Gary Taylor-Fletcher retires at 38

Gary Taylor-Fletcher retires at 38 stone

Former Blackpool and Leicester striker Gary Taylor-Fletcher has announced his retirement after finally tipping the scales at 38 stone.

In a 20-year career he played 575 times in the top five divisions of English football, scoring 120 goals, eating 7,300 lbs of saturated fat and downing close on a quarter of a million pints of lager.

He will be best remembered for his time at Blackpool where he played 237 games and scored 39 times, including one in the Championship play-off final win over Cardiff City in 2010. However, it was his prodigious demolition of 39 Big Macs in a single sitting following a boring 0-0 draw with Oldham Athletic that will live long in the memories of all tangerine fans.

He scored six Premier League goals for Blackpool the following season, the last of which saw him lift his shirt and reveal a 'I'm sponsored by Greggs' T-shirt in what was to become his trademark goal scoring celebration.

In total, he played for 15 clubs in England and Wales, helping Leicester City win promotion to the Premier League in 2014 after doing the same with Blackpool four years earlier. Upon leaving Leicester, he kindly donated his specially-made playing shirt to the Foxes Foundation who now use the massive garment in a choreographed display of shirt shaking before each Premier League home-game.

"I've had some fantastic meals along the journey from being a 17stone slip of a kid at Northwich Victoria in the Conference to playing in the Premier League at 29 stone for Blackpool," he said in a statement on social media.

"It has been a real feast of football in every sense of the word, but now I'm looking forward to putting my feet up, hanging up my training boots and dedicating the rest of my career to a life of sloth and gluttony. It's been a ball."