He sits underneath a collage of great West Ham players through the ages."The aristocrats of ******* football, West Ham used to be called," he says, with a throaty, nicotine-laced chuckle. He also features in the book's Cult Heroes XI, along with George Best, Paul Gascoigne and Matt Le Tissier, as well as lesser luminaries such as "Vodka" Vic Kasule of Albion Rovers and Torquay United's Derek "the dude" Dawkins.Finally, he arrives "What's a cult hero?" he asks me Whatever it is, he does not look like one. Just to save on asterisks, incidentally, I will refrain throughout from quoting him verbatim "I remember playing against Trevor Brooking. Yet to most football lovers of my generation, me included, the name Stan Bowles evokes a golden age It's rather odd. Time passes. My pint glass is almost empty, our 1pm rendezvous is long gone, and still there is no sign of Bowles. He has agreed to meet me to publicise a new book based on a regular item on the BBC's Football Focus programme, called Cult Heroes.
The book contains one so-called cult hero for every League club in England and Scotland, and Bowles, not surprisingly, is the Queen's Park Rangers pick. England's footballers have just qualified for the 2006 World Cup, yet here I am waiting to meet a man who, more than most, symbolises a decade in which England failed to reach successive World Cups, who walked out on his national team over a perceived slight, who openly consorted with gangsters, who once accepted a bribe to throw a game, who makes some of the most poorly behaved players in modern football look like paragons of virtue. Most people will now be waiting see who we draw and where we are playing, and then take it from there.". Nostalgia, it occurs to me as I nurse a pint of bitter in a shabby pub on a shabby street in Spitalfields, in the East End of London, is fundamentally delusional. Clarke was not surprised, given the lacklustre way Eriksson's team have performed this season."There would have been a lot better reaction if the manner of qualification gave us all optimism for next year," he said.
"The reason it has been a bit mixed is because people thought the performances have been rather average."People feel that if we are seriously going to have any aspirations for winning the thing, then qualification should not have been too difficult, but we seem to have made relatively heavy weather of getting ourselves over the line."Despite the lack of enthusiasm to date, there are bound to be thousands of England fans who will make the trip to Germany next summer, spending a great deal of hard-earned money following the dream of World Cup glory.Clarke reflected: "Even if England had not got there, quite a lot of people had already booked various packages to go over to Germany. It is very difficult to think of any others who have that 'turn-on' factor." England's qualification was greeted with something of a lukewarm reception after a 1-0 victory over Austria at the weekend - coupled with Netherlands' victory against the Czech Republic in Prague - ensured one of the best-runners up spots, whatever the result against Poland at Old Trafford last night. There may be a small number of people who are enthused again, but I rather doubt it will make a great difference."Clarke added: "It is not as if the England players have been producing the performances in those last international games which have been so exciting it makes people want to go and watch them."In terms of individuals, there is probably only Wayne Rooney who is the type of player which makes you think 'Yeah, I want to get in there and see this guy live'. "The problems at the top of the game are more fundamental than that.
