Eddie ‘The Eagle’ Edwards feared he was going to be arrested after he brought more than £40,000 in cash back to the UK from the Olympics in a suitcase, according to a new book. The skiing icon, 61, was said to have been handed the money in used bills after a Del Boy-style geezer paid him the loot to slap his face on T-shirts and ballpoint pens. Eddie captured the world’s imagination in 1988 when he competed in the ski jump at the Calgary Winter Olympics – Britain’s first competitor in the adrenaline-fuelled event since 1929. It’s now claimed that behind the scenes he took cash to allow his image to be used on a string of T-shirts so he could buy more sports gear. Entrepreneur-turned-writer Kirk Field has shared the tale in his new book Planes, Trains & Amphetamines, about his wild days leading the first holiday company catering exclusively to clubbers, which saw him meet a string of stars. He says in the book: “Eddie told me how he was eating breakfast alone one morning in the Olympic village, and a portly guy with slicked back hair in a sharp suit asked if he could sit down opposite. “‘Eddie the Eagle!... Eddie the Eagle,’ he kept repeating. He then leaned forward to conceal his conversation. “‘Eddie, I have a question. How much would it cost to put your face on a T-shirt?’” Eddie is said to have told him there was a shop in the mall who would do it for about a tenner. But the bloke quickly wrote him a cheque for $10,000 for the rights to print official Eddie the Eagle T-shirts. When Eddie told him he didn’t have a bank account, but could do cash, he allegedly started getting wads of money sent to his room. Kirk wrote: “The next morning at breakfast, the stranger returned with a bulging envelope of cash and a colleague – (and said) ‘This is my cousin Hymie. He’s in the ballpoint pen game and has an offer for you... .’ “This was repeated for the next few days, until Eddie had a suitcase containing £40,167 under his bed.” Kirk said Eddie took the look as “the money would enable him to continue competing and buy his own pair of boots”. But the Olympian flew into a panic when two coppers grabbed his arm just as he was lifting the suitcase stuffed with cash from the luggage carousel at Heathrow airport. When they put him a cop car, Eddie broke. Kirk said: “He could take it no more and explained he was going to declare the money, which he explained was payment for T-shirts and pens and all legal.” But the two coppers said they “we’re not interested in that” and were just there to escort him home to protect him from the media glare his stint at the Olympics had caused. Eddie has previously said about how his fortune soared in the wake of his Olympic stint: “I signed a deal with a T-shirt company, a sweatshirt company and a pin company and all of a sudden, after arriving in Calgary about £7,000 in debt, I had a about £85,000 of contracts, so I came back quite flush.” Kirk Field’s Planes, Trains & Amphetamines is out now and available from booksellers and his website kirkfield.net. Want all the biggest Showbiz and TV news straight to your inbox? Sign up for our free Daily Star Showbiz newsletter.