Men of the Quaff

Jimmy Five Bellies

	After Ant and Dec, Gazza and Gardner were Tyneside’s most famous couple and were in and out of the tabloids as much as they were the local chippie.

Jimmy ‘Five Bellies’ Gardner is what Gazza would have looked like were he not any good at football. An irrefutable “Northern Fat Lad”, if he was a film he’d be Super Size Me, if he was a wrestler he’d be called Dumptruck, and if he was a play he’d be the whole of the third act. Yes, after only Gazza himself and the Angel of the North, Jimmy Five Bellies is Gateshead’s biggest export.

His notoriety came from the regularity with which him and his heavy-drinking pals ended up in the papers. After Ant and Dec, Gazza and Gardner were Tyneside’s most famous couple and were in and out of the tabloids as much as they were the local chippie.

First emerging as Gazza’a other half during the Geordie’s dramatic rise to stardom during the 1990 World Cup, Bellies was always on hand to help cement Gascoigne’s status as a “wayward soccer genius” and be  the butt of most of his gags: Gazza paired his best friend with a young lady knowing she was a transvestite; he once replaced Jimmy’s hair gel with hair-removing cream and the insides of his mince pie with cat excrement; he even paid £1,000 for a robot, which he set up so it would travel into Jimmy Five Bellies’ room at Gazza’s old house and say: “Make a cup of tea, fat man.”

One of the only times Gazza was on the receiving end was when him and his entourage were asked to leave the dead posh West Lodge Park Hotel in London after guests were treated to the sight of a naked Five Bellies swimming across the duck pond.

The point is this: Gazza and Bellies entertained us for the best part of a decade, leading something of a distinguished life for two pie-loving Geordies. Together they sampled the take-aways of the world, with all Bellies’ expenses covered by his greatest pal. Wherever the mercurial soccer ace went, Jimmy and a handful of crisps were sure to follow.

Remember when an on-the-wagon Gascoigne took a player-coach position at Chinese second division outfit, the Langzhou Flying Horses, and appeared in that BBC documentary being miserable and having unsightly panic attacks? Jimmy and Gazza’s dad flew to the other side of the world and drank neat whisky in front of him to cheer him up. Now, that’s friendship.

No stranger to the joys of a working men’s club, a greasy kebab house or an ill-fitting shellsuit, Bellies is the rotund drinking buddy par excellence. He once said of Gazza: 'Paul's more than a brother to me. More than a husband could be to his wife. I love him to bits.'

In Gazza’s darkest hours, let’s hope that Bellies is still making him laugh and sharing a drink and a gag with him.