JOHN Batchelor is dressed as Austin Powers, in crushed red velvet suit, frilly shirt, black wig, glasses and outsize teeth. As he sprawls over his Union Flag-decorated Mazda MX5 and cries "Groovy, baby!" to our photographer, a thought occurs. You couldn't imagine Douglas Craig doing this.

Yes, the current York City chairman and his predecessor are very different men. No one would have dared ask gruff Scot Douglas to don fancy dress to promote the club, yet I knew John would go for it. Like Austin Powers, he is on a mission: a mission to have fun.

Goldmember, the third Austin Powers movie, opened last Friday, prompting the idea for the photoshoot. The City chairman has compared the club to the spoof spy more than once, and has even signed letters John "Austin Powers" Batchelor.

It is all to do with York City's new "branding".

"There's lots of ways you can express that but one of the quickest ways is to say, right, if it was a person, who would it be," John explains.

"So it might be a bit of Dudley Moore, a bit of Austin Powers. We'd like it to be a bit cool, so it might be a bit Michael Caine."

York City Soccer (not football) Club is "a fun thing, it's a little bit retro, it's very English and it's not frightened of taking the mickey out of itself. So that was really where the Austin Powers reference came from."

There is another connection, of course. Like Mr Powers, John is something of an international man of mystery.

Who exactly is this car-mad, former stand-up comedian and toilet roll salesman? And which planet does he come from?

The answer is Planet Yorkshire, by birth if not inclination. "I was born in Sheffield but, as they say, being born in a stable doesn't make you a horse. I was there for about three minutes before we moved."

John was brought up until the age of 11 in Dover, Kent, with two elder sisters.

It was a comfortable childhood. Dad imported timber from Portugal, and so worked abroad a lot, and "mum was a traditional housewife really. They were of that era, both of them."

"Not switched on" by school, he managed four O levels. Then his world was shattered.

He won a study scholarship to America, but while he was away in the summer of 1974, there was a military coup in Portugal. His dad couldn't get any money out of the country and the business went under.

"So when I came back, rather than going into Sixth Form, I came back to find us homeless. We ended up living at my grandparents and I was out selling insurance door-to-door."

How did that affect him? "It was a culture shock. I think it probably did me a lot of good. Because it awakens you to the difficulties of the real world. I was working in East Lancashire selling tenpenny insurance policies on council estates. Not an environment I'd previously had much contact with, and you realise how hard people have to work to survive."

It instilled in him a work ethic he'd previously lacked. He found another job "tanking up and down the M6 and M62 flogging toilet rolls to factories and hospitals and offices and things like that". He later remortgaged his house to start his own company called System Hygiene. When he sold it 15 years later, it had 40 staff and a multi-million pound turnover.

Business is in his blood. His great, great grandfather invented a method of canning vegetables and set up the Batchelor food empire, although the company has long since ceased to have any connections with John's family. "I'm not the next pea heir."

It was while running System Hygiene he developed his aversion to "corporate thinking".

"We would often have champagne picnics in the office, because it's better to create an environment where people are happy." Meanwhile, the toilet roll king kept his creative side ticking over by "doing all sorts of odd stuff". This included running for Parliament twice, first in Blackburn in 1997, against Jack Straw, then in 2001 in Tatton, Neil Hamilton's former seat.

John describes himself as a left-winger who doesn't believe in the party system. "Politics and politicians irritate me because they speak a lot of waffle and don't actually achieve very much."

This will not surprise anyone who read his blast at "the inept bungling of the morons in charge of running this city" in the Evening Press.

He is unrepentant about the broadside, aimed at council officials for a supposed negative attitude to his plans to build a new stadium at Clifton Moor.

The council may not find him funny, but John has also done a stint as a stand-up comedian, in Blackburn club Laughing Gas. He worked with Paul Merton among others, and harbours an ambition to return to comedy writing.

"We have a potentially interested sponsor in doing a comedy festival in York," he says. It could be tied in with next year's Food and Drink Festival.

John is happy to be described as a family man. He's been married to Gillian for 21 years, and they have four children: Luke, 19, Sam, 16, Matthew, 14 and ten-year-old Alice ("yes, we kept going for the girl").

Gillian is a biology graduate and an accountant now in charge of an £8 million budget as bursar of Manchester Grammar School.

"Gillian is very, very, very supportive of everything I do," the City chairman says. "And she also, frighteningly, has a great deal of confidence in me. To the extent that when I tell her I'm going to do these things she says 'fine'.

"It's a bit scary because if I ever get it wrong, I'll be in big trouble with her."

She is a private person, he says. Will we see her at Bootham Crescent in the role of chairman's wife? "Yes, she will come over and do that but you might not necessarily be aware of her presence." She is soon to receive a gift of York City knickers. John has the designs for a line in Minstermen ladies undies on his desk, just one of many merchandising ideas to keep the wolf from the third division club's door.

Throughout the interview John is frank and open - except when it comes to money. He won't put a figure on how much he's putting into the club, and when I asked what he's worth he replied: "I honestly don't know."

Multi-millionaire? "I don't really want to talk about it."

Is this just an ego trip? "No it's a business. But it's fun. And I can't deny there are elements of this I enjoy."

He is serious in his desire to make York City bigger, better and more entertaining.

"If only one per cent of the way I feel about this club gets across to ten per cent of the city of York, then we've made some impact.

"If people can get behind the club and start coming to the games, and start being positive about the club's future then we will have something that's a useful addition to York which can create a feel-good factor about the town."

As the man said: Groovy, baby.

John Batchelor's Austin Powers outfit was loaned by Kaos party hire, Gillygate, York. Ring: (01904) 630317

Updated: 11:11 Friday, August 02, 2002