After My Fake Baby, a Channel 4 documentary about a new industry in dolls made to look and behave like living babies, comes My Fake Footballer, a Channel 4 documentary about an industry in dolls made to recreate famous footballers from the past.
The men who buy them idolise them, dress them in the latest kit, wash them, dry them, even take them on training sessions. The dolls are customised to customers' specifications: Kevin Keegan in his Hamburg days, Glen Hoddle on Top of the Pops, Paul Gascoigne on crutches. They can even be fitted with an abusive voice mechanism.
The footballer dolls, or "substitutes", are made by Ed Loosecrew, a 54 year old Everton fan who said that after seeing his favourite footballers grow old and slide into rehab, this would be the "closest" he would get to seeing them in their prime forever. "I've cried when I've let a few of them go," he admitted. The documentary showed him put a baking tray of rubber footballer parts in the oven, complete with boots, shinpads and jockstraps. You could have anything you liked, he said, a lithe Booby Moore, a stolid Italian Baresi, a Pele, a Mark Lawrensen even.
One man, Jimmy, had quite a few "substitutes" in a room that looked like a recreated old Wembley. He couldn't do with the unpredictability of the real thing: "I want them well behaved and clean and the reality isn't like that," he said. Jimmy takes his "team" for runs and even "trains" them. He spent nearly £3000 on hairstyles alone for the new "players".
Ed said he never asked why people bought the dolls; if they paid the money, he was just providing a service.
Do you have a favourite footballer you miss so much you'd spend a fortune recreating him? Of course you do. Admit it.
Next week: My Fake First Girlfriend. A Channel 4 documentary about men who miss their first love so much, they buy dolls, or "Lolitas" that allow them to rerun that first snog over and over. In My Fake First Car, yet another Channel 4 documentary, they even recreate their first fumbles on fake backseats with their fake girls.
