March 12 - Happy Birthday Ollie

“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’re not the best. Our performance today would have been not the best looking bird but at least we got her in the taxi. She weren’t the best looking lady we ended up taking home but she was very pleasant and very nice, so thanks very much, let’s have a coffee.”

With logic like that it’s hard not to love Ian Holloway, which is why we’d like to wish happy birthday to the Leicester City manager who was born today in 1963.

Following on from the musings of the likes of Brian Clough, Gordon Strachan, Big Ron and Bob Shankley, Holloway’s post match interviews are a match for anyone. Rather than possessing the quick-wit of Strachan or the ego of Cloughie, Ollie’s style is more like that of senile rambling old uncle who, despite how bad the jokes are, you have to laugh at. When his Plymouth defender Hasney Aljofree broke his nose Holloway told all who listened that “he can smell round corners now.”

Holloway started out as a terrier-like midfielder, where his boundless enthusiasm made up for his slight 5 ft 8 frame. He made his name at Bristol Rovers, with whom he had three spells, as like a moth to a flame he just kept going back. In his 18-year playing career he also found time to represent the Crazy Gang-era Wimbledon side, Brentford, Torquay United and QPR, before combining the playing field with the dug-out when he became Rovers’ player-manager in 1996.

His managerial career began well, as he turned around a struggling Rovers side, bringing play-off football to the Memorial Stadium in his second season. In February 2001 he took over at another of his former stomping grounds, Loftus Road, where he couldn’t prevent the R’s being relegated to the third flight for the first time in their history. Holloway steadied the ship and returned his side to the Championship in 2004.

Despite a respectable 11th place finish in 2005/06, the QPR hierarchy were not impressed with rumours constantly linking their manager to the vacant Leicester City job, leading Chairman Gianni Paladini to place his gaffer on gardening leave. It seems that this wasn’t the life for Ian as he would say: “I needed a bigger garden. I only had a little one. I told my wife after a week I was knackered. I tried to help by pulling out weeds, and it turned out they were her plants! She weren’t very happy.”

After a few months of unemployment, on which he would remark: “When you’re a manager it’s a case of have suitcase will travel, and I certainly didn’t want to travel with my trousers down,” Holloway rocked up at Plymouth, but he would only last a year, as the Leicester job again came-a-calling.

Away from the game Holloway took part in a BBC documentary called the ‘Stress Test’, where a team of psychologists and anger management experts showed Ollie how to chill out before he worked his way to an early grave. June 2006 saw Time Out magazine publish a poll of the funniest Londoners, with Holloway’s outbursts ranking him at number 15, ahead of the likes of Ali G and Paul Merton.

We’ll leave you with a clip of him trying to explain his infamous ‘coffee’ quote (amongst other things) below and make sure you head over here again tomorrow as we venture north of the border.

(2 votes, average: 4 out of 5)

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