Stand back, I'm releasing my inner Rachman

5 July 2010

I never liked Fabio Capello - an England manager for me should be English because it’s team England.

Tommy Cooper with glasses was never likely to motivate our lot. And what about those grey suits they all wore? Made them look like a bunch of bankers.

It’s got to be Harry Redknapp for me, and the sooner the better.

The problem with English footballers is that they are obscenely overpaid, cosseted prima donnas who have no idea what the World Cup means to fans.

Assuming you aren’t from Aberdeen or Swansea you, like me, will have shared the disappointment of being beaten by the Krauts.

But fear not - I am about to give the nation something to cheer about.

Leave those flags up because yours truly is entering the UK Regional Monopoly Property Championship.

When I win I will receive an all-expenses-paid trip to the Monopoly World Championship in Las Vegas.

I have always loved Monopoly because it brings out the Peter Rachman in me.

Rachman, you will recall, was London’s most unscrupulous landlord who in the 1960s thought nothing of packing eight people into a single room in Notting Hill and charging them full rent while not repairing the roof.

The sozzled-looking gent still featured on the Monopoly game box is known as Uncle Pennybags

There are many thrills to be had with Monopoly, and with my playing style I’d much rather be likened to Rachman than Rupert Rigsby, the landlord in the classic 1970s sitcom Rising Damp.

But of course I’m just a humble chartered surveyor who most days doesn’t do anything more exciting than look down a blocked drain.

But secretly, I would love to have been a City wheeler-dealer working for a big firm with a sexy name. Doing multimillion pound deals over a decent bottle of champagne in Stringfellows sounds a lot more fun to me than doing a building survey in Crouch End.

So entering this Monopoly championship is the nearest thing I will ever get to being Nick Candy. And regular readers will be heartened to know that my training programme will not extend to a drinking ban.

Monopoly is the most played commercial game in the world and was invented by one Charles Darrow in 1933.

He sold the concept to games manufacturer Parker Brothers in 1935, which then granted a licence to Waddingtons in the UK to market the game outside the US.

Originally, every board outside the US incorporated London street names and it was only recently that Monopoly boards became regionalised. Now, even the Isle of Man has its own board.

The slightly sozzled-looking gentleman who can still be seen on the Monopoly game box is known as Uncle Pennybags (pictured), and is based on Parker Brothers’ first travelling salesman.

For my forthcoming assault on the championship I am adopting him as my mascot, so watch this space.

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