Ian Holloway emerged as a national treasure.I tell him that I honestly believe that going on that show is the bravest thing I've ever seen a footballer do, on or off the pitch."Bravest?" Holloway asks, "or most stupid?"It's probably true that Sir Alex Ferguson, say, might have taken some persuading before he consented - as Ian Holloway did - to have his stress levels monitored while he performed an a cappella version of "Why Do Fools Fall in Love?""But if I hadn't done that programme," Holloway says, "I wouldn't be sitting here now. Paladini, a former footballers' agent who was once a wine waiter in Birmingham, recently issued a writ against a newspaper which alleged improprieties in his transfer dealings. He inherits a club with debts of around £10m.I ask Holloway when it was that he first heard about the supposed firearm incident "After the game We're walking off the pitch We've just won, 2-1. Four men have been charged with conspiracy to commit blackmail, and joint possession of a firearm with intent to commit GBH.Gianni Paladini has since been appointed chairman of Queens Park Rangers - the latest in a bewildering series of upheavals at board level. the tail," he adds, "cannot wag the dog."There are whole web sites devoted to so-called "Ollyisms".
Invited to analyse one hard-fought victory, over Chesterfield, he responded as follows: "To put it in gentleman's terms, if you've been out for a night and you're looking for a young lady and you pull one, some weeks they're good-looking and some weeks they are not the best. It's getting to the point where other managers would start thinking bugger this, I'm off into the river and joining another boat... (omega)Holloway's end of the phone conversation is the usual blend of candour and mixed metaphors; he has a tendency to start one sentence before he has completed the last, and speaks in a strong West Country accent which lends a kind of poetry to the most banal phrase."Directors are calling me for advice," he says, the last word rhyming with "choice" "It's like they're holding on to my shirt tails It should be the other way round. I sit on the sofa, under the scrutiny of his rottweiler, Nathan, while the manager, who is 42, discusses the club's situation.
Though fiercely combative by nature, he meets life head-on with a frank and disarming vulnerability.In his photograph in the club programme - one place where even the most thoroughly tormented manager can usually strike a pose of imperious tranquillity - Holloway's expression is a mixture of determination and foreboding: he has the look of a man who has just led a breakout from Colditz, and is glancing back to the perimeter wall, only to see that all of his fellow escapees have been machine-gunned.When I arrive at his house in St Albans, Holloway, wearing a blue dress shirt and jeans, answers the door and leads the way to his living room, talking to a colleague on his mobile. "It has," says the manager, "been absolutely horrendous."The whole thing sounds like a surreal black comedy."Yes," says Holloway. "I kept expecting Harry Potter to fly in."In a precarious and hostile trade, the general run of football managers tend to espouse the kind of haughty machismo perfected by Jose Mourinho Ian Holloway is not like this Holloway paints huge, abstract canvases He has wept on camera, talking about his love for his wife He has difficulties with reading and says so in public. Don't tell me.' That way, when I met the press after the match I didn't know what had - allegedly - gone on."Since then, the CID have been regular visitors to Loftus Road, the club's west London stadium.