Golf buggies, pranks, and resisting Blues allegiances - Lee Hendrie's enthralling Aston Villa memoirs

"Obviously it was me who was the Boy Fan," grins Lee Hendrie.

We're giggling our way through a 90-minute Zoom chat and the conversation turns to a Birmingham Evening Mail clipping in the former Aston Villa star's scrapbook. The cutting in question shows a teenage Hendrie - curtain haircut, fist pumps and all - photo-bombing Ron Atkinson's more measured celebrations after Phil King has smashed in the penalty that clinched a UEFA Cup shootout victory over Inter Milan at a packed Villa Park.

Still a relative unknown despite the hype starting to swirl around him back then, the caption on the front page of the Mail from September 30, 1994, the day after the night before, simply refers to Hendrie as 'Boy Fan'.

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“The delight reflected on the faces of physio Jim Walker, manager Ron Atkinson and a boy fan caught the emotion of a nation held enthralled by the match in a million,” it reports.

Knowing what we know now, that description vastly undersells a player who went on to make 308 appearances in claret and blue - but as we witness the youthful exuberance that still spills out of 45-year-old via Claret & Blue's video link-up, 'Boy Fan' is absolutely bang on.

Hendrie recalls that balmy night. Stationed as a ball boy near the tunnel on the Trinity Road track, Hendrie, then 16, had a perfect view of a dramatic moment in Villa's illustrious history and it had the desired effect of making him want more.

"I remember that, because it was in the paper the next day with Big Ron stood there showing no emotion and then you've got me with this dodgy barnet behind him giving it the big one in the background," he laughs.

"The clipping said 'Big Ron and the Boy Fan'. I've still got it with all my football clippings.

"It's quite a funny caption to be honest, 'Boy Fan', knowing that I was a youth team player at the time and went on to play for the club.

"It just showed what my emotions were like. To watch Kingy bang that penalty in was amazing and I was like that whenever I scored a goal for the club."

The Boy Fan went on to live the dream for his beloved club - but his football upbringing was far from routine for a Villa supporter.

For a start his Dad, Paul, had played for Birmingham City, his Nan a St Andrew's season ticket holder, he lived in Bordesley Green and - he divulges this bit in hushed tones - he endured a brief spell on schoolboy forms for Villa's fierce rivals Blues before Big Ron came knocking.

Despite growing up in enemy territory, a Villa Park stadium tour with some mates had already set in motion Hendrie's staunch claret and blue allegiances by the time he joined Blues for a year at 13 .

"I was living in Bordesley Green which was a stone's throw away from that terrible place down the road," he explains with a mischievous smile.

"Nan and my uncle were big Blues fans. We lived with Nan in Blakeland Street. I didn't get pushed into Blues, no. Don't get me wrong I think my uncle used to always try to throw a Birmingham shirt on me, but it was never the case, I always wanted to play for Villa.

"Not many people know but I did sign for Birmingham on a school of excellence form for one season. Villa didn't come and scout me at the time and Blues were the first club that did. It was an opportunity for me to get myself into the pro ranks and see what it was all about.

"Dad said it would be good to go and have a feel for it which I did and I couldn't get out of the place quick enough!

"Big Ron was on the phone to Dad saying we've watched him a hell of a lot, I can't believe we haven't had him down here and training with us.

"We just want to skip to that and get him signed for Villa."

It's revealing how Hendrie talks about Big Ron and his Dad - they were his yin and his yang, his good cop, bad cop, one would make him float on a cloud, while the other would anchor him in reality.

Hendrie remembers signing on the dotted line as a 14-year-old at Bodymoor Heath - Big Ron had built him up, and his old man knocked him straight back down.

"I've got to give lots of credit to my Dad," he says. "When we came out after I'd signed, I'd got given a load of training clobber and I thought this was it, I'd made it.

"My Dad said: 'Take a step back, you, you ain't got anywhere yet, this is the start of a long road. Just because you've got all the kit it doesn't mean you're a professional footballer and an Aston Villa player - relax yourself'.

"When Dad said that in the Scottish voice with a little bit of a tone on it, it was a bit of a slap around the ear and did make me think I need to slow myself down."

Big Ron soon made Hendrie and best mate Darren Byfield his teacher's pets. The close pals had developed a reputation as a dynamic duo on and off the pitch. First meeting and playing together at Erdington Star and Erdington & Saltley district team as kids, they became strike partners and the talk of Midlands schools football circles, with Manchester United among the clubs wanting to take them on trial.

Instead, Villa snapped them up, Big Ron converted Hendrie from centre forward to left winger ('You'll play for England there one day' was the manager's prophetic prediction) and the pair continued to tear it up together for the claret and blue youth team.

Big Ron encouraged them to be in and around the first team dressing room and warned the senior pros that these two whippersnappers were out to take their shirts. Hendrie was cleaning the boots of Garry Parker back then. That and being plunged into freezing cold icebaths by Dean Saunders and Mark Bosnich whenever he or Byfield failed to sing for them on demand.

"It was quite daunting going in there," he laughs. "I had some rascal barnets back in the day so I knew I'd be getting some stick, especially when I'd float in with a perm with that much gel in it you could snap a curl off!"

Hendrie and Byfield spent their first pay-cheques on Rockport boots which they loved so much they even twinned with their club shellsuits, and gradually added to their wardrobe with Lacoste and Stone Island gear from the Eltex store in town, while on the Bodymoor pitches they were looking so good that Big Ron and the first team squad would often wander over to watch their academy practice matches after training.

Remembering his Dad's advice to keep grafting, Hendrie caught the eye by being among the fittest at the club, owning the beep tests and racing so far ahead on a cross country run around Kingsbury Water Park that he kept glancing over his shoulder to check he hadn't got lost.

When he first got the call to train with the seniors, Andy Townsend and Kevin Richardson warned him not to pass to Big Ron, who fancied himself as Argentine star Redondo, but largely stood doing nothing on the left wing.

At that time, Hendrie and Byfield had special dispensation from the manager to shirk some of the menial chores imposed upon their academy peers by kitman Jim Paul.

"I'd see see the gaffer coming in walking these little dogs, these two little Shih Tzus would be strolling behind him," Hendrie smiles.

The teenager would be excused from sweeping the bootroom. "Ron would look at me and say 'You don't want to be doing that do you?'

"I'd be a bit embarrassed and say 'Course I do'. He'd say 'Leave him, Jim, he's taking the dogs out for a walk'. Before I knew it Darren was next to me and we had to walk the dogs round Bodymoor Heath while the others were cleaning the changing rooms.

"I knew Ron had a good feel for me and Darren and it made it easier to step up around the first team."

Despite being the gaffer's favourite, Hendrie's Villa debut did not come under Big Ron. "Not forgetting, I was a skinny 16 year-old lad with no meat on me - my body fat was zero," he points out.

Amazingly, Atkinson did include Hendrie and Byfield in the travelling squad for the Coca Cola Cup final triumph over Manchester United at Wembley in Febuary 1994.

"The first time I travelled with the first team was unbelievable," he recalls. "It was the cup final, Ron took me and Darren down for the whole weekend and I was just like 'wow'."

Hendrie even thought Big Ron might spring a surprise by putting him on the bench. It was a foolish notion he was quickly disabused of.

"I said to Dad I've got a funny feeling and he was like 'listen, you're not going to be involved!'. It was a good mental feeling to feel that way anyway. I was really nervous. Driving down on the coach to Wembley Way, seeing all the Villa flags and then getting out and seeing all the fans singing.

"That feeling, I wish I could bottle it up and take all the time because it was immense. I was like floating in a bubble. When I realised I wouldn''t be involved - why would I be?! - it was a bit of a sucker punch. But I remember getting kitted up warming up with the lads.

"It was a boy's dream to continue on a road that just seemed to be going perfectly - everything was just going right."

Well, not quite everything. As much as Big Ron would have loved to give Hendrie his debut, it eventually came as an 18-year-old under Brian Little in December 1995.

Ever since he'd scored two goals in a schools cup final victory for Washwood Heath against Hodge Heath at Villa Park he had dreamed of playing for Villa. Sadly, at least on his senior bow, his dream became a nightmare.

Introduced as a 33rd minute substitute for Mark Draper, Hendrie was red-carded in stoppage time in a 1-0 Premier League defeat to Queens Park Rangers at Loftus Road - a second booking for an innocuous foul on Rufus Brevett followed a first for kicking the ball away.

If Little took the Hendrie's Dad role of tough love by saying very little to the devastated debutant than Ray Wilkins, the QPR player-boss and future Villa coach, was there to provide a Big Ron-esque arm around the shoulder.

"It was nothing malicious it was just me being a young man, very anxious, very excited and wanting to make a point that I was good enough," recalls Hendrie with a shake of his head.

"When I saw the referee Alan Wilkie put his hand in his pocket and give me the second yellow a lot of players were trying to talk him round.

"For someone to make his debut, with all those highs and then for that to happen. I really didn't want to walk down tunnel, it was so emotional.

"I walked into the changing room and no one came in for a couple of minutes. I didn't know what to do, whether to keep my boots on. I didn't want to take my shirt off.

"Then the door flung open and Ray Wilkins, who was player manager at the time, came in. I thought he was coming in to get something out of the changing room. He came and sat next to me and put his arm round me and it was just surreal.

"Someone who I've seen play football, a legend of the game, to come and console me and say 'This is football, welcome to football, these are the ups and downs you're going to have in your career'.

"He said there's lot of people who are talking highly of you, you've got a big future in the game, kid. As he got up he tapped my shoulder and said 'keep that up'.

"Then it was back to 'What's the gaffer going to say when he walks in. He didn't say anything to me which really made me feel down. It's all right me having knockbacks from my dad but when you're trying to impress a manager and trying to burst onto the scene.

"It was just the way the gaffer worked at the time. He didn't do that - it took me a bit of a while to get over that I've got to admit."

It would be another three months before Hendrie played again, making his home debut and first start in a 0-0 draw with Middlesbrough in March 1996 and playing another 90 minutes in a last day 1-0 defeat at Everton that May. The Boro game was the match before the Coca Cola Cup final triumph over Leeds United at Wembley.

Hendrie was not involved in the 14 man squad that day and had to make do with being a bit part player under Little, making six substitute cameos and one start in 1996-97. The following season he made and seven substitute appearances (including his first goal in a 3-0 win over Coventry in December 1997) and four starts for the legendary Villa gaffer before he quit in late February 1998.

The irony was that those four starts came in Little's final month at the club. Just as he had finally won over the gaffer, the gaffer was gone. It's only now, more than two decades on, that Hendrie finally understands and accepts the little by little approach of his former boss.

"I get on with Brian now, better than what I did," he admits. "I remember having a conversation playing golf with him and I said to him 'Gaffer, you've changed so much'.

"Hes out there, he's fun, he's bubbly. I think everyone always used to say Brian was like that, but when he was a manager he said the pressure that came with it, the way he had to change himself and conduct himself with players, he had to be different because the club was so big and the pressure and expectation was so much.

"I understood it and I'm glad he did speak to me about that, because he didn't freeze me out of the side, but he kind of protected me from throwing me back in there.

"He wanted me to take a step back, have a look at things, let me watch things. I just felt there was a lot of games I could be a playing at that time and there were a lot of fans wanting me to get amongst it.

"He didn't have that push to get me out on the pitch again. I totally understand where he was coming from."

It was when John Gregory replaced Little in Febuary 1998 that Hendrie finally felt he was a 'part of the furniture', as he puts it. Gregory knew many of the kids having coached them when he was part of Little's backroom staff and the new boss put his faith in Hendrie from the off as well as trusting the likes of Gareth Barry and Jlloyd Samuel and giving Byfield a few cameos.

Hendrie used his breakthrough under JG to announce himself on the European and international stage - and two sliding doors moments from back then continue to trouble him.

"I've got two incidents in football where I felt I should have done better," he admits before explaining that they relate to his one and only England cap and a one-that-got-away chance against Atletico Madrid.

Firstly, his the England debut as a 77th minute substitute for Villa team-mate Paul Merson in a 2-0 victory over Czech Republic at Wembley on November 18, 1998. Merson scored that night in a Glenn Hoddle squad also including claret and blue colleagues Dion Dublin and Gareth Southgate. For Hendrie, so excitable when he learned of his call up, the memory is bitter sweet.

"Villa didn't really get as mention when it came to the England squads then all of a sudden there was a handful of us going down," he explains.

"I just remember there was talk of it in the paper building up to the call ups. "The gaffer JG pulled me in when they got the call. He called me in the office and said 'Congratulations, you've deserved everything that you've achieved, you've been called into the England squad'.

"I just started bouncing round in the office. I was like a kid. I wanted to jump on him and he said you've just got to relax.

"It was really emotional. I remember coming out and rather than going into the changing rooms coming out and getting some fresh air because to think I was going to go and join up with the England squad.

"It's the pinnacle of football to put on an England shirt with the three lions - well, the next best thing to putting on a Villa shirt in my eyes, anyway."

So far so good and but for the width of the woodwork it might have been even better.

"I actually felt like I did quite well when I came on," he says. "I came so close to scoring. I chopped on to my left, obviously my weaker foot and I've hit it quite cleanly but I've just dragged it just a touch and it's just sort of glanced the post and gone away and I've thought 'oh my word'.

"I think Dion picked me up and said 'different class'. I wish it had gone in, but it was brilliant to even be in a situation where I'm at Wembley in an England shirt, on the box, family there watching and I've nearly scored."

Within two months Hoddle was sacked as England boss amidst a cloud of controversy and Hendrie's England career was over before it had really started with Kevin Keegan and a host of other Three Lions bosses just not fancying him.

"It's a regret that I didn't go on and make more of my England career. It's great that I've got a cap and it's something you can't take away from me, but I hate being classed as a one-cap wonder. It's something that really annoys me because I do deep down feel that I should have gone on and got more at the time. It just wasn't to be."

By then he had established himself as a Villa regular under Gregory, culminating in his greatest Aston Villa memory, and his second sliding doors moment.

Without hesitation he volunteers the frenzied atmosphere inside Villa Park for that UEFA Cup night against Atletico Madrid in March 1998 as the moment he will take to his grave.

Having been a ball boy for that famous Inter Milan victory, to this day he wishes he could retrieve the ball to retake a shot which could have brought Villa glory rather than glorious failure. Hendrie had completed the entire first leg when Villa trailed 1-0 to a Christian Vieri at the Vicente Calderon Stadium, and the home return was his first experience of European football under the floodlights in B6.

He played a part in goals for Ian Taylor and Stan Collymore as Villa threatened a famous comeback, but he spurned a chance to make it a hat-trick of goals for boyhood fans and Gregory's men crashed on 2-2 on aggregate because of the away goal rule.

The missed opportunity would be vivid in his mind even if he hadn't watched it back on a bootleg copy of the tie just weeks ago - and it still hurts.

"It haunts me so bad that I didn't put it further in the corner where the keeper's made the save," he winces. That goal would have been such a massive turning point in the game because it would have possibly sent us through.

"I've never been a part of atmosphere and an intensity quite like that. I remember being a part of the goals, Stan scoring that screamer and the chance I should've put away. It sticks in my heart. That is what I loved and cherished. Villa Park packed out, an atmosphere like you can never imagine, being in the middle of that football pitch and having people willing you on. Incredible."

On the pitch, Hendrie was developing a reputation as a wind-up merchant and you can read about the time he clattered Robbie Savage and left him "lying there rolling round, his hair was all covered in sand" here.

Off the pitch, the stigma of being a bit of a bad boy was following him round from Libertys to Stoodi Bakers and Spearmint Rhino to Forest of Arden golf club.

There was this incident with a golf buggy when he was playing around with Gareth Barry and Peter Crouch (see the video here).

Remembering his nights out, Hendrie smirks and says: "We got introduced to Libertys on the Hagley Road because every now and then Yorkie (Dwight Yorke) and Bozzie (Mark Bosnich) and Ugo (Ehiogu) would go up there.

"Because we were floating around the squad we'd end up in Libertys. That was the one because I was a young lad and there were a few of the older birds in there and I'd think 'I've got a chance here'. It was like 'Grab-a-granny' in there!

"Then we ended up going into Stoodi Bakers which was rife - full of young girls, young lads. We'd take over when we went in, the likes of me Gareth, Crouchy, Jloyd (Samuel). That was the place to be in

Birmingham on a Saturday night. If you wanted to see any footballers, you've got any chance that you would in there."

Confessing he was ''no angel - not by any stretch' Hendrie still feels his partying was blown out of proportion and claims many of the scrapes he got into were prompted by Blues fans.

"Some of the things you get branded doing were just absolutely ridiculous," he insists. "Because you're in a city that got two rival clubs that hate each other, you ask anyone, the majority of people that were saying it were the Birmingham fans.

"All they could do was hang on and try to bring Villa down which they were never going to. They'd be slagging me or slagging Villa. Sometimes I wish I could jump back now. I think 'What on earth was I doing - why was I reacting to people like that that wanted to drag you down?'."

Before too long Hendrie was back at Wembley for an FA Cup semi final and final in 2000 - but again he was restricted to a bit part role on both occasions.

Strapping up an ankle injury to convince Gregory he was fit enough to be involved, Hendrie was sent on for the final minute of extra time in the semi-final 0-0 draw with Bolton Wanderers, purely to take a spot-kick in the penalty shootout.

"I couldn't get my gear off quick enough," he says. "I got on and before I knew it the whistle had gone. I hadn't even touched the ball and we're going to penalties. That's why he put me on."

Terrified of the responsibility, Hendrie remembered his Dad's advice to pick his spot and smash it. "It still gives me the heebie jeebies thinking about it," he continues.

"Taking a penalty when there's a tackle in the box and you're taking it there and then is one thing but to walk from the halfway line at a packed out Wembley, knowing you've just come on, you haven't touched the football and you've got to take a penalty to keep Villa in the cup."

Hendrie smashed it in the corner. Bolton goalkeeper Jussi Jaaskelainen got a fingertip to it, but couldn't keep it out.

"That relief was like scoring the winning goal in front of the Holte End," he lets out a sigh. "I've never felt pressure like that in my whole football career."

Villa prevailed on penalties and Hendrie was back on the bench against Chelsea. It was the last final at the old Wembley and as Hendrie admits "I think it went down as one of the worst finals ever."

Robert Di Matteo's goal settled a dour game and Hendrie got on for the last two minutes, in place of Alan Wright, as Villa's limp attempt at a fight-back fizzled out to nothing.

"I'm really gutted that I haven't got that FA Cup winners medal," he says. "I've got that runners-up one which is upstairs in the drawer somewhere because I don't feel like having runners-up medals is something you want to keep.

"I think boys have took it into school for their show and tell. Unless I'm winning, it doesn''t really do anything for me at all."

Over the course of a career from December 1995 to August 2006, Hendrie made 243 league and cup starts and 65 substitute appearances for Villa, scoring 32 goals.

His final appearance came from the bench in Martin O'Neill's first match in charge, the 1-1 Premier League draw at Arsenal on the opening day of the 2006-07 campaign.

Hendrie was excited about playing for O'Neill, but the new boss had other plans and swiftly and candidly told the now 30-year-old he was not part of them.

Even when he joined Stoke City on loan he did so with the intention of changing O'Neill's mind. When that didn't happen, he regrets moving to Sheffield United instead of joining Stoke permanently, accusing Blades boss Kevin Blackwell of 'making a mockery' of him by branding him a money-grabber.

Having spent 17 years as a one-club man and boy at Villa, he journeyed to 10 clubs during his final six years as a player.

So unremarkable were his brief spells at Stoke, Sheffield United, Leicester, Blackpool, Derby, Brighton, Bradford, Kidderminster, Tamworth and Corby, that he could, he says, "draw a line through all of them" and his most memorable moment was probably a prank involving a mascot's 'helmet', which he brilliantly describes in the video below.

But how would he rate his claret and blue career out of 10?

"I'd probably give myself a seven, a low seven," he admits. "When I came into the side people say I could have gone on and done a hell of a lot more. I still played a lot of games for the club but I felt I should have played a lot more.

"Whether it was down to the preference of the manager or whatever. Graham Taylor wasn't someone I got on with, Brian Little didn't really push me into the squad, so there was probably 100 games or more that I've missed out on.

"That's why I'd probably give myself a seven. There's no doubt about it, when I put a Villa shirt on I was going to work, I was going to come off that pitch knowing that I'd run around and given everything.

"Whether it turned out that I did play well or didn't there wasn't a day when I thought I'm just going to stroll round today. It's never been like that and it never would be.

"My disappointment is that I had to leave the club at 30 when I wanted to finish my whole career there. I had good spells and bad spells, the consistency wasn't there and that's why I couldn't turn round and say its a nine or an eight."

We can't sign off without asking Hendrie to comment on a vicious rumour that his youngest son supports a rival club - no, don't worry, it's not Blues.

"Oh my goodness me," he laughs when we end by enquiring whether it's true there is a Wolves fan in the Hendrie household. "I'm mortified I really am."

It transpires that Hendrie junior liked Wolves' colours when he saw them on television and started insisting on being the Molineux men whenever they play FIFA together.

A trip to Villa Park to buy claret and blue kits didn't end well when the lad told his Dad he wanted the 'orange one' instead.

"I thought it might just be a phase and we'll slowly filter it out into the dustbins, but nah, that was it," shrugs Hendrie.

"He started knowing players. I've seen him crying over games because they've got beat. I think it was the Watford game at Wembley where they've got beat.

"He was bouncing round when they were 2-0 up. Troy Deeney scored one late on and they ended up losing. That's when I knew he really did support the club to be fair to him.

"The one thing I can take out of it is he isn't a Birmingham fan because he wouldn't have been setting foot in this house if he was. I couldn't have had that kit in here. It's one of those things. Hopefully he'll see sense as he gets a little bit older."

Don't bank on it, Lee. These boy fan allegiances can last a lifetime.