Profile Club's fans never won over by pornographer

When David Sullivan was growing up in a council house in Cardiff, he dreamed of becoming a professional footballer.

- Jacob Steinberg

Short and squat, he would never be a player, but later in life the fortune he built through the pornography industry and the property world gave him a route into the sport. The only problem, Sullivan discovered, was finding a club willing to roll out the carpet for him and his business partners, David and Ralph Gold.

They were fans of West Ham United and bought a stake in the east London club in 1991, only to find entry to the boardroom closed. “We had no contact with the board,” the late David Gold wrote in his autobiography. “They simply did not want David Sullivan and the Golds at their football club.”

Connections to the world of adult entertainment counted against Sullivan and his associates. They considered moves for Leeds United and Tottenham Hotspur before settling on Birmingham City, who were in administration and struggling in the second tier of English football when they were bought by Sullivan and the Golds for £700,000 in March 1993.

In different circumstances, perhaps this would be the story of how Sullivan defied the blazers who shut him out, about how he took Birmingham out of difficulty and eventually became the most powerful man at West Ham.