Will England be in a pickle without Pickles?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/07/2021 (1792 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

With England and Italy squaring off Sunday in the final of the European Championship, this is the perfect time to share the story of Britain’s greatest football hero.

I am referring, of course, to a four-year-old black-and-white border collie mix named Pickles.

What you need to know is that Sunday’s big game marks the first time England’s men’s soccer team has made it to the final of a major tournament since 1966, when they defeated West Germany 4-2 in the World Cup to claim their first and only international title.

What you also need to know is that England’s football heroes would never have been able to wrap their sweaty mitts around that trophy 55 years ago if Pickles hadn’t come trotting to the rescue.

In 1966, the Jules Rimet Trophy — the first trophy presented to the winners of the World Cup of Soccer — was on display at a rare stamp exhibition at Westminster’s Central Hall in London about four months prior to that year’s tournament in England.

On Sunday, March 20, just the second day of the exhibition, the gold-plated silver trophy, named in honour of a former FIFA president, was stolen from its glass display case.

With the security guards absent on a break, the exact circumstances of how the cup was taken remain a mystery to this day. “The idea there were people by the display case all the time is just not true,” Martin Atherton, author of the book The Theft of the Jules Rimet Trophy, told the BBC in 2016.

“It came out one of the security guards was 74 years old or something. The security was quite inadequate. We think two people broke in through an emergency exit, took the trophy and walked out again.”

Oddly, the thieves passed over rare stamps worth millions of pounds to snatch the trophy, worth far less.

With the World Cup less than four months away, the football world was thrown into a panic. Police at Scotland Yard took control of the investigation, but had little to go on. “There were two separate descriptions of two clearly different people — a tall person and a short person,” Atherton told the BBC.

A ransom note asking for 15,000 pounds was delivered to then-Football Association chairman Joe Mears from a person called Jackson, who was arrested in a police sting soon after and turned out to be a former soldier/used-car dealer called Edward Betchley.

Despite the arrest, the trophy remained missing — at least it did until a week after the heist when (cue upbeat theme music) Pickles and his owner, David Corbett, went for a walk in south London on the evening of March 27.

Which is when the plucky Pickles began sniffing at a mysterious package near a hedge. “Pickles was running around over by my neighbour’s car. As I was putting the lead on I noticed this package lying there, wrapped just in newspaper but very tightly bound with string,” Corbett told the BBC.

“I tore a bit off the bottom and there was a blank shield, then there were the words Brazil, West Germany and Uruguay printed. I tore off the other end and it was a lady holding a very shallow dish above her head. I’d seen the pictures of the World Cup in the papers and on TV so my heart started thumping.”

Dog and master took the stolen trophy to their local police station, where they were met with confusion. “I slammed it on the desk in front of the sergeant and said, ‘I think I have found the World Cup,’ ” Corbett recalled. “I remember his words: ‘Doesn’t look very World Cuppy to me, son.’ “

After being cleared of any potential wrongdoing, Corbett — and Pickles in particular — became international celebrities in the days before social media, while Betchley, who claimed to be just a middleman, was sentenced to two years in prison.

The plucky Pickles was awarded a medal by the National Canine Defence League and received several other rewards.

“He won Dog of the Year, Italian Dog of the Year and appeared on television on (children’s new shows) Blue Peter and Magpie,” Corbett recalled on the 50th anniversary of the trophy’s recovery. “He lapped it up and was perfect under the lights. He was invited to most countries in the world but in those days it was six months’ quarantine when you came back.”

Pickles even landed a feature role in the 1966 British comedy film The Spy With a Cold Nose, wherein a dog has a covert listening device implanted under its skin before being presented as a gift to a Russian leader.

Best of all, after England beat West Germany 4-2 to claim the World Cup, Pickles and his owner were invited to the big celebratory dinner. “We went into the hotel with all these celebrities and Pickles walked over to the lift shaft and did a wee. I felt so embarrassed,” Corbett recalled years later. “Afterwards, the England team went out on to a balcony and the street was full of people. We went with them and (star player) Bobby Moore picked Pickles up and showed him to the crowd, and there were cheers.”

In 1970, the Jules Rimet Trophy — since replaced by the FIFA World Cup Trophy — was given in perpetuity to Brazil after it won the World Cup for a third time. In 1983, it was again stolen from a display, and has never been recovered, likely because Pickles died in 1967 and is now buried in his owner’s garden.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca