This week two lads blagged their way on to the Team GB medals bus, posing as athletes – but they’ve got a way to go before they can match up to Karl Power, the true master of the art

Karl Power can still play back in his mind the moment Gary Neville rumbled him. It was April 2001 and Manchester United were about to take on Bayern Munich in a Champions League quarter-final. As 60,000 fans watched the team line up for the official photo, a 12th man appeared in the back row in full away kit. Neville was the first to spot him.

“He points at me and says, ‘Who’s that?’, and I say to him, ‘Shut it, Gary, you grass, I’m doing it for Cantona’,” Power says from his home outside Manchester. Eric Cantona, then recently retired from the team, was his hero, and the stunt was in part a tribute to him. He had the Frenchman’s name on his replica away shirt, which still hangs in his wardrobe.

Chastened by the impostor, Neville knelt and posed with the team. Power stood like Cantona – chest puffed, straight arms – almost squeezing Andy Cole out of line. The cameras clicked, and an unemployed labourer, known to his mates as Fat Neck, became – briefly – the most famous man in Britain. “It’s still the best day of my life,” he says.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Karl Power comes out to bat during an England v Australia test match at Headingley in 2001. Photograph: Laurence Griffiths/Allsport

Fifteen years later, Power, now 49, has observed with wistful admiration a stunt by younger practitioners of the art that he mastered. We’ll call it humourous blagging. On Monday, Zac Alsop and Jamie Rawsthorne wore Team GB tracksuits and plastic medals to pose as athletes on an open-top bus during the Olympic “heroes parade” in Manchester.

“I thought it was a good one, really,” Power says. He had read about it in the papers and seen the clip of the men being rumbled by a news reporter. “They’ve put a bit of effort into it, like, getting the tracksuits. That’s military precision, that is, and they’ve not done it to spoil anything for anyone, they’ve just done it for a bit of banter.”

Alsop, 21, is delighted when he hears this endorsement. He’s too young to remember Power’s fame or subsequent stunts. (In 2002, Power played a warm-up rally for Tim Henman on Centre Court at Wimbledon, winning applause from the royal box. He had picked up a racket for the first time that morning.) But while searching for inspiration online a few weeks ago, Alsop came across the old clips. “We’re pleased to have the seal of approval from someone who shares the essence of jib,” he says. “Jib”, he explains, is a word he and Rawsthorne made up to describe their style of blagging “and taking the piss out of life and security and everything”. He describes Power as a legend and “the godfather of jib itself”.

Power believes you have to develop blagging instincts early. He grew up on an estate in north Manchester, the youngest of 11. “Someone told me it sounded like Jackass meets Shameless, which is about right,” he says of his upbringing. As a teenager, he would stride into boxing matches without a ticket by carrying a bag and a towel so that he looked like a fighter. “My broken nose helped,” he adds. Prison followed – car thefts, mainly – and in the early 90s Power was attacked in a phonebox by a man with a machete. It was a case of mistaken identity, he says. The knife severed nerves in his legs and he wasn’t supposed to walk again. The stunts proved the doctors wrong, yet they also led to a brush with the tabloid press and an end to his disability benefits.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Karl Power on Centre Court at Wimbledon in 2002. Photograph: Srdjan Suki/EPA

Mischief and balls will only get you so far; gumption gets you past the gates. Power credits much of his to his childhood friend, Tommy Dunn, who masterminded their pranks. Typically, Dunn would dress as a photographer, spot a name on the security guard’s list, and walk in. He’d then get passes or bibs and come back out for Power. The men had been standing happily on the touchline before the Man United stunt.

Alsop, who met Rawsthorne, 21, at university in Bristol, is reluctant to reveal all his secrets. “You need a load of confidence and a general understanding of the human psyche,” he will say. “If you don’t give anyone a reason to believe you’re not meant to be somewhere, they won’t stop you and cause a scene.” Last summer, Alsop and Rawsthorne tied the red handles of a Tesco “bag for life” round their wrists and walked into a Bristol music festival. “We convinced another guard that we were cousins with one of the acts and our wristbands were legitimate ones he’d never seen before,” he says. The pair went backstage that night and hung out with Dizzee Rascal and Stormzy.

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The thrill of the blag gets addictive. “The adrenaline!” Power says. “It was the best adrenaline in the world.” The crowd got bigger each time he and Dunn returned to the Magpie, their long-gone local pub. For Alsop, it was the adulation of a Facebook chat group. In dark times, there is a basic joy in watching someone harmlessly outwitting The Man. “People need a bit of a smile, don’t they,” Power says.

Power and Dunn dreamed of riches, but ended up with memories. Power, who has four children, now manages a band, the Backhanders, and is hosting a charity rugby and music festival in Manchester this weekend. He’s given up blagging, but is working on a memoir and a publicity stunt to launch it. “It’s gonna be a big ’un is all I can tell you,” he says. Alsop has no immediate plans. “But the jib lives within us,” he says. “I’m sure we’ll be back.”