Bolton Wanderers super-fan Jenny Ryan on her matchday superstitions

IF you spot TV quizzer Jenny Ryan dashing down to the concourse during the game at Wembley on Saturday, consider it a good sign for Wanderers!

The Bolton super-fan, known to many as The Vixen from ITV’s gameshow smash The Chase, abandons all logic when it comes to watching her beloved club.

Jenny will be joined by her parents, her uncle, auntie, two cousins, and her Leeds United-supporting partner for the final.

“He’s being dragged along because he was lucky last time in the Papa Johns,” she told The Bolton News.

But that’s not the only superstition that could come into play... if things get desperate.

“We are quite vocal fans,” she explained. “My mum is a nervous watcher and I pick that up from her, share in her anxiety and share the pressure a bit.

“We have all the lucky rituals. Obviously, there is the lucky wee, and that came to the fore in the play-off final in 1995. I don’t think I saw any of the Bolton goals because they kept sending me to go to the loo!

“And at one point we had a lucky biscuit. I think it’s somewhere still in my mum’s house.

“It came about because one day I was halfway through a biscuit and we’d scored a goal; all of a sudden, I was instructed to stop eating it because, you know, it was clearly a sign.

“It wasn’t a Kit-Kat, but like a chocolate-covered bar, and I think it lived in the freezer for ages. My mum would take it out, bring it to the game in a rucksack, and whenever it would get tense, she would take it out again. But you weren’t allowed to eat it.”

On a matchday at the Toughsheet you can regularly spot season ticket holder Jenny with her family, although she admits her cousin/godson Jake may now be lost to the masses.

“He’s in his late teens and recently graduated to sitting with his mates now, he doesn’t want to listen to us chunnering on,” she said.

"I just don't know what I'd do without Bolton Wanderers.

“My first match was 1992, Leyton Orient at home. That season I went every home match after that, bought my ticket out of my pocket money. It might have been £3 for juniors back then.

“It was spellbinding, and not long afterwards I was allowed to go by myself. I’d literally do the walk down the Manny Road, me and my friend Rick, we’d go and buy the ticket on the turnstile and stand down the front in the corner on the Burnden Terrace.

“I think that was the perfect time to come on board as a Bolton fan, it had it all. It wasn’t glamorous football by any means but we had some amazing players and results, we had the FA Cup runs, it was absolutely brilliant to start off as a kid, about nine or 10.

“We are quite a sporty family but I was a bit later to football. My mum would take me to the rugby league or the cricket when I was younger, probably just building up my tolerance. It is a bit more intense and rowdy than Old Trafford or Central Park, as it was then.

“There’s no other club for me. The first pitch invasion you’re a part of, you’re hooked!”

Jenny will be back in Bolton at the Octagon on October 2, performing her new cabaret show Out of the Box, an evening of song, storytelling and showbiz secrets. For more details of her UK tour and to book tickets CLICK HERE.