He made his league debut on 13 January 1979, against West Bromwich Albion, and settled into the Norwich side, scoring regularly and occasionally spectacularly.

Fashanu's name had been linked with bigger clubs for some time, and his inevitable departure from Carrow Road came in August 1981 when he signed for Nottingham Forest, becoming Britain's first £1 million black footballer.

[10] At The Dell, Fashanu settled in well and his promising form helped the "Saints" overcome the sudden departure of Kevin Keegan; manager Lawrie McMenemy would have liked to make the move permanent, but was prevented from doing so by a lack of funds.

He scored 20 times in 64 games for the Magpies, although he was unable to prevent them suffering back-to-back relegations, before moving to Brighton & Hove Albion in June 1985 for a fee of £115,000, where a knee injury soon afterwards looked to have finished his career.

He went to the United States for surgery and began playing again, firstly with Los Angeles Heat and then to Canada with the Edmonton Brick Men and with the Hamilton Steelers.

In October 1990, he publicly came out as gay in an interview with the tabloid press, becoming the only prominent player in professional English football to do so until Jake Daniels in 2022.

Although Fashanu claimed that he was generally well accepted by his fellow players, he freely admitted that they would often joke maliciously about his sexual orientation, and he also became the target of constant crowd abuse because of it.

He was the centre of fan and media attention while at Plainmoor: in particular, his relationship with Coronation Street actress Julie Goodyear featured in tabloid newspapers;[15] but he still managed to impress on the pitch, playing 21 league games that season and scoring 10 goals, though he was unable to save Torquay from suffering relegation from the Third Division.

In February 1993, with Torquay battling against a second successive relegation, from the new Division Three to the Football Conference, Fashanu applied for the vacant post of manager following Compton's departure, but was turned down in favour of Neil Warnock.

He left Airdrieonians in 1993, playing in Sweden with Trelleborg, before returning to Scotland, joining Heart of Midlothian in July 1993, but then had his contract terminated in February 1994 for "unprofessional conduct" (he had attempted to sell false stories regarding him and a number of cabinet ministers to the press),[16] and returned to the United States to coach youth football in Georgia.

He later moved to Atlanta Ruckus but was suspended for the playoffs for failure to comply with the terms of his contract, before joining Miramar Rangers in New Zealand in 1997.

[22] Fashanu was the subject of an early internet meme in 1996 when the BBC opened their poll for the Sports Personality of the Year award to e-mail votes for the first time.

An online campaign was organised among students in an attempt to enable him to win the title, but his votes were excluded from the final tally by the show's production team.

[4][24][25] On the morning of 3 May, he was found hanged in a deserted lock-up garage he had broken into, in Fairchild Place, Shoreditch, London, at the age of 37,[26] after visiting Chariots Roman Spa, a local gay sauna.

[27] In his suicide note, he denied the charges, stating that the sex was consensual,[4][5] and that he had fled to England because he felt he could not get a fair trial due to his homosexuality,[5] and he added: "I realised that I had already been presumed guilty.

"[25] An inquest held in London on 9 September heard evidence from a Scotland Yard detective that the Americans made no request for Fashanu to be found or arrested, and the Coroner stated that he was not a wanted man at the time he hanged himself.