He sacked you didn't he?

A funny 'urban legend' Whelan story I got told years ago was around some lad who worked at the JJB factory at Martland Mill. Lad walking through the warehouse just as Whelan is being shown around. Whelan catches sight of this lad and notices that one of his shoes that the rubber sole is flapping and almost hanging off.

Whelan shouts him over angrily and demands to know why he's walking through his warehouse looking like that. The lad says he can't afford a new pair of shoes so Whelan pulls out a massive stack of fifties & twenties with a big elastic band around it.

The lad's eyes widen as he expects to be given a few quid for a new pair, until Whelan throws the elastic band at him and tells him to put it around his shoe.

How true this is I'm unsure but it's a classic!

Quote ="MattyB"icon_lol.gif A funny 'urban legend' Whelan story I got told years ago was around some lad who worked at the JJB factory at Martland Mill. Lad walking through the warehouse just as Whelan is being shown around. Whelan catches sight of this lad and notices that one of his shoes that the rubber sole is flapping and almost hanging off. Whelan shouts him over angrily and demands to know why he's walking through his warehouse looking like that. The lad says he can't afford a new pair of shoes so Whelan pulls out a massive stack of fifties & twenties with a big elastic band around it. The lad's eyes widen as he expects to be given a few quid for a new pair, until Whelan throws the elastic band at him and tells him to put it around his shoe. How true this is I'm unsure but it's a classic! '" it's an old one that, though I wouldn't put it past him! https://jokeboost.com/homeless-jokes

Quote ="MattyB"icon_lol.gif A funny 'urban legend' Whelan story I got told years ago was around some lad who worked at the JJB factory at Martland Mill. Lad walking through the warehouse just as Whelan is being shown around. Whelan catches sight of this lad and notices that one of his shoes that the rubber sole is flapping and almost hanging off. Whelan shouts him over angrily and demands to know why he's walking through his warehouse looking like that. The lad says he can't afford a new pair of shoes so Whelan pulls out a massive stack of fifties & twenties with a big elastic band around it. The lad's eyes widen as he expects to be given a few quid for a new pair, until Whelan throws the elastic band at him and tells him to put it around his shoe. How true this is I'm unsure but it's a classic! '" it's an old one that, though I wouldn't put it past him! https://jokeboost.com/homeless-jokes

Quote ="Grimmy"icon_lol.gif it's an old one that, though I wouldn't put it past him! https://jokeboost.com/homeless-jokes'" Damn... . got told this in mid nineties. Always hoped this was true.

Quote ="Grimmy"icon_lol.gif it's an old one that, though I wouldn't put it past him! https://jokeboost.com/homeless-jokes'" Damn... . got told this in mid nineties. Always hoped this was true.

Whelan told that story himself in a documentary IIRC. He may have just been joking but it wouldn’t surprise me at all. The old tales about him turning the heating/hot water off at Central Park when he first took over and getting people to count sheets on toilet rolls to ensure he wasn’t being ripped off may also have been myths but nothing would really surprise you.

Was a scene in Only Fools and Horses.

DW told it in his Ruby Wax documentary

I'm told that up to a few years ago he would regularly go around Wrightington Country Club switching lights off in rooms he thought were unoccupied

It sounds ridiculous but he isn’t a millionaire by accident. As the old saying goes “look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves”

Yeah heard he tried to sack (or did sack) the new office junior as she put paper in the bin that had paper clips attached to them (unauthorised disposal of company property).

A true story is when he had his supermarket he had a two young lads delivering large electrical goods. At the start of the week, they were told that from the following week, they had to wear a collar and tie. One of the lads refused to do it as Whelan never issued them with work clothes or safety shoes and he was sacked. A week or so later he got a job at the Heinz plant where he worked till he retired.

If anyone called Whelan, he would always say to them, he's a cracking fellow, he sacked me when I was 17 and I have never looked back since".

If you mean me, the answer is a big emphatic NO!

I can confirm stuff like this to be true. When i was at college i worked at JJB Warehouse. On his visits he used to have lights switched off etc. The best one though, my sister worked in the office and he made the bosses give her a final written warning because she had her phone on charge behind her desk using his electricity for free

Not saying Whelan isn't miserly but I guarantee that a lot of these are just anecdotes people in every town tell with the famous local businessman's name inserted.

The Wrightington Country Club one is definitely true as it came first hand from my brother-in-law who's had the lights switched off on him whilst in a room several times and also been b0ll0cked by Whelan for daring to have left a room with the lights on for 5 minutes!

I would be more interested in knowing what happened to the three State of Origin players we were going to sign that he mentioned to the Wigan Supporters group on his first meeting with them.

Seem to remember that made headlines in the local press. But it was still the last we heard of it.

Truth is that I never thought Whelan had any real interest in us. Feel sure we were no more than a stepping stone to getting the funding he needed for his new football stadium.

When he brought Mo back, things looked up. It was almost as if he realised that Wigan fans didn't trust him. But Mo was past it by then and never acclimatised to the era of the salary cap.

DW wasn't a disaster for Wigan RL, but he nearly was. I remember a rare astute comment from Ray French when we were looking at what seemed like imminent relegation:

'Someone has taken their eye off the ball at Wigan for too long.'

Was that the one at Wigan Cricket Club?

Could have been. It's a while back now and memory fails.

He already had the funding for the stadium.

We signed Jules O'Neill, Adrian Lam, Matty Johns, Craig Smith and Jamie Ainscough in his time (more im sure)

All played origin

I wouldn't pretend that things were bad from the start, but I don't think running Wigan RL was as easy as he'd expected (especially under the cap). As I said before, bringing Mo back seemed like good idea at the time, but he was past it.

We also had some bad luck around then. Greg's illness and the bewilderingly poor coach that Ian Millward turned out to be, etc. But having lived through the 1979/80 disaster, I never thought I'd live to see the day when Wigan RL were facing relegation again. As Ray French said, someone at the club had taken their eye off the ball big time.

All that said, it would be churlish of me not to admit that it was clearly DW who tempted Brian Noble to Wigan despite being in the middle of his Bradford success, and Nobby was the one who steadied the ship.

Many many years ago i was a court bailiff, and the bugger$ who had it (money) were always a nightmare.... They got a very hard time from me.

Phil Bailey, Bryan Fletcher, Dallas, Renouf

Exactly right about him as he had no time for ordinary people. Passed me in the Riverside Club one night and looked at me as if I was a piece of dirt!

In the seventies, a friend of mine was a postman on the Wigan Road, Standish delivery where Whelan was living at the time.

At Christmas, he always got tips of many of the professional and business people who also lived on his delivery, but never got a penny off Scrooge Whelan!

Never the nice smiling person that Sky were so keen to show sat in the directors box at Latics games.

i would say ruthless about DW as i worked at Rathbones when he took over that.

It was the first time i had come across someone who would say something one day and then do the complete opposite the next, and not appear to give a f*** about the impact on the people his decisions affected. The decisions werent changing the type of loo roll in the toilets either, but livelihoods. i have never trusted him ever since.

i have also been told a tale about how he acquired Wigan RL, which if true shows the guy in his true colours and it aint pretty

Did he hold someone ransom? Come on......spill

Edit - I made a sarcastic comment about some of the Whelan myths but it feels in bad taste after reading the story about the baker later in the thread.