roman Abramovich. "I'll let you into a little secret," Whelanovich leans forward and whispers: "He's not really Russian. His name's Martin Taylor and used to sell electrical items on Camden market on a Saturday. All these stories about Mr Abramovich and where his billions came from; Hitachis and Toshibas off the back of a lorry."

However, not everyone is impressed with Whelanovich's rags to riches domination of Wiggin. Bert Stickle, a local councillor worries that Whelanovich has too much power and influence. "I geet worried when he bought Poole's Pies. I thought to meself, aye aye, he's getten ambitions above his station. And I were reet. Santos family did well to stop him buying t'Mint Ball factory." Stickle, though, is dismissed as a local crank. "He's been thrown out of every society and club he's ever belonged to. Old Rotarians, Old Spongians, Society of Oddfellows. Everyone thrown him out as a perennial bothermaker."

Whelanovich is hoping he can make an impact on the Premiership and has already pledged £125m pounds in their first season. A large sum of money, incomprehensible to most people. To put t into perspective, that figure translates into: 1284 billion bars of carbolic soap, 734 million Subbuteo Munich Edition floodlights, 8415 million meat pies. "But at the end of the day you can't put a price on happiness," Whelanovich adds. "Look at the people of Wiggin now that the team have been promoted. I've ordered 70 000 frock coats for everyone to wear. It's time to bring a bit of character back to the hamlet. We've got a new shopping centre going up, there was a sighting of a pair of Lesser Crested Tits in Mesnes Park last week, and the sun is shining. What more can a boy from Bradfordostok ask for?"

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Meat pie oligarch in Premiership face-off

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