Speaker 1: You know when you go on a holiday and take
Speaker 1: your happy snaps and everyone's smiling, and then you get
Speaker 1: home and you're showing your family and a strange guy.
Speaker 2: Who wasn't on your trip is photo Bombingham. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: ruins the whole vibe.
Speaker 1: Next time it happens, you might want to make sure
Speaker 1: it's not a man named Karl Power. Hey, welcome to
Speaker 1: the poolroom, where we celebrate the winners, losers and the
Speaker 1: weird stuff between. I'm Tony Armstrong, and today we're learning
Speaker 1: professional sports careers are ten percent skill and ninety having
Speaker 1: the confidence to show up.
Speaker 2: At first glance.
Speaker 1: Manchester United's two thousand and one Champions League team photo
Speaker 1: looks pretty normal, but look a little closer and you'll
Speaker 1: notice there are twelve players, not eleven, and one of them, well,
Speaker 1: he wasn't on the team sheet. He was wearing the
Speaker 1: official uniform, and he wore the name and number of
Speaker 1: a real player, Eric Cantona, who had recently retired.
Speaker 2: The team's right back.
Speaker 1: Gary Neville was first to notice the man who's that?
Speaker 1: He asked, and the imposter shop back shut it, Gary Ugrass,
Speaker 1: I'm doing it for Cantona.
Speaker 2: After that, Neville was silent.
Speaker 1: Man United were meeting Bayern Munich in a Champions League
Speaker 1: semifinal in front.
Speaker 2: Of sixty thousand fans.
Speaker 1: Carl Power was one of them, and now he was
Speaker 1: going to be immortalized in the pregame team photo. In
Speaker 1: the UK, they call it blagging, deceiving your way into
Speaker 1: getting what you want, like a cartoon villain. Carl had
Speaker 1: been doing it since he was a kid, growing up
Speaker 1: on an estate outside Manchester. As a teen, he would
Speaker 1: trick his way into boxing matches by simply being convincing enough.
Speaker 1: A bag, a tower and the right attitude. He said,
Speaker 1: He's already broken nose helped too. Carl had an accomplice,
Speaker 1: Tommy Dunn, the mastermind behind the pranks. He'd do the
Speaker 1: hard work of posing as a photographer and walking in,
Speaker 1: then nick some passes or bibs and bring them back
Speaker 1: to Carl. The two men had worked together to scheme
Speaker 1: their way into the Manchester United game and were already
Speaker 1: standing gleefully on the touchline.
Speaker 2: Before their prank.
Speaker 1: It was planned with military precision, Carl said. They brought
Speaker 1: three United kids with them in all the possible color options.
Speaker 1: They found out where the team was staying and convinced
Speaker 1: one of the directors to tell them whether they'd be
Speaker 1: wearing red, white or blue.
Speaker 2: Serious rehearsals went on.
Speaker 1: They practiced what they'd say and how they'd sneak in.
Speaker 1: They planned to pose as a TV crew and hope
Speaker 1: some unsuspecting security guards would.
Speaker 2: Let them through. They did.
Speaker 1: Tommy and Carl made their way to the side of
Speaker 1: the pitch to wait for the players spotting and opening.
Speaker 1: Carl slipped right around to behind goal and sat with
Speaker 1: real photographers to watch the warm up.
Speaker 2: Then, when the teams walked out.
Speaker 1: He simply went to the player's entrance and became one
Speaker 1: of them. Observers say Carl Power stood for the shot
Speaker 1: just like his hero Canton Are, with his chest out
Speaker 1: and arms straight. The camera clicked and the deception was complete.
Speaker 1: This laborer, a former inmate who was out of work,
Speaker 1: would briefly be the most famous man in Britain. Not
Speaker 1: bad for a bloke whose friends knew him as fat Neck.
Speaker 1: A man hunt began. The tabloids demanded to know more
Speaker 1: about the man who desecrated the sacred tradition of lining
Speaker 1: up for pre match photos. A men's magazine called Front
Speaker 1: eventually outed him and discovered that prank Dunn. Carl had
Speaker 1: simply walked back into the stands and watched the rest
Speaker 1: of the match. The limelight agreed with him and his
Speaker 1: ambition grew. Later that same year, a cricket match was
Speaker 1: underway between the English and Australian Test teams. Tommy Dunn
Speaker 1: had once again made his way into the stadium without
Speaker 1: a ticket, and he smuggled Carl in behind him. Fat neck,
Speaker 1: popped on his pads and helmet and hid inside a
Speaker 1: toilet stall to wait. A phone called distracted Carl and
Speaker 1: he was late heading onto the field. The gag was
Speaker 1: supposed to be Karl replacing Nasa Hussein, but the batsman
Speaker 1: was already at the wicket. Then Carl's phone rang in
Speaker 1: front of the Leeds crowd and millions more watching on TV.
Speaker 1: He removed his helmet to answer it. Like I said,
Speaker 1: Tommy Dunn really was the brains of the operation. Together
Speaker 1: they went on blagging. On one occasion, Carl ended up
Speaker 1: on a Formula one circuit. Another time it was Wimbledon
Speaker 1: Center Court, where he and Tommy's son, Tommy Jr. Got
Speaker 1: stuck into a brief rally in front of a delighted
Speaker 1: crowd that let them play until they ran out of
Speaker 1: tennis balls.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure who's one.
Speaker 1: BBC commentator Sue Barker said the style wasn't great. Eventually
Speaker 1: their luck and the public's patients with their antics started
Speaker 1: to run low. In two thousand and three, they were
Speaker 1: finally arrested and held by police. As his profile grew,
Speaker 1: Carl Power attracted the attention of the British government, who
Speaker 1: charged him with scamming benefits and threw him in prison
Speaker 1: for six months. The judge said he'd been caught by
Speaker 1: his own vanity, by addiction to self publicity. As for
Speaker 1: Tommy Dunn, he's a professional prankster now. He's racked up
Speaker 1: nearly one point five million YouTube subscribers on a channel
Speaker 1: called troll Station, where he just trolls people for a gag.
Speaker 1: Older videos have tens of millions of views, but it
Speaker 1: would be fair to say interests dropped off of late.
Speaker 1: One of the latest stunts has only twenty eight thousand.
Speaker 1: The jig, it seems, is finally up. Thanks for hanging
Speaker 1: out in the boolroom.
Speaker 2: I'm Tony Armstrong and you've been listening to an iHeart production.
Speaker 1: See you next time for another story from the wonderful
Speaker 1: world of sport.
Speaker 2: Catch you then,