May 2011

Is there a more bewitching heir to Greta Garbo than Mark Clattenburg, the Premier League referee who recently withdrew from public life for a spell, claiming to be sick of the attention it brought him? We now have evidence of how Mark spent some of his time in seclusion, with the unveiling of a new advertising campaign for a hair-loss centre – starring our self-effacing hero himself.

"It's OFFICIAL," runs the copy next to a picture of a beaming Mark holding a football. "My hair loss is no longer a problem." It was always the least of your problems, Mark – but do go on. "The hardest decision to make is to pick up the phone and make that call," he says. "But I did, and it changed my life." (Incidentally, if Mark's testimony seems to you a little over the top, never forget the destruction male pattern baldness can wreak. Just look at Mark Oaten, who cited hair loss as the trigger for his rent boy habit.)

Now, there are those who assumed a footballer earning quarter of a million quid a week was an eventuality predicted in the Book Of Revelation, but others may counter that a serving referee thrashing out private sponsorship deals is a more obvious harbinger of the coming apocalypse.

Wherever you stand on the Premier League's role in the endtimes, though, you have to concede Mark's emergence as a spokesmodel crosses a rubicon for sporting officialdom. Even Pierluigi Collina had to choose between his career and an endorsement deal (he chose the latter, and retired.) Of course, we've seen sportsmen themselves endorse hair-loss clinics, typified by the current ad for the Advanced Hair Studio, which makes reference to Mark Nicholas asking AHS client Shane Warne about his treatment during a recent interview. (Incidentally, by using a considerably larger picture of Nicholas than Warne, I can't help feeling that the clinic somehow seeks to imply that the former is also a client – so impressionable readers are hereby advised that the commentator's luxuriant coiffure has nothing to do with implants. Like the eco-vehicle in a memorable episode of The Simpsons, Mark's hair growth is powered by his own sense of self-satisfaction.)

Still, the FA cannot recall a previous instance of a serving official picking up a personal endorsement prior to Clattenburg – and yet there does seem an inevitability to it all. With star players such as John Terry so frequently deciding to act as a match official, it was probably only a matter of time before match officials started acting like star players, and amassing a series of lucrative endorsements, which they can one day be stripped of when they are discovered to have had sex with someone inappropriate, or asked for Steven Gerrard's autograph.

Against such a backdrop, Clattenburg would seem the obvious candidate to make the leap, with his soi disant bad-boy image burnished only by that eight-month ban for sending a former business associate a threatening email. Meanwhile, there have long been suspicions that Mark is a little star-struck, if I may stray into the territory of euphemism – be it cuddling Wayne Rooney after the latter's elbow was head-butted by James McCarthy; or appearing to defer to Gerrard's gracious advice that an incident deserved a red card rather than the yellow he was preparing to brandish; or his repeated boast that the players "identify with me".

And he with them, it seems. He isn't the first to seek the limelight, obviously. We ought to pay tribute to the trailblazing work of Mark's former PGMOL mentor, Graham Poll – or Polly, as he likes to make third-person reference to himself – whose tireless attempts at self-promotion have yet to yield the stardom he appears to desire. Still, instinct suggests that when the I'm A Celebrity producers do eventually come calling, Graham will be on the first plane to the jungle, where he will slide effortlessly into the role of Rapidly Oxidising Authority Figure With An Excruciating Need To Be Liked. Or the Brian Paddick memorial hammock, to give it its shorthand.

As yet, though, it hasn't happened for Polly – but doubtless no one will be more thrilled than him to see his protege breaking the glass ceiling and taking officialdom to the next logical level. It was Rio Ferdinand who once explained: "The music, the fashion, the TV – it all goes to make up Rio Ferdinand". We must pray that Mark Clattenburg's endorsement debut heralds an age when football is only a piece of the modern official's brand.

Source

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