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Sept. 14, 2024 - David Icke
01:05:12
DAVID ICKE – The Career, The Beliefs & The Philosophy
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you Now, I do have a very, very special guest on this show.
Now, this special guest is classed as a conspiracist theory by a lot of people.
He did used to be a footballer.
He played for Coventry City, Oxford United, Northampton Town and Hereford United.
Of course, he is a Leicester fan and he's somebody that you will have seen on numerous publications, numerous videos.
And it is a pleasure to welcome on to Up The Cherries, in all departments, David Icke.
Welcome to the show, David.
How are you doing?
I'm good.
Fantastic.
Fantastic.
And thank you so much for joining us.
So firstly, I wanted to speak about your footballing career.
How did your love for the beautiful game start?
Well, you know, it was a big part of my, if you like, psychological development, because when I was a kid, I mean, you wouldn't know it now, but when I was a kid, I was born in 1952.
I was very much lacking confidence and I was born in a A real working class background in Leicester.
We had no money and I mean no money.
And you kind of thought that, you know, you were going to be like that all your life and nothing was going to happen and of any note.
And, you know, you were you were stuck with your lot.
And like I say, I was a very diffident kid in the early years.
And then one day, I was, well, we used to play at primary school.
We used to play football in the playground.
And we used to call it uppers and downers because the playground was on a slight incline and someone would come out at playtime, kick the ball, kick a ball in the air.
One of those plastic balls, you know, they used to have in those days.
And and they'd shout uppers and downers.
And then you chose if you wanted to kick up or down.
And, you know, the teams were often very uneven.
But I always wanted to go in goal, even though it was a hard playground.
I wanted to go in goal.
I was kind of attracted to that.
And I remember walking up the steps to this is in the would have been the third year of primary school.
And there was a note at the top of the steps as you went into the school, and it said trials for the school third year team.
Put your name down if you want to be in the trial.
And me of that time thought, well, I'm not going to get in, am I?
What's the point?
So I'm going home one night, maybe a day, couple of days later.
And I'm, you know, I'm walking quite a long way from the school.
And now I heard this voice behind me shouting, Ike, Ike, Ike.
And I turned around.
It was a mate of mine.
And he said, Mr. Rickard, the school third year football teacher, wants you to take part in the trial tomorrow.
Right.
So I'm like, Me?
What?
Because he'd seen me playing in goal in the Uppers and Downers in the playground.
So I ran home and waiting for my father to come back.
And I told him, look, I've got to be on this trial tomorrow.
I need some football boots.
I never had any football boots.
I never had any.
So in those days, it wasn't like today where supermarkets were open till late at night.
There were no supermarkets.
I saw the first one built in Leicester.
And so and there were really a lot of kind of shop laws and things closed like Sunday.
Nothing was open virtually.
And it was after five o'clock.
And all the shops were shut.
But anyway, my father and me, we went down to this row of shops in a place called Green Lane Road in Leicester.
And there was one shop open and in the centre of the window was this pair of football boots.
Um, and, uh, you know, uh, the boots they used to wear in the 1920s, actually make it 1910, you know, with a massive fricking toe caps on.
And there were, there were many sizes, uh, bigger than my feet.
They were adults.
Right.
But I mean, you know, beggars can't be choosers and all that.
So, um, we bought these boots for next to nothing.
And I went and played in the trial the next day and he wanted me in as a goalkeeper.
And this other goalkeeper was going to be picked and not me, although very soon afterwards he played for the higher fourth year team.
So I started my goalkeeping career.
But right at the start in this trial, there were two of us.
And Mr. Rickard was going to decide who was going to be in the team by who had the hardest shot.
Well, I mean, this poor kid had no chance.
I had these bloody big boots on with toe caps.
They were like divers boots, you know, keep you under water.
So I hit this thing with the end of my toe and it went like an Exocet past the goalkeeper.
And so I got in the team and I scored in my first game.
That was not much of a feat because we won 16-0 against a Roman Catholic school called the Newery.
And it's one of the things I remember is I've never seen a football match where everyone but the goalkeeper, and I'm talking about the Newery team, everyone but the goalkeeper was everywhere the ball was.
It was like a swarm of wasps around the ball.
The rest of the pitch, from their point of view, was empty.
So we won 16-0.
It weren't difficult.
And then I got into goal and that was what I really wanted to do.
And I was transformed as a kind of person, really, because suddenly I thought, hey, you know, you can do something.
You know, it is possible to To do more than than just what you thought you were going to do.
And I became more and more confident as a kid, thanks to football and thanks to goalkeeping, because I was I was quite good at it.
And I decided at that moment when I was in that third year football team at primary school that I was going to be a professional footballer.
So.
Of course, people laughed, you know, but I thought I am I am.
And so I went to senior school and played in the, you know, the school team.
And I was sent to some trials here and there for Leicester school boys teams and didn't do any good.
And I got to, I would have been, what, 13.
And I thought, you know, I've got to do something here.
Because I'm not going to be a professional footballer the way things are going.
And there was this amazing piece of luck that happened to me.
I was sent to for a trial by the school teacher to to have a trial for the Leicester under 14 school boys team.
Now, this was the level where If you got in, the scouts were starting to look at you, you know, because if you couldn't if you weren't in your schoolboy city team, then there was no point.
I understand that the scouts looking at you.
So but he said there's a there's a guy because what was happening at this time is that there was a kid of my age.
Who was playing in goal for the under-15 team.
So it was taken as read that he would get in goal for the under-14 team.
This bloke called Dave Valance, I remember.
And so the teacher said to me, well, I'm not going to send you as a goalkeeper because, you know, Dave Valance is going to get in.
So I'll send you as an outfield player.
And so I played the first half an hour of the trial on the pitch and I was rubbish because my heart wasn't in it.
I just didn't want to play outfield.
And so The guy who's running the trial said to me and two other kids, OK, well, look, if we need you again, we'll shout for you.
You just take a ball and play on the other pitch.
And of course, you knew at the time, thanks, but no thanks.
So we're kicking this ball around that I'm thinking, well, you know, how am I going to be a professional footballer?
And then I heard this shout and it was the teacher.
He said, hey, hey, any of you lads playing goal?
And I'm off straight away towards him.
Yeah, me, I do.
And what had happened is there were two goalkeepers, Dave Vallance and another one, and the other one had got injured.
So I played in goal in the rest of the trial.
And the guy came up to me afterwards, the manager, and he said, oh, I was very impressed.
He said, obviously, Dave Vallance is going to be in the team, but we need a reserve, right?
So would you come for the next trial?
I thought, yeah, I bloody will.
So we had the next trial.
And I don't know who picked the teams, but they were incredibly uneven.
And I was on the end of a coconut shy.
And I only let one goal in.
And on that day, if I'd have dived the wrong way, it would have hit my foot and gone over the bar.
I mean, I couldn't not stop everything.
I've never had a game like it in my life.
And he said, well, look, You know, I thought Dave Vallance was going to be in the team.
But I've got to say, you were far the better goalkeeper in the trial.
So you're going to be in the team.
So I was in the under-14 team and I started playing under-14.
And then an Arsenal scout saw me very, very early on when I played for that under-14 Leicester team.
And I went on trial to Arsenal.
And then a series of other clubs came in for me.
I got into the Leicester school boys under-15 team the next year.
I was playing for the Leicestershire County team and I had a stream of clubs.
Funnily enough, a quick aside, when I was on trial at Arsenal, one of the times I went there and stayed for a week with Arsenal, It was during the 1966 World Cup.
And so I was watching the World Cup.
And then on the Wednesday before the final, the England team came over, the whole squad, to the Arsenal training ground.
I think it's still there up in the Potters Bar area.
And just Nissan huts in those days.
It wasn't like, you know, based on Mars like it is now.
And they played a game against the Arsenal first team on the training ground pitch.
London Colney, they called it, for all the players who weren't in the main World Cup team.
And I remember standing next to Jimmy Greaves as he was putting his tie-ups on his socks.
And Jimmy Greaves had been injured, if you remember, when Jeff Urst came in.
And Greaves, at this time, didn't know he wasn't going to play in the final.
But he played in this practice game.
And alongside me on the line, as we watched this game, was the England World Cup team.
Bobby Moore, Gordon Banks.
Well, as a goalkeeper at Leicester City, of course, that's how I learned to be a goalkeeper, watching him.
And so on all the rest of the team, it was phenomenal for what I was then, 13 years of age, 13, 14 years of age.
But eventually I went to Coventry City because it was 25 miles down the road from Leicester.
And that, you know, suited me.
And also, you know, Coventry at that time were managed by Jimmy Hill and they got a hell of a lot of publicity because of Jimmy Hill.
And I signed for them just before they got into what was then the First Division, now the Premiership, of course, when they won promotion from Division Two, now the Championship.
And so I joined them in their first year in the top division.
And I didn't regret it because we had a fantastic time.
You know, we got one of the best youth teams in Britain.
We got to the final of the FA Youth Cup, played against Graeme Souness when he was at Tottenham and Steve Perriman and all these people.
And yeah, I had a great time at Coventry.
And then I was... A strange thing happened just after I joined Coventry about six months in.
It's a long story, but you know, my left knee swelled up for no apparent reason.
And that was the start of arthritis.
I didn't know at the time, rheumatoid arthritis.
But I played for Coventry.
for two years as an apprentice professional and then signed professional.
And things were going really well, especially in the last season I was with them when we got so close.
We played Tottenham in the final of the FA Youth Cup.
Big crowds were watching us by then.
And we played four games before we finally lost.
Um, uh, You know, home and away, and then a third game, which was a draw, and then the third game at White Hart Lane, which they won 1-0.
And so by this time, by the next season, I spent a bit of time on loan at Oxford United, who were in what is now the championship then.
That's when I met Ron Atkinson, right?
Atkinson was a club captain, right?
He was a midfield player.
As I remember Ron, he never left the centre circle.
He was just standing there and spraying it around.
So I met him and I liked him.
He was a character.
But the arthritis, Started really getting worse and it was in a few joints.
And I left Coventry thinking my career was over because that's what they told me.
Don't play football again.
You could be in a wheelchair in your 30s.
And then I got a call, another long story, but I got a call from one of the greats of football history in Britain, John Charles, who, of course, went to Juventus and became the big gentle giant hero out in Italy.
And he was managing Herefordshire United Football Club, which was a Southern League club at the time.
And he asked if I'd go along and play with them.
And I thought, well, they train or play once midweek and then play on a Saturday.
Maybe I'll get away with that.
And the next season, we were in the league and I played 60 games that season, first team games.
And funnily enough, I still hold the record for the fewest goals conceded per game by any goalkeeper in Hereford United history.
A guy on the local paper told me that when he interviewed me.
And I also that season, we had a fantastic defence and got promotion.
And I let fewer goals in in the season than any other goalkeeper except one guy called Stevenson at Burnley that season.
He let one less in than me.
I think it was 22, 23 or something like that.
And things were going well.
I mean, I know other clubs were sniffing around.
Um, higher up and I'm still I'm still only 20 years of age, which, you know, to be in a first team in a football league team at 20 years of age in those days, the goalkeeper was a really big thing.
And I'm carrying this arthritis around with me, um, which the club didn't know about.
Um, otherwise that I got a new goalkeeper, I guess.
But, um, eventually it got too bad and I couldn't, I couldn't continue.
And that was the end of my career.
I'd just turned 21, but my football career was up to my 20th year.
When you had to make that decision to hang up your boots, or hang up your gloves in this case, how difficult was that, David?
Well, I'll tell you a story of my last year in when I played league football that last year.
The arthritis had become so bad that every morning in the warm up, imagine doing this now.
But in those days, we used to train at Creden Hill.
Hereford, which is the base of, you know, a major, major army base.
And what's that regiment?
Not the parachute regiment, the other one.
Anyway, Hereford is a famous base for this very elite regiment.
And we used to train on their football pitches.
They had great pitches and all that stuff.
But imagine that today.
I mean, you couldn't.
I mean, I remember Going back there through Hereford once years and years later and I stood out the fence just to have a look You know where we used to train and within minutes there was a an army truck turned up.
Excuse me.
What are you doing?
We used to train there every morning, you know and it was You know good during the winter months was was wet and damp and cold and And the warm-up because of the arthritis was agony every day.
I used to wake up in the morning.
I know that within a couple of hours I was going to be in agony for at least like 20 minutes.
And then the joints would warm up and I'd get on with the training.
And so when that's what you're doing every day, when that's what you're doing every day.
And of course, during the games, the adrenaline got you through them.
It never affected me in the games.
It was weird.
But, you know, it wears you down.
It wears you out, really.
And what happened was, we won promotion to what is now League Two, which was fantastic in the first season, a bit like Wrexham did.
And so, I was in the summer between the seasons and I woke up one morning and I couldn't move and I couldn't breathe.
And I was trying to knock my wife who was lying next to me, but I couldn't move.
My whole body was frozen and I couldn't breathe.
So I thought I was going to die.
It seemed ages before I gasped a breath.
It couldn't have been that long.
But I gasped a breath eventually.
And as I did, my body unfroze, but I was in absolute agony.
It was like there was a knife going in every joint.
And that was the end of my career.
I went to bed a professional footballer and I woke up with no career.
And so when you're in that kind of pain and you've been in that kind of pain just to be a footballer for a whole season, You basically, you have really had enough.
And it was sad because it's what I always wanted to do since I was a kid, like I say.
But you have to get on with it.
You know, you can't feel sorry for yourself and be a victim.
You have to say, OK, well, that's that road is closed.
So what now?
And I'd always as a kid, I had a second bow of interest, if you like, beyond football.
And that was that was journalism, newspapers and that sort of stuff.
I was reading newspapers when I was a kid.
I wanted to know the ladies thing, what was going on.
And I remember you'll remember these.
They don't have them anymore, but they used to have the sports paper on a Saturday night.
Yes.
Used to come out, used to call it the pink or the buff or whatever it was.
And there was a bloke...
used to write the Leicester City reports called Laurie Simpkin.
And I used to read his stuff, you know, and I became very interested in how the whole thing was put together and, you know, how it was written and all that stuff.
And years later, I ended up on the Leicester Mercury and my news editor was Laurie Simpkin, funnily enough.
And so I decided when my football career ended that I was going to go into journalism.
And of course, I left school at 15 to be a professional footballer.
I never took a major exam in my life except, you know, end of year class exams.
And, you know, I wanted to get into journalism and they're asking me, you know, what university I went to.
And I said, well, I played for Oxford United once.
Does that work?
And it was very difficult.
But I had a friend who was a former Coventry director called John Kamkin.
Well, he was a director when I played for the club and he's a nice guy who ran some travel agency business.
And he contacted me when he heard my career was finished at Hereford United.
He said, what do you want to do?
I said, well, I want to be a journalist.
I said, but, you know, how do you start?
Because what actually happened, you know, just going back one step is when my career ended at Hereford United, I was invited because it was, you know, considered a new story to go to Central Television in Birmingham, which was Hereford was in that region to be interviewed by a bloke called Gary Newbon, who became a well-known sports presenter.
Live on the evening news show about how my career finished.
And funnily enough, next to me was a cricketer called Mike Hendricks, who became an England bowler.
He was about to make his England debut.
And so they did this thing on my career ended and his career with England cricket starting.
And I walked into the studio and I looked around.
This is just after my Hereford career is finished.
And I thought, This is for me.
There was a guy reading the news and it was going quiet and stuff.
And I thought, yeah, this is for me.
And I afterwards in the green room, I remember saying to newborn, how do you become a how do you get into this business?
And he said, well, usually do it by journalism.
So I decided I was going to be a journalist and my goal From that moment, in that studio, was to front Grandstand, which was the big BBC Saturday afternoon show, made famous by people like David Coleman and Frank Boff, and later Desmond Lynam.
And I actually achieved that eventually, and that was a big moment.
Just because you're presenting a TV show, but it was like you completed an ambition that started out when your football career finished.
And so I went, I went to work on a weekly paper after I left Hereford, which was part of the Leicester Mercury Group.
And it was just about read by the people who wrote it, you know, it was a it was a tax write off.
And it was the very lowest of the low in journalism.
But then I worked my way up to I worked for the Leicester Mercury and then I worked for BRNB radio in Birmingham, which eventually got me into the BBC in Birmingham, which then got me into the BBC in London.
So that was really how it all unfolded.
Excellent.
Well, one thing that I did notice as well, and I don't know how true this is, is that you went to Saudi Arabia to help their national team.
What was that time like?
Nightmare.
I only lasted eight weeks and I was starting to try to leave the moment I arrived.
You know, in those days I was working for BRNB in Birmingham.
I didn't really know anything about Saudi Arabia.
But again, John Kamkin, same guy, contacted me and said that he was involved in a group led by Jimmy Hill who go to Saudi Arabia and try to sort their football out.
Of course, in those days, because Saudi Arabian football was appalling.
I mean, it was appalling.
And you had these princes that kind of headed the different football clubs in Saudi Arabia.
The quality was appalling.
Even in those days, long after my football career ended, I played a few games in Saudi Arabia in their main stadium.
Let's say the quality was not a challenge to me.
I went there and I was appalled by what I saw immediately.
I mean, you know, Saudi Arabia for me then and now is a fascist country.
And I wanted to get out as quick as I could, which I did.
It took me eight weeks to work it all through.
But it was a great experience to see a country In which that level of control existed, it was a real eye opener to me.
And the the the royal family, not real royal at all and make it up the House of South.
They had all these princes and they all kind of, you know, have hijacked the the oil revenues and everything.
But they were in those days.
The reason they they got this group in, led by Jimmy Hill, is that they were getting beaten.
You know, they were seeing themselves.
We're the home of Mecca.
We're the home of Islam and all these other Islamic countries.
And the worst of all, you know, you have Sunni Islam and Shia Islam.
Well, you know, the home of Sunni Islam is Saudi Arabia.
The home of Shia Islam is Iran.
And so they were getting beaten by Iran and that was really football and that was really, really not acceptable.
So that's why they put all this money into building it up.
And although I didn't stay very long, a matter of weeks, I think the Jimmy Hill group did improve football to the extent that it's gone on to be much better than it was.
But I do remember there was one game when They're playing Iran in a World Cup match in the main stadium in Riyadh.
And Iran absolutely played them off the park.
They beat them 3-0.
It could have been more, a lot more.
And I remember going to the reception afterwards with all these bloody royals and whatever.
And to say they were pissed off is the understatement of the century, really.
And, you know, maybe Jimmy's group wouldn't have survived much longer after that.
But they did.
And I think they eventually did.
Of course, you eventually left the BBC.
a much better setup there. Obviously you can see the money they're putting in now with the
with the Saudi league and Ronaldo and stuff. Of course you eventually left the BBC. If you
don't mind me asking David what was that period like when you did leave the broadcaster?
Well the broadcaster left me.
It's a long story, and I won't bore you with it now, but strange things were happening to me, if you like, paranormal things, which I couldn't explain.
And in this same period where this was happening, and no one knew it was happening, only me, I got this letter From from the BBC saying they weren't renewing my contract, which was kind of strange because, you know, when I joined the BBC sports department eventually in London.
I joined it at the height of its powers.
I mean, I was presenting, you know, shows, sports shows.
Including some grandstands, which was my, you know, my ambition and sports nights and stuff like that, as they were then.
And I was introducing and surrounded by some of the absolute greats of sports commentary.
The team was extraordinary at the time.
And many of them I'd watched on television, even as a kid.
So I was doing things into Grandstand when it was presented by Frank Boff and when it was presented by David Coleman.
I'm sitting there in the studio and these people who were, you know, heroes of mine from way back when I was a kid were handing over to me.
You know, David Coleman and Frank Boff.
We had Harry Carpenter doing the boxing.
We had Peter O'Sullivan doing the racing.
We had Ron Pickering doing the athletics.
I mean, it was just an extraordinary.
We had Richie Beno doing the cricket.
And all these people I was handing over to, you know, when I was presenting shows, it was unbelievable to me because I was still young at the time.
And you know, it would seem that I had a long career with them.
I had commendations from my work and all that stuff.
And then suddenly they decided they were not going to renew a contract.
And a lot of that, well, the real reason for that was because I'd started to Get very concerned about the environment, not global warming, load of nonsense, that is.
But I mean, caused by humans.
I mean, you know, the environment in general, the pollution and the destruction of beautiful areas, which was really going on big time at the time.
But give this Labour government time and they'll outrun that, that's for sure.
But the The point was I wanted to do something about it and eventually joined the Green Party and became a national speaker for the Green Party in a matter of weeks.
That's another bloody story.
Talk about doors opening and doors closing.
And in 1989, out of the blue, well it wasn't really out of the blue, there was a lot of environmental programs being made at the time.
We got this big election result in the European elections of 1989 and suddenly the Green Party is all over the media and that's when the BBC decided that there was a conflict of interest between the economic system is destroying the world and Ian Rush scored two today, right?
So so I was out of it.
But I was I was glad, really, by then, because it's funny, once I achieved my ambition to to front grandstand, I kind of lost that momentum.
It was almost like it was achieving that ambition from the depths of your football career ending.
I'd lost my momentum really, and I'd lost my enthusiasm for being a television presenter.
And I went off on another journey, which is still going on 35 years later.
One thing I did want to get your thoughts on, because of course Leicester City have been hit, or were going to be hit, because of profit and sustainability rules.
Everton and Nottingham Forest were hit last season.
Villa are under scrutiny as well as a number of other clubs and finances are a big thing in football and of course there's big changes in day-to-day life.
Cash is seeming to be phased out by the government.
I'd like to get your views on the financial system both in football and in daily life and who is controlling that.
Well, Leicester City got away with it, didn't they?
Yeah.
I'm delighted about that.
Well, let's mess about.
They got away with it.
I don't know how, but obviously they got very good lawyers.
But in terms of the economic system, the economic system is a joke when you break it down.
And I've gone into this in my books in great detail and taken it apart.
See, it's all based on money that doesn't exist.
But you're paying interest on money that doesn't exist to bankers who are lending you money that doesn't exist.
How do you mean, Dave?
What are you talking about?
Well, look, you go into a bank and you say borrow £50,000.
The bank does not move any precious metals or move any tangible wealth around at all.
It just types into your account £50,000.
And that £50,000 has not, does never and will never exist.
It's just figures on a screen.
It's called credit.
That's what credit is.
It's money that doesn't exist.
It's theoretical money.
Because, you know, as I expose in my books, the same networks That control government, control the banking system.
In fact, the banking system controls governments.
That's the dynamic, really.
And so laws have been passed which allow banks to lend many, many, many times what they have on deposit.
It's called fractional reserve lending.
And so they can lend you money they don't actually have called credit.
And the key thing, then, is they charge you interest on it.
And so you're paying the principal plus the interest on theoretical money called credit.
And what you have to do to get this credit is sign over tangible assets, your home, your land, your resources, your business, your possessions, whatever.
If you can't pay back the money plus the interest, often through no fault of your own because the banking system and financial system has manipulated booms and busts and crashes for its own ends, then they get your tangible assets and they get your tangible assets in exchange for non-existent theoretical money called credit.
And there's another point in all this.
When you take out a loan, say £50,000, that's what they create theoretically in the form of credit, £50,000.
But you're not paying back £50,000, you're paying back £50,000 plus interest.
The interest is never created in all these loans.
And that means that at any point there is never ever enough money theoretical or otherwise in circulation.
To pay back all the debt and all the interest on the debt that's outstanding around the world.
And that means that people losing their homes, their resources, their assets is built into the system.
Now, when there's an expansion of what they call the money supply, more and more loans, in other words, are made by banks that can be hidden to an extent.
But when there's a curtailment of the money supply by banks not making as many loans
and calling in loans that are already out there, it becomes very, very clear,
it's called a bust or a crash or a credit crunch, that there's not enough money in circulation
to pay back all the interest and all the principle of the debt.
And therefore people lose their homes, they lose their businesses, they lose everything.
And so the banking system is an organized crime.
That's what it is.
And it's not called out because it controls governments.
And, you know, it's an interesting thing.
Why do governments, they're the government.
Why don't they issue their own currency interest free?
Why did they go to banking systems and borrow money on behalf of the public?
What's the public sector borrowing requirement and all this stuff?
Why aren't you issuing your own currency interest-free and circulating it interest-free?
Why are you going to banks and paying interest on it?
In other words, the taxpayer is.
Because the whole thing's stitched up.
And, you know, one of the greatest forms of mind control is familiarity.
So you you become familiar with with something.
Oh, yeah.
You want to borrow money, borrow it from a bank and the government wants to borrow money, borrows it from the bank.
No one actually says, oh, hold on a minute.
Why are they doing that?
And these are the questions that I've been and many others across the great spectrum of human life.
The questions I've been asking the last 35 years.
Why?
Why do you do that?
Who says that?
Who's controlling this?
Who's decided that?
And when you do, it's extraordinary how the whole system that people believe in just falls before your eyes because it's a nonsense.
It's a confidence trick.
And, you know, it's ridiculous, for instance, that the current Labour government of Keir Starmer can get 34 percent of the vote.
In a democracy and become an elected tyranny or a not elected tyranny in terms of democracy to impose its will upon the population in the way that already is.
And we see nothing yet from 34% of the vote is ridiculous.
But oh, yeah, well, that's how the system works for the systems nonsense then.
And maybe we find another way of doing it.
But familiarity is, oh, we've always done it like that.
It's like, you know, kids going to school is familiar.
Well, that's what you do.
You go to school when you're young and stuff.
And, you know, no one seems to ask, well, what are the kids taught when they go to school?
How valid is what they're taught?
What's the real evidence for it?
What is the supporting evidence for kids being told this is how it is?
And that's it.
No need to question.
And so all I've done for the last 35 years is ask these questions.
And I tell you, 99% of the time, the system is found wanting and has no answer.
But people have stopped asking questions, unfortunately, on the scale they need asking.
Do you feel that there is, and you do mention control quite a bit, but do you feel that there
is that control in football, why PSR has come in, is to stop Leicester doing what they did in 2015,
2016, win the Premier League, upsetting the status quo, and the money...
a And the profits from football will go to the big clubs, which, of course, are funding the whole regime.
Would you say that that is the scenario that we're facing?
Well, funny enough, years ago, I, you know, would it be, I don't know, maybe 15 years ago, I wrote a column for a football website every week.
I think it was called Football 365.
And my column was based on football as a microcosm of life.
And it is.
It's a microcosm of life in this way, just very quickly.
You know, my son, Jamie, was goalkeeper.
He had trials for Manchester United in Aston Villa and he played in the Portsmouth youth set up for years.
And my other son, Gareth, he was the England Beach soccer goalkeeper for a number of years.
And football is a very great way, well sport in general, very great way, but football in particular, of developing your character, and if you use it right, and creating emotional strength and developing your character.
Because, you know, you go through life and you have your emotional and ups and downs and your challenges, you know, maybe every few days if you're unlucky or every few weeks or every few months or whatever.
But in football, you can have those ups and downs literally in minutes.
And it's a great way to develop your character and get control of your emotions and develop your personality.
So it mirrors life, but in a very, very concentrated way because of that.
But in terms of the greater picture, you know, when I was watching Lester and Gordon Banks and Peter Shilton, who I actually played football against in schools, football known him for since I was about 14, 15, no, 13, 13, I played against him.
No, 13. 13 I played against him.
And, you know, the clubs were owned by the local business, local businessman or something.
And there was a rapport between the club and the community.
And also, although, you know, footballers, even in those days in the 1960s, were paid more than the average wage.
I mean, it wasn't phenomenally more.
I mean, I remember Jimmy Hill again.
fighting the case to bring in the or to end the maximum wage when Johnny Haynes of Fulham
in England became the first £100 a week footballer. But it's now gone absolutely insane.
I mean, you know, I like football, but I mean £300,000, £400,000 a week for kicking a bag of
I mean, please, you know, we've just taken the pensioners fuel allowance away for millions of them.
So it's become much more apart from the community.
And it's it's gone from local business people running the club.
To these people that like in, I mean, Newcastle United.
You know, I played at Newcastle once.
I mean, that was a fantastic experience.
It's an amazing place.
But they're owned by the Saudi Arabian government, in effect.
I mean, what?
You're in the northeast of England.
You're Geordies.
And you're owned by the Saudis.
And, you know, it's like so many people.
I saw this when Abramovich came into Chelsea and the kind of background that he came from.
You see the fans instead of the fans going, oh, hold on a minute.
We don't want this Russian bloody oligarch running our football club or we don't want the Saudis running Newcastle United.
It's like how much money they're going to bring.
So we'll be more successful as if as if that's the only criteria.
And so I've seen this this global elite This global financial elite, and elite in many other ways, elite in quotes, by the way, because they're not, they're the dregs, I think, who've taken football over.
It's now not, I mean, even, you know, paying to watch the game is no longer the prime criteria for financial income of major football clubs.
They get it from other means.
And, you know, to a certain extent, you know, I remember when I was going to what I was watching Leicester City and, you know, it was six shillings to get in the ground in the in the 1960s.
And now it's a phenomenal amount of money to watch a game.
And even that, like I say, is not the main income of the football clubs anymore.
The major ones, I mean, it is lower down.
And so, obviously, the fans become less important.
Their importance starts moves from major financial, crucial financial income of the big clubs to what we want the ground for, because that's better for television, if you like, better atmosphere and all that stuff, because their money comes from elsewhere.
And, you know, when you've got these these oligarchs in the Middle East and these these American owners and what have you, I mean, you know, you've got these football clubs now who that were once, you know, part of the local community are now being owned by these billionaires from all over the world.
They've become playthings or even, you know, financial asset investments.
And I don't like the way it's gone at all.
But the football, going back to that column I used to write, Football has just mirrored the system in general.
If you look at a few multi, multi, multi billionaires, I mean, billionaires like hundreds of billions and you add up their assets, it's equivalent.
There's not that many of them before you get to this point.
Their assets are more than half the world's population.
So for football to go the same way is is just, you know, par for the course, if you like.
And they've moved in on that.
And I don't think that's right.
I don't think that's at all good.
I'm sure I'm sure the players love it, the incomes they get at the top level.
But I think it's it's a very It's very much the wrong direction that football's gone as a game.
And of course, this effort to bring about this European League for the elite is all part of the progression.
Because if you look at the way the world has gone, there was a time when we were organized in tribal systems, humans.
And then there was this pivotal point where lots of tribes were brought together under what were called countries.
Now, a few people at the center of the country were dictating to all the former tribes that form that country.
This happened all over the world.
And then you took the next level where, you know, the European Union is a classic example where you bring loads and loads of countries together and you centrally dictate them.
And where this is planned to go is what I've been writing about for years.
Is the next level where you have a world government which dictates to everybody on the planet from a central point.
And if you look at football, it's mirrored that fewer and fewer people are now able to own football clubs because of the financial implications of doing that.
And, you know, you're right.
I mean, Leicester City's winning of the premiership was a phenomenal kind of thing to do in the sense of the financial disparities.
It was just amazing.
It was like everything.
It was a perfect storm of a nice kind that came together with the players and the way they played and what happened that season.
But you look at it now, you look at, you look at, you know, clubs like Bournemouth.
You, I mean, how is anyone ever going to do that, given the financial situation that's demanded now?
So you've got clubs like Leicester City, you know, they get, you know, players, they develop players, they make players valuable and then they sell them.
To clubs that have the financial resources to buy them.
Same with Bournemouth, of course, classic.
And so it's it's a it's it's a direction that that's very dangerous for the smaller clubs.
And, you know, I'm a bit of a supporter now of Bern Albion.
Because, you know, if you go into the championship, I love I love the championship.
I mean, the upper level of the championship is, you know, financially kind of massive with some of the clubs.
But you go into the championship, that's the old first division that I remember.
That's that was what it was like.
And, you know, you go to clubs like Burton Albion, they're community clubs.
They're still they're still retaining that interaction with the fans.
They're not like in the stratosphere and the fans are down here.
So, you know, I like lower league football because I just think it's certainly more like that I remember.
And once you get to your Manchester City's and your Manchester United's, I mean, Manchester United owned by the Glazers out of America.
And you've got the Manchester City owned by, you know, again, the Middle East oil oligarchs.
And it's not what I remember.
But having said that, there are, you know, there are some very good things about modern football.
And one of them is the pitches.
I remember when I played football, Professional football, it was on a ploughed field from about late October, November onwards.
Manchester United, you look at some of the pitches that were at Old Trafford during the winter that George Best and Bobby Charlton played on.
You look at Chelsea and all these clubs, Derby County under Brian Clough.
I mean, I played at Derby County under Brian Clough at the baseball ground and there was a few blades of grass in each corner and that was it.
So they're now playing on billiard tables and the football benefits from that, I think, you know, definitely.
And my other thing about modern football, my gripe is the bloody goalkeepers gloves, by the way.
I was working on a program called News Night for the BBC when I was doing, you know, news journalism before I went into sport to full time.
And I was doing this film on Bristol City.
They were in financial trouble at the time.
And I was it would have been what?
I don't know.
In the 70s, would it be in the 70s?
Yeah, late 70s.
And they're training and I saw these gloves, right, just lying there.
And I thought, what are they like?
And I put the gloves on and I picked a ball up that was lying next to them.
And it was more difficult to drop it.
These latex gloves, you know, and of course, they have such soft latex in the league football.
That they only wear the gloves once, certainly at the top level they do, because it's such a fantastic grip.
And we used to wear like string gloves and you used to have to give with the ball so you could hold it because, you know, there wasn't this stickiness of latex rubber.
And the other thing about goalkeeping in those days is you were expected to catch the ball when you could catch it.
Yeah.
And what I'm seeing is all these goalkeepers pushing the ball away now.
I guess the ball moves more now.
I guess that's the reason they do it.
And, you know, players put more on the ball than they did in my day.
I remember when I was starting out in football and quite a bit afterwards, that when someone got the ball on the touchline, like a winger or something, you went to the back post.
Because you knew that's where they were going to put it and they used to loft it to the back post.
And then Ron Greenwood at West Ham brought in the near post header, the near post cross.
Martin Peters bringing it in to often Jeff Hurst at the near post.
And now suddenly everyone was doing it and you couldn't go to the back post anymore.
You had to readjust.
in case it went to the near post.
And the game changed because they can do a lot more with the ball now.
I think the balls and the pitches have made that possible as well as,
you know, better coaching maybe.
But it's a different game now for a goalkeeper.
And I'm not sure I would have enjoyed it as much as I did.
It's quite interesting what you did mention as well during that segment,
because there's a lot of Bournemouth fans who feel that they're losing their club.
And, of course, it was a community club.
It was always fighting for survival.
It was always on its arse, put nicely, David.
Of course, it's now being bought out, firstly, from Maxim Demin, the Russian owner, who was fantastic, and now Bill Foley, who is an American owner.
And they feel that that is slipping away.
Do you feel that that The top end of football is just going to be consolidated with these clubs.
And say, for example, a team like Burton Albion, do you think it's ever possible for them to do what Bournemouth have done?
Burton, no, because they don't get the crowd potential.
I mean, you get... What's the Vitality Stadium hold now?
11,000?
11,000, yeah.
Yeah, I don't think Burton Albion would ever get that.
But, you know, for Bournemouth, I've got great admiration for Bournemouth.
You know, when Jamie, my son, was playing for Portsmouth, we used to go over to, probably not the training ground now, but it was the training ground then, Bournemouth, to play Bournemouth.
It was near Hearn Airport.
Yes.
Yeah.
And so I've got a great admiration for Bournemouth and in the way that they have managed to um consolidate um in the in the top division given the 11 000 income uh from the from the gate uh it's it's it's great and Leicester City to an extent uh I know they had that fantastic season in the premiership when they won it but um Leicester City for a lot of their history um since the 60s
would have been in Division 1A.
You know what I mean?
They've just gone between the two.
And a lot of clubs do, because it's very difficult to sustain the income disparities to stay in the premiership.
But I can completely understand why Bournemouth fans think they're losing their club, because everyone's losing their club.
Once they get to those levels where Global oligarchs move in.
And you see, you've got the guy who's bought Bournemouth, but does he have any allegiance to Bournemouth?
Had he heard of the place before the possibility came up?
I mean, what does the Saudi royal family know about Newcastle?
They are assets to acquire.
And for often they'll play things to own and they lose that interaction with the fans, that allegiance with the fans.
They might talk about it.
They don't really have it.
And, you know, to an extent, the owners of Leicester City David, honestly, this has been an absolute pleasure to have you on the show.
the gentleman who unfortunately died in the helicopter crash.
They showed themselves to have that rapport with the fans.
They did have that rapport with the fans and the fans loved them.
So it is possible, but largely it doesn't happen.
David, honestly, this has been an absolute pleasure to have you on this show.
Before I let you go, do tell us where anybody wanting to find out more about your philosophies and your
beliefs can find you.
Yeah, DavidIke.com.
I had to really laugh.
I was on a website and it was a website talking about old Coventry City players.
Where are they now?
And I found my name and it said, basically, went a bit strange.
And now is living out his life quietly on the Isle of Wight.
Well, the last thing I'm living my life out in quietly.
So they did.
I did let them know that they've changed it.
But yeah, it's David Ike dot com.
And we've got a media platform, too.
It's kind of an alternative to Netflix.
And when I say alternative, I mean, alternative information and views of the world.
called Iconic, I-C-K-E, no, I-C-K-Conic.
And so that's there as well.
And I've just got a new book out called The Reveal, which is as deep in the rabbit hole as I've ever gone.
So check that out if you wanna see what I'm talking about.
David, honestly, it has been an absolute pleasure and thank you so, so much for joining us today.
And, you know, let's hope for a draw, shall we?
Keep it balanced.
Well, it's been a pleasure.
Thank you so much.
Thanks, mate.
Bye.
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