Agent who kicked Wayne Rooney into the long grass

We confess we were intrigued. According to a new report in the Mirror,  “Wayne Rooney was once thrown out of a London estate agents with his Everton team-mate Alan Stubbs, after staff thought they were away-day Scousers lining up burglaries”.

We should add that this comment was in the context of four black professional footballers being asked to pay up-front for a meal in Pizza Hut.

The  report didn’t say which agent it was, but thanks to the modern-day miracle that is search engines, we naturally turned up Foxt… no, actually, we didn’t.

In a 224-page book on the football hero (the things I do for EAT!), we discover that it was instead Kinleigh, Folkard & Hayward, the highly reputable agents with more than a few awards to their names and who are so lovely about raising money for impoverished children.

Apparently, Rooney and Stubbs walked into the Chelsea branch after wandering down King’s Road to kill time before Everton’s Worthington Cup match against Chelsea, which nails it down to 2002 or 2003.

Staff failed to recognise the pair who were wearing tracksuits and trainers, and chewing gum, and thought they had come to London to case some big houses.

According to one of those mysterious sources: “Wayne and Alan just left without making a fuss but were laughing all the way to the ground. The agent had mistaken them for a couple of scallies on the rob.”