David Evans

David Evans was an opening batsman who had spells at Gloucestershire and Warwickshire in the late 1950s without breaking into the first team, and he later represented Hertfordshire, captained the Club Cricket Conference, and was chairman of the Lord's Taverners.

It was off the field that Evans made his name, both in cricket and football. A self-made man who built-up a cleaning business from scratch, he became an outspoken right-wing Conservative MP. In 1977, when Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket threatened to rip the game apart, Evans briefly appeared as a saviour when he offered to buy out any WSC contracts. Enthusiasm cooled when it emerged the deals were dependent on sponsors placing £3 million of business with his cleaning empire. While his idea floundered, it did sew the seeds for the England board's subsequent rearrangement of the players' finances.

He was even more controversial in footballing circles - he was on the books at Aston Villa for a time but, again, failed to break into the first team - where he advocated flogging hooligans (arguing it would be good to "give 'em scars for the rest of the lives" - he was also all for the castration of rapists) and as chairman of Luton Town between 1984 and 1989 he installed a deeply unpopular artificial pitch and banned visiting supporters. He was also a key figure is selling the idea of compulsory ID cards for all supporters to Margaret Thatcher.

An unashamed self-publicist, he was ousted as an MP in 1997 when he used a speech at a sixth-form college to slam his Labour opponent as "a single woman with three bastard children who had never had a proper job".
Martin Williamson