Tony Cascarino. Ireland World Cup hero. Talksport personality. Freeman of the city of Nancy.
It's 25 years since Cascarino released his book 'Full-time: The Secret Life of Tony Cascarino', written with Paul Kimmage.
The Guardian's assessment of his autobiography kicked off with the opening line, "Compared with the standard issue footballer's autobiography, this is Tolstoy."
The book is best remembered for the explosive - and it turned out, inaccurate - revelation that he was never actually eligible to play for Ireland, a disclosure which made huge headlines for days afterwards.
It transpired that his Mayo-born maternal grandfather Michael O'Malley had not been his grandfather at all, something he had only discovered on an away trip in Liechtenstein some years before. It was all rather complicated but suffice to say, it emerged that the woman his mother believed to be her sister was in fact her mother.
"He was telling me this through the book and you're thinking 'who's going to publish goddamn thing?'" Kimmage recalls in the new documentary 'Tony Cascarino: Extra Time', screened on RTÉ One on Monday night.
"So, you're looking for a hook. I said well, it could be that he was never actually qualified to play for Ireland? And of course, the publishers went, 'aw, that's great, that'll make a headline!'
"And of course, it made loads of headlines."
FAI CEO Bernard O'Byrne was suitably aghast and made clear this was a headache he could do without. Jack Charlton gruffly expressed his bemusement that he had said anything at all.
Later on, it was revealed that his mother - Theresa O'Malley - had in fact been granted Irish citizenship without her knowledge in 1985, shortly before Cascarino's international debut and that the adoption laws entitled him to play for Ireland.
One of the most celebrated Cascarino anecdotes relates to his status as a member of the 'Granny ruler' contingent.
The dressing room in the aftermath of Ireland's quarter-final defeat to Italy in Rome was a crowded place, a who's who of 'Official Ireland.' The Six One news report from inside the dressing room by the late Tommie Gorman captured the scene.
Charlie Haughey, fresh from his lap of the Stadio Olimpico running track, having basked in the innocent acclaim of the travelling fans, is making his way around the room, congratulating the players on their efforts. (He is filmed shaking hands with Jack Charlton's son John and there are suspicions he may have mistaken him for a player.)
Haughey then wanders up and offers his post-match verdict to a cigarette-wielding Charlton, announcing that the players were "magnificent. They ran and ran and ran... "
Opposition leaders Alan Dukes and Dick Spring were also present, the Fine Gael leader telling Gorman that in his view the ref had screwed over Ireland - not in so many words.
The story goes that a towelled-up Andy Townsend wandered out of the shower and, spotting Haughey, said loudly, 'Here Cas, 'oo the f**k is tha'?'
- Cas: "I dunno."
- Townsend: "Quinny will know?"
- Cas: "Quinny, who is that guy?"
- Quinn: (Embarrassed) "Shh... (whispering) that's the Taoiseach!"
- Townsend: (on the other side of him) Who is it, Cas?
- Cas: I dunno... But Quinny says he owns a teashop.
The story sounds every inch an apocryphal one, in the same tradition as the Terry Mancini (or was it Townsend?) 'Blimey, I hope ours ain't as long' national anthem line.
However, Cascarino himself confirmed to this writer about a decade ago that this exchange did in fact take place. With the important proviso that both he and Townsend were messing themselves. They did of course know who Haughey was.
Early on in the documentary, Cascarino observes, "I've always said the biggest superpower you can have is luck, and I think I've been very fortunate."
Nowhere is this more evident than in the Romania penalty shootout.
Cascarino famously scored the fourth penalty, in which he took a bigger divot than Rory McIlroy. It was a woefully poor strike but still somehow squirmed under the arms of Silviu Lung, who presumably realised afterwards that he wasn't saving one today.
The world contains no shortage of Italia 90 documentaries. Fortunately this is not just another retrospective of that summer.
Some of the most interesting material concerns his time in France, which made Cascarino an exotic in the context of Irish football in the 90s.
Cas was never the most prolific of Irish strikers but back in the mid-to-late 90s, one would often hear tell of his phenomenal goalscoring exploits in the French league. Footage was relatively thin on the ground though often one would catch a snippet of a headed goal on Irish television, usually with the Canal+ or TF1 logo in the corner of the screen.
How 'Tony Goal' came to be a folk hero in French football was one of the curiosities of the day and another instance of fortuitous timing.
Always tortured by self-doubt, Cascarino's career had fallen into a rut by the time of USA '94.
Having broken through initially at Gillingham - where he was signed from Kent league side Crockenhill for a set of tracksuits - he really hit the bright lights in the dowdy surrounds of Millwall.
His attacking partnership with Teddy Sheringham propelled the south London club to promotion to the old First Division for the first time. Anyone who read Eamon Dunphy's 'Only a Game?' will appreciate what a big deal this was. He subsequently made history by scoring Millwall's first two goals in the top flight, in an opening day draw at VIlla Park in 1988-89.
By then, he was a fully-fledged international again.
He had made his international debut under Eoin Hand in a 0-0 draw away to Switzerland in September 1985, as Ireland's doomed campaign to reach the 1986 World Cup was winding down.
He was out of favour for the first two years of Charlton's reign, only for the manager to invite him back into the fold in the lead-in to Euro 88 with the immortal words - "I saw you at Gillingham. I thought you were s**t."
He made late cameo appearances against the USSR and the Netherlands, assaulted the penalty spot in Genoa, scored perhaps his most famous international goal with a wonderful looping header to equalise against England in a Euro '92 qualifier in September 1990.
However, failed moves to Aston Villa and Celtic dented his confidence badly. He then spent two injury-ridden seasons at Chelsea, being released a day after the 1994 FA Cup final defeat to Manchester United.
Like Gary Breen eight years later, he headed to the World Cup as a free agent. Unlike Breen, he wouldn't get the chance to wow prospective suitors. He picked up an injury in training and spent the World Cup on an exercise bike and anxiously waiting on calls from agents.
He was in the States when he got word that Marseille was a possibility.
Cascarino readily concedes that the 1993 Champions League winners wouldn't have gone near him had they not been in the midst of severe turmoil themselves.
Three days after Basile Boli's goal saw them beat AC Milan in the Champions League final, it was alleged that one Marseille player had contacted three players from Ligue 1 side Valenciennes, offering a bribe for them to go easy on the champions in a league game prior to the European Cup final.
The investigation dragged on for over a year, with Marseille punished with relegation to Ligue 2 ahead of the 1994-95 season and placed under a spending embargo.
It was in that context that Cascarino joined on a free transfer. He scored 30-plus goals in two wildly successful seasons, acquiring the nickname 'Tony Goal' from the Marseille ultras.
While there, he became acquainted with the club's, ahem, colourful President Bernard Tapie, a former Adidas executive and Socialist party politician, who spent much of the final two decades of his life walking in and out of court.
Tapie's public verdict on the bribery scandal was that the whole farrago was cooked up by Parisians jealous of Marseille's success. The documentary gives some insight into Tapie's modus operandi.
Ahead of a UEFA Cup tie against Olympiacos, he gave Cascarino a nudge and told him "the goalkeeper is with me" and to "shoot as much as you like, shoot! shoot!"
"I shot loads and he made loads of saves," Cascarino recalls. "You obviously didn't pay him enough!
"He obviously hadn't paid the goalkeeper but he would say things to get into your mindset."
The book also made headlines for Cas's disclosures about the 'injections'.
"We had a club doctor come to the hotel the night before a game," he remembers. "There was injections given out. I didn't know what they were. We were told they were 'boosters'. What was in the boosters, I don't know.
"All I knew is I felt quite good before the game." (UEFA later re-examined the anti-doping tests from the era and found no doping violations.)
Cascarino's period in Marseille was one of the most successful of his career, which also happened to coincide with the implosion of his marriage.
He was, at this time, still married to Sarah, while conducting an affair with a French woman Virginia, who was to become his second wife.
While most Irish football fans are inclined to think 'Marseille' when Cascarino's years in France crop up, the striker himself maintains that he played his best football at Nancy in the twilight of his career between 1996 and 2000.
He scored freely for the small club in the north of France, remarkably becoming the second sportsman to be awarded the freedom of the city - the previous one being Michel Platini.
Mick McCarthy and the Republic of Ireland certainly got the benefit of late-stage Cascarino.
Improbably, Cas had his most prolific spell in an Irish jersey in McCarthy's first qualification campaign in charge. His seven goals were indispensable in helping Ireland into a play-off for the 1998 World Cup, in what was otherwise an awkward, transitional period for the national team.
His international career concluded in a tempestuous play-off in Turkey in late 1999, where he was involved in a spectacular brawl, much as Eric Cantona had six years earlier.
Perhaps a neat bit of synchronicity. For just as Cantona's career had been resurrected by moving from France to England, so Cascarino's had by heading in the opposite direction.
Watch Tony Cascarino: Extra Time on RTÉ One and the RTÉ Player on Monday, 6 October at 9.35pm
