[4] After a short stint on the Leeds United ground staff, he turned professional with his local club, Swansea Town, in 1952.
However, manager Billy McCandless was unwilling to test youngsters in the unforgiving waters of the Third Division South, so the boys were not signed up to the club.
[7] This proved costly to Swansea, and the result was that John signed with Leeds United, and fourteen-year-old Mel also followed him to Elland Road to become one of the ground staff.
[9] After a young apprentice, also from Swansea, failed to impress at Leeds, manager Major Frank Buckley asked Charles to accompany him on the trip back to his hometown.
[13] However, his progress was halted when he twisted his knee on national service, though this injury came as he was messing around outside the cook house rather than on parade or in the 9th Battalion's march to the Army Cup.
A cash-strapped club, their cause was not helped by the fact that the directors refused to pay for overnight stays, and so many times the team's coach would appear outside the opposition's ground just minutes before the match.
During his time at Vetch Field, Charles picked up four goals in a match against Blackburn Rovers, as well as hat-tricks against Stoke City, Middlesbrough and Sheffield Wednesday.
[21] Charles offered to work at a second job to remain at Swansea with their strict wage limit of £14 a week, but this was not permitted, and instead, he put in a transfer request.
[22] He employed Neil Harris to act as his 'business manager' in his pending transfer move, thereby making him the first-ever agent in the English game.
[23] Chased by Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur, Charles was eventually sold to Arsenal in March 1959 for a fee of £42,750 with two other players, David Dodson and Peter Davies, going the other way.
[28] Not used to the complexities of a rapidly modernising game, he endured a frosty relationship with coach Ron Greenwood after numerous humorous mix-ups over new terms such as 'blind-side run' and 'marking space', and embarrassed himself in front of the TV cameras when he fumbled and said "I'm okay, I've just got clitorises in my eyes", instead of cataracts.
[30] A fortnight later he missed a chance to make it two Highbury hat-tricks in a row when, already with two goals to his name, he scuffed a penalty into the arms of Everton keeper Jimmy O'Neill.
[37] The "Bluebirds" were in a relegation dogfight, and there was a lot of pressure on Charles to perform, however, he missed an easy chance for a goal in his debut, in what ended as a 0–0 draw at home to Manchester City.
[41] Cardiff signed John Charles for the start of the 1963–64 campaign, allowing the brothers to play alongside each other for the first time at club level.
[44] However, Mel picked up an injury, and Cardiff's promotion hopes began to fade after a poor run of form in the Christmas period.
[46] The two-legged affair had finished as a draw, and so Cardiff only lifted the cup after a 2–0 win at the Racecourse Ground, in a hastily arranged replay.
[47] Charles scored a hat-trick against Swindon Town but was dropped by Scoular for the next game after he told his striker that he hadn't worked hard enough for the team.
[48] Charles responded by pointing at a horse in a field by Ninian Park and telling Scoular, "you could put a number eight shirt on him and he would run all day – but he wouldn't score a fucking hat-trick for you!
[51] Despite enjoying his time in North Wales, he decided that he could not turn down an offer to return to the Football League by Port Vale, then managed by Stanley Matthews.
"[5] Charles was then selected for the 1957 British Home Championship squad, and helped his country to record a 2–2 draw with Scotland at Ninian Park.
A Roy Vernon goal gave Wales two opening points at home to the Czechs – this was John Charles' final game before his big-money move to Juventus.
[60] Juventus did not allow John to play in the final match, but Mel put in one of his best performances in a Welsh shirt and managed to keep prolific striker Willy Tröger in check to help secure a 4–1 victory over East Germany at Cardiff.
[61] The Czechs won the group and Welsh hopes of World Cup football seemed to be over, however, tension in the Middle East came to Wales' rescue.
Another nation won the lottery, but refused to play as they were too proud to accept such an easy route to the tournament; the Welsh FA had no such qualms, and so Charles and his countrymen only had to overcome a team of amateur Israelis to qualify for the elite competition of international football.
[63] Wales duly qualified with two simple 2–0 victories, one in the baking sun at a half completed Ramat Gan Stadium, the other in front of 50,000 rain-soaked Welshmen at Ninian Park; the scores were kept respectable by some heroic goalkeeping from Ya'akov Hodorov.
[65] The Welsh FA were pessimistic about their prospects, and before the tournament, they arranged for five days of training on some free land at Hyde Park and booked the flights home for before the beginning of the knockout stages.
[82] He tried jobs as a door-to-door shoe salesman, as a scrap metal dealer (along with brother John), as a butcher, and as a potato merchant, often failing in a spectacular and humorous fashion.
The title is a reference to his elder brother, John Charles, who became one of the biggest names in football as Mel was building his own career.