Riveting: C4's Who Stole the World Cup reviewed

Have you ever seen film of the England 1966 football team holding the World Cup at the Royal Garden Hotel, Kensington, on the evening of their victory? The answer, I can guarantee, is no. Unbeknownst to everybody except a few policemen and FA officials, what they were holding was only a replica, made a few months previously after the real Jules Rimet trophy was stolen
in London.

‘All the gay footballers should boycott the World Cup!’

But this was just one of the many eye-popping disclosures in Monday’s 1966: Who Stole the World Cup? Of course, it’s not uncommon for a documentary to claim the tale it’s telling is scarcely believable. Much rarer is for that claim, as here, to be true.

The challenges to our credulity began immediately, when the programme interviewed the man charged with looking after the trophy when it was fatefully put on display at a stamp exhibition in the Methodist Central Hall. John McLarens was not, as he cheerfully admitted, a trained security guard. Instead, he was a struggling actor – whose career reached its zenith as an extra in Monty Python – looking to make some extra cash.

Pickles died in 1967, when he strangled himself with his lead when chasing a cat

So it was that on 20 March, John showed up for his Sunday shift to find the cup gone – although the heist wasn’t an especially daring one. The chain on the outside of the hall’s front door had been attached with eight ordinary screws. The plinth on which the trophy stood could be accessed through the open back of its glass case.

Not that this represented a sudden relaxation in security. In the preceding weeks, the silversmith George Bird had taken the cup from one display venue to another in the basket on the front of his bike.