Peter Crouch has opened up on a boozy trip to London during his playing days that landed him and Aston Villa team-mates in hot water with the great Graham Taylor.
The former England striker got his Premier League break at Villa Park after joining the Midlands outfit from Portsmouth for £5million in 2002.
He scored on his debut against Newcastle as he was introduced to life in England's top flight for the first time.
He was also introduced to nights out with some of the country's brightest stars, and the 39-year-old has revealed how one of those trips alongside Lee Hendrie and Gareth Barry after a game led to a meeting in the manager's office early on the Monday morning.
'We were in London but we'd stayed down after a game. Two players stayed down with me – Lee Hendrie and Gareth Barry,' he said on the BBC's That Peter Crouch podcast.
'We had a night out then the next day we played a drinking game. Whoever lost had to go round the pub and pretend to be a dog. It's absolutely ridiculous and I'm not proud of it.
'We didn't know but there was someone that the manager knew in the bar, who had called him. All of our phones started blowing up saying we had a meeting with Graham Taylor on the Monday.'
Talking on the reception he got in the manager's office at the beginning of the week, Crouch revealed: 'He said we were behaving like idiots, which we were.
'He called me and Lee Hendrie in, he said to us: "It's a disgrace. What are you playing at?". He said: "Why can't you be more like Gareth Barry?".
'We were like: "Yeah, we should be. You're right".
'I was dying to go: "He was ******* sitting right next to us the whole time that we were there". We couldn't drop Gaz in it. Gaz was the golden boy.'
Crouch left Villa Park in 2004, heading to Southampton, while Barry stayed at the club until joining Manchester City in 2009.
Barry hasn't always been able to escape controversy since, however. The midfielder was part of the quartet of West Brom players forced to apologise in 2018 for stealing a taxi in Barcelona during a squad break.
Series 5 of That Peter Crouch Podcast begins today on BBC Sounds