Everton and Belgium star Marouane Fellaini has landed himself in hot water after it was revealed that he transported his whole family from North Africa to Britain in his hair. The midfielder’s elaborate stunt came to a sticky end after a dressing room show-down with boss David Moyes, who noticed Fellaini’s grandmother having a cup of tea behind his left ear.

“I knew there was something wrong when I first saw him,” said immigration official Harry Buncefield-Depot. “But what can you do? You can’t go up to a footballer and say anything these days – let alone ask him if you can rustle around in his hair for members of his immediate family. So when he came in for his papers, I swore I heard someone else’s voice telling him where to sign his name, and then a female voice said something about clean underwear – well, I thought – I must be going mad. It was only after he’d gone I thought to myself – hey, maybe they were in his hair?”

The complex follicle-plot was apparently hatched by Fellaini’s ambitious father, who saw the film Ratatouille and believed that he could control his son by sitting in his enormous barnet and pulling at carefully chosen clumps of hair. When the father eventually realised that he had no power whatsoever over his son’s actions, he then hatched a plot to create room for his wife, his brothers and his parents to all ‘hitch a ride’ into the UK.

Marouane Fellaini told reporters that he “bitterly regretted” accepting his father’s proposal, and that he should have consulted with immigration officials. “It got really noisy up there after a while – once they realised they were in the UK, they didn’t want to come out. Grandmother burnt some of my hair by trying to cook on a portable gas flame, and I keep finding my uncle’s fag ends. Everyone thinks that I smoke, or that I put on funny accents to confuse them. I don’t. I’m actually quite dull, and can’t do any accent other than my own.”

Everton players have seen the funny side of Fellaini’s immigration troubles, and captain Phil Neville can often be found sleeping in Fellaini’s afro after a particularly hard training session. David Moyes, however, wants to crack down on the Belgian star, saying “the team should be focusing on their football, not Marouane’s nesting issue. When he fell over in that tackle against the Red Shite the other week, I swore I saw an elderly North African man waving at me. That just won’t do.”