was demolished in the mid-1950s as part of the city's slum clearance. When David Icke was three, around 1955, they moved to the Goodwood estate, one of the council estates the post-war Labour government built. "To say we were skint", he wrote in 1993, "is like saying it is a little chilly at the North Pole." He recalls having to hide under a window or chair when the councilman came for the rent; after knocking, the rent man would walk around the house peering through windows. His mother never explained that it was about the rent; she just told Icke to hide. He wrote in 2003 that he still gets a fright when someone knocks on the door. He attended Whitehall Infant School, and then Whitehall Junior School. Football Icke has said he made no effort at school, but when he was nine he was chosen for the junior school's third-year football team. He writes that this was the first time he had succeeded at anything, and he came to see football as his way out of poverty. He played in goal, which he wrote suited the loner in him and gave him a sense of living on the edge between hero and villain. After failing his 11-plus exam in 1963, he was sent to the city's Crown Hills Secondary Modern (rather than the local grammar school), where he was given a trial for the Leicester Boys Under-14 team. He left school at 15 after being talent-spotted by Coventry City, who signed him up in 1967 as their youth team's goalkeeper. In 1968 he played in the Coventry City youth team that were runners up to Burnley in the F.A. Youth Cup. He also played for Oxford United's reserve team and Northampton Town, on loan from Coventry. Rheumatoid arthritis in his left knee, which spread to the right knee, ankles, elbows, wrists and hands, stopped him from making a career out of football. Despite stating that he was often in agony during training, Icke managed to play part-time for Hereford United, including in the first team when they were in the fourth, and later in the third, division of the English Football League. But in 1973, at the age of 21, the pain in his joints became so severe that he was forced to retire. First marriage Icke met his first wife, Linda Atherton, in May 1971 at a dance