The monkey, handcuffed, was being heavily mooted and no little touted after the Stamford Bridge club rejected stories linking them with Avram Grant, Chris Tarrant, a diabetic squirrel and an old Panini sticker of Dmitri Kharine.
Speaking exclusively to Football Burp, the real Dmitri Kharine threw his hat into the ring, though he accepted that multiple stickers of him dotted about the place next to Post-it notes bearing various instructions would work just as well.
He said: “They’d all start ‘Dmitri says: Remember…’ – gee, it’d be real swell.”
Giving separate interviews, John Terry, Frank Lampard and Petr Cech all had to have it explained to them that they once played under Avram Grant.
Lampard said: “Really, that guy? I thought he was someone’s dad.”