Two childhood friends, a missing football jersey and an elaborate quarter-century deception that culminated in the ultimate wedding surprise.
The story began in 2001 when Kevin Hill, now 47 and living in Dunfermline, Fife, discovered his prized Ian Wright Celtic shirt had vanished. The garment held deep sentimental value—it bridged his two greatest sporting passions and bore the name of his childhood hero.
Growing up in Aberdeen as a Celtic supporter required resilience, Kevin explains. His father took him to matches in Glasgow from age five onwards, and his parents bought him a new strip each season. But his first footballing idol was Ian Wright, the Arsenal striker whose posters covered his bedroom walls.
When Wright signed for Celtic in 1999 near the end of his career, Kevin's dreams seemed to align.
"As much as I'm a Celtic fan my first footballing hero was Ian Wright,"he recalls.
"When I started hearing the rumour that he might be coming to Celtic, it was like my dreams were coming true."
Wright's spell at Parkhead proved brief—three goals in eight appearances—but Kevin's affection for the shirt never waned. The jersey remained his match-day uniform long after Wright's departure. What made it particularly distinctive was that it bore Wright's name without a number on the back.
"The reason it doesn't have a number on the back was because he hadn't actually signed yet and so we didn't know his number when I got it."
After moving to Edinburgh, Kevin attended a flat-warming party that turned raucous. When the shirt went missing, he suspected someone had taken it during the festivities, but he could never identify the culprit. Over time, his frustration faded and he largely forgot about the loss.
Then, years later, an unexpected email arrived from an unfamiliar address. It began:
"Hi Kevin, remember me? Yes that's right, it's your Ian Wright Celtic top. I hope you aren't mad with me but I decided to embark on a journey of discovery."
Attached was a photograph of a woman Kevin didn't recognise, standing on the London Eye and holding up what appeared to be his Celtic shirt to the camera.
"I was just mega confused,"Kevin says.
"Running through my mind was, who has done this? I mean bravo, it's a really good prank. But little did I know there were a lot more emails to follow."
A few weeks later, another message arrived with a photograph of a complete stranger wearing the shirt—this time in Barcelona. The emails continued to arrive with increasing frequency, each one documenting the jersey's travels to new destinations.
"The next one was Turkey, then Italy and then it went all the way to South America,"Kevin recalls.
"Christ the Redeemer was one of my favourite ones. It made it all the way [to Brazil] and then down to Venezuela and Puerto Rico and then back up to the USA."
The shirt visited Venice, Easter Island, Niagara Falls, Machu Picchu, Las Vegas, Lake Michigan and numerous other locations across the globe. Each photograph showed a different person holding or wearing the jersey against iconic backdrops.
As 2008 gave way to 2009, the messages kept arriving until eventually the email trail went cold. Kevin found himself obsessed with solving the mystery.
"What confused me was how did they keep this going?"he wondered.
"It wasn't one of my friends globetrotting, from what I could deduce they were handing [the strip] on to someone else and giving them the email address because it was always a different person in the picture."
For another decade, the prank occupied a corner of Kevin's mind. Whenever he met someone new, he would recount the strange adventures of
"Wrighty"and the mystery of who had orchestrated it all. He even told his fiancée Cheryl about the peculiar tale.
The Wedding Revelation
What Kevin did not anticipate was that his marriage would become the key to unlocking the secret that had puzzled him for 25 years. At his wedding reception in late August, Kevin was sitting at a table with his childhood friends from Aberdeen when they all began laughing as one of them handed him a parcel.
"When I opened it, I could see it was a Celtic top but then very quickly I saw the white letters of Wright. I knew immediately and I just couldn't believe it."
Alongside the shirt was a photobook entitled
"Wrighty on Tour: 25 years of adventures around the globe."
"It was the best present I could have ever been given,"Kevin says.
"And the fact that they kept it going that long just shows how good a friendship group I've got."
The mastermind behind the elaborate prank was Kris Robertson, Kevin's childhood friend who had been harbouring the secret for a quarter of a century. Kris Robertson said the prank was payback after Kevin hijacked his emails to embarrass him at work.
The Origins of Revenge
Friends since their schooldays, Kris Robertson vividly remembered Kevin's deep attachment to his Ian Wright Celtic shirt.
"He used to wear it all the time. I just remember he was very proud of it. It was his prize possession."
That affection made it the ideal target for retaliation.
"It was revenge,"says the 48-year-old, smiling. The inspiration came from an unlikely source: the 2001 French film Amélie, in which the protagonist steals her father's garden gnome and sends it around the world with photographs from exotic locations.
"It was postcards with pictures of all these exotic locations and I thought that's perfect, I've got to do that with his strip."
The first stage of the plan required recruiting another school friend to steal the shirt during Kevin's flat-warming party. Once the theft was accomplished, Kris obtained a fake email address and began the long process of documenting the shirt's travels.
The execution demanded creativity and patience.
"It had to be people he wouldn't recognise, so I was just asking whoever happened to be standing there could you just hold this strip up and I'll take a photograph. That was the game really."
Kris explains that he had to be strategic about timing.
"I think Benicassim music festival was the first place I took it, but if I'd sent him a photo from there he would have sussed me straight away because he knew I was there. So I had to make sure there was quite a long delay between going places and then sending the emails."
As the shirt accumulated air miles, Kris carefully drip-fed emails to his unsuspecting friend.
"At one point I did get an email back [from Kevin] saying I think I've worked out who it is. I knew he hadn't and of course I never heard from him again. He was obviously trying to flush me out."
The Prank Expands Globally
Kris's parents helped him build up a bank of photographs from around the United Kingdom and Europe. Then in 2008, he took the shirt with him to South America where the prank took on a life of its own. Kris recruited friends and strangers he met on his travels to send Kevin photos of it.
"I met people in Peru and I gave them the strip because they were going off travelling around the world. They took it away with them and went to Easter Island with the big stone heads. They went to Christ the Redeemer in Rio. They got some brilliant photos."
What had begun as a personal prank between two friends had evolved into a collaborative global adventure involving Kris's family, his parents, and complete strangers from around the world.
The Lost Original and the Replacement
However, there was a twist that Kris had not been brave enough to reveal until now. The original shirt's travels ended around 2013, when the last person known to have it admitted it was lost; Kris later found a replacement and ironed on matching lettering by hand.
Sometime around 2013, the steady stream of photographs he had been receiving from around the world suddenly stopped. When Kris contacted the last person he knew had the shirt, they sheepishly confessed to losing it during their travels.
"I suppose that's the risk of sending it off around the world with complete strangers."
Determined that the prank he had invested so much time and energy into would not simply fizzle out, Kris spent hours scouring the internet for a replacement shirt and identical lettering. In the end, he had to iron on the letters by hand.
"I should apologise yes it was very careless of me to lose [but] a lot of love went back into the replacement."
The replacement shirt was what Kevin received at his wedding, complete with the photobook documenting all the adventures—real and carefully preserved—that the original and its successor had undertaken across the globe.
An Unfinished Story
The revelation at Kevin's wedding brought closure to one of the most elaborate pranks ever conceived between friends. Yet it also raises an intriguing question: somewhere out there, the original Ian Wright Celtic shirt—lost in 2013 during its travels—may still exist, waiting to be discovered by someone who has no idea of its remarkable history.
This epic tale of love, loss, revenge and reconciliation might still have room for another chapter. The original
"Wrighty"could be out there somewhere, searching for a way home.
For Kevin and Kris, however, the prank has achieved its ultimate purpose. What began as an act of revenge has become a testament to the enduring power of friendship and the lengths to which old friends will go to create a memory that lasts a lifetime.
