IT IS TESTAMENT TO SAM HAMMAM’S love of eccentric living that he will for ever be associated with sheep’s testicles. The bawdy crudities of his surrealist approach have been much mocked, but he continues anyway, putting others in their place and the key to his locked office in his underpants while demanding players sign on the dotty line.

Being at the forefront of the Y-front method is just another of the megalomaniac’s tics. Hammam is a curious man who deals in vaudeville but yearns for the Theatre of Dreams. Cardiff City, his latest enterprise, are now a game away from the Nationwide League first division. Line your stomach and prepare for punishment bleatings.

He is not the first gut-wrencher (he forces new players to eat bizarre food as an initiation) to run a football club. Chairmen have rarely been popular figures. It is universally acknowledged that it is the fastest way for a beloved former player to sully his legend and Tommy Docherty was only half-joking when he suggested the ideal board comprised three directors — two dead, one dying. Hammam is no different. For all the idiosyncrasies and idiocies, he is just another middle-aged suit trying to live vicariously through the visceral drama of football. If he sometimes acts like a child, it is only because he wants to be one of the boys.

That is fine up to a point, but Hammam can and does overstep the mark in his insatiable quest for popularity. As a committed egocentric he is a law unto himself, hence the mind-numbingly daft pitchside walk during the ugliest of matches between Cardiff and Leeds United in last season’s FA Cup. Hammam maintained that he had been given permission from “the highest authority”, which presumably meant himself. And so the rabid Leeds velociraptors were treated to the sight of a nice cashmere coat and a man beating himself over the head like a deranged tic-tac man. This is Hamman, the only chairman who could upstage his own players after a remarkable result.

The Football Association demanded he refrain from such practices , but he was utterly unrepentant. Affronted by their temerity, he even suggested the true outcome of the game had been to kickstart the campaign against hooliganism. It was another hallucinatory offering, a solution akin to eradicating the problem of the bees’ nest in the garden by prodding it with a large stick. This is Hammam too; diplomacy is a weakness.

His supporters say his heart is in the right place, albeit a recommendation from Eric Hall should be taken with a monster, monster pinch of salt. Yes, he is happy to be dumped in a puddle by Wimbledon’s original Crazy Gang because he wants to play too. He even kissed Dean Holdsworth’s backside once. If it was merely a business then he would be happy with a faceless existence in the boardroom, but he feeds his ego by feeding Spencer Prior sheep’s testicles.

In a way, Hammam is Publicity Pete with gimmicks. But where being a fan hampered Peter Ridsdale’s toils, Hammam is a fan primarily of his own wallet.

A successful businessman, he oversaw the rise of The Dons and then turned his back on them. Bitter Wimbledon supporters claim he sold them down the river and up the M1, but business is business. For all his professed love of the club, and the image it afforded him, he had no qualms about demolishing Plough Lane and letting a bunch of Norwegians talk of Dublin and Milton Keynes.

Hammam could put most of the blame for the acrimony on his successors, but he is just as bad. Having decamped to Cardiff with his tidy profit, he spoke about changing the name. Cardiff Celts was considered; so was The Dragons. It was an appalling idea that rode roughshod over tradition and exposed his limitations.

But beneath the self-aggrandisement, the silliness and the bully-boy tactics that have included confiscating reporters’ tapes, Hammam is an enduringly entertaining soul. This is the age where gruff managers have poor vision and are consumed with endless tales of woe, the sporting equivalent of an old blues legend.

Hammam, by contrast, is a jolly old soul. The picture of Robbie Earle, the former Dons midfield player, being locked in a room and contemplating the whereabouts of the missing key is unforgettable. Hammam is a character who has added to British football’s pageant.

Cardiff supporters could not care less that he plucked them out of the air with an unabashed opportunism. He is football’s insurance against an anodyne death. Sometimes his arrogance takes over, sometimes the obduracy grates. After that infamous Leeds game, he claimed there was an “orchestrated, vile and evil biased campaign” against Cardiff. Such fatuous outbursts were part-playground, part-All The President’s Men, arrant nonsense that belittled the good side.

What’s that, you say? Good side? Well, his friends do say he is charming and old players remember him as larger than life. And it does seem to work. Wimbledon won the FA Cup, Cardiff are on the up and, of course, Earle did sign. Hammam is too old and too stubborn to change so we will all have to lump it, ignore him or, conversely, accept him for what he is — still crazy after all these years.

Hammam's career

1975 Having made his fortune in construction, comes from Lebanon to settle in London

1977 Buys his first piece of Wimbledon

1981 Becomes owner and chairman of the club

1988 Wimbledon win the FA Cup

1991 Causes concern among fans as he moves the club from Plough Lane to share Selhurst Park with Crystal Palace

1997 Leaves Wimbledon

2000 Buys Cardiff City

2002 Accused of incitement when he walks around the pitch after Cardiff’s victory over Leeds in the FA Cup

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