From Brighton to Love Island: Jonny Dixon was not your average footballer

Jonny Dixon wasn’t your average footballer. That much was obvious from the moment he signed for Brighton in 2008, wearing an oversized woollen jumper complete with a built in scarf that he’d made himself.

He looked like he was wearing a diving suit designed for sheep. That jumper would go down in Brighton folklore, but it was only the tip of the iceberg for a man who defied the belief that in order to be a professional, you have to dedicate your life to football.

Because Dixon didn’t. He was more interested in writing film scripts during his spare time. Or making and selling his own clothes, like that terrible jumper. Or becoming the first modern-day Albion player with a famous WAG after a brief relationship with Holly Vallance.

It was almost like Dixon didn’t want to be a footballer, he was just good at it for some reason and decided he better try and have a go at making a career of it. That career went through Wycombe Wanderers, Aldershot Town and the Albion.

Needless to say, it was at Withdean that he was finally put off of football for life and moved into his dream job – as a music producer.

He had been a partner in his own music business since the age of 19, but even so this was a career move that not many footballers have made at the age of 25.

Dixon arrived at the Albion in the January 2008 transfer window from Aldershot for a cool £55,000. Dean Wilkins had sold Alex Revell and Dick Knight had failed to agree a new contract with Bas Savage, meaning that Wilkins needed two new strikers with Dixon and a certain Glenn Murray both arriving from the lower leagues.

Dixon’s scoring record in the Conference with the Shots was excellent. He averaged nearly a goal every other game at the Recreation Ground and it was this natural finishing ability and his pace that persuaded the Albion – or in this case, Tony Bloom as we all know who was funding things behind the scenes – to part with what was a decent wedge of cash in those days.

This wasn’t Dixon’s first crack at the Football League. He’d spent six years as a professional with Wycombe Wanderers having come through the youth ranks at Adams Park after moving to Britain from Spain, where he was born to a British father and a Chinese-Malaysian mother.

Dixon played 85 times for Wycombe and while the majority of those came as a substitute, he still managed to score nine goals and play against Chelsea when Paul Lambert’s side embarked on their famous run to the League Cup semi finals in the 2006-07 season.

He was viewed as something of an eccentric in the Chairboys’ changing room, nipping down to Greenwich Market to sell clothes he’d cut and running that aforementioned music business on the side.

He even wrote his first movie script while with Wycombe and helped his fellow Wycombe striker Gavin Holligan manage a gospel choir.

It was the day after he’d been involved in Wycombe’s 1-1 draw with Chelsea that he moved to Aldershot for £6,000. Dixon had already had two hugely successful loan spells with the Shots prior to his permanent transfer, and so it was no surprise that he was such a success in his year with Aldershot, firing them to the top of the Conference before the Albion came calling.

Dixon didn’t get off to the best of starts in Sussex however, and we’re not just talking about that jumper. He picked up an ankle injury in his first training session and had to wait over a month for his Albion debut as a result.

That eventually arrived as a substitute against Leyton Orient. He went onto make three further appearances in the final throes of the 2007-08 season, starting away at Luton Town and at home to Hartlepool United and coming off the bench on the last day of the season as League One champions Swansea City visited Withdean.

Wilkins’ controversial sacking that summer proved to be the end of Dixon’s Albion and football career. Micky Adams clearly didn’t like the look of the striker from day one and he played just once more for the Seagulls, as a substitute on that infamous day when Walsall won 1-0 at Withdean despite playing for over an hour with only nine men.

Loan spells with Grays Athletic and Eastleigh followed, but it was obvious that Adams didn’t value anybody with outside interests. He would prefer to give old, experienced stalwarts opportunities over young players who he decided he didn’t want to work with – see Joel Lynch being forced out the club to be replaced by Colin Hawkins.

Eventually, Dixon decided he’d had enough. He approached the Albion about terminating his contract in the summer of 2009 despite the fact it still had a year to run and he might have got an opportunity under Russell Slade who was by now at the helm.

Dixon could have sat around collecting his wages but never playing, using the time instead to make more garish jumpers or writing film scripts.

A bit like how Kemy Agustein got paid for two seasons work at the Albion in which he just designed shit clothes of his own. But Dixon didn’t take that approach. He decided that now was the time to become a music producer.

He told Football365 in a fascinating interview: “It came to a point at Brighton where it just felt like I wasn’t happy in what I was doing, I wasn’t really given a chance by the manager at the time and it just felt like there was something else for me.”

“I didn’t know what it would be but I knew I wasn’t happy and when you’re not happy doing what you do then you’re not happy with life, whatever job you do. So for me, I decided it was time to move on and try to do something else.”

That something else has resulted in Dixon having a ridiculous CV for a former footballer. After working in the music industry and dating Vallance, he turned to television and film.

The movie script Dixon had been working on throughout his football career finally became a movie and in his most famous piece of work yet, he worked as a producer on series three of Love Island.

His other television credits include Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents, Come Dine with Me, Don’t Tell the Bride, My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding, Mary Portas: Secret Shopper, The Valleys and Jodie Marsh on Mail Order Brides.

And we bet he still wears ridiculous jumpers. Jonny Dixon really wasn’t your average footballer.