Michael Owen Hits Back at Critics of His Childhood Apple-Throwing Story, Calling Them ‘Muppets’

Michael Owen has delivered a sharp response to those who mocked his story about throwing apple cores into a bin as a boy, dismissing the critics as people who “don’t get it” and suggesting many of them are “still living in their mum and dad’s house when they’re 40.” The former England striker, now 46, revisited the tale while promoting Meet the Owens, a new Amazon Prime Video documentary series that follows his family life and his work as the owner of a substantial racehorse yard. The programme is scheduled to premiere on 28 August.

Owen first described the childhood habit in an interview three years ago and later recreated the scene, with mixed accuracy, on The Good, The Bad & The Football alongside Paul Scholes, Nicky Butt and Paddy McGuinness. The anecdote spread widely online, generating memes and ridicule that framed the activity as trivial or absurd. In Meet the Owens he addresses that reaction directly and without apology.

‘That’s Why They’re Bloody Muppets’

“It became a meme and everybody laughed at it,” Owen said. “That’s cool because the vast majority of people who laughed at it, don’t get it. And that’s why they’re bloody muppets. Probably still living in their mum and dad’s house when they’re 40 years of age, it’s like who’s a***d?” The language is characteristically blunt. For Owen, the point of the story was never the apple itself but the willingness to risk failure in pursuit of a small, private standard of excellence and parental recognition.

He has explained the ritual in greater detail on Upfront with Simon Jordan. Evening television would be accompanied by an apple. The bin stood several metres away. Each core became a test. “Everything was a challenge. I would eat an apple while watching the TV at night. The bin would be by the TV, six metres away or whatever. I would just [throw the core]. I had the bravery to miss and for there to be a stain on the wallpaper and my mum to absolutely scream at me and send me upstairs. I wasn’t cocky at all, but the next day I would do the same and it’ll go right in the middle and my dad would give me a nod of approval. My mum would be seething but couldn’t say anything because it went in. That confidence, that sort of daring, that nod of approval that, ‘I don’t want to get b******ed by my mum here’. But I’m desperate for a little wink, a little nod from my dad, to say ‘here you cocky little, you know’. That’s what I always yearned as a kid.”

Risk, Approval and Competitive Instinct

Read in full, the anecdote is less about household chores and more about a child constructing low-stakes examinations of nerve. Missing carried a cost—stained wallpaper, a mother’s anger, an early trip upstairs. Succeeding brought a father’s quiet acknowledgement. Owen presents that loop of risk and validation as formative. The same temperament later translated into a career defined by decisive movement in the penalty area, first at Liverpool, then in spells with Real Madrid and Manchester United, and across 89 appearances for England.

Critics who reduced the story to a joke about throwing fruit, he implies, missed the underlying psychology. Bravery is not only required on a football pitch in front of thousands; it is rehearsed in ordinary rooms where the only witnesses are parents and the only trophy is a nod. Whether every listener finds that persuasive is secondary to Owen’s clear belief that the mockery says more about the mockers than about the memory.

Documentary Context

Meet the Owens promises a broader portrait than a single viral clip can supply. Viewers will see Owen in the setting of his racing operation, a significant shift of focus from the pitch to the stable yard, and in the company of his family. The series arrives at a stage of life when former athletes often reassess the traits that drove them. Owen’s willingness to revisit a story that already exposed him to ridicule suggests either stubbornness or a settled confidence that the original meaning still holds.

His recent public comments have not been limited to childhood habits. He was sharply critical of England after their World Cup semi-final exit, continuing a pattern of frank assessment that has sometimes unsettled those who prefer softer former-player analysis. The apple-core retort fits that pattern: an unfiltered judgment delivered without concern for online sentiment.

Career Backdrop

Owen’s playing record supplies the credibility against which he measures his critics. A Ballon d’Or winner in 2001, he scored prolifically for Liverpool as a teenager and young adult, won major honours, and carried the attacking burden for England at successive international tournaments. Injuries shortened his peak, yet the reputation established in those years remains intact. From that vantage point, laughter at a boyhood drill designed to test nerve registers as noise from people who never faced comparable pressure—or so his “muppets” line contends.

The recreation of the throw on a podcast, and its failure to find the bin, only added to the internet’s amusement. Owen appears untroubled. In his telling, the occasional miss was always part of the exercise; the willingness to attempt the throw again the next night was the point.

Public Image and Private Standards

Modern celebrity ensures that almost any anecdote can be clipped, memed and stripped of context. Owen’s response is to reassert the context at greater volume rather than to retreat. He does not ask for the jokes to stop; he classifies the jokers as people who cannot see the competitive lesson he believes the story contains. That stance will strike some as thin-skinned and others as consistent with a personality that always preferred clarity to consensus.

Family approval sits at the centre of the original memory. The mother’s potential anger and the father’s potential nod formed the emotional stakes. Many elite sportspeople describe similar micro-dramas of childhood—hours spent jugging balls, racing siblings, or turning ordinary objects into targets—not because the activities were remarkable, but because they organised desire for mastery and recognition. Owen’s bin was simply his version of that universal apprenticeship.

A Season of Reflection

As Meet the Owens prepares to air, the apple-core exchange serves as an early trailer for the tone viewers can expect: direct, unembarrassed about old habits, and impatient with what he regards as shallow readings of his past. The racing yard, the family relationships and the long view on a life that began with prodigious football talent will fill out the picture. For now, the former striker has drawn a firm line under one particular internet joke. Those who laughed are free to keep laughing. Owen has made clear he considers the last word already spoken—and that it belongs to the boy who kept throwing until the core hit the bin and the quiet nod arrived.